The Air Trust Part 25

Then, soothed by these happy thoughts, and by a somewhat increased dosage of his drug, the Billionaire gradually and contentedly fell asleep, to dream of victory, and vengeance, and power.

Not in weeks had he slumbered so peacefully.

But for many hours after her father was asleep, Catherine sat at her window, in a silk kimono, and with fevered pulses and dry eyes, with throbbing heart and leaping pulses, thought long thoughts.

Sleepless she sat there, counting the hours tolled from the church-spire in the town, below.

Morning still found her at the window, her brain afire, her heart laid desolate and waste by the consuming struggle which, that night, had swept and ravaged it.

CHAPTER XXI.

GABRIEL, GOOD SAMARITAN.

On the evening of July third, a week later, Gabriel Armstrong found himself at Rochester, having tramped the hundred miles from Syracuse, by easy stages. During this week, old Flint took good care not to reopen the subject of the break with Waldron; and his daughter, too, avoided it. They two were apparently at an impa.s.se regarding it. But Flint inwardly rejoiced, knowing full well the plot now under way. And though Waldron urged him to take some further action and force the issue, Flint bade him hold his peace, and wait, telling him all would yet be well.

Outwardly calmer, the old man was raging, within, more and ever more bitterly, against Armstrong. On July first, Slade had reported in person that his operators who were trailing the quarry had--in the night--discovered in one of his pockets a maple leaf wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief marked "C. J. F." Flint, recognizing his daughter's initials, well-nigh burst a blood-vessel for wrath. But he instructed Slade not to have the handkerchief abstracted from Armstrong's possession. By no sign or hint must the victim be made aware that he was being spied upon. When the final blow should fall, then (reflected the Billionaire, with devilish satisfaction) all scores would be paid in full, and more than paid.

July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where--he had already heard--ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning. Gabriel counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and celebration had been arranged. Ordinarily, he would have taken part in the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd. There could be little danger, thought he, in such a ma.s.s. Despite the recent stringent censors.h.i.+p and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police, a huge gathering was expected. The big railway and lake-traffic strikes, both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.

"It will be worth seeing," thought Gabriel, as he stood outside the lodging-house where he had taken a room for the night. The workers are surely awakening, at last. The spirit I've been meeting, lately, is uglier and more determined than anything I ever used to find, a year or two ago. It seems to me, if conditions are like this all over the country, the safety-valve is about ready to pop, and the masters had better look out, or some of them are going to land in h.e.l.l!

"Yes, I'll stop over here, one day, and look and listen. Sorry I can't take part, but I mustn't. My game, now, is to travel underground as it were. I've got a bigger job in view than soap-boxing, just _now_!"

He ate a simple supper at an "Owl" lunch-cart, totally unaware that, across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the descending sun.

Here he remained till dark, smoking his briar, watching the dirty, ragged children of the wretched wage-slaves at play; observing the exploited men and women on the park-benches, as they sought a little fresh air and respite from toil; and pondering the problems that still lay before him. At times--often indeed--his thoughts wandered to the maple-grove and the old sugar-house, far away on the Hudson. Memories of the girl would not be banished, nor longings for her. Who she might be, he still knew not. Unwilling to learn, he had refrained from looking up the number he had copied from the plate of the wrecked machine. He had even abstained from reading the papers, a few days, lest he might see some account of the accident. A strange kind of unwillingness to know the woman's name possessed him--a feeling that, if he positively identified her as one of some famous clan of robbers and exploiters, he could no longer cherish her memory or love the thought of how they two had, for an hour, sat together and talked and been good, honest friends.

"No," he murmured to himself, "it's better this way--just to recall her as a girl in need, a girl who let me help her, a girl I can always remember with kind thoughts, as long as I live!"

From his pocket he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about it--something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a time it seemed to him a wondrous peace possessed him.

"If it could only have been," he murmured, at last. "If only it could be!"

Then suddenly urged by a realization of the hopelessness of it all, he stood up, pocketed the souvenirs of her again, and walked away in the dusk; away, through the park; away, at random, through squalid, ugly streets, where the first electric-lights were just beginning to flare; where children swarmed in the close heat, wallowing along the gutters, dodging teams and cars, as they essayed to play, setting off a few premature firecrackers and mocking the police--all in all, leading the ugly, unnatural, destructive life of all children of the city proletariat.

"Poor little devils!" thought Gabriel, stopping to observe a dirty group cl.u.s.tered about an ice-cream cart, where cheap, adulterated, high-colored stuff was being sold for a penny a square--aniline poison, no doubt, and G.o.d knows what else. "Poor little kids! Not much like the children of the masters, eh? with their lawns and playgrounds, their beaches and flowery fields, their gardens and fine schools, their dogs, ponies, autos and all the rest! Some difference, all right--and it takes a thousand of _these_, yes, ten thousand, to keep one of _those_.

And--and _she_ was one of the rich and dainty children! Her beauty, health and grace were bought at the price of ten thousand other children's health, and joy and lives! Ah, G.o.d, what a price! What a cruel, awful, barbarous price to pay!"

Saddened and pensive, he pa.s.sed on, still thinking of the woman he could not banish from his mind, despite his bitterness against her cla.s.s.

So he walked on and on, now through better streets and now through worse, up and down the city.

Here and there, detonations and red fire marked the impatience of some demonstrator who could not wait till midnight to show his ardent patriotism and his public spirit by risking life and property. The saloons were all doing a land-office business, with the holiday impending and the thermometer at 97. Now and then, slattern women, in foul clothes and with huge, gelatinous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, could be seen rus.h.i.+ng the growler, at the "family entrance" of some low dive. Even little girls bore tin pails, for the evening's "scuttle o' suds" to be consumed on roof, or in back yard of stinking tenement, or on some fire-escape.

The city, in fine, was relaxing from its toil; and, as the workers for the most part knew no other way, nor could afford any, they were trying to s.n.a.t.c.h some brief moment of respite from the h.e.l.l of their slavery, by recourse to rough ribaldry and alcohol.

Nine o'clock had just struck from the church-spires which mocked the slums with their appeal to an impa.s.sive Heaven, when, pa.s.sing a foul and narrow alley that led down to the Genesee River, Gabriel saw a woman sitting on a doorstep, weeping bitterly.

This woman--hardly more than a girl--was holding a little bundle in one hand. The other covered her face. Her sobs were audible. Grief of the most intense, he saw at once, convulsed her. Two or three by-standers, watching with a kind of pleased curiosity, completed the scene, most sordid in its setting, there under the flicker of a gas-light on the corner.

"Hm! What now?" thought Gabriel, stopping to watch the little tragedy.

"More trouble, eh? It's trouble all up and down the line, for these poor devils! Nothing but trouble for the slave-cla.s.s. Well, well, let's see what's wrong _now_!"

Gabriel turned down the alley, drew near the little group, and halted.

"What's wrong?" he asked, in the tone of authority he knew how to use; the tone which always overbore his outward aspect, even though he might have been clad in rags; the tone which made men yield to him, and women look at him with trustful eyes, even as the Billionaire's daughter had looked.

"Search _me_!" murmured one of the men, shrugging his shoulders. "_I_ can't git nothin' out o' her. She's been sittin' here, cryin', a few minutes, that's all I know; an' she won't say nothin' to n.o.body.

"Any of you men know anything about it?" demanded Gabriel, looking at the rest.

A murmur of negation was his only answer. One or two others, scenting some excitement, even though only that of a distressed woman--common sight, indeed!--lingered near. The little group was growing.

Gabriel bent and touched the woman's shoulder.

"What's the matter?" asked he, in a gentle voice. "If you're in trouble, let me help you."

Renewed sobs were her only answer.

"If you'll only tell me what's the matter," Gabriel went on, "I'm sure I can do something for you."

"You--you can't!" choked the woman, without raising her head from the corner of the ragged shawl that she was holding over her eyes. "n.o.body can't! Bill, he's gone, and Eddy's gone, and Mr. Micolo says he won't let me in. So there ain't nothin' to do. Let me alone--oh dear, oh dear, dear!"

Fresh tears and grief. The little knot of spectators, still growing, nodded with approval, and figuratively licked its lips, in satisfaction.

Somewhere a boy snickered.

"Come, come," said Gabriel, bending close over the grief-stricken woman, "pull together, and let's hear what the trouble is! Who's Bill, and who's Eddy--and what about Mr. Micolo? Come, tell me. I'm sure I can do something to straighten things out."

No answer. Gabriel turned to the increasing crowd, again.

"Any of you people know what about it?" he asked.

Again no answer, save that one elderly man, standing on the steps beside the woman, remarked casually:

"I guess she's got fired out of her room. That's all I know."

Gabriel took her by the arm, and drew her up.

"Come, now!" said he, a sterner note in his voice. "This won't do! You mustn't sit here, and draw a crowd. First thing you know an officer will be along, and you may get into trouble. Tell me what's wrong, and I promise to see you through it, as far as I can."

She raised her face, now, and looked at him, a moment. Tear-stained and dishevelled though she was, and soiled by marks of drink and debauchery, Gabriel saw she must once have been very beautiful and still was comely.

"Well," he asked. "Aren't you going to tell me?"

"Tell you?" she repeated. "I--oh, I can't! Not in front of all them men!"