CHAPTER XIX — THE WEDDING OF THE ANNUNCIATION
At the end of a year from the death of Gordon’s father the divorce was granted, and Ruth elected to retain her married name.
The Temple of Man was rapidly rising. The building fronted three hundred feet on each cross street. Its great steel-ribbed dome, modeled on the capitol at Washington, was slowly climbing into the sky from the centre to dominate the architecture of the Metropolitan district.
The success of Gordon’s meetings in the old Grand Opera House had been enormous. Its four thousand seats were filled and every inch of standing-room the police would allow. The religious element in Socialism had found in him its high priest. His eloquence, his magnetism, his daring, his aggressive and radical instinct for leadership made him at once their idol.
The prestige given him by the rapid building of his magnificent Temple in the heart of the wealth and splendour of the Metropolis, and the crush for admission by strangers who had read of him and his work, were adding daily to his power.
His bold avowal of love for Kate Ransom, and his determination to win and marry her by a new ceremony of “announcement,” which should challenge the forms of civilisation, had stilled the tongue of gossip and made him the hero of the sentimental.
At the same time it had made him the object of bitter attack by the conservative forces of society, and the violence of these attacks daily added importance to his every act.
His triumphant appeal to the masses against the classes was making him a master spirit of the modern mob that has humbled king, emperor and pope, at whose breath statesmen tremble, and at whose feet coward and sycophant of every cult cringe and fawn.
With fierce enthusiasm he proclaimed, “Now is Eternity. To reach Heaven we must build a new earth, and lo! we are in Heaven.”
The response from sullen working-men who had hitherto held aloof from Socialism and its leaders was remarkable. With the fiery zeal of the pioneer of a religious movement he preached in season and out of season his new faith, and proselyted with success even among those who scoffed.