His wild eyes swept over them.
"What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "What are you all doing here?"
Agitated voices whispered. Nobody knew who was speaking. Words tumbled over each other.
"He drove us out into the town, where death is running as though amok… He sent us out to look for his son, Freder. We couldn't find him… None of us… We daren't go in to Joh Fredersen… Nobody dares take him the news that we haven't been able to find his son… "
A voice swung out, high and sharp from out the knot: "Who can find one single damned soul in this hell—?" "Hush… hush… !" "Listen—!"
"He is talking to Slim."
And in the tension of listening, which smothered every sound, the heads bent towards the door.
Behind the door a voice spoke, as were the wood rattling: "Where is my son… ?"
Josaphat made for the door, staggering. The panting cry of many men tried to stop him. Hands were stretched out towards him.
"Don't-don't—!!"
But he had already pushed open the door. He looked about him. Through the enormous windows the first glow of the youthful day was flowing, lying on the shining floor like pools of blood. By the wall, near the door, stood Slim. And just before him stood Joh Fredersen. His fists were pressed against the wall, right and left of the man, holding him fast, as though they had been drilled through him, crucifying him.
"Where is my son—?" said Joh Fredersen. He asked—and his voice cracked as if in suffocation: "Where is my child?"
Slim's head flung back against the wall. From his ashen lips came the toneless words:
"To-morrow there will be many in Metropolis who will ask:
"'Joh Fredersen, where is my child?'" Joh Fredersen's fists relaxed. His whole body twisted around. Then the man who had been the Master over Metropolis saw that another man was standing in the room. He stared at him. The sweat trickled down his face in cold, slow, burdensome drops. The face twitched in a terrible impotence.
"Where is my son—?" asked Joh Fredersen, babblingly. He stretched out his hand. The hand shot through the air, groping aimlessly. "Do you know, where my son is—?"
Josaphat did not answer. Yes, the answer shouted in his throat. But he could not form the words. There was a fist at his throat, strangling him… God—Almighty God in highest heaven, was it Joh Fredersen who was standing before him?
Joh Fredersen made an uncertain step towards him. He bent his head low to look at him the more closely. He nodded again.
"I know you," he said tonelessly. "You are Josaphat and you were my first secretary. I sent you away. I treated you cruelly. I did you wrong and I ruined you… I beg your forgiveness… I am sorry that I was ever cruel to you or to anyone else… Forgive me… Forgive me, Josaphat, for ten hours I have not known where my son is… For ten hours, Josaphat, I have been sending all the men I could get hold of, down into that damned city to look for my son, and I know it is senseless, and I know it is quite pointless, the day is breaking, and I am talking and talking and I know that I am a fool but perhaps, perhaps you know where my son is… ?"
"Captured," said Josaphat, and it was as though he ripped the word from his gullet, and feared to bleed to death therefrom. "Captured… "
A stupid smile hovered over Joh Fredersen's face.
"What does that mean… captured… ?"
"The mob has captured him, Joh Fredersen!"
"Captured—?"
"Yes."
"My son—?"
"Yes!—Freder, your son—!"
A senseless, pitiable, animal sound broke from Joh Fredersen's mouth. His mouth stood open, distorted—his hands rose as in childish defence, to ward off a blow which had already fallen. His voice said, quite high and piteously: "My son… ?"
"They took him prisoner,"—Josaphat tore the words out—"because they sought a victim for their despair, and for the fury of their immeasurable, inconceivable agony. When they saw the black water running towards them from the shafts of the underground railway, and when they realised that, as the result of the stopping of the pumps, the whole workmen's town had been flooded out, then they went mad with despair. They say that some mothers, blind and deaf to all remonstrance, tried, as if possessed, to dive down through the flooded shafts, and just the terrible absoluteness of the futility of any attempt at rescue has turned them into beasts and they lust for revenge… "
"Revenge… on whom?"
"On the girl who seduced them… ."
"On the girl… "
"Yes… "
"Go on… "
"They have taken captive the girl, on whom they put the blame of all this horror… Freder wanted to save her, for he loves the girl… They have taken him captive and are forcing him to look on and see how his beloved dies… They have built the bonfire before the cathedral… They are dancing round the bonfire… They are yelling: 'We have captured the son of Joh Fredersen and his beloved'… and I know—I know: He'll never get away from them alive… !"
For the space of some seconds there was so deep and perfect a silence that the golden glow of the morning, breaking forth, strong and radiant had the effect of a powerful roar. Then Joh Fredersen turned around, breaking into a run. He flung himself at the door. So forceful and irresistible was this movement that it seemed as if the closed door itself were not able to withstand it.
Past the knots of human being ran Joh Fredersen—across to the stair-case and down the steps. His course was as a pauseless series of leaps. He did not notice the height. With hands stretched forward he ran, in bounds, his hair rearing up like a flame above his brow. His mouth was wide open and between his parted lips there hovered-a soundless scream—the unscreamed name: "Freder!"
An infinity of stairs… clefts… rents in walls… smashed Stone blocks… twisted iron… destruction… ruin… .
The street.
The day was streaming down, red, upon the street…
Howls in the air. And the gleam of flame. And smoke…
Voices… shouts—and no exultant shouting… shouts of fear, of horror, of terribly strained tension…
At last the cathedral square…
The bonfire. The mob… men, woman, immeasurable masses… but they were not gazing at the bonfire, on the smoking fireiness of which smouldered a creature of metal and glass, with the head and body of a woman.
All eyes were turned upwards, towards the heights of the cathedral, the roof of which sparkled in the morning sunshine.
Joh Fredersen stopped, as though a blow had been struck at his knees.
"What… " he stammered. He raised his eyes, he raised his hands quite slowly to the level of his head… his hands rested upon his hair.
Soundlessly, as though mown down, he fell upon his knees.
Upon the heights of the cathedral roof, entwined about each other, clawed to each other, wrestled Freder and Rotwang, gleaming in the sunlight.
They fought, breast pressed to breast, knee to knee. One did not need very sharp eyes to see that Rotwang was by far the stronger. The slender form of the boy, in white silken tatters, bent under the throttling grip of the great inventor, farther and farther backwards. In a fearfully wonderful arch the slender, white form was extended, head back, knees bent forward. And the blackness which was Rotwang stood out, massy, mountain-like, above the silken whiteness, forcing it downwards. In the narrow gallery of the spire Freder crumpled up like a sack and lay in the corner, stirring no more. Above him, straightened up, yet bent forward—Rotwang, staring at him, then turning…
Along the narrow roof ridge, towards him—no, towards the dullish bundle of white silk, staggered Maria. In the light of the morning, risen glorious and imperious, her voice fluttered out like the mourning of a poor bird: "Freder-Freder—!"
Whispers broke out in the cathedral square. Heads turned and hands pointed.
"Look—Joh Fredersen! Look over there—Joh Fredersen!"
A woman's voice yelled out:
"Now you see for yourself, don't you, Joh Fredersen, what it's like when someone's only child is murdered—?"
Josaphat leaped before the man who was on his knees, hearing nothing of what was going on around him.
"What's the matter—?" he shouted. "What's the matter with you all—? Your children have been saved! In the 'House of the Sons!' Maria and Joh Fredersen's son—they saved your children—!"
Joh Fredersen heard nothing. He did not hear the scream, which, like a bellowed prayer to God, suddenly leaped from the one mouth of the multitude.
He did not hear the shuffling with which the multitude near him, far around him, threw itself on its knees. He did not hear the weeping of the women, the panting of the men, nor prayer, nor thanks, nor groans, nor praises.
Only his eyes remained alive. His eyes which seemed to be lidless, clung to the roof of the cathedral.
Maria had reached the white bundle, which lay, crumpled up in the corner, between the spire and the roof. She slid along to it on her knees, stretching her hands out towards it, blinded with misery:
"Freder… Freder… "
With a savage snarl, like the snarl of a beast of pray, Rotwang clutched at her. She struggled amid screams. He held her lips closed. With an expression of despairing incomprehension he stared into the girl's tear-wet face.
"Hel… my Hel… why do you struggle against me?" He held her in his ironlike arms, as prey which, now, nothing and no one could tear away from him. Close to the spire a ladder led upwards to the cathedral coping. With the bestial snarl of one unjustly pursued he climbed up the ladder, dragging the girl with him, in his arms.
This was the sight which met Freder's eyes when he opened them and tore himself free from the half-unconscious state he was in. He pushed himself up and flung himself across to the ladder. He climbed up the ladder almost at a run, with the blindly certain speed born of fear for his beloved. He reached Rotwang, who let Maria fall. She fell. She fell, but in falling she saved herself, pulling herself up and reaching the golden sickle of the moon on which rested the star-crowned Virgin. She stretched out her hand to clutch at Freder. But at the same moment Rotwang threw himself down upon the man who was standing below him, and clasped tightly together, they rolled along, down the roof of the cathedral, rebounding violently against the narrow railing of the gallery.
The yell of fear from the multitude came shrieking up from the depths. Neither Rotwang nor Freder heard it. With a terrible oath Rotwang gathered himself up. He saw above him, sharp against the blue of the sky, the gargoyle of a waterspout. It grinned in his face. The long tongue leered mockingly at him. He drew himself up and struck, with clenched fist, at the grinning gargoyle…
The gargoyle broke…
In the weight of the blow he lost his balance—and fell—and saved himself, hanging with one hand to the Gothic ornamentation of the cathedral.
And, looking upwards, into the infinite blue of the morning sky, he saw Hel's countenance, which he had loved, and it was like the countenance of the beautiful angel of Death, smiling at him, its lips inclining towards his brow.
Great black wings spread themselves out, strong enough to carry a lost world up to heaven.
"Hel… " said the man. "My Hel… at last… "
And his fingers lost their hold, voluntarily…
Joh Fredersen did not see the fall, neither did he hear the cry of the multitude as it stared back. He saw but one thing: the white-gleaming figure of the man, who, upright and uninjured, was walking along the roof of the cathedral with the even step of one fearing nothing, carrying the girl in his arms.
Then Joh Fredersen bent down, so low that his forehead touched the stones of the cathedral square. And those near enough to him heard the weeping which welled up from his heart, as water from a rock.
As his hands loosened from his head, all who stood around him saw that Joh Fredersen's hair had turned snow-white.
Chapter 23
"BELOVED—!" SAID FREDER, Joh Fredersen's son.
It was the softest, the most cautious call of which a human voice is capable. But Maria answered it just as little as she had answered the shouts of despair with which the man who loved her had wished to re-awaken her to consciousness of herself.
She lay couched upon the steps of the high altar, stretched out in her slenderness, her head in Freder's arm, her hands in Freder's hand, and the gentle fire of the lofty church-windows burnt upon her quite white face and upon her quite white hands. Her heart beat, slowly, barely, perceptibly. She did not breathe She lay sunken in the depths of an exhaustion from which no shout, no entreaty, no cry of despair could have dragged her. She was as though dead.
A hand was laid upon Freder's shoulder.
He turned his head. He looked into the face of his father.
Was that his father? Was that Joh Fredersen, the master over the great Metropolis? Had his father such white hair? And so tormented a brow? And such tortured eyes?
Was there, in this world, after this night of madness, nothing but horror and death and destruction and agony—without end—?
"What do you want here?" asked Freder, Joh Fredersen's son. "Do you want to take her away from me? Have you made plans to part her and me? Is there some mighty undertaking in danger, to which she and I are to be sacrificed?"
"To whom are you speaking, Freder?" his father asked, very gently.
Freder did not answer. His eyes opened inquiringly, for he had heard a voice never heard before. He was silent.
"If you are speaking of Joh Fredersen," continued the very gentle voice, "then be informed that, this night, Joh Fredersen died a sevenfold death… "
Freder's eyes, burnt with suffering, were raised to the eyes which were above him. A piteously sobbing sound came from out his lips.
"Oh my God—Father—! Father… you—!"
Joh Fredersen stooped down above him and above the girl who lay in Freder's lap.
"She is dying, father… Can't you see she is dying—?"
Joh Fredersen shook his head.
"No, no!" said his gentle voice. "No, Freder. There was an hour in my life in which I knelt, as you, holding in my arms the woman I loved. But she died, indeed. I have studied the face of the dying to the full. I know it perfectly and shall never again forget it… The girl is but sleeping. Do not awaken her by force."