Who spouts his message to the wilderness,
Lightens his soul and feels one burden less;
But to the people preach, and you will find
They'll pay you back with thanks ill to your mind.
Goethe. Translated by J.S.B.
Hyde Park is a truly national property, and it is amusing and perhaps
edifying to note the various uses to which it is often put. In the
morning it is the rendezvous of nurses and children; in the afternoon
of a fashionable throng; on Sunday evenings it is the resort of
hard-working men and women, who have to content themselves with getting
a breath of fresh air once a week. But, above all, the park is the
meeting place of the people, the place for mass meetings and monster
demonstrations.
On a bright day in June, when the trees were still in their freshest
green, the crowd of wealth and fashion had beaten an ignominious retreat
before a great political demonstration to be held that afternoon.
Every one knew that the meeting would be a very stormy one, for it
related to the most burning question of the day, a question which was
hourly growing more and more momentous, and which for the time had
divided England into two bitterly opposed factions.
These years which Erica had passed so quietly had been eventful years
for the country, years of strife and bloodshed, years of reckless
expenditure, years which deluded some and enraged others, provoking most
bitter animosity between the opposing parties. The question was not a
class question, and a certain number of the working classes and a large
number of the London roughs warmly espoused the cause of that party
which appealed to their love of power and to a selfish patriotism. The
Hyde Park meeting would inevitably be a turbulent one. Those who wished
to run no risk remained at home; Rotten Row was deserted; the carriage
road almost empty; while from the gateways there poured in a never
ending stream of people some serious-looking, some eager and excited,
some with a dangerously vindictive look, some merely curious. Every now
and then the more motley and disorderly crowd was reinforced by a club
with its brass band and banners, and gradually the mass of human beings
grew from hundreds to a thousand, from one thousand to many thousands,
until, indeed, it became almost impossible to form any idea of the
actual numbers, so enormous was the gathering.
“We shall have a bad time of it today,” remarked Raeburn to Brian, as
they forced their way on. “If I'm not very much mistaken, too, we are
vastly outnumbered.”
He looked round the huge assembly from his vantage ground of six foot
four, his cool intrepidity not one whit shaken by the knowledge that,
by what he was about to say, he should draw down on his own head all the
wrath of the roughest portion of the crowd.
“'Twill be against fearful odds!” said Tom, elbowing vigorously to keep
up with his companion.
“We fear nae foe!” said Raeburn, quoting his favorite motto. “And,
after all, it were no bad end to die protesting against wicked rapacity,
needless bloodshed.”
His eye kindled as he thought of the protest he hoped to make; his heart
beat high as he looked round upon the throng so largely composed of
those hostile to himself. Was there not a demand for his superabundant
energy? A demand for the tremendous powers of endurance, of influence,
of devotion which were stored up within him? As an athlete joys in
trying a difficult feat, as an artist joys in attempting a lofty
subject, so Raeburn in his consciousness of power, in his absolute
conviction of truth, joyed in the prospect of a most dangerous conflict.
Brian, watching him presently from a little distance, could not wonder
at the immense influence he had gained in the country. The mere physique
of the man was wonderfully impressive the strong, rugged Scottish face,
the latent power conveyed in his whole bearing. He was no demagogue, he
never flattered the people; he preached indeed a somewhat severe creed,
but, even in his sternest mood, the hold he got over the people,
the power he had of raising the most degraded to a higher level was
marvelous. It was not likely, however, that his protest of today would
lead to anything but a free fight. If he could make himself effectually
heard, he cared very little for what followed. It was necessary that a
protest should be made, and he was the right man to make it; therefore
come ill or well, he would go through with it, and, if he escaped with
his life so much the better!
The meeting began. A moderate speaker was heard without interruption,
but the instant Raeburn stood up, a chorus of yells arose. For several
minutes he made no attempt to speak; but his dignity seemed to grow in
proportion with the indignities offered him. He stood there towering
above the crowd like a rock of strength, scanning the thousands of faces
with the steady gaze of one who, in thinking of the progress of the
race, had lost all consciousness of his own personality. He had come
there to protest against injustice, to use his vast strength for others,
to spend and be spent for millions, to die if need be! Raeburn was made
of the stuff of which martyrs are made; standing there face to face with
an angry crowd, which might at any moment break loose and trample him to
death or tear him to pieces, his heart was nevertheless all aglow with
the righteousness of his cause, with the burning desire to make an
availing protest against an evil which was desolating thousands of
homes.
The majesty of his calmness began to influence the mob; the hisses and
groans died away into silence, such comparative silence, that is, as
was compatible with the greatness of the assembly. Then Raeburn braced
himself up; dignified before, he now seemed even more erect and stately.
The knowledge that for the moment he had that huge crowd entirely
under control was stimulating in the highest degree. In a minute
his stentorian voice was ringing out fearlessly into the vast arena;
thousands of hearts were vibrating to his impassioned appeal. To each
one it seemed as if he individually were addressed.
“You who call yourselves Englishmen, I come to appeal to you today! You,
who call yourselves freemen, I come to tell you that you are acting like
slaves.”
Then with rare tact, he alluded to the strongest points of the British
character, touching with consummate skill the vulnerable parts of his
audience. He took for granted that their aims were pure, their standard
lofty, and by the very supposition raised for a time the most abject of
his hearers, inspired them with his own enthusiasm.
Presently, when he felt secure enough to venture it, when the crowd was
hanging on his words with breathless attention, he appealed no longer
directly to the people, but drew, in graphic language, the picture
of the desolations brought by war. The simplicity of his phrases, his
entire absence of showiness or bombast, made his influence indescribably
deep and powerful. A mere ranter, a frothy mob orator, would have been
silenced long before.
But this man had somehow got hold of the great assembly, had conquered
them by sheer force of will; in a battle of one will against thousands
the one had conquered, and would hold its own till it had administered
the hard home-thrust which would make the thousands wince and retaliate.
Now, under the power of that “sledge-hammer Saxon,” that marvelously
graphic picture of misery and bereavement, hard-headed, and hitherto
hard hearted men were crying like children. Then came the rugged
unvarnished statement shouted forth in the speaker's sternest voice.
“All this is being done in your name, men of England! Not only in your
name, but at your cost! You are responsible for this bloodshed, this
misery! How long is it to go on? How long are you free men going to
allow yourselves to be bloody executioners? How long are you to be
slavish followers of that grasping ambition which veils its foulness
under the fair name of patriotism?”
Loud murmurs began to arise at this, and the orator knew that the ground
swell betokened the coming storm. He proceeded with tenfold energy, his
words came down like hailstones, with a fiery indignation he delivered
his mighty philippic, in a torrent of forceful words he launched out the
most tremendous denunciation he had ever uttered.
The string had been gradually worked up to its highest possible
tension; at length when the strain was the greatest it suddenly snapped.
Raeburn's will had held all those thousands in check; he had kept his
bitterest enemies hanging on his words; he had lashed them into fury,
and still kept his grip over them; he had worked them up, gaining more
and more power over them, till at length, as he shouted forth the last
words of a grand peroration, the bitterness and truth of his accusations
proved keener than his restraining influence.
He had foreseen that the spell would break, and he knew the instant
it was broken. A moment before, and he had been able to sway that huge
crowd as he pleased; now he was at their mercy. No will power, no force
of language, no strength of earnestness or truth would avail him now.
All that he had to trust to was his immense physical strength, and what
was that when measured against thousands?
He saw the dangerous surging movement in the sea of heads, and knew only
too well what it betokened. With a frightful yell of mingled hatred
and execration, the seething human mass bore down upon him! His own
followers and friends did what they could for him, but that was very
little. His case was desperate. Desperation, however, inspires some
people with an almost superhuman energy. Life was sweet, and that day he
fought for his life. The very shouting and hooting of the mob, the roar
of the angry multitude, which might well have filled even a brave man
with panic, stimulated him, strengthened him to resist to the uttermost.
He fought like a lion, forcing his way through the furious crowd,
attacked in the most brutal way on every side, yet ever struggling on
if only by inches. Never once did his steadfastness waver, never for
a single instant did his spirit sink. His unfailing presence of mind
enabled him to get through what would have been impossible to most
men, his great height and strength stood him in good stead, while the
meanness and the injustice of the attack, the immense odds against which
he was fighting nerved him for the struggle.
It was more like a hideous nightmare than a piece of actual life, those
fierce tiger faces swarming around, that roar of vindictive anger, that
frightful crushing, that hail storm of savage blows! But, whether life
or nightmare, it must be gone through with. In the thick of the fight a
line of Goethe came to his mind, one of his favorite mottoes; “Make good
thy standing place and move the world.”
And even then he half smiled to himself at the forlornness of the hope
that he should ever need a standing place again.
With renewed vigor he fought his way on, and with a sort of glow
of triumph and new-born hope had almost seen his way to a place of
comparative safety, when a fearful blow hopelessly maimed him. With a
vain struggle to save himself he fell to the earth a vision of fierce
faces, green leaves, and blue sky flashed before his eyes, an inward
vision of Erica, a moment's agony, and then the surging crowd closed
over him, and he knew no more.