A Second Coming. Marsh Richard
at Jones, then at the crowd, then at each other. All the morning the people had been gathering round the gate, the number increasing as the minutes passed. Except that they could not be induced to move away, there had been little to object to in their demeanour until now. As Jones appeared with his wife they formed together into a more compact mass. Another shovelful of dust was thrown by someone at the back with the same dexterity as before, so that it lighted on the man and the woman, partially obscuring them beneath a cloud of dust. That same instant perhaps a dozen stones were thrown, some of which struck both Mr. and Mrs. Jones, the rest rattling against the gate.
It was done so quickly that the police had not a chance to offer interference. They had been instructed to make as little show of authority as possible, to bear as much as could be borne, and, until the last extremity, to do nothing to rouse the rancour of the strikers. In the face of this sudden assault the trio hesitated. Then the one nearest to the gate held his hand up to the crowd, shouting:
'Now, you chaps, none of that! Don't you go making fools of yourselves, or you'll be sorry!' He turned to the Joneses. 'You'd better go back and try to get out some other way. There'll be trouble if you stop here.'
Tom Jones asked him stolidly, gazing with his lack-lustre eyes intently at the crowd:
'Which other way?'
'I don't know-any other way. You can't get this way, that's plain- they mean mischief. Back you go, before you're sorry.'
The constable endeavoured to hustle the pair back within the gate. But Jones would not have it.
'My child's dying; this is the nearest way to her. I'm going this way.'
The officer persisted in his attempt to persuade him to change his mind.
'Don't be silly! You won't do your child any good by getting yourself knocked to pieces, will you?'
Tom Jones was obstinate.
'I'm going this way.'
Slipping past the constable, he moved towards the crowd. The people confronted him like a solid wall.
'Let me pass, you chaps.'
That moment the storm broke. The man's stolid demeanour, the complete indifference with which he faced their rage, might have had something to do with it. The effect of his request to be allowed to pass was as if he had dropped a lighted match into a powder-magazine. An explosion followed. The air was rent by curses; the people became all at once like madmen. Possessed with sudden frenzy, they crowded round the man, raining on him a hail of blows, each man struggling with his fellow in order to reach the object of his rage. Their very fury defeated their purpose. Not a few of the blows which were meant for Jones fell on their own companions. With the commencement of the attack Jones's stolidity completely vanished. He was transformed into a fiend, and behaved like one. His voice was heard above the others, pouring forth a flood of objurgations on the heads of his assailants. His wife was his slavish disciple. Her shrill tones were mingled with his deeper ones; they were at least as audible. Her language was no better, her passion was no less. The man and the woman fought like wild beasts. And so blinded by fury were the efforts of their assailants that the pair were able to give back much more than they received.
The attempts of the police at pacification were useless. They were not in sufficient force. And there is a point in the temper of a crowd at which its rage is not to be appeased until it has vented itself on the object of its fury. All that the officers succeeded in doing was to lose their own tempers. Under certain circumstances there is irresistible contagion in a madman's frenzy. Presently they themselves were mingling in the frantic mêlée, apparently with as little show of reason as the rest.
Suddenly the crowd gave way towards the centre. Those in the middle were borne down by those who persisted in pressing on. There was a struggling, heaving, mouthing mass upon the ground, with the Joneses underneath. And, as the writhings and contortions of this heap grew less and less, there came One, before whose touch men gave way, so that, before they knew it, He stood there, in their very midst, before them all. In His presence their rage was stilled. Ceasing to contend, they drew back, looking towards Him with their bloodshot eyes. Where had been the pile of living men was a clear space, in which He stood. At His feet were two forms-Tom Jones and his wife. The woman cried and groaned, twisting her limbs; but the man lay still.
'What is it that you would do?'
With the sorrowful inflexion of the voice was blended a satiric intonation which seemed to strike some of those who heard as with a thong. One man, a big, burly fellow, chose to take the question as addressed to himself. He still trembled with excess of rage; his voice was husky; from his mouth there came a volley of oaths.
'Bash the – to a jelly-that's what we'd like to do to his – carcase! It's through the likes of him that our homes are broken up, our kids starving, our wives with pretty near nothing on. Killing's too good for such a-!'
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