For six months he had usually spent two or three evenings each week in his friend’s library, rehearsing their boyhood days, discussing new books, art and politics, Socialism and religion.
Overman’s cynicism had piqued1 Kate’s curiosity and opened new views of things she had accepted as moral finalities.
At these battles of wit she was always a charmed listener. She seemed never to tire watching the sparks fly in the rapier thrust of mind in these two men of steel and listening with a shiver to the deep growl2 of the animal behind their words. The one, so homely3 he was fascinating, with massive neck, and enormous mouth pursing and twisting under excitement into a sneer4 that pushed his big nose upward, the incarnation of a battle-scarred bulldog; the other, with his giant figure, hands and feet, his leonine face and locks, his deep voice, handsome and insolent5 in his conscious strength, the picture of a thoroughbred mastiff.
With the grace of a goddess she would sit and watch this battle to the death in the arena6 of thought.
Overman had keenly interested her from the first, and she stimulated7 him to unusual brilliancy. His remorseless logic8, his thorough scholarship, his grasp of history, his savage9 common sense presented so sharp a contrast to the idealism of Gordon, she was shocked and startled.
He fell into the habit of calling on Sunday mornings and walking with them to the Opera House. They would leave Gordon at the stage entrance and sit together during the services.
He would comment softly to her on many of the little absurdities10 of the preacher’s flights of sentiment, and often convulsed her with laughter by a single word or phrase which made ridiculous his mysticism. He did this with his single eye fixed11 on Gordon without the quiver of a nerve or the movement of a muscle to indicate ought but profound rapture12 in the speaker and his message.
Overman’s business ability had been of great service in the Temple enterprise, which had involved difficulties with contractors13, and Gordon had opened an account in Kate’s name with his banking14 house. Her signature to legal documents had made her a frequent visitor to the bank, and she often took lunch with him.
Alone with her at these impromptu15 lunches, without the restraint of Gordon’s presence, he had revealed to her a new phase of his character which had interested her still more deeply. It was here that she discovered the secret of his real attitude toward women, his deep hunger for love, tenderness and sympathy, and his terror lest his ugliness and the loss of his eye might entrap16 him into hopeless suffering.
She laughed at his fears.
“Ridiculous,” she cried, closing her red lips. “You ought to have sense enough to know that a woman of character past the schoolgirl age is often fascinated by the ruggedness17 of such a man. Savage strength is sometimes resistless to women of rare beauty.”
“You think so?” he asked, pathetically.
“Certainly; I know it,” she answered, her lips twitching18 playfully.
Overman looked at her steadily19.
“Sort of beauty-and-beast idea, I suppose. There may be something in it. It never struck me before.”
“I’ll put you in training for a handsome woman I know,” she said, with a curious smile playing about her eyes.
“No, thank you,” he quickly replied. “I’m just beginning to feel at home with you. I am content.”
The opening of the Temple was an event which commanded the attention of the world. Leaders of Socialism from every quarter of the globe poured into New York.
The building was one of imposing20 grandeur21. The auditorium22 filled the entire space of the first-four stories. It seated five thousand people within easy reach of the speaker’s voice. The line of its ceiling was marked outside by the serried23 capitals of Greek columns springing from their massive bases on the ground. The grand stairway was of polished marble, its wainscoting and walls of onyx.
Resting on the capitals of the columns, the outer walls of rough marble rose twenty stories to the first offset24. Dropping back fifty feet, another structure, crowned by Greek facades25, sprang ten stories higher, forming the base of the central dome26. From each corner rose a tower of bronze supporting the figures of Faith, Hope, Love and Truth, while scores of minarets27 flamed upward, flying the flags of every nation.
From the centre of this pile of marble, the huge dome, finished in gold, solemnly loomed28 among the clouds, higher than its model in Washington, dominating the city from every point of the compass. The magnificent sweep of Jefferson Avenue, stretching through miles of palatial29 homes, terminating at its base, seemed a tiny pathway leading through its grand arched and pillared entrance.
The dome was crowned by a statue of Liberty holding aloft a steel staff, from which flew the solid red battle-flag of Socialism, flinging into the heavens its challenge to civilisation30, rising, falling, waving, fluttering, quivering, rippling31 in the wind, a scarlet32 blaze sweeping33 a hundred feet across the sky far above the cross on the Cathedral spire34.
The cost of the building had exceeded the estimate, and it had been finished by a loan of two million dollars secured by a mortgage held by the banking house of Overman & Company. It could have commanded a larger loan, as the entire structure, except the two stories below ground and the auditorium, was devoted35 to business offices occupied by the best class of tenants36. The auditorium was for rent at a nominal37 sum during the week, and was designed to be the forum38 of free thought for the nation.
The dedication39 programme began on Monday, lasting40 through an entire week, day and night, and culminated41 on Sunday with Gordon’s address at eleven o’clock. The elaborate ceremonials and speeches had worn out Kate’s body by Saturday, and the praise of pygmies had long before worn out her soul.
Ruth had read with interest the accounts of these meetings, and Morris King tried in vain to dissuade42 her from attending the Sunday exercises at which Gordon was to speak.
“It’s useless to talk, Morris,” she said, firmly. “I am going. I’d as well tell you I’ve been slipping into the gallery of the Opera House the past six months. I’ve tried to keep away, but I had to go. I am going to-day. I’ve heard him talk and dream and plan so much of this, it seems my own.”
“Well, I’m going with you. You shall not enter that den43 of Anarchists44 alone again.”
She hesitated.
“You may go if you’ll agree to sit behind a pillar in the gallery where we will not be seen.”
When they were seated he whispered to Ruth: “But for you, I wouldn’t be caught dead in this place. I’ll soon be the Governor, and it will be my duty to see that some of these gentlemen are carefully packed in quicklime at Sing Sing.”
She started suddenly, her brow clouded, and she placed a trembling hand on his arm.
“Hush, Morris.”
“It’ll be so, mark my word.”
“Hush!” she repeated, with such a shudder45 of pain he hastened to whisper.
“I beg your pardon, Ruth. You know I was joking.”
Gordon rose and gazed for a moment over the sea of faces. His quick sympathies and brilliant imagination were stirred to their depths.
When the beautifully modulated46 voice first filled the room, Ruth felt with quick sympathy, beneath the tremor47 of his tones, the storm of suppressed feeling. Her eyes filled, and she bent48 forward, following him breathlessly.
He held the crowd spellbound.
Even the foreign Socialists49, unable to understand a word of English, hung on every gesture, held by the magnetism50 of his powerful personality.
As he reached an impassioned climax51, Ruth was startled to hear a note of suppressed laughter from a woman sitting in the same row behind the next pillar.
She looked quickly, and saw Overman’s massive head cocked to one side, his face an immovable mask, and his single gleaming eye fixed on Gordon, with Kate beside him.
Overman stayed to dinner and congratulated his friend on his effort.
“Frank, you surpassed yourself,” he said. “You made the grandest defense52 of an indefensible absurdity53 I ever heard.”
“H’m, that’s saying a good deal for you.”
Overman pulled his moustache thoughtfully.
“But I couldn’t help wishing I were an orator54 to jaw55 back at you. A preacher has such an easy thing, with no back talk except the sonorous56 echo of his own voice.”
“Think you could have talked back to-day?”
There was a moment’s silence. Overman leaned back and locked his hands behind his massive neck.
“If you hit a man with a brick, he may hurt you. drop a millstone on him, he’ll not even reply. If I could have gotten at you to-day, your wife would have lost her insurance policy, because there wouldn’t have been anything to identify.”
“Nothing like a good opinion of oneself,” Gordon replied, good-naturedly.
Overman nodded.
“I never heard you explain so beautifully that ‘Back to Nature’ idea. I went West once and lived a year with some red folks who have been so fortunate as to never get away from Nature. They have been doing business at the same stand for several thousand years. Their women are old hags at your wife’s age, and their men die at mine—forty-five. Their social institutions are an exact reflection of their personal attainments57.”
“But we propose,” Gordon flashed, “to make institutions an advance on man’s attainments and so lead him onward58 and upward.”
“Exactly,” he answered, dryly. “Make human nature divine by writing it on paper that it is so, pile water into a pyramid upside down, and repeal59 the law of gravitation by the vote of a mob. I don’t like the law of gravitation myself, but I haven’t time to repeal it.”
“You are a hopeless materialist60.”
“Yet you, who preach the Spirit, propose to build a heaven here out of mud.”
“Socialism may be the great delusion61, but it’s coming. It sweeps the imagination of the world,” Gordon cried, with enthusiasm.
“There you go! Every time I pin you down, you sail off into space with prophecy or poetry. If it does conquer the world, the world will not be worth conquering. The one thing worth while is character, and your Socialistic pig-pen cannot produce it. In this herd62 of swine to which you hope to reduce society an Edison or a Darwin is rewarded with the pay of a hod-carrier. The hod-carrier gets all he’s worth now. This instinct for the herd, which you call Solidarity63 and Brotherhood64, is not a prophecy of progress; it is a memory—a memory of the dirt out of which humanity has slowly grown.”
Gordon grunted65 contemptuously.
“Yet only a brute66 can be content with the cruelty and infamy67 of our present society.”
“All our ills can be met by careful legislation. You propose to pull the tree up by the roots because you see bugs68 crawling on a limb.”
Kate rose and left the room, saying she would return in a moment, and Overman leaned back in his chair again, gazing at the ceiling.
Suddenly straightening himself, he drew his brow down close over his eye, half closing its lid, bent toward Gordon, and in a low tone slowly asked:
“But I would like to know, Frank, what in the devil you really meant by that ‘Freedom and Fellowship’ in marriage?”
“Just what I said.”
“Bah! You don’t mean to apply such tommyrot to your own wife now that she’s yours?”
“Certainly.”
“It’s beyond belief that you’re such a fool. You say to your wife and to the world, ‘This peerless woman is my comrade, but she is free; take her if you can.’”
Gordon laughed.
“Yes; but, Mark, old boy, God has not yet made the man who can take her from me.”
The one eye dreamily closed, the banker whistled softly, and said:
“I see.”
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1
piqued
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| v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的过去式和过去分词 )；激起（好奇心） | |
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2
growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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6
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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7
stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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8
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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10
absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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11
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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12
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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13
contractors
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| n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 ) | |
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14
banking
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| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
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15
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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16
entrap
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| v.以网或陷阱捕捉，使陷入圈套 | |
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17
ruggedness
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| 险峻，粗野； 耐久性； 坚固性 | |
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18
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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19
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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20
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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21
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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22
auditorium
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| n.观众席，听众席；会堂，礼堂 | |
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23
serried
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| adj.拥挤的；密集的 | |
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24
offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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25
facades
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| n.（房屋的）正面( facade的名词复数 )；假象，外观 | |
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26
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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27
minarets
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| n.（清真寺旁由报告祈祷时刻的人使用的）光塔( minaret的名词复数 ) | |
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28
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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29
palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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31
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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32
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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33
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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34
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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35
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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36
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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37
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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38
forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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39
dedication
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| n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞 | |
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40
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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41
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
dissuade
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| v.劝阻，阻止 | |
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43
den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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44
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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45
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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46
modulated
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| 已调整[制]的，被调的 | |
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47
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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48
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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49
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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50
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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51
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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52
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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53
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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54
orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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55
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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56
sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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57
attainments
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| 成就，造诣； 获得( attainment的名词复数 )； 达到； 造诣； 成就 | |
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58
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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59
repeal
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| n.废止，撤消；v.废止，撤消 | |
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60
materialist
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| n. 唯物主义者 | |
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61
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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62
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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63
solidarity
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| n.团结；休戚相关 | |
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64
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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65
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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66
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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67
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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68
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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