Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  He tapped a stick of sealing wax on his desk and broke it in two. Again I reflected how unlike this was to the Nordenholt I had known at first, the man who could unfold huge plans without so much as a gesture to help out his meaning. He must have read the thought in my eyes, for he laughed, half at himself, I think.

  “Quite right, Jack. These theatrical touches seem to be growing on me, of late. I must really try to cure myself. But, all the same, I mean to keep my eye on the Reverend John. If he sets up as a prophet—and I expect he will do that one of these days—I’ll take the risk and put him down. But it’s a tricky business, I can tell you. Until he actually becomes dangerous, I shall let him go on.”

  It was only natural, after that, for me to take more interest in the career of the Reverend John. I even attended one of his open-air meetings from start to finish; and I was still more impressed by his command over his hearers. The material of his sermons seemed to me commonplace in the extreme: it was not by the novelty of his subjects but by his personal force that he impressed his audiences and raised them to a state of exaltation. Zion, the River, The Tree of Life, Eden, the loosing of burdens, rest and joy eternal: all the old phrases were utilised. From what I heard of his preaching, it seemed to me innocuous. A brief time of suffering and sorrow upon earth and then the heavens would open and the Elect would enter into their endless happiness: these appeared to be the elements of the creed which he expounded; and I could see little reason for Nordenholt’s anxiety.

  At last, however, I began to notice something novel in the sermons. The change came so gradually that I could hardly be sure when it began. Probably he had opened up his fresh line so tentatively that I had not observed it at the time; and it was only after he had already been changing step by step in his subject that I became clearly conscious of his new tone.

  With the greatest skill he contrived to use the old expressions while inflecting them with a fresh meaning. At last, however, there could be no doubt as to his intention. It was no longer Christianity that he preached, but a kind of bastard Buddhism. Up to that point in his career he had spoken of earthly affairs as a trial through which we must pass in order to attain to bliss in the Hereafter; but in his newer phase the things of the material world became entirely secondary.

  Eternal rest, eternal joy, eternal peace: these were his main themes; and to the exhausted and nerve-racked population they had an attraction of the most subtle kind. The Rev. John was a psychologist like Nordenholt, though he worked in a narrower groove; and he well knew how to utilise the levers of the human consciousness. Eternal rest! What more attractive prospect could be held out to that toil-worn race?

  Slowly, with the most gradual of transitions, he began to assume the mantle of a prophet; and with that phase new names began to emerge in his discourses. The Four Truths, the Middle Path, the Five Hindrances, Arahatship, Karma: these cropped up from time to time in sermons which were daily becoming wilder in their phraseology.

  I have no wish to be unfair to the Reverend John. He was a fanatic; and no fanatic is entirely sane. I am sure, also, that in the earlier stages of his campaign, he strove merely for the spiritual good of the people as he understood it. But it is necessary to say also that I believe he became crazed in the end; and that the ultimate effect of his preaching led us to the very edge of disaster. It is not for me to weigh or judge him; he preferred his visions to material safety; whilst my own mind is concerned more with the things of this earth than with what may come later.

  His preaching now passed into a stage where even I could appreciate its dangerous character. More and more, his sermons took the form of belittlings of the material world; while the joys of eternal life were held up in comparison. It was not long until he was openly questioning whether our human existence was worth prolonging at all. Would it not be better, he asked, to throw off these shackles of the Flesh at once rather than live for a few years longer amid the sorrows and temptations of this world? Why not discard this earthly mantle and enter at once into Nirvana?

  This appeared to me a mere preaching of suicide; but if his followers chose to adopt his suggestions, it seemed to me a matter for themselves. I had always regarded suicide as the back-door out of life; though I had never underestimated the courage of those who turn its handle. Yet it seemed to me evidence of a certain want of toughness of fibre, a lack of fitness to survive; and, personally, I had no desire to retain in the world anyone who seemed unable to bear its strains.

  His next phase of development, however, opened my eyes. By this time he had become a great power among the people. Many a king has been treated with less reverence than his followers showed to him. Crowds flocked to his meetings, standing thickly even when they stretched far beyond the reach of that magnificent voice. In the streets he was saluted as though he were a superhuman agent. There were attempts made to get him to touch the sick in the hope that he might heal them.

  From afar, Nordenholt watched all this rising surge of emotion. In some ways, the two men resembled each other; but their motives were wide apart as the Poles. Both had their ideals, higher than the normal; but these ideals were in deadly antagonism to each other. Both, it is possible, were right; but the clash of right with right is the highest form of tragedy; and collision between them was inevitable.

  “The Reverend John has been a great disappointment to me, Jack,” Nordenholt admitted to me one day. “That man has the makings of a great demagogue or a great saint in him; and it seems to me that the spin of the coin has gone against me, for I thought the saint would come uppermost. He isn’t as big as I thought he was. His head has been turned by all this adulation; and unless I am mistaken again we shall find him becoming a public danger before very long. He thinks he has his own work to do, preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven; and in doing that he seems to sweep aside all earthly affairs as trifles. He despises them. I don’t. To me, he seems to be like a child in a game who won’t abide by the rules. His heaven may be all right; but if it is to be attained by shirking one’s work on earth—not striving to live—it seems to me a poor business. I think life is important, or it wouldn’t exist; and I’m working to keep it in existence. He seems to believe it is of no value, if he really means what he says. We can’t agree, that’s evident.”

  It was not long before the Reverend John’s campaign filled even my mind with apprehension. His style of preaching changed and grew more incoherent; his phraseology became wilder; and a minatory tone crept into his sermons. And the tremendous personality of the speaker, coupled with all the art of the orator, made even these obscure ravings powerful to influence the minds of his hearers.

  He began to speak of curses from heaven upon a generation which had forgotten the right path. The Famine was a sign that all life was to be swept from the earth’s face. And thence he passed to the proposition that any struggling against the Famine was a hindrance to the workings of the universe.

  I think that it was about this time that he discarded ordinary clothes and began to go about clad in a curious garment manufactured from the skin of some animal. Except for his fiery beard, he recalled the sandal-shod John the Baptist represented in old illustrated Bibles. Nor was he alone in this fashion: some of his more prominent adherents also adopted it, though in their cases the results were not so imposing. And now things moved rapidly towards their end. The Reverend John preached daily in the streets, predicting a universal entry into Nirvana. His curses against those who worked for the physical salvation of the people to the detriment of their Karma became louder and more frequent; and it was not long until he spent most of his energies in comminations. From cursings, he passed to threats; and his attacks upon Nordenholt grew in vehemence day by day. And still Nordenholt, to my growing wonder, held his hand and forbore to strike.

  By this time the religious mania was spreading rapidly throughout the population of the Area. The skin-clad followers of the Reverend John ran nightly through the streets crying that the Great Day was at hand and calling upon the people
to repent of their sins and turn to righteousness. Strange scenes were witnessed; and stranger doctrines preached. It was a weird time.

  Meanwhile, the preaching of the revivalist was becoming more and more exalted. He named himself a Prophet, the last and the greatest. He began to be more definite in his predictions; events which he foreshadowed were foretold as coming to pass at stated dates. At last he gave out that three days later he and his followers would publicly ascend to heaven in a cloud of glory; and that the world of earthly things would pass away as he did so.

  And still Nordenholt held his hand. I could not understand it; for by this time I had seen where the teaching of the Reverend John was leading us. Work was slowing down in the factories; crowds of all classes were spending their whole time following their Prophet; and the mere numbers of them were becoming a serious menace to the safety of the Area. At last I became so anxious on the subject that I went to consult Nordenholt on the matter. I had begun to doubt if he appreciated the gravity of the situation.

  I found him sitting before the fire in his office, smoking and gazing before him as though wrapped in his reflections.

  “Look here, Nordenholt,” I said. “I suppose you grasp the seriousness of affairs nowadays? Isn’t it about time something was done? It seems to me that you’ll need to grasp this nettle before long anyway. Why let it grow any bigger?”

  “Afraid I’m losing my grip, eh? Not yet, Jack, not yet awhile. But I will grasp it before long. I’m only waiting the proper moment. I’ve waited for weeks; and now I think it’s nearly due at last.”

  “But the man’s insane, Nordenholt. You see that, don’t you? Why wait any longer? Grab him now and be done with it—at least that’s what I should do if I were in charge.”

  “No, I’m going to give him three days more. If I interfered now, it would spoil everything. Wait till he has seen his prophecy fail, and then we can tackle him.”

  “I don’t see any use waiting; but I suppose you know best.”

  “I do know best, Jack, believe me. Come back here in three days, at half-past eleven, and you’ll see my methods. I’m going to teach these people a lesson this time.”

  He leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes on the old stone image of the Pope’s head which, under its glass bell, forms part of the mantelpiece.

  “What differences there are in the way religion works on a man, Jack. There was an old chap in the dark ages, that Pope; and he believed in spreading the light by education. He founded the University here. And then you have this fanatic to-day whose one idea seems to be to reduce everything to chaos again. What a difference! And yet each of them thinks that he is inspired to do the right thing in his day.”

  He threw away the end of his cigar and rose.

  “Come back in three days, Jack. You’ll see it all then. I needn’t explain it now.”

  *****

  The events of the following two days filled me with uneasiness; and I began to fear that for once Nordenholt had erred in his calculations. The tumult and agitation centring around the figure of the revivalist increased; his preaching became more and more menacing; and it seemed to me that he had been allowed too much rope. By this time he was quite frankly attacking the whole scheme of the Nitrogen Area as an act of impiety which would call down the wrath of the Divinity in the immediate future. And mingled with these cursings he poured forth his prophecies which grew hourly more detailed. He and his Elect would ascend into the sky at noon, he declared; and that all men might see this come about, he proposed to take his stand by the Roberts statue in Kelvingrove Park, from which eminence he would be visible to the assembled crowds.

  Rumours ran through the Area, growing wilder and yet more wild as they passed from lip to lip. Even the most unimaginative of the population felt the strange electric power which seemed to flow out from the revivalist; and the tales of his doings were magnified and distorted out of all semblance of reality. Just as Nordenholt had predicted, all the formless unrest of the Area crystallised round the personality of the preacher and took shape and substance. Work was abandoned by the greater part of the Area labour; and the factories, usually thronged by shift after shift, remained almost untenanted during those two days in which the populace awaited the promised miracle.

  Meanwhile the followers of the revivalist redoubled their efforts and their conduct grew less and less restrained. The labourers who remained at work were assaulted by bands of these fanatics, and driven from the doors of the factories. Order seemed to have vanished from the Area; for I found that Nordenholt had withdrawn the Labour Defence Force entirely from the streets, allowing the madmen to do their will. It seemed as though the Area were being permitted to relapse into chaos.

  The uninterrupted preaching of the revivalist had wrought the whole population into a state of strained expectation. Even those who scoffed at his claims were affected by the atmosphere of the time; and there was in most minds an uneasy questioning: “Suppose that it should all be true?”

  *****

  At half-past eleven, I went to Nordenholt’s office as I had promised. He was alone, seated at his huge desk. The usual mass of papers had been cleared away and I noticed that their place had been taken by a small piece of apparatus like a telephone in some respects and an ordinary electric bell-push on a wooden stand. Temporary wires ran from these to the window.

  “Come in, Jack. You’re just in time for the curtain.”

  “It seems to me, Nordenholt, that the curtain ought to have been rung down on this thing long ago. You’ve waited far too long, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t think I’ve miscalculated. And to tell you the truth, Jack, this is the biggest thing I’ve had to think out so far. It’s make or break with us this time; and we’ve never been as near disaster before. But I’ve thought it out; and I believe I’m right. Have a cigar.”

  He pushed a box across to me and I cut and lit one mechanically.

  “This thing here,” he tapped the instrument, “is a loudspeaker. The transmitter’s fixed up in the statue over there.”

  He nodded in the direction of the Park below our windows. I got up and looked out. As far as my view reached, the ground was concealed by a closely-packed crowd of people, all standing motionless and intent upon the group on the open space around the statue. There had been some singing of hymns earlier in the morning; but now the vast concourse had fallen silent as their expectation rose to fever-heat and the hour of the miracle drew near.

  “I’m going to give him every chance,” said Nordenholt’s voice behind me. “Let him pull off his miracle if he can. If he can’t, then I expect trouble; and at the first word of danger I hear, I’ll settle with him at last. I don’t mind his preaching suicide; but if he starts to threaten the work of the Area, it will be on his own head.”

  The three-quarters had struck from the great bells above our heads; and, a few minutes later, Nordenholt switched on the loudspeaker. Suddenly the clarion voice of the revivalist seemed to fill the room in which we stood.

  “My brothers! In a few brief moments I shall leave you, ascending in glory to the skies. While I am yet with you, heed my words. Turn from this idle show which blinds your eyes. Turn from this heavy labour and unceasing toil. Turn from this valley of sin and sorrow. Turn from the lusts of the flesh and the lures of material things. Long and weary has been the way; life after life have we suffered, but when we pass into Nirvana there is rest for you, rest for each of you, eternal rest! O my brothers, all that are worn with the bearing of burdens, all that are taxed beyond your powers, all that are a-faint and borne down, follow after me into Nirvana, where none shall be a-weary and where all shall rest. There shall be no more toil, no more fatigue, no more striving and no more labour. There shall be rest, everlasting rest, a long sweet slumber under the trees, while the river flows by your feet and its murmur lulls you in your eternal rest.”

  Even in the harsh reproduction of the dictaphone I could feel the magic of the cadences of that splendid voice, soothin
g, comforting, promising the multitude the prize which to them must have seemed the most desirable of all. And through it all the steady repetition of “Rest” ran with an almost hypnotic effect. Incoherent though it was, the appeal struck at the very centre of each over-driven being in that throng.

  “Rest, rest for all. Surcease of toil. Do you not feel it already, my brothers? Languor creeps over you; you faint as you stand. And I promise rest to you all. Follow me and you shall rest in those fields; there where you may dream away the long, long days among the flowers, lying at ease. There where the songs of birds shall but stir you faintly in your dreams, and all the tumult of the world shall be stilled within your ears.”

  He paused; and the silence seemed almost like a continuation of his speech. The multitude seemed frozen into stone. Then came an isolated phrase:

  “Into Nirvana; Nirvana where there is rest. . . .”

  The voice died away in a soothing murmur which yet had its compelling power. Nordenholt looked at his watch.

  “Two minutes yet. So far, he hasn’t been actively objectionable; but I can guess what is coming.”

  Again the loudspeaker sounded.

  “But a few moments now, my brothers, then I and my Elect shall ascend into the skies. Look well, O my brothers. Mark our passage to our rest.”

  His voice ceased. There was a dead silence. Then, suddenly, with a preliminary vibration of machinery, the clock above us struck. Four double chimes for the quarters and then the heavy note of the hour-strokes. Nordenholt listened grimly until all twelve had been rung. Then I heard his voice, even as ever, without the faintest tinge of irony: