“Now’s the danger-point, Jack. He’ll try to divert attention from his failure. But I’m ready for him.”
I began mechanically to count seconds, with no particular reason, but simply because I felt I must do something. Two minutes passed; and then through the windows came a long groaning note, the voice of the multitude smitten with disillusion at the failure of the miracle which they had expected. It rolled in a huge volume of sound across the Park and then died away.
Suddenly the dictaphone poured out a torrent of words. The voice was no longer calm; all the quiet strength had gone out of it, and, instead, the tones were those of an infuriated man seeking some object upon which to wreak his anger. But with all his rage the Reverend John had a ready mind. In a moment he seems to have seen a possible loophole of escape.
“No!” he cried, “I will not ascend for yet awhile. Work remains to be done here, in this godless city; and I will renounce my rest until it has been brought to its end. Life must cease ere I can seek my rest. I bid you follow me that we may accomplish the task which has been laid upon me. Over yonder”—he evidently pointed towards us—“over yonder sits the Arch-Enemy; he who strives to chain pure spirits in this web of flesh. His hand is on all this city, so that the smoke of her burning goes up to the skies. Break asunder the chains which he is forging. Destroy the evil works which he has planned. Wreck the engines which he has designed. Come, my brothers; the doom is pronounced against all the works of his hand. Come, follow me and end it all. Destroy! Destroy! so that this world of sorrow and of sin may pass away like an evil vision and life may be no more. Destroy! Destroy!”
Nordenholt, listening intently, pressed his finger upon the ivory stud. There was a moment’s pause, and then from the eastern end of the building came a sound of machine-guns. It lasted only for a few seconds and then died out.
“They couldn’t miss at that range,” said Nordenholt. “That’s the end of the Reverend John personally. But I doubt if we are finished with him altogether even now.”
XVIII
The Eleventh Hour
I have set down all my doubts as to the wisdom of Nordenholt’s treatment of the Reverend John; and it is only right to place on the other side the fact that events proved he had gauged matters better than I had done. He had foreseen the trend of the revivalist’s thoughts and had deduced their climax, probably long before Wester himself had understood the road he had placed his feet upon. Nordenholt had allowed the excitement to grow without check, even to its highest point, without interfering in the least; because he calculated that the supreme disillusion would produce a revulsion of feeling which could be attained in no other way. And his calculation proved to be correct. Morally shaken by the failure of the miracle which they had been led to expect, and which many of them had counted upon with certainty, the populace allowed itself to be driven back into the factories and mines without a word of protest. Their dreams were shattered and they fell back into reality without the strength to resist any dominant will. It seemed as though the last difficulties were disappearing before us; and that the path now led straight onward to our goal. So I thought, at least, but Nordenholt doubted. And, as it turned out, he again saw more clearly than I. We might be done with the Reverend John; but the Reverend John had not finished with us, dead as he was.
The next ten days saw the institution of a merciless system in the works and mines of the Area. During the period of the revivalist’s activity there had been an accelerated fall in the output; and Nordenholt determined that this must be made good as soon as possible. Possibly also he believed that a spell of intense physical exertion would exhaust the workers and leave them no time to indulge in recollections and reflections which might be dangerous. Whatever his motives may have been, his methods were drastic in the extreme. The minimum necessary output was trebled; and the members of any group who failed to attain it were promptly deported into the desert of the South. Surely entrenched behind the loyalty of the Labour Defence Force, Nordenholt threw aside any concealment and ruled the whole Area as a despot. The end in view was all that he now seemed to see; and he broke men and threw them aside without the slightest hesitation. More than ever, it seemed to me at this time, he was like a machine, rolling forward along its appointed path, careless of all the human lives and the human interests which he ground to powder under his irresistible wheels. I began to think of him at times in the likeness of Jagannatha, the Lord of the World, under whose car believers cast themselves to death. But none of Nordenholt’s victims were willing ones.
Unlimited power, as Nordenholt himself had pointed out to me, is a perilous gift to any man. The human mind is not fitted for strains of this magnitude; and even Nordenholt’s colossal personality suffered, I believe, from the stress of his despotic rule. But where a smaller man would have frittered away his energies in petty oppression or aimless regulation, Nordenholt never lost sight of his main objective: and I believe that his harshness in the end arose merely from his ever-growing determination to bring his enterprise to success. Concentrating his mind entirely upon this, he may have suffered from a loss of perspective which made him ruthless in his
