The Air Trust Part 34

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.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE REFUGE.

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 Pa.s.s. And, red through the haze to westward, the great huge sunball slid down the heavens toward the tumbled, jagged ma.s.s 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 be visible, 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 Const.i.tution 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 most bungalows; 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, and _then_ beg 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 they _don't_ know 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script and in vibrant and harmonious voice, read:

_I SAW THE SOCIALIST_

I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men, Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Mult.i.tude; 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, prost.i.tutes, 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 dispa.s.sionate 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 n.o.bles and gold-crammed bankers, But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of Life Where 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 s.n.a.t.c.hing filthy crumbs; Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees; Things that s.h.i.+ver 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 each Might 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.