THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE
The Temple was profoundly dark. Crouched on the swinging stone, helpless
in Sanson’s power, I was not conscious of fear. Rather, a melancholy
regret possessed me that this was the end, as it inevitably must be. A
hundred years of separation, the knowledge of each other’s love—no more;
and all had gone for nothing. Yet, there was cause for happiness that
this much had been granted me, to die with Esther; and the loss of all
hope brought calmness to my spirit and acceptance of the inevitable.
It may have been two hours later when I heard the cries of the mob once
more. I heard the tramp of feet upon stone; and then, through every
swinging door below, invisible forms came trooping in until they covered
the whole of the vast floor. They shouted against the Christians in an
unceasing pandemonium, and the walls and hollow roof re-echoed that
infernal din until another spirit that underlay the mob fury, something
of awed expectancy, swept over the concourse, and the last shout died
down, and a new and dreadful silence arose.
It lasted minutes, perhaps, broken only by the stir of feet on the
floor, the rustle of robes, the sighs that whispered through the
darkness; then, out of that silence a low chant began. It was that
dreadful chant that I had heard before, crooned first by a few and then
by many, tossed back and forth from side to side of the Temple floor,
until all caught it up and made the walls echo with it:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal in the body before
we die.”
There was a dreadful melody, one of those tunes that seem to rise
spontaneously to a people’s lips as the outpouring of its aspirations.
Again and again that dreadful, hopeless chant rose from below, swelled
into a din, and died.
Then shouts broke out again as the mob spirit seized upon some who had
assembled there:
“Make us immortal in these bodies of ours!”
“Make us immortal, Sanson!”
“Give me eternal life!” raved the cracked voice of an aged man; and that
blasphemy against Nature seemed to shock the mob into silence, until
once more the low chant swelled and echoed and died away in wailing
overtones of helplessness.
Suddenly a single solar light flashed at one side of the Temple, and,
high above the multitude, where the end of the bridge span rested
against the curve of the wall, I perceived Sanson. He was standing alone
upon the drawn-back span, which, shadowy and vague, gave him the aspect
of a figure poised in the air.
He was a master of stage-craft. It even awed me, that calculated effect
of the dark Temple and the crowd, invisible each to his neighbor; and
the hypnotic _mise en scène_ of the solitary figure aloft beneath the
single light. I, too, felt the contagion of the universal expectation.
Sanson uttered no word, but stretched one arm out and pointed across the
Temple. Then I heard the tramp of men coming from the direction of the
elevator shafts; and suddenly a second light burned across the vast void
of the dark.
Upon the second span, now dimly visible, drawn back against the wall
opposite Sanson, I saw the prisoners from the vaults, marshaled under
the charge of the Guard. There, at the extreme edge, Elizabeth stood, a
slender, virginal figure, her hands clasped over her bosom; at her side
David, behind them the patriarchal figure of Bishop Alfred. Behind him
were ranged the other victims of Sanson’s rage. They, too, under that
single light, seemed to be poised in air.
At the sight of them, hysteria swept the minds of the mob into frenzy.
“The Christians!” they screamed. “Kill them! Kill them! Out with the
dogs who hold their bodies cheap! To the Rest Cure! Ah—h!”
The groaning end was drawn out as the vibration of a G-string. The air
was heavy and foul with hate; I felt it as something ponderable.
A woman’s voice rang shrill through the Temple, and the devil that
goaded her had raised his head now after two thousand years of stupor.
He returned into a world that had forgotten him since the first shapings
of Europe’s peoples began, out of the deepest place in hell.
“Sacrifice them!” she shrieked. “A human sacrifice upon the
altar-stone!”
The whistling, strident voices of the mob answered her: “Sacrifice them!
A human sacrifice!”
Surely Sanson’s stage-craft was working well. He stood there, facing his
victims across the void. He raised his hand, and every voice was
stilled.
“I have called you together, citizens, upon this day,” he said,
“because, as you once chose freedom in place of bondage, so, now, the
time has come to choose again. I have given you liberty, I have given
you peace, I have enlightened you and raised you to man’s true dignity.
The Christians used to say that man was half ape and half that mythical
vertebrate known as the angel. I have driven the ape out of you and made
you all angel. That is to say, all man, standing on his own feet, not
leaning against imaginary gods to prop him. It has been a difficult
battle, for all the vested evils in the world have fought against me.
But I have won: your God, your Christ, the superstitious, stubborn heart
of man have yielded. Now the old order is ripe to perish everlastingly.
There remains one more enemy—”
“Death!” screamed the shrill woman’s voice. “Make us immortal in our
beautiful bodies, Sanson! Give us life, everlasting life!”
“The Ant,” pursued the speaker patiently.
It was an unexpected anticlimax. The crowd groaned in disappointment,
and the silence that followed was of unutterable grief. That Sanson
would bestow his boon upon them, all had believed. Nor had they
anticipated Sanson’s declaration. For the idolatrous symbol, which was
all they knew of worship, had possessed itself of their imaginations,
their aspirations had cleaved to it, and, as must be, what had begun as
a symbol had ended as a god.
Sanson was too shrewd not to see immediately that he had struck the
wrong note. He swung himself about, facing the captives on the opposite
span, and his voice reverberated through the Temple.
“You have demanded sacrifices, human sacrifices,” he cried, “and you
shall have them, but not in honor of the Ant. There is no Ant, no God.
But there is Freedom, hidden within the cylinder where she has lain
since the beginnings of time, waiting for this day to dawn, now ready to
emerge into a world set free. To her we sacrifice!”
He stood there, a dramatic figure, the incarnation of rebellious pride,
Lucifer defying God, or some old Titan in revolt against Olympus. But,
as he paused, the cracked voice of the old bishop piped through the
Temple.
“But I can give you eternal life, my people,” he cried clearly. “I have
the Word that alone can set you free. It is the same that Bonham spoke
to you in Westminster Hall while he was burning. You heard him and went
home, and some were afraid, some wondered, and some forgot; but that
Word never dies, and it will be told soon in a million homes, because,
by God’s mercy, the Russians are at hand to set you free.”
The deep-breathed “Ah!” that followed was not of hate but of fear.
Something was stirring in the hearts of the multitude, molding them
against knowledge and will. I felt it, too: a mighty spiritual power, a
Light that clove the darkness. I saw the old bishop stand out at the end
of the span and shake his clenched hand at Sanson, silent, opposite.
“You cannot raise one finger save by the will of Him whom you deny,
Sanson!” he said. “You are not going to make any sacrifices. You, who
have raised your will against heaven, this night your soul will be
required of you!”
The sense of something imminent and mighty shook my limbs. I stood up,
clinging against the grille. There was no sound in all the Temple.
Protagonists in the eternal drama, the bishop and Sanson faced each
other.
Suddenly I perceived that the solar light above the bishop had moved. It
had moved outward; and now it was approaching me. And the light above
Sanson was moving, too. I understood what was happening. Sanson had
quietly given the command for the bridges to be swung together.
An instant later the little lights that crossed the gloom were
dissipated as ten thousand more flashed out, illumining the vast
interior of the Temple. I saw the packed multitudes below, thousands on
thousands, their faces upturned, each with the same stamp of fear on it,
as if the same workman had carved the features. I saw the groins and
arches, the gallery above me, filled with the Guard; Sanson upon one
nearing bridge, his Guard about him, too; upon the other, David,
Elizabeth of the slender figure and the clasped hands, and Bishop Alfred
and the rest of the prisoners. I waited, my arms about Esther.
Once more I heard a single sigh float upward. Then the woman’s voice
that had shrieked before cried piercingly:
“The Messiah has come, who is to make us free!”
I saw Sanson stiffen and catch at the rail of the nearing bridge. I saw
David, now only an arm’s length from me, staring incredulous; Elizabeth
with wide-open eyes, the bishop’s calm face, the Guard like carven
effigies.
Then, as if the power that held the populace in unison were suddenly
dissolved, they broke from their places. They sprang with frantic,
exultant cries toward the Ant; they formed a dozen human chains that
reared themselves above the pedestal, dissolved, and poured over the
golden idol. Among them I saw clusters of men—our men—with Ray rods in
their hands. They poured out into the rooms that lined the passages.
They swarmed up pillars and reached out hands to the captives. They
howled at Sanson, whose bodyguard, closing about him, formed an
impenetrable defense. The conspiracy had not miscarried.
But all were shouting at me, and the fanatic spirit of hate that Sanson
had evoked seemed to have recoiled and turned on him to his destruction.
Suddenly the approaching spans stood still. They remained motionless,
each end some three feet from me. Then, slowly, they began to recede.
“Jump, Arnold!” I heard David scream above the uproar.
I saw the plan to isolate me there, where none could reach me, helpless
in the mid-Temple. I gathered Esther high in my arms, stepped back, and
sprang; I felt myself falling. Still clutching Esther with one hand, I
groped in blindness with the other. I struck the edge of the span. Hands
held me; hands pulled Esther free; I stood among our friends, and behind
us already the Guard was beaten backward.
I saw the tattered outlaws’ figures everywhere. Only around Sanson were
the Guard still potent. He saw the situation; he knew his power was
crumbling as Lembken’s had crumbled; and, pushing his bodyguard aside,
strode forward and held up his hand for silence. Even then—so great was
his power—at the gesture, all motion in the Temple ceased; I saw
arrested Ray rods, not yet discharged, held stiffly, limbs halted in
air, necks craned toward the speaker and immobile.
“Choose, then!” Sanson called in words that rang like a trumpet’s blast.
“It is your supreme moment. Will you have your Messiah or will you have
my gift—immortality?”
“Give us God!” screamed the woman’s voice; and then a thousand and ten
thousand answered him:
“Give us God!”
“The God of Bonham!”
“Our fathers’ God, Whom we denied.”
The people had answered truly in the supreme moment, as they must
always, that the world may not cease. For, in the words of Renan, “the
heart of the common people is the great reservoir of the self-devotion
and resignation by which alone the world can be saved.”