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 Hell-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, 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 Hell’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, noble 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 ownership 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 pass, 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 shining 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, lust, 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’ bums an’ red-light con-workers like this geezer. Oh yes, sure, sure they would—I should worry!”
Which mental attitude 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 passed 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, surpassed 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 class. 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 associates.
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 bod
ies 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 damnable prostituted system, to suppress and kill me?
“Can she believe her father guilty of all that? And of all the horrors of this capitalist Hell, 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 space, 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 fictitious peace!”
Thus pondered Gabriel, in the gloom of his harsh cell, branded with crime and writhing in the agony of soul that only those who love hopelessly can ever know.
And Catherine, what of her? What were her thoughts, emotions, inspirations as—seeming to live in a dream, with Gabriel’s eloquence and the new vision of a better, saner, kindlier world shining through her soul—she made her way back to the dingy hotel where now, shabby as it was, she felt she had no right to stay, while others, homeless, walked the brutal streets?
Who shall know them? Who shall tell? A blind man, suddenly made to see, can find no words to express the wonder and bright glory of that sudden sight. A deaf man, regaining his lost sense, cannot describe the sudden burst of sound that fills the new, strange world wherein he finds himself. So, now, this cultured, gently bred woman, for the first time in her life understanding the facts, glimpsing the tragedy and grasping the answer to it all, felt that no words could compass her strange exultation and enlargement.
“It—it’s like a chrysalis emerging into the form of a light, swift butterfly!” she pondered, as, back in her room once more, she prepared to write two letters. “Just for the present, I can’t understand it all. I don’t know, yet, whether I’m worthy to be a Socialist, to be one of that company of earnest, noble men and women striving for life and liberty and joy for all the world. But with the help of the man I trust and honor and believe in, and—and love—perhaps I may yet be. God grant it may be so!”
She thought, a few minutes more, her face lighted by an inner radiance that made its beauty spiritual and pure and calm. Then, having somewhat composed her thoughts, she wrote this letter to Maxim Waldron:
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, 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 the bitterest 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.
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