My Dear Wally:I am writing you without date or place, just as I shall write my father, because whatever happens, I insist that you two let me go my way in peace, without trying to find, or hamper, or importune me. My mind is fully made up. Nothing can change it. We have come to the parting of the ways, forever.Though I may feel bitterly toward you for what I now understand as your harsh and cruel attitude toward the world, and the rôle you play as an exploiter of human labor, I shall not reproach you. You simply cannot see these things as I have come to see them since my feet have been set upon the road toward Socialism. Don't start, Wally—that's the truth. Perhaps I'm not much of a Socialist yet, because I don't know much about it. But I am learning, and shall learn. My teacher is the best one in the world, I'm sure; and added to this, all my natural energy and innate radicalism have flamed into activity with this new thought. So, you see, the past is even more effectively buried than ever. How could anything ever be possible, now, between you and me?Cease to think of me, Wally. I am gone out of your life, for all time, as out of that whole circle of false,insincere, wicked and parasitic existence that we call "society." That other world, where you still are, shall see me no more. I have found a better and a nobler kind of life; and to this, and to all it implies, I mean to be forever faithful. I beg you, never try to find me or to answer this.Good-bye, then, forever.Catherine.
My Dear Wally:
I am writing you without date or place, just as I shall write my father, because whatever happens, I insist that you two let me go my way in peace, without trying to find, or hamper, or importune me. My mind is fully made up. Nothing can change it. We have come to the parting of the ways, forever.
Though I may feel bitterly toward you for what I now understand as your harsh and cruel attitude toward the world, and the rôle you play as an exploiter of human labor, I shall not reproach you. You simply cannot see these things as I have come to see them since my feet have been set upon the road toward Socialism. Don't start, Wally—that's the truth. Perhaps I'm not much of a Socialist yet, because I don't know much about it. But I am learning, and shall learn. My teacher is the best one in the world, I'm sure; and added to this, all my natural energy and innate radicalism have flamed into activity with this new thought. So, you see, the past is even more effectively buried than ever. How could anything ever be possible, now, between you and me?
Cease to think of me, Wally. I am gone out of your life, for all time, as out of that whole circle of false,insincere, wicked and parasitic existence that we call "society." That other world, where you still are, shall see me no more. I have found a better and a nobler kind of life; and to this, and to all it implies, I mean to be forever faithful. I beg you, never try to find me or to answer this.
Good-bye, then, forever.
Catherine.
After having read this over and sealed it, she wrote still another:
Dear Father:It is hard to write these words to you. I owe you a debt of gratitude and love, in many ways; yet, after all, your will and mine conflict. You have tried to force me to a union abhorrent and impossible to me. My only course is this—independence to think, and act, and live as I, no longer a child but a grown woman, now see fit.I shall never return to you, father. Life means one thing to you, another to me. You cannot change; I would not, now, for all the world. I must go my way, thinking my own thoughts, doing my own work, living up to my own ideals, whatever these may be. Your money cannot lure me back to you, back to that old, false, sheltered, horrible life of ease and idleness and veiled robbery! The skill you have given me as a musician will open out a way for me to earn my own living and be free. For this I thank you, and for much else, even as I say good-bye to you for all time.I have written Wally. He will tell you more about me, and about the change in my views and ambitions, which has taken place. Do not think harshly of me, father, and I will try to forgive you for the burden I now know you have laid upon the aching shoulders of this sad, old world.And now, good-bye. Though you have lost a daughter, you may still rejoice to know that that daughter has found peace and joy and vast outlets for the energies of her whole heart and soul and being, in working for Socialism, the noblest ideal ever conceived by the mind of man.Farewell, father; and think sometimes, not too unkindly, ofYourKate.
Dear Father:
It is hard to write these words to you. I owe you a debt of gratitude and love, in many ways; yet, after all, your will and mine conflict. You have tried to force me to a union abhorrent and impossible to me. My only course is this—independence to think, and act, and live as I, no longer a child but a grown woman, now see fit.
I shall never return to you, father. Life means one thing to you, another to me. You cannot change; I would not, now, for all the world. I must go my way, thinking my own thoughts, doing my own work, living up to my own ideals, whatever these may be. Your money cannot lure me back to you, back to that old, false, sheltered, horrible life of ease and idleness and veiled robbery! The skill you have given me as a musician will open out a way for me to earn my own living and be free. For this I thank you, and for much else, even as I say good-bye to you for all time.
I have written Wally. He will tell you more about me, and about the change in my views and ambitions, which has taken place. Do not think harshly of me, father, and I will try to forgive you for the burden I now know you have laid upon the aching shoulders of this sad, old world.
And now, good-bye. Though you have lost a daughter, you may still rejoice to know that that daughter has found peace and joy and vast outlets for the energies of her whole heart and soul and being, in working for Socialism, the noblest ideal ever conceived by the mind of man.
Farewell, father; and think sometimes, not too unkindly, of
Your
Kate.
One week after these letters were mailed, "Tiger" Waldron, fanning the fires of the old man's terrible rage, had decided Flint to disinherit Catherine and to name him, Waldron, as his executor. Gabriel's fervent wish that she might be penniless, was granted.
On the very day this business was put through, practically delivering the Flint interests into Waldron's hands in the case of the old man's death, a verdict was reached in Gabriel's case, at Rochester.
This case, crammed through the calendar, ahead of a large jam of other business, proved how well unlimited funds can grease the wheels of Law. It proved, also, that in the face of infinitely-subsidized witnesses, lawyers, judge and jurymen, black becomes white, and a good deed is written down a crime.
Catherine, working incognito, co-operated with the Socialist defense, and did all that could be humanely done to have the truth made known, to overset the mass of perjury and fraud enmeshing Gabriel, and to force his acquittal.
As easily might she have bidden the sea rise from its bed and flood the dry and arid wastes of old Sahara. Her voice and that of the Socialists, their lawyers and their press, sounded in vain. A solid battery of capitalist papers, legal lights, private detectives and other means—particularly including the majority of the priests and clergy—swamped the man and damned him and doomed him from the first word of the trial.
Money flowed in floods. Perjury overran the banks of the River of Corruption. Herzog branded the man a thief and fire-eater. Dope-fiends and harlots from the Red-Light district, "madames" and pimps and hangers-on, swore to the white-slave activities of this man, who never yet in all his four and twenty years had so much as entered a brothel.
Forged papers fixed past crimes and sentences on him. By innuendo and direct statement, dynamitings, arsons, violence and rioting in many strikes were laid at his door. His Socialist activities were dragged in the slime of every gutter; and his Party made to suffer for evil deeds existing only in the foul imagination of the prosecuting attorneys. The finest "kept" brains in the legal profession conducted the case from start to finish; and not a juryman was drawn on the panel who was not, from the first, sworn to convict, and bought and paid for in hard cash.
After three days—days in which Gabriel plumbed thebitterest depths of Hell and drank full draughts of gall and wormwood—the verdict came. Came, and was flashed from sea to sea by an exulting press; and preached on, and editorialized on, and gloated over by Flint and Waldron and many, many others of that ilk—while Catherine wept tears that seemed to drain her very heart of its last drops of blood.
At last she knew the meaning of the Class Struggle and her terrible father's part in it all. At last she understood what Gabriel had so long understood and now was paying for—the fact that Hell hath no fury like Capitalism when endangered or opposed.
The Price! Gabriel now must pay it, to the full. For that foul verdict, bought with gold wrung from the very blood and marrow of countless toilers, opened the way to the sentence which Judge Harpies regretted only that he could not make more severe—the sentence which the detectives and the prison authorities, well "fixed," counted on making a death-sentence, too.
"Gabriel Armstrong, stand up!"
He arose and faced the court. A deathlike stillness hushed the room, crowded with Socialists, reporters, emissaries of Flint, private detectives and hangers-on of the System. Heavily veiled, lest some of her father's people recognize her, Catherine herself sat in a back seat, very pale yet calm.
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say, why sentence should not be pronounced upon you?"
Gabriel, also a little pale, but with a steadfast and fearless gaze, looked at the legal prostitute upon the bench, and shook his head in negation. He deigned not, even, to answer this kept puppet of the ruling class.
Judge Harpies frowned a trifle, cleared his throat, glanced about him with pompous dignity; and then, in a sonorous and impressive tone—his best asset on the bench, for legal knowledge and probity were not his—announced:
"It is the judgment of this court that you do stand committed to pay a fine of three thousand dollars into the treasury of the United States, and to serve five years at hard labor in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta!"
Four years and two months from the day when this iniquitous verdict fell from the lips of the "bought and paid for" judge, a sturdily built and square jawed man stood on the steps of the Atlanta Penitentiary and, for the first time in all these weary months and years, faced the sun.
Pale with the prison-pallor that never fails to set its seal on the victims of a diseased society, which that society retaliates upon by shutting away from God's own light and air, this man stood there on the steps, a moment, then advanced to meet a woman who was coming toward him in the August glare. As he removed his cheap, convict-made cap, one saw his finely shaped head, close cropped with the infamous prison badge of servitude. Despite the shoddy miserable prison-suit that the prostituted government had given him—a suit that would have made Apollo grotesque and would have marked any man as an ex-convict, thus heavily handicapping him from the start—Gabriel Armstrong's poise and strength still made themselves manifest.
And the smile as they two, the woman and he, came together and their hands clasped, lighted his pale features with a ray brighter than that of the blistering Southern sunshine flooding down upon them both.
"I knew you'd come, Catherine," said he, simply, hisvoice still the same deep, vibrant, earnest voice which, all that time ago, had thrilled and inspired her at the hour of her great conversion. Still were his eyes clear, level and commanding; and through his splendid body, despite all his jailers had been able to do, coursed an abundant life and strong vitality.
Gabriel had served his time with consummate skill, courage and intelligence. Like all wise men, he had recognizedforce majeure, and had submitted. He had made practically no infractions of the prison rules, during his whole "bit." He had been quiet, obedient and industrious. His work, in the brush factory, had always been well done; and though he had consistently refused to bear tales, to spy, to inform or be a stool-pigeon—the quickest means of winning favor in any prison—yet he had given no opportunity for savagery and violence to be applied to him. Not even Flint's eager wish to have his jailers force him into rebellion had succeeded. Realizing to the full the sort of tactics that would be used to break, and if possible to kill him, Gabriel had met them all with calm self-reliance and with a generalship that showed his brain and nerves were still unshaken. On their own ground he had met these brutes, and he had beaten them at their own game.
Their attempt to make a "dope" out of him had ignominiously failed. He had detected the morphine they had cleverly mixed with his water; and, after his drowsiness and weird dreams had convinced him of the plot, had turned the trick on it by secretly emptying this water out and by drinking only while in the shop, where he could draw water from the faucet. The cell guards' intelligence had been too limited to make them inquire ofthe brush shop guards about his habits. Also, Gabriel, had feigned stupefaction while in the cell. Thus he had simulated the effects of the drug, and had really thrown his tormentors off the track. For months and months they were convinced that they were weakening his will and destroying his mentality, while as a matter of fact his reasoning powers and determination never had been more keen.
By bathing as often as possible, by taking regular and carefully planned calisthenics, by reading the best books in the prison library, by attention to every rule of health within his means, and by allowing himself no vices, not even his pipe, Gabriel now was emerging from the Bastile of Capitalism in a condition of mind and body so little impaired that he knew a few weeks would entirely restore him. The good conduct allowance, or "copper," which they had been forced to allow him for exemplary conduct, had cut ten months off his sentence. And now in mid-August of 1925, there he stood, a free man again, with purpose still unshaken and with a woman by his side who shared his high ambition and asked no better lot than to work with him toward the one great aim—Socialism!
Now, as these two walked side by side along the sunbaked street of the sweltering Southern town, Gabriel was saying:
"So I haven't changed as much as you expected? I'm glad of that, Kate. Only superficial changes, at most. Just give me a little time to pull together and get my legs under me again, and—forward march! Charge the forts! Eh, Catherine?"
She nodded, smiling. Smiles were rare with her, now.She had grown sober and serious, in these years of work and battle and stern endeavor. The Catherine Flint of the old times had vanished—the Catherine of country club days, and golf and tennis, and the opera—the Catherine of Newport, of the horse show, of Paris, of "society." In her place now lived another and a nobler woman, a woman known and loved the length and breadth of the land, a woman exalted and strengthened by new, high and splendid race-aspirations; by a vision of supernal beauty—the vision of the world for the workers, each for all and all for each!
She had grown more mature and beautiful, with the passing years. No mark of time had yet laid its hand upon her face or figure. Young, still—she was now but five-and-twenty, and Gabriel only twenty-eight—she walked like a goddess, lithe, strong and filled with overflowing vigor. Her eyes glowed with noble enthusiasms; and every thought, every impulse and endeavor now was upward, onward, filled with stimulus and hope and courage.
Thus, a braver, broader and more splendid woman than Gabriel had known in the other days of his first love for her—the days when he had wished her penniless, the days when her prospective millions stood between them—she walked beside him now. And they two, comrades, understood each other; spoke the same language, shared the same aspirations, dreamed the same wondrous dreams. Their smile, as their eyes met, was in itself a benediction and a warm caress.
"Charge the forts!" Gabriel repeated. "Yes, Kate, the battle still goes on, no matter what happens. Here and there, soldiers fall and die. Even battalions perish; butthe war continues. When I think of all the fights you've been in, since I was put away, I'm unspeakably envious. You've been through the Tawana Valley strike, the big Consolidated Western lockout and the Imperial Mills massacre. You were a delegate to the 1923 Revolution Congress, in Berlin, and saw the slaughter in Unter den Linden—helped nurse the wounded comrades, inside the Treptow Park barricades. Then, out in California—"
She checked him, with a hand on his arm.
"Please don't, Gabriel," she entreated. "What I have done has been so little, so terribly, pitiably little, compared to whatneedsto be done! And then remember, too, that in and through all, this thought has run, like the red thread through every cable of the British navy—the thought that in my every activity, I am working against my own father, combatting him, being as it were a traitor and—"
"Traitor?" exclaimed the man. "Never! The bond between you two is forever broken. You recognize in him, now, an enemy of all mankind. Waldron is another. So is every one of the Air Trust group—that is to say, the small handful of men who today own the whole world and everything in it.
"Your father, as President of that world-corporation which potentially controls two thousand millions of human beings—and which will, tomorrow, absolutely control them, is no longer any father of yours.
"He is a world-emperor, and his few associates are princes of the royal house. Your life and thought have forever broken with him. No more can bonds and ties of blood hold you. Your larger duty calls to battleagainst this man. Treachery? A thousand times, no! Treason to tyrants is obedience to God! Or, if not God, then to mankind!"
He paused and looked at her. They had now reached a little park, some half mile from the grim and dour old walls of the Federal Pen. Trees and grass and playing children seemed to invite them to stop and rest. Though strong, moreover, Gabriel had for so long been unused to walking, that even this short distance had tired him a little. And the oppressive heat had them both by the throat.
"Shall we sit down here and wait a little?" asked he. "Plan a little, see where we are and what's to be done next?"
She nodded assent.
"Of course," she said, "even if I could have got word in to you, I wouldn't have given you our real plans."
"Hardly!" he exclaimed. Then, coming to a fountain, they sat down on a bench close by. Nobody, they made sure, was within ear-shot.
"Thank God," he breathed, "that you, Kate, and only you, met me as I came out! It was a grand good idea, wasn't it, to keep my time of liberation a secret from the comrades? Otherwise there might have been a crowd on hand, and various kinds of foolishness; and time and energy would have been used that might have been better spent in working for the Revolution!"
She looked at him a trifle curiously.
"You forget," said she, "that all public meetings have been prohibited, ever since last April. Federal statute—the new Penfield Bill—'The Muzzler' as we call it."
"That's so!" he murmured. "I forgot. Fact is, Kate,Iamout of touch with things. While you've been fighting, I've been buried alive. Now, I must learn much, before I can jump back into the war again. And above all, I must lose my identity. That's the first and most essential thing of all!"
"Of course," she assented. "They—the Air Trust World-corporation—will trail you, everywhere you go. All this, as you know, has been provided for. You must vanish a while."
"Indeed I must. If they 'jobbed' me like that, in 1921, what won't they do now in 1925?"
"They won't ever get you, again, Gabriel," she answered, "if your wits and ours combined, can beat them. True, the Movement has been badly shot to pieces. That is, its visible organization has suffered, and it's outlawed. But under the surface, Gabriel, you haven't an idea of its spread and power. It's tremendous—it's a volcano waiting to burst! Let the moment come, the leader rise, the fire burst forth, and God knows what may not happen!"
"Splendid!" exclaimed Gabriel. "The battle calls me, like a clarion-call! But we must act with circumspection. The Plutes, powerful as they now are, won't need even the shadow of an excuse to plant me for life, or slug or shoot me. Things were rotten enough, then; but today they're worse. The hand of this Air Trust monopoly, grasping every line of work and product in the world, has got the lid nailed fast. We're all slaves, every man and woman of us. Even our Socialists in Congress can do nothing, with all these muzzling and sedition and treason bills, and with this conscription law just through. Now that the government—the Air Trust, that is to say—is running the railways and telegraphs and telephones, a strike is treason—and treason is death! Kate, this year of grace, 1925, is worse than ever I dreamed it would be. Oh, infinitely worse! No wonder our movement has been driven largely underground. No wonder that the war of mass and class is drawing near—the actual, physical war between the Air Trust few and the vast, toiling, suffering, stifling world!"
She nodded.
"Yes," said she, "it's coming, and soon. Things are as you say, and even worse than you say, Gabriel. I know more of them, now, than you can know. Remember London's 'Iron Heel?' When I first read it I thought it fanciful and wild. God knows I was mistaken! London didn't put it half strongly enough. The beginning was made when the National Mounted Police came in. All the rest has swiftly followed. If you and I live five years longer, Gabriel, we'll see a harsher, sterner and more murderous trampling of that Heel than ever Comrade Jack imagined!"
"Right!" said he. "And for that very reason, Kate, I've got to go into hiding till my beard and hair grow and I can reappear as a different man. Don't look, just now, but in a minute take a peek. Over on that third bench, on the other side of the park, see that man? Well, he's a 'shadow.' There were three waiting for me, at the prison gates. You couldn't spot them, but I could. One was that Italian banana-seller that stood at the curb, on the first corner. Another was a taxi driver. And this one, over there, is the third. From now till they 'get' me again, they'll follow me like bloodhounds. I can't go free, to do my work and take part in the impending war, till I shake them. Look, now, do you see the one I mean?"
Cautiously the girl looked round, with casual glance as though to see a little boy playing by the fountain.
"Yes," she murmured. "Who is he? Do you know his name?"
"No," answered Gabriel. "His name, no. But I remember him, well enough. He's the larger of the two detectives I knocked out, in that room in Rochester. Beside his pay, he's got a personal motive in landing me back in 'stir,' or sending me 'up the escape,' as prison slang names a penitentiary and a death. So then," he added, "what's the first thing? Where shall I go, and how, to hide and metamorphose? I'm in your hands, now, Kate. More than four years out of the world, remember, makes a fellow want a little lift when he comes back!"
She smiled and nodded comprehension.
"Don't explain, Gabriel," said she. "I understand. And I've got just the place in mind for you. Also, the way to get there. You see, comrade, we've been planning on this release. When can you go?"
"When? Right now!" exclaimed Gabriel, standing up. "The quicker, the better. Every minute I lose in getting myself ready to jump back into the fight, is a precious treasure that can never be regained!"
"Go, then," said she, with pride in her eyes. "I will wait here. Don't think of me; leave me here; I am self-reliant in every way. Go to the Cuthbert House, on Desplaines Street. Everything has been arranged for your escape. Every link in the chain is complete. Remember, we are working more underground, now, than when youwere sentenced. And our machinery is almost perfect. Register at the hotel and take a room for a week. Then—"
"Register, under my own name?" asked he.
"Under your own name. Stay there two days. You won't be molested so soon, and things won't be ready for you till the third day. On that day—"
"Well, what then?"
"A message will come for you, that's all. Obey it. You have nothing more to do."
He nodded.
"I understand," said he. "But, Kate—who's paying for all this? Notyou?I—I can't haveyoupaying, now that every dollar you have must be earned by your own labor!"
She smiled a smile of wonderful beauty.
"Foolish, rebellious boy!" said she. "Have no fear! All expense will be borne by the Party, just as the Party paid your fine. It needs you and must have you; and were the cost ten times as great, would bear it to get you back! Remember, Gabriel, the Party is far larger than when you were buried alive in a cell. Even though in some ways outlawed and suppressed, its potential power is tremendous. All it needs is the electric spark to cause the world-shaking explosion. All that keeps us from power now is the Iron Heel—that, and the clutch of the Air Trust already crushing and mangling us!
"Go, now," she concluded. "Go, and rest a while, and wait. All shall be well. But first, you must get back your strength completely, and find yourself, and take your place again in the ranks of the great, subterranean army!"
"And shall I see you soon, again?" he asked, his voice trembling just a little as their hands clasped once more, and once more parted.
"You will see me soon," she answered.
"Where?"
"In a safe place, where we can plan, and work, and organize for the final blow! Now, you shall know no more. Good-bye!"
One last look each gave the other. Their eyes met, more caressingly than many a kiss; and, turning, Gabriel took his way, alone, toward Desplaines Street.
At the exit of the park, he looked around.
There Catherine sat, on the bench. But, seemingly quite oblivious to everything, she was now reading a little book. Though he lingered a moment, hoping to get some signal from her, she never stirred or looked up from the page.
Sighing, with a strange feeling of sudden loneliness and a vast, empty yearning in his heart, Gabriel continued on his way, toward what? He knew not.
The detective on the other side of the park, no longer sat there. Somehow, somewhere, he had disappeared.
Far on the western slopes of Clingman Dome in the great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, a broad, low-built bungalow stood facing the setting sun. Vast stretches of pine forest shut it off from civilization and the prying activities of Plutocracy. The nearest settlement was Ravens, twenty miles away to eastward, across inaccessible ridges and ravines. Running far to southward, the railway left this wilderness untouched. High overhead, an eagle soared among the "thunder-heads" that presaged a storm up Sevier Pass. And, red through the haze to westward, the great huge sunball slid down the heavens toward the tumbled, jagged mass of peaks that rimmed the far horizon.
Within the bungalow, a murmur of voices sounded; and from the huge stone chimney a curl of smoke, arising, told of the evening meal, within, now being made ready. On the wide piazza sat a man, writing at a table of plain boards roughly pegged together. Still a trifle pale, yet with a look of health and vigor, he sat there hard at work, writing as fast as pen could travel. Hardly a word he changed. Sheet by sheet he wrote, and pushed them aside and still worked on. Some of the pages slid to the porch-floor, but he gave no heed. His brow was wrinkled with the intensity of his thought; and over his face, where now a disguising beard was beginning to bevisible, the light of the sinking sun cast as it were a kind of glowing radiance.
At last the man looked up, and smiled, and eyed the golden mountain-tops far off across the valley.
"Wonderful aerie in the hills!" he murmured. "Wonderful retreat and hiding-place—wonderful care and forethought to have made this possible for me! How shall I ever repay all this? How, save by giving my last drop of blood, if need be, for the final victory?"
He pondered a moment, still half-thinking of the poem he had just finished, half-reflecting on the strange events of the past week—the secret ways, by swift auto, by boat, by monoplane which had brought him hither to this still undiscovered refuge. How had it all been arranged, he wondered; and who had made it possible? He could not tell, as yet. No information was forthcoming. But in his heart he understood, and his lips, murmuring the name of Catherine, blessed that name and tenderly revered it.
At last Gabriel bent, picked up the pages that had fallen, and arranged them all in order.
"Tomorrow this shall go out to the world," said he, "and to our press—such of it as still remains. It may inspire some fainting heart and thrill some lagging mind. Now, that the final struggle is at hand, more than guns we need inspiration. More than force, to meet the force that has ravished our every right and crushed Constitution and Law, alike, we need spiritual insight and integrity. Only through these, and by these, come what may, can a true, lasting victory be attained!"
In the doorway of the bungalow a woman appeared, her smile illumined by the sunset warmth.
"Come, Gabriel," said she. "We're waiting—the Granthams, Craig, and Brevard. Supper's ready. Not one of them will sit down, till you come."
"Have I been delaying you?" asked Gabriel, turning toward the woman, with a smile that matched her own.
"I'm afraid so, just a little," she answered. "But no matter; I'm glad. When you get to writing, you know, nothing else matters. One line of your verse is worth all the suppers in the world."
"Nonsense!" he retorted. "I'm a mere scribbler!"
"We won't argue that point," she answered. "But at any rate, you're done, now. So come along, boy—or the comrades will begin 'dividing up' without us; for this mountain air won't brook delay."
Gabriel took a long breath, stretched his powerful arms out toward the mountains, and raised his face to the last light of day.
"Nature!" he whispered. "Ever beautiful and ever young! Ah, could man but learn thy lessons and live close to thy great heart!"
Then, turning, he followed Catherine into the bungalow.
Beautiful and restful though the outside was, the interior was more restful and more charming still.
In the vast fireplace, to left, a fire of pine roots was crackling. The room was filled with their pitchy, wholesome perfume, with the dancing light of their blaze and with the warmth made grateful by that mountain height.
Simple and comfortable all the furnishings were, hand-wrought for use and pleasure. Big chairs invited. Broad couches offered rest. No hunting-trophies, no heads of slaughtered wild things disfigured the walls, as in mostbungalows; but the flickering firelight showed pictures that inspired thought and carried lessons home—pictures of toil and of repose, pictures of life, and love, and simple joy—pictures of tragedy, of reality and deep significance. Here one saw Millet's "Sower," and "Gleaners" and "The Man with the Hoe." There, Fritel's "The Conquerors," and Stuck's "War." A large copy of Bernard's "Labor,"—the sensation of the 1922 Paris Salon—hung above the mantelpiece, on which stood Rodin's "Miner" in bronze. Portraits of Marx, Engels, LaSalle and Debs, with others loved and honored in the Movement, showed between original sketches by Walter Crane, Balfour Kerr, Art Young and Ryan Walker. And in the well-filled bookshelves at the right, Socialist books in abundance all told the same tale to the observer—that this was a Socialist nest high up there among the mountains, and that every thought and word and deed was inspired by one great ideal and one alone—the Revolution!
At a plain but well-covered table near the western windows, where fading sunlight helped firelight to illumine the little company, sat three men—two of them armed with heavy automatics—and a woman. Another woman, Catherine, was standing by her chair and beckoning Gabriel to his.
"Come, Comrade!" she exclaimed. "If you delay much longer, everything will be stone cold, andthenbeg forgiveness if you dare!"
Gabriel laughed.
"Your own fault, if you wait for me," he answered, seating himself. "You know how it is when you get to scribbling—you never know when to stop. And the scenery, up here, won't let you go. Positively fascinating,that view is! If the Plutes knew of it, they'd put a summer resort here, and coin millions!"
"Yes," answered Craig, once Congressman Craig, but now hiding from the Air Trust spies. "And what's more, they'd mighty soon confiscate this resting-up place of the Comrades, and have us back behind bars, or worse. But theydon'tknow about it, and aren't likely to. Thank Heaven for at least one place the Party can maintain as an asylum for our people when too hard-pressed! Not a road within ten miles of here. No way to reach this place, masked here in the cliffs and mountains, except by aeroplane. Not one chance in a thousand, fellows, that they'll ever find it. Confusion take them all!"
The meal progressed, with plenty of serious and earnest discussion of the pressing problems now close at hand. Brevard, a short, spare man, editor of the recently-suppressed "San Francisco Revolutionist" and now in hiding, made a few trenchant remarks, from time to time. Grantham and his wife, both active speakers on the "Underground Circuit" and both under sentence of long imprisonment, said little. Most of the conversation was between Catherine, Craig and Gabriel. Long before the supper was done, lamps had to be brought and curtains lowered. At last the meal was over.
"Dessert, now, Gabriel!" exclaimed Grantham. "Your turn!"
"Eh? What?" asked Armstrong. "My turn for what?"
"Your turn to do your part! Don't think that you're going to write a poem and then put it in your pocket, that way. Come, out with it!"
Gabriel's protests availed nothing. The others overbore him. And at last, unwillingly, he drew out the manuscript and spread it open on his knee.
"You really want to hear this?" he demanded. "If you can possibly spare me, I wish you would!"
For all answer, Craig pushed a lamp over toward him. The warm light on Gabriel's face, now slightly bearded, and on his strong, corded throat, made a striking picture as he cast his eyes on the manuscript and in vibrant and harmonious voice, read:
I SAW THE SOCIALISTI saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men,Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude;I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters,Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People,Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods,Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty!Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold;Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men,The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance,The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves,The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war,And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization—That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.I saw the Socialist there, calm, unmoved, unsmiling, thoughtful,Sober, serious, full of dispassionate and prophetic vision,Not like the other men, the all-wise Leaders of the People.The political economists, the professors, the militarists, heroes and statisticians;Not like the kings and presidents and emperors, the nobles and gold-crammed bankers,But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of LifeWhere blind things crawl in the dark, things men and yet not human,Things whose toil makes possible the Banquets of the Leaders of Men,Things that live and yet are not alive; things that never taste of Life;Things that make the rich foods, themselves snatching filthy crumbs;Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees;Things that shiver and cringe and whine, that snarl sometimes,That are men and women and children, and yet that know not Life!I saw the Socialist there; I sat at the banquet; beside him,Listened to the surging music, saw all the lights and flowers,Flowers and lights and crystal cups, whereof the price for eachMight have brought back from Potter's Field some bloodless, starving baby.I heard the Leaders' speeches, the turgid oratory,The well-turned phrases of the Captains, the rotund babble of prosperity,(Prosperity for whom? Nay, ask not troublesome questions!)The Captains' vaunting I heard, their boasts of glory and victory,While red, red, red their hands dripped red with the blood of the butchered workers.I heard the Judges' self-glorification, Quixotic fighting of windmills,Heard also the unclean jests that those respected Leaders told.And as I looked and listened, I still observed the Socialist,Unmoved and patient and serious, calm, full of sober reflections.Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body,Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God,Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter,Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber,Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist,Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth's exploited,Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.And the rotund Bishop's words were as the crackling of dry thornsUnder a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words,Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment,So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner,Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.And still I watched the Socialist. Sober, judicial, observantAnd full of greater wisdom he was than to laugh with the tipsy Leaders.His eyes were fixed on the Bishop, vice-regent of God upon earth.And as I watched the Socialist, the unmoved, the contemplative one,He thoughtfully took his pencil, he took the fine and large cardWhereon the names of the rich foods and all the costly wines were printed,And made a few notes of the feast, notes of the Bishop's speech,Notes to remind him to search the slums for the great, God-given prosperity,Which all the Judges, Lawmakers, Captains and Leaders knew to be "our" portion;Notes of the flowers, the wine, the lights, the music, the splendor,Notes of the Leaders' oratory, notes of the Bishop's deep-voiced unctiousness,Notes he made; and as I looked at the notes he was carefully writing,The words ran red like wine and blood, they blazed like the blazing lights!Words they were of blood and fire, that spread, that filled the banquet-hall.Words of old, I read them—"MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSHIN!—Weighed in the Balance you are, ye Leaders respected of men,You Statesmen, Lawmakers, Judges, Captains, Bishops, vice-regents of God!Weighed and tried and found wanting. Give way, now, to what shall come after!Make ye way for the Men who shall do what ye have but neglected and shirked!Make ye way for a Time which hath more than Power and Greed for its watchwords!Soon your day shall decline forever, your sun shall sink and shall vanish.Then from the Cellars of Life the darkness-dwellers shall issue,Greeting another daunt which shall have more than pain for its portion.Then no more shall the humble, the lowly, the friends of the Nazarene CarpenterBe starved, be mangled for gold, be crucified, slaughtered, bled.Make ye way!...Make ye way!..."Such was the message I read, the words of that fire-writ warning.Then peace came back to my spirit, calm peace, and hope and patience:Then, through my anger and heat, I thought of the Retribution.But even more clearly I saw the New Birth of this weary world,This world now groaning in chains, with the bloody sweat of oppression.These things and many more, such as were hard to write of,I read in the words of the Socialist, patient, peaceful and sober,Full of prophetic vision, above all things hopeful and patient,Written in living flame at the Feast of the Leaders of Men....
I SAW THE SOCIALIST
I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men,Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude;I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters,Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People,Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods,Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty!Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold;Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men,The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance,The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves,The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war,And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization—That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.
I saw the Socialist there, calm, unmoved, unsmiling, thoughtful,Sober, serious, full of dispassionate and prophetic vision,Not like the other men, the all-wise Leaders of the People.The political economists, the professors, the militarists, heroes and statisticians;Not like the kings and presidents and emperors, the nobles and gold-crammed bankers,But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of LifeWhere blind things crawl in the dark, things men and yet not human,Things whose toil makes possible the Banquets of the Leaders of Men,Things that live and yet are not alive; things that never taste of Life;Things that make the rich foods, themselves snatching filthy crumbs;Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees;Things that shiver and cringe and whine, that snarl sometimes,That are men and women and children, and yet that know not Life!
I saw the Socialist there; I sat at the banquet; beside him,Listened to the surging music, saw all the lights and flowers,Flowers and lights and crystal cups, whereof the price for eachMight have brought back from Potter's Field some bloodless, starving baby.I heard the Leaders' speeches, the turgid oratory,The well-turned phrases of the Captains, the rotund babble of prosperity,(Prosperity for whom? Nay, ask not troublesome questions!)The Captains' vaunting I heard, their boasts of glory and victory,While red, red, red their hands dripped red with the blood of the butchered workers.I heard the Judges' self-glorification, Quixotic fighting of windmills,Heard also the unclean jests that those respected Leaders told.And as I looked and listened, I still observed the Socialist,Unmoved and patient and serious, calm, full of sober reflections.
Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body,Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God,Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter,Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber,Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist,Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth's exploited,Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.And the rotund Bishop's words were as the crackling of dry thornsUnder a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words,Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment,So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner,Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.
And still I watched the Socialist. Sober, judicial, observantAnd full of greater wisdom he was than to laugh with the tipsy Leaders.His eyes were fixed on the Bishop, vice-regent of God upon earth.And as I watched the Socialist, the unmoved, the contemplative one,He thoughtfully took his pencil, he took the fine and large cardWhereon the names of the rich foods and all the costly wines were printed,And made a few notes of the feast, notes of the Bishop's speech,Notes to remind him to search the slums for the great, God-given prosperity,Which all the Judges, Lawmakers, Captains and Leaders knew to be "our" portion;Notes of the flowers, the wine, the lights, the music, the splendor,Notes of the Leaders' oratory, notes of the Bishop's deep-voiced unctiousness,Notes he made; and as I looked at the notes he was carefully writing,The words ran red like wine and blood, they blazed like the blazing lights!Words they were of blood and fire, that spread, that filled the banquet-hall.Words of old, I read them—"MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSHIN!—Weighed in the Balance you are, ye Leaders respected of men,You Statesmen, Lawmakers, Judges, Captains, Bishops, vice-regents of God!Weighed and tried and found wanting. Give way, now, to what shall come after!Make ye way for the Men who shall do what ye have but neglected and shirked!Make ye way for a Time which hath more than Power and Greed for its watchwords!Soon your day shall decline forever, your sun shall sink and shall vanish.Then from the Cellars of Life the darkness-dwellers shall issue,Greeting another daunt which shall have more than pain for its portion.Then no more shall the humble, the lowly, the friends of the Nazarene CarpenterBe starved, be mangled for gold, be crucified, slaughtered, bled.Make ye way!...Make ye way!..."
Such was the message I read, the words of that fire-writ warning.Then peace came back to my spirit, calm peace, and hope and patience:Then, through my anger and heat, I thought of the Retribution.But even more clearly I saw the New Birth of this weary world,This world now groaning in chains, with the bloody sweat of oppression.These things and many more, such as were hard to write of,I read in the words of the Socialist, patient, peaceful and sober,Full of prophetic vision, above all things hopeful and patient,Written in living flame at the Feast of the Leaders of Men....
As Gabriel's voice fell to silence, after the last words, a stillness came upon the lamp-lit room, a hush broken only by the snapping of the pine-root fire on the hearth and by the busy ticking of the clock upon the chimneypiece. Then, after a minute's pause, Craig reached over and took Gabriel by the hand.
"I salute you, O poet of the Revolution now impending!" he cried, while Catherine's eyes gleamed bright with tears. "Would God thatIcould write like that, old man!"
"And would God that my paper was still being issued!" Brevard added, making a gesture with the pipe that, in his eagerness to hear, he had allowed to die. "If it were I'd give that poem my front page, and fling its message full in the faces of Plutocracy!"
Gabriel smiled a bit nervously.
"Don't, please don't," he begged. "If you really do like it help me spread it. Don't waste words on praise, but plan with me, tonight, how we can get this to the people—how we can perfect our final arrangements—what we must do, now, at once, to meet the Air Trust and defeat it before its terrible and unrelenting grip closes on the throat of the world!"
"Right!" said Craig. "We must act at once, while there's yet time. today, all seems safe. The Air Trust spies haven't ferreted this place out. A week from now,they may have, and one of the most secure and useful Socialist refuges in the country may be only a heap of ashes—like the ones at Kenwyck, Hampden, Mount Desert and Loftiss. Every day is precious. Every one helps to perfect Gabriel's disguise and adds materially to his strength."
"True," assented Gabriel. "We mustn't wait too long, now. That last report we got yesterday, by our wireless, ought to stimulate us. Brainard says, in it, that the Air Trust people are now putting the finishing touches on the Niagara plant. That will give them condensing machinery for over 90,000,000 horsepower, all told. As I see the thing, it looks absolutely as though, whenthatis done, the whole Capitalist system of the world will center right there—focus there, as at a point. Let kings and emperors continue to strut and mouth vain phrases; let our own President and Congress make the motions of governing; even let Wall Street play at finance and power. All, all are empty and meaningless!
"Power has been sucked dry, out of them all, comrades. You know as well as I know—better, perhaps—that all real power in the world, today, whether economic or political—nay, even the power of life and death, the power of breath or strangulation, has clotted at Niagara, in the central offices of the Air Trust; nay, right in Flint and Waldron's own inner office!"
Gabriel had stood up, while speaking; and now, pacing the floor of the big living-room, glanced first at one eager and familiar face, then at another.
"Comrades," said he, "we should not sleep, tonight. We should get out all our plans and data, all the dispatches that have come to us here, all the information athand about our organization, whether open or subterranean. We should make this room and this time, in fact, the place and the hour for the planning of the last great blow on which hangs the fate of the world. If it succeed, the human race goes free again. If it fail—and God forbid!—then the whole world will lie in the grip of Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage, our press forced into impotence—save our underground press—and political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when Diaz ruled, we have but one recourse!"
"And that is?" asked Catherine. "The general strike?"
"A final, general, paralyzing strike; and with it, the actual, physical destruction of the colossal crime of crimes, the Air Trust works at Niagara!"
A little silence followed. They all drew round the reading-table, now, near the fireplace. Mrs. Grantham brought a lamp; and Brevard, opening a chest near the book-case, fetched a portfolio of papers, dispatches, plans, reports and data of all kinds.
"Gabriel's right," said he. "The time is ripe, now, or will be in a week or so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds to their power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike and the attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must come to extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and we shall be eternally too late!"
"Extreme measures, yes," said Gabriel, while Brevard spread the papers out and sorted them, and Craig drew contemplatively at his pipe. "The masters would have it so. Our one-time academic discussion about ways andmeans has become absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. We're up against facts, now, not theories. God knows it's against the dictates of my heart to do what must be done; but it's that or stand back and see the world be murdered, together with our own selves! And in a case of self-defense, no measures are unjustifiable.
"Whatever happens our hands are clean. The plutocrats are the attacking force. They have chosen, and must take the consequences; they have sown, and must reap. One by one, they have limited and withdrawn every political right. They have taken away free speech and free assemblage, free press and universal suffrage. They have limited the right to vote, by property qualifications that have deprived the proletariat of every chance to make their will felt. They have put through this National Censorship outrage and—still worse—the National Mounted Police Bill, making Cossack rule supreme in the United States of America, as they have made it in the United States of Europe.
"Before they elected that tool of tools, President Supple, in 1920, on the Anti-Socialist ticket, we still had some constitutional rights left—a few. But now, all are gone. With the absorption and annexation of Canada, Mexico and Central America, slavery full and absolute settled down upon us. The unions simply crumbled to dust as you know, in face of all those millions of Mexican peons swamping the labor-market with starvation-wage labor. Then, as we all remember, came the terrible series of strikes in 1921 and 1922, and the massacres at Hopedale and Boulder, at Los Angeles and Pittsburg, and, worst of all, Gary. That finished what few rights were left, that killing did. And then came the army ofspies, and the proscriptions, and the electrocution of those hundred and eleven editors, speakers and organizers—why bring up all these things that we all know so well?Wewere willing to play the game fair and square, andtheyrefused. Say that, and you say all.
"No need to dwell on details, comrades. The Air Trust has had its will with the world, so far. It has crushed all opposition as relentlessly as the car of Juggernaut used to crush its blind, fanatical devotees. True, our Party still exists and has some standing and some representatives; but we all know whatpowerit has—in the open! Notthatmuch!" And he snapped his fingers in the air.
"In the open, none!" said Craig, blowing a cloud of smoke. "I admit that, Gabriel. But, underground—ah!"
"Underground," Gabriel took up the word, "forces are now at work that can shatter the whole infernal slavery to dust! This way of working is not our choice; it is theirs. They would have it so—now let them take their medicine!"
"Yes, yes," eagerly exclaimed Catherine, her face flushed and intense. "I'm with you, Gabriel. To work!"
"To work, yes," put in Craig, "but with system, order and method. My experience in Congress has taught me some valuable lessons. The universal, all-embracing Trust made marionettes of us, every one. Our strength was, to them, no more than that of a mouse to a lion. Their system is perfect, their lines of supply and communication are without a flaw. The Prussian army machine of other days was but a bungling experiment by comparison with the efficiency of this new mechanism. I tell you, Gabriel, we've got to give these tyrants credit for being infernally efficient tyrants! All that science hasbeen able to devise, or press and church and university teach, or political subservience make possible, is theirs. And back of that, military power, and the courts and the prisons and the electric chair! And back of allthose, the power to choke the whole world to submission, in a week!"
Gabriel thought, a moment, before replying. Then said he:
"I know it, Craig. All the more reason why we must hit them at once, and hit hard! These reports here," and he gestured at the papers that Brevard had spread out under the lamp-light, "prove that, at the proper signal, every chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation—the keynote of the whole situation.
"True, the government—that is to say, the Air Trust, andthatis to say, Flint and Waldron—can keep men in every engine-cab in the country. They can keep them at every switch and junction. But this isn't France, remember, nor is it any small, compact European country. Conditions are wholly different here. Everywhere, vast stretches of track exist. No power on earth—not even Flint and Waldron's—can guard all those hundreds of thousands of miles. And so I tell you, taking our data simply from these reports and not counting on any more organized strength than they show, we have today got the means of cutting and crippling, for a week at least, the movements of troops to Niagara. And that, just that, is all we need!"
A little silence. Then said Catherine:
"You mean, Gabriel, that if we can keep the troops back for a little while, and annihilate the Air Trust plant itself, the great revolution will follow?"
He nodded, with a smouldering fire in his eyes.
"Yes," said he. "If we can loosen the grip of this monster for only forty-eight hours, and flash the news to this bleeding, sweating, choking land that the gripisloosened—after that we need do no more.Après nous, le déluge;only not now in the sense of wreck and ruin, but meaning that this deluge shall forever wash away the tyranny and crime of Capitalism! Forever and a day, to leave us free once more, free men and women, standing erect and facing God's own sunlight, our heritage and birthplace in this world!"
Catherine made no answer, but her hand clasped his. The light on her magnificent masses of copper-golden hair, braided about her head, enhanced her beauty. And so for a moment, the little group sat there about the table—the group on which now so infinitely much depended; and the lamp-glow shone upon their precious plans, reports and diagrams.
Into each others' eyes they looked, and knew the moment of final conflict was drawn very near, at last. The moment which, in failure or success, should for long years, for decades, for centuries perhaps, determine whether the world and all its teeming millions were to be slave or free.
They spoke no word and took no oath of life-and-death fidelity, those men and women who now had been entrusted with the fate of the world. But in their eyes one read unshakable devotion to the Cause of Man, unswerving loyalty to the Great Ideal, and a calm, holy faith that would make light of death itself, could death but pave the way to victory!