The Air Trust Part 31

"Can they?" he repeated. "When you see that they _are_, isn't that answer enough? And the reason of it all is that I'm a Socialist and know certain secrets of certain men, which--if I should tell the world--might, nay, surely would precipitate a revolution. So, these men, and the System behind them, have tried to discredit me by this foul charge. After this, if the charge sticks, I may shout my head off, exposing what I know; and who will listen? You know the answer as well as I! Do I complain? No, not once! What I must suffer, for this wondrous Cause, is not a tenth what thousands suffer every day, in silence and high courage. What has happened to me, personally, is but the merest trifle beside what has already happened to thousands, fighting for life and liberty, for wife and home and children; for the right to work and live like men, not beasts!"

"You mean the--the working cla.s.s?" she ventured, wonderingly. "Is this outrage really a minor one, compared with what they, who feed and warm and carry the whole world, have to suffer? Tell me, for I--G.o.d help me, I am ignorant! I am beginning to see, to half-see, awful, dim, ghostly shapes of huge, unspeakable wrongs. Tell me the truth about all this, as you have told it about yourself--and let me know!"

Then Gabriel talked as never he had talked before. To this, his audience of one, there in the dirty and ill-smelling police station, he unfolded the sad tale of the disinherited, the enslaved, the wretched, as never to a huge, and spell-bound audience in hall or park or city street. His eloquence, always convincing, now became sublime.

With master strokes he painted vast outlines of the whole sad picture--the System based on robbery and fraud and exploitation; its natural results in millionaire and tramp and harlot and degenerate; the crime of armies of unemployed and starving men, of millions of women forced into the factories and shops, there to compete with men and lower wages and lose their finest feminine attributes in the sordid and heartless drudging for a pittance.

He told her of child slavery, and brought before her eyes the pictures he himself had seen, of the pale, stunted little victims of Mammon's greed, toiling by day and night in stifling, dangerous mines; in the h.e.l.l-glare of the gla.s.s-factories; in the hand-bruising, soul-obliterating Inferno of the coal-breakers; in the hot, linty, sickening atmosphere of the southern cotton-mills. And as he talked, she saw for the first time the figures of these bowed and bloodless little boys and girls, giving their lives drop by drop, and cough by cough, that _she_ might have purple and fine linen and the rich, soft, easy paths of life.

Then, pausing not, he spoke to her of white slavery, of girls and women by the uncounted thousand forced to barter their own bodies for a mockery of life; and, stinging as a nagaika, he laid the lash of blame on Capitalism, evil cause of an evil and rotten fruit, of disease and crime, and misery, and death. He told her of political corruption beyond belief; of cheating, lying, trickery and greed, for power. Of war, he told her, and made all its inner, hideous motives clear. She seemed verily to see the trenches, the "red rampart's slippery edge," the spattered blood and brains and all the horror of h.e.l.l's nethermost infamy--and then the blasted, wrecked and wasted homes, the long trail of mourning and of hopeless ruin--the horror of this crime of crimes, all for profit, all for gold and markets, all for Capitalism!

And then, while the girl stood there listening, spell-bound by her first insight, her first understanding of the true character of this, our striving, slaving world, held by a few for their own inordinate pride and power, the man's voice changed.

With new intonations and a deeper tone, he launched into some outlines of the great hope, the splendid vision, the Wondrous Ideal--Socialism, the world-salvation.

Sentence by sentence, imagery of this vast, n.o.ble thought flowed from his inspired lips. Clearly he showed this woman all the causes of the world's travail and pain; and clearly made her see that only in one way, only through the owners.h.i.+p of the world by the world's children as a whole, could peace and justice, life and joy and plenty and the New Time come to pa.s.s, dreamed of and yearned for by many sages and prophets, and now close at hand on the very threshold of reality!

Socialism! It leaped from his spirit like a living flame, consuming dross and waste and evil, lighting up the future with its s.h.i.+ning beacon, its message of hope to the hopeless, of rest and cheer and peace to all who labored and were heavy laden.

Socialism! The glory of the vision seemed to blind and dazzle Catherine.

In its supernal light, things grievous to be understood and borne were now made clear. For the first time in all her life, the woman saw, and knew, and grasped the truths of this strange nexus of conflict, pain and sorrow, that we know as our existence.

"Socialism! The Hope of the World!" Gabriel finished. "And for this, and for what I know about its enemies, I stand here in this cell and may yet go to a living death. This is my crime, and nothing else--this battle for the freedom and the joy of the world--this struggle against the powers of ignorance and darkness, priestcraft and greed, l.u.s.t, treachery and foulness, cruelty and hate and war! This, and this only. You have heard me. I have spoken!"

He fell silent, crossed his arms upon the bars of the cage that pent him, and laid his head upon them with a motion of weariness.

Something strangely stirred the heart of the woman. Her hand went out and touched his thick, black hair.

"Be of good cheer," she whispered. "Though I am ignorant and do not fully understand, as yet, some glimmer of the light has reached my eyes.

I can learn, and I _will_ learn, and dare, and do! All my life I have eaten the bread of this bitter slavery, taken the thing I had no right to take, unknowingly wielded the lash on bleeding backs of men and women and children.

"All my life have I, in ignorance and idleness, done these things. But never shall I do them again. That is all past and gone, an evil dream that is no more. From now, if you will be patient and forgive and teach me, I will stand with you and yours, and glory in the new-found strength and majesty of this supreme ideal!"

He made no answer, save to reach one hand to her, through the bars.

Their hands met in a long, clinging tension. The policeman, somewhat down the corridor, moved officiously in their direction.

"Here, now, none o' that!" he blurted. "Break away! An' say, time's up.

Yuh stayed too long, miss, as it is!"

Their hands parted. Still Gabriel did not look up.

"Are--are you coming back again?" he asked.

"Yes, Gabriel. Tomorrow."

"And will you tell me then who you are?"

"I'll tell you now, if you want to know."

"I do," he answered, and raised his head. Their eyes met, steadily. "I do, now that you too have seen the light, and that you understand. Tell me, who are you?"

A moment's pause.

Then, facing him, she answered:

"I am Catherine Flint, only daughter of Isaac Flint, the Billionaire!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

"GUILTY."

Speechless and dazed, Gabriel stared at her as though at some strange apparition.

"Daughter of--of Isaac Flint?" he stammered, clinging to the bars.

"Come, come, lady, yuh can't stay no longer!" the officer again insisted, tapping her on the shoulder. "Yuh'd oughta been out o' here ten minutes ago! No, nuthin' doin'!" he concluded, as she turned to him appealingly. "Not today! Time's up an' more than up!"

Catherine stretched out her hand to Gabriel, in farewell. He took it, silently.

"Good-bye!" said she. "Until I come again, good-bye. Keep up a stout heart, for I am with you. We--we _can't_ lose. We shall win--we _must_ win! Don't condemn me for being what I am and who I am, Gabriel. Only think what--with your help--I may yet be! And now again, good-bye!"

Their hands parted. Gabriel, still silent, stood there in his cell, watching her till she vanished from his sight down the long corridor of grief and tears. The officer, winking wisely to himself, thrust his tongue into his cheek.

"Daughter of Isaac Flint, th' Billionaire!" he was thinking, with derision. "Oh, yes, billionaires' daughters would be visitin' Socialists an' b.u.ms an' red-light con-workers like this geezer. Oh yes, sure, sure they would--I should worry!"

Which mental att.i.tude was fortunate, indeed; for it, and it alone, preserved the girl from a wild blare of newspaper notoriety. Had the truth been known, who could have imagined the results?

For a long time after the girl had departed, Gabriel sat there in his cell, motionless and sunk in deepest thought. His emotions pa.s.sed recording. That this woman, his ideal, his best-beloved, the cherished, inmost treasure of his heart and soul--she whom he had rescued, she who had lain in his arms and shared with him that unforgettable hour in the old sugar-house--should now prove to be the daughter of his bitterest enemy, surpa.s.sed belief and stunned all clear understanding.

Flint! The very name connoted, for Gabriel, all that was cruel and rapacious, hateful, vicious and greedy; all that meant pain and woe and death to him and his cla.s.s. Visions of West Virginia and Colorado rose before his mind. He heard again the whistle of the "Bull Moose Death Special" as it sped on its swift errand of barbarism up Cabin Creek, hurling its sprays of leaden death among the slaves of this man and his vulturine a.s.sociates.

Flint! He whispered the name; and now he seemed to see the burning tents at Ludlow; the fleeing women and children, shot down by barbarous thugs and gunmen, ghouls in human form! He saw the pits of death, where the charred bodies of innocent victims of greed and heartless rapacity lay in mute protest under the far Colorado sky. And more he saw, east and west, north and south, of this man's inhuman work; and his thoughts, projected into the future, dwelt bitterly on the Air Trust now already under way--the terrible, coming slavery which he, Gabriel, had struggled to checkmate, only to find himself locked like a rat in a steel trap!

"And this woman," he groaned in agony of soul, "this woman, all in all to me, is--is _his_ daughter!"

Flinging himself upon his hard and narrow bunk, he buried his head in his powerful arms, and tried to blot out thought from his fevered brain; but still the current ran on and on and on, endlessly, maddeningly. And to the problem, no answer seemed to come.

"She must know who I am," he pondered. "Even if her father has not told her, the papers have. True, she doesn't believe the infamous charge against me; but what then? Can she, on the other hand, believe the truth, that her father has conspired with Slade and those Cosmos thugs, and with the press and courts and the whole d.a.m.nable prost.i.tuted system, to suppress and kill me?

"Can she believe her father guilty of all that? And of all the horrors of this capitalist h.e.l.l, that I have told her about? No! Human nature is incapable of such vast turnings from all the habits and environments of a lifetime. In her veins flows the blood of that arch-criminal, Flint.

Her thoughts must be, to some extent, his thoughts. She must share his viewpoint, and be loyal to him. After this first flush of reaction against her father, she will go back to him. It is inevitable. Betwixt her and me is fixed a boundless s.p.a.ce, wider than Heaven and earth. She is one pole, and I the other. If I have any strength or resolution or philosophy, now is the hour for its trial.

"This woman must be, shall be put away from every thought and wish and hope. And the word FINIS must be written at the end of the one brief chapter where our life-stories seem to have run along together in a false harmony and a fict.i.tious peace!"