"Listen! Isn't it a rotten sound!"
The truth occurred to Segal. "You prize fools! Oh, you ultra prize fools!" he cackled. "It's a sheep! Ha, ha! A sheep! And you're two more!"
They found the midnight full of curious noises in which man and his works had no concern. An owl hooted. A nightjar skimmed an edge of darkness silently, then turned his hoarse wheel. Insects crepitated below grasses. The boys had little known how the watchful forces of nature crept back to the place Doomington had usurped when, during the night, the town's fumy power was relaxed.
When at last the dark band of eclipse sliced the rim of the moon, Philip was drowsing. Harry seized him suddenly. Philip sprang to his feet. "Look! Look! The moon! The eclipse!"
Slowly the transformation took place. The three lads stood there tensely straining towards the moon. It seemed that the world had no sound during this breathless miracle. No owl cried and no sheep lifted a voice from the hollows. The moorland wind stopped, the scant grasses did not move. A train in a far cutting uttered a startled cry and subsided. Until out of the white purity was made a disk of lurid and burnished splendour, like the bossed shield of a Titan who strode across space while the issues were still dubious of celestial wars.
The lads waited on the moor till dawn came, so that the fringe of that night should not be sullied by their return to Doomington dust. Dawn came with a cool breath from the East and a line of pale green lying like a blade on the far-seen Mitchen. A sword was swung above the slopes, glancing with gold and crimson. The edge of the sun was at last visible. The boys made their way homeward along the quiet streets.
As Reb Monash ascended the pulpit on the second morning of Rosh Hashonah, the New Year festival, to deliver a drosheh, an oration, in his capacity as professional orator or maggid, the incidents of the eclipse were hazily passing through Philip's mind. For some time Reb Monash's utterance was calm and measured, not interfering with the flow of Philip's recollections. But a sudden note of passion rising and again falling away flickered across Philip's brain, as a vein of fire smoulders with the turning of an opal, and when the opal is turned away is swallowed in pearl-mist and blue. He was occupying the seat vacated by his father against the side of the Ark. He looked up towards Reb Monash who again was speaking abstractly, evenly, as if he were finding his way somewhither. There was still on his face a certain air of preoccupation which Philip had noticed all that morning. It had been a morning signalized also by a few low kind words he had said to Philip which had touched the boy curiously; and, at one moment, he had looked sombrely, gently, into his son's eyes, placing a hand on his shoulder as if to hold him back from the darkness towards which his steps were tending. Philip had looked back uneasily into his eyes, wondering. A shadow of so much sadness in his father's face had produced a sick yearning in the deeps of the boy's body. His own eyes had filled strangely, but he had clenched his fists and set his teeth. His father had turned away from him and walked back into the chayder....
Reb Monash standing in the pulpit became mysteriously depersonalized. He became a force capable at one moment of bringing tears to the eyes of his harshest listeners and the next of convulsing them with laughter. Philip realized from what deep well of oratory sprang that runlet which had burst forth upon the Longton croft from his lips. In the pulpit Reb Monash lost sight of his personal sorrow and became the voice of the age-long sorrow of his race. At such a time he stood like a bard, his tallus hanging down in great folds, his voice of such strength and sweetness that a weeping came from the women's section upon its first syllables.
The first part of the morning's oration proceeded on traditional lines. He subtly interwove the text he had chosen with the message of the festival now celebrated. Upon single words he threw such diverse and strange lights that they were opened up gallery beyond gallery, like a mine of meanings. Each sentence was illuminated by his inexhaustible fertility of quotation, each quotation prefaced by the "as it stands in the passage." He elaborated each point by a swift "zu moshel," to give a parallel. But all this skill was the routine of the maggid's profession; he had graduated with these arts in many schools. He was proceeding further than this; his voice still was subdued, patient, as if realizing that beyond these thickets was a clearing of intense light, if but steadily he made his way. Then suddenly he emerged from the tortuous paths and the tangle of undergrowth, with a loud resonant cry as he came upon the clear space at the centre of his heart.
"But is it truly the beginning of the year? Shall it be a rejoicing for our fathers and for our sons if the birth of to-day is not a birth but a death? Hayom harras olom! But think, my brothers and my sisters, into what world the Year, the Law, came first! For the world was void and dark, and the spirit of God moved upon the waters, and the spirit of God was the Law. The godlings were of stone and of wood whom you would kick and they were fallen down, and their number was the sands of the sea. Then to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob the one God vouchsafed Himself and in His book His breath is fire. How He was gracious to our fathers beyond all their deserts when, recollecting the impieties of Egypt, they made themselves a false God, a Calf of Gold. But yet He did not abandon them, nor in after times. Always he held out His right arm over them, yea He shattered the gathered enemies, even with the jawbone of an ass He shattered them. Whole races of the godless were destroyed in His love for the Law He had uttered and the Chosen People to whom He had entrusted the Law. Then our parents fell upon evil ways, they took to themselves the daughters of the Gentile, they no more circumcised their sons into the company of the Chosen. Too many, too many to tell were the sorrows that came down upon us. Our vineyards were taken away, our crops were wasted, our daughters stolen away from us. The gold and the ivory of Solomon's temple were despoiled, the Holy City was a waste of weeds. Yet once more in His goodness Jerusalem arose and once more in their hardness of heart the people sought the false gods: until the accursed Titus came upon us and the walls for ever fell. By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps on the willows in the midst thereof. But lo, my brothers, do not weep; my sisters, one thing was left to us, as a tabernacle in the wilderness, a dove on the void of waters, a sword in our right hand, a burning bush; that Law which each year begins and ends but has no ending. For upon it once again when the years of the gollus are numbered shall the Temple be rebuilt. Yea, when the trumpet shall sound, the corpses of the Chosen shall be awakened; they shall rise from their graves and roll from the scattered lands, beyond seas and hills, once more to the hills of Zion. How shall the gems on the breast of the High Priest shine and his garments be of dazzling white! How a Miriam shall sing a sweeter song on further shores of deeper waters and more divinely cloven than the waters of the Red Sea! Then at last shall Moses arise from his undiscovered grave to enter that land he had but seen afar off. The land shall be flowing with milk and honey and the grapes on the vines be fat. Our matrons shall be fruitful with blessed children and our daughters be glad. The Law shall be as a sign upon the forehead of our sons.