Air Trust

by George Allan England

  CHAPTER XXV.

  THROUGH STEEL BARS.

  True to her plan, Catherine ended her journey at Rochester. She engageda room at a second-rate hotel--marvelling greatly at the meanness of theaccommodations, the like of which she had never seen--and, at teno'clock of the morning, appeared at the Central Police Station. Thebundle of papers in her hand indicated that she had read the latest liesand venom poured out on Gabriel's defenseless head.

  The haughty, full-fed sergeant in charge of the station made someobjections, at first, to letting her see Gabriel; but the tone of hervoice and the level look of her gray eye presently convinced him he wasplaying with fire, and he gave in. Summoning an officer, he bade the manconduct her. Iron doors opened and closed for her. She was conscious oflong, ill-smelling, concrete-floored corridors, with little steel cagesat either side--cages where hopeless, sodden wrecks of men werestanding, or sitting in attitudes of brutal despair, or lying on foulbunks, motionless and inert as logs.

  For a moment her heart failed her.

  "Good Lord! Can such things be?" she whispered to herself. "Sothis--this is a police station? And real jails and penitentiaries areworse? Oh, horrible! I never dreamed of anything like this, or any menlike these!"

  The officer, stopping at a cell-door and banging thereon with somekeys, startled her.

  "Here, youse," he addressed the man within, "lady to see youse!"

  Catherine was conscious that her heart was pounding hard and her breathcoming fast, as she peered in through those cold, harsh metal bars. Fora minute she could find no thought, no word. Within, her eyes--stillunaccustomed to the gloom--vaguely perceived a man's figure, big andpowerful, and different in its bearing from those other cringingwretches she had glimpsed.

  Then the man came toward her, stopped, peered and for a second drewback. And then--then she heard his voice, in a kind of startled joy:

  "Oh--is it--is it _you_?"

  "Yes," she answered. "I must see you! I must talk with you, again, andknow the truth!"

  The officer edged nearer.

  "Youse can talk all y' want to," he dictated, hoarsely, "but don't youpass nothin' in. No dope, nor nothin', see? I'll stick around an' watch,anyhow; but don't try to slip him no dream powders or no 'snow.' 'Causeif you do--"

  "What--what _on_ earth are you talking about?" the girl demanded,turning on the officer with absolute astonishment. But he, only winkingwisely, repeated:

  "You heard me, didn't you? No dope. I'm wise to this whole game."

  At a loss for his meaning, yet without any real desire to fathom it,Kate turned back toward Gabriel.

  A moment they two looked at each other, each noting any change thatmight have taken place since that wonderful hour in the sugar-house,each hungering and thirsting for a sight of the other's face. In herheart, already Kate knew as well as she knew she was alive, that thisman was totally innocent of the foul charges heaped upon him. And so shelooked at him with eyes wherein lay no reproach, no doubt and nosuspicion. And, as she looked, tears started, and her heart swelledhotly in her breast; for he was bruised and battered and a helplesscaptive.

  "He, caged like a trapped animal!" her thought was. "He, so strong, andfree, and brave! Oh, horrible, horrible!"

  He must have read something of this feeling, in her face; for now,coming close to the bars, he said in a low tone:

  "Girl--your name I don't know, even yet--girl, you mustn't pity me!That's _one_ thing I can't have. I'm here because the master class isstronger than my class, the working class. Here, because I'm dangerousto that master class. This isn't said to make myself out a martyr. It'sonly to make you see things right. I'm not complaining at this plight.I've richly earned it--under Capitalism. So, then, _that's_ settled.

  "And now, what's more important, tell me how _you_ are! And did yourwound cause you much trouble? I confess I've passed many an anxioushour, thinking of your narrow escape and of your injury. It wasn't toobad, was it? Tell me!"

  "No," she answered, still holding to the bars, for she somehow feltquite unaccountably weak. "It wasn't very bad. There's hardly any scarat all--or won't be, when it's fully healed. But all this is trifling,compared to what _you've_ suffered and are suffering. Oh, what ahorrible affair! What frightful accusations! Tell me the truth,Boy--how, why could--?"

  He looked at her a moment, in silence, noting her splendid hair and eyesand mouth, the firm, well-moulded chin, the confident and self-reliantpoise of the shapely head; and as he looked, he knew he loved thiswoman. He understood, at last, how dear she was to him--dearer thananything else in all the world save just his principles and stern lifework. He comprehended the meaning of all, his dreams and visions andlong thoughts. And, caring nothing for consequences, unskilled in thefinesse of dealing with women, acting wholly on the irresistibleimpulses of a heart that overflowed, he looked deep into those gray eyesand said in a tone that set her heart-strings vibrating:

  "Listen! The truth? How could I tell you anything else? I know not whoyou are, and care not. That you are rich and powerful and free, while Iam poor and in captivity, means nothing. Love cares not for suchtrifles. It dares all, hopes all, trusts all, believes all--and ispatient in adversity."

  "Love?" she whispered, her face paling. "How do you dare to--?"

  "Dare? Because my heart bids me. And where it bids, I care not forconventions or consequences!" He flung his hand out with a splendidgesture, his head high, his eyes lustrous in the half-light of the cell."Where it leads, I have to follow. That is why I am a Socialist! That iswhy I am here, today, outcast and execrated, a prisoner, in danger oflong years of living death in the pestilential tomb of some foulpenitentiary!"

  "You're here because--because you are a Socialist?" she asked.

  He nodded.

  "Yes," said he. "I tried to help a suffering, outcast woman--or one whoposed as such. And she betrayed me to my enemies. And so--"

  "There _was_ a woman in this affair, then?" Catherine queried withsudden pain. "The newspapers haven't made the story _all_ up out ofwhole cloth?"

  "No. There _was_ a woman. A Delilah, who delivered me into the hands ofthe Philistines, when I tried to help her in what she lied in telling mewas her need. Will you hear the story?"

  Still very pale, she formed a half-inarticulate "Yes!" with her fulllips. Then, seeming to brace herself by a tighter clasp on the hardsteel grating, she listened while he spoke.

  Earnestly, honestly and with perfect straightforwardness, omittingnothing, adding nothing, he gave her the narrative of that fatal night'sevents, from the first moment he had laid eyes on thewonderfully-disguised woman, till her cudgel-blow had laid him senselesson the floor.

  He told her the part that every actor therein had played; how the wholedrama had been staged, to dishonor and convict him, to railroad him tothe Pen for a long term, perhaps to kill him. He spoke in a low voice,to prevent the watching officer from overhearing; and as he talked, hethanked his stars that in all this network of conspiracy and crimeagainst the Party and against himself, his captors had not yet placedhim incommunicado. For some reason--perhaps because they thought theircase against him absolutely secure and wanted to avoid any appearance ofunfairness or of martyrizing him--this restriction had not yet been laidupon him. So now his message of the truth could reach the ears of herwho, more than all the world beside, had grown dear to him and preciousbeyond words.

  He told her, then, not only the story of that night, but also all thathad since happened--the newspaper attacks on him and on the Party; thedeliberate attempt to poison the community and the nation against him;the struggle to fix a foul and lasting blot upon his name, and ruin himbeyond redemption.

  "And why, all this?" he added, while she--listening so intently that shehardly breathed--knew that he spoke the living, vital truth. "Why thispersecution, this plotting, this labor and expense to 'get' me. Do youwant to know?"

  "Yes, tell me!" she whispered. "I don't understand. I can't! It--it allseems so horrible, so unreal, so--so different from wh
at I've alwaysbelieved about the majesty and purity of the law! Can these things be,indeed?"

  He laughed bitterly.

  "Can they?" he repeated. "When you see that they _are_, isn't thatanswer enough? And the reason of it all is that I'm a Socialist and knowcertain secrets of certain men, which--if I should tell theworld--might, nay, surely would precipitate a revolution. So, these men,and the System behind them, have tried to discredit me by this foulcharge. 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 wellas I! Do I complain? No, not once! What I must suffer, for thiswondrous Cause, is not a tenth what thousands suffer every day, insilence and high courage. What has happened to me, personally, is butthe merest trifle beside what has already happened to thousands,fighting for life and liberty, for wife and home and children; for theright to work and live like men, not beasts!"

  "You mean the--the working class?" she ventured, wonderingly. "Is thisoutrage really a minor one, compared with what they, who feed and warmand carry the whole world, have to suffer? Tell me, for I--God help me,I am ignorant! I am beginning to see, to half-see, awful, dim, ghostlyshapes of huge, unspeakable wrongs. Tell me the truth about all this, asyou have told it about yourself--and let me know!"

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

  With master strokes he painted vast outlines of the whole sadpicture--the System based on robbery and fraud and exploitation; itsnatural results in millionaire and tramp and harlot and degenerate; thecrime of armies of unemployed and starving men, of millions of womenforced into the factories and shops, there to compete with men and lowerwages and lose their finest feminine attributes in the sordid andheartless drudging for a pittance.

  He told her of child slavery, and brought before her eyes the pictureshe himself had seen, of the pale, stunted little victims of Mammon'sgreed, toiling by day and night in stifling, dangerous mines; in theHell-glare of the glass-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, shesaw for the first time the figures of these bowed and bloodless littleboys and girls, giving their lives drop by drop, and cough by cough,that _she_ might have purple and fine linen and the rich, soft, easypaths of life.

  * * * * *

  Then, pausing not, he spoke to her of white slavery, of girls and womenby the uncounted thousand forced to barter their own bodies for amockery of life; and, stinging as a nagaika, he laid the lash of blameon Capitalism, evil cause of an evil and rotten fruit, of disease andcrime, and misery, and death. He told her of political corruption beyondbelief; of cheating, lying, trickery and greed, for power. Of war, hetold her, and made all its inner, hideous motives clear. She seemedverily to see the trenches, the "red rampart's slippery edge," thespattered blood and brains and all the horror of Hell's nethermostinfamy--and then the blasted, wrecked and wasted homes, the long trailof 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 firstinsight, her first understanding of the true character of this, ourstriving, slaving world, held by a few for their own inordinate prideand power, the man's voice changed.

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

  Sentence by sentence, imagery of this vast, noble thought flowed fromhis inspired lips. Clearly he showed this woman all the causes of theworld's travail and pain; and clearly made her see that only in one way,only through the ownership of the world by the world's children as awhole, could peace and justice, life and joy and plenty and the New Timecome to pass, dreamed of and yearned for by many sages and prophets, andnow close at hand on the very threshold of reality!

  Socialism! It leaped from his spirit like a living flame, consumingdross and waste and evil, lighting up the future with its shiningbeacon, its message of hope to the hopeless, of rest and cheer and peaceto 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 werenow made clear. For the first time in all her life, the woman saw, andknew, and grasped the truths of this strange nexus of conflict, pain andsorrow, that we know as our existence.

  "Socialism! The Hope of the World!" Gabriel finished. "And for this, andfor what I know about its enemies, I stand here in this cell and may yetgo to a living death. This is my crime, and nothing else--this battlefor the freedom and the joy of the world--this struggle against thepowers of ignorance and darkness, priestcraft and greed, lust, treacheryand foulness, cruelty and hate and war! This, and this only. You haveheard me. I have spoken!"

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

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

  "Be of good cheer," she whispered. "Though I am ignorant and do notfully 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 haveeaten the bread of this bitter slavery, taken the thing I had no rightto take, unknowingly wielded the lash on bleeding backs of men and womenand children.

  "All my life have I, in ignorance and idleness, done these things. Butnever shall I do them again. That is all past and gone, an evil dreamthat is no more. From now, if you will be patient and forgive and teachme, I will stand with you and yours, and glory in the new-found strengthand 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, somewhatdown 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. "Ido, now that you too have seen the light, and that you understand. Tellme, who are you?"

  A moment's pause.

  Then, facing him, she answered:

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