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 Constitution 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 furnishings 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 manuscript 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 manuscript 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 Multitude;
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, prostitutes, 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 dispassionate 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 emper
ors, the nobles 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 snatching filthy crumbs;
Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees;
Things that shiver 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.
Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.
Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body,
Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God,
Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.
I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter,
Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber,
Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist,
Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth’s exploited,
Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.
And the rotund Bishop’s words were as the crackling of dry thorns
Under a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.
The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words,
Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment,
So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.
Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner,
Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,
Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.
And still I watched the Socialist. Sober, judicial, observant
And full of greater wisdom he was than to laugh with the tipsy Leaders.
His eyes were fixed on the Bishop, vice-regent of God upon earth.
And as I watched the Socialist, the unmoved, the contemplative one,
He thoughtfully took his pencil, he took the fine and large card
Whereon the names of the rich foods and all the costly wines were printed,
And made a few notes of the feast, notes of the Bishop’s speech,
Notes to remind him to search the slums for the great, God-given prosperity,
Which all the Judges, Lawmakers, Captains and Leaders knew to be “our” portion;
Notes of the flowers, the wine, the lights, the music, the splendor,
Notes of the Leaders’ oratory, notes of the Bishop’s deep-voiced unctiousness,
Notes he made; and as I looked at the notes he was carefully writing,
The words ran red like wine and blood, they blazed like the blazing lights!
Words they were of blood and fire, that spread, that filled the banquet-hall.
Words of old, I read them—”MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSHIN!—
Weighed in the Balance you are, ye Leaders respected of men,
You Statesmen, Lawmakers, Judges, Captains, Bishops, vice-regents of God!
Weighed and tried and found wanting. Give way, now, to what shall come after!
Make ye way for the Men who shall do what ye have but neglected and shirked!
Make ye way for a Time which hath more than Power and Greed for its watchwords!
Soon your day shall decline forever, your sun shall sink and shall vanish.
Then from the Cellars of Life the darkness-dwellers shall issue,
Greeting another daunt which shall have more than pain for its portion.
Then no more shall the humble, the lowly, the friends of the Nazarene Carpenter
Be starved, be mangled for gold, be crucified, slaughtered, bled.
Make ye way!...Make ye way!...”
Such was the message I read, the words of that fire-writ warning.
Then peace came back to my spirit, calm peace, and hope and patience:
Then, through my anger and heat, I thought of the Retribution.
But even more clearly I saw the New Birth of this weary world,
This world now groaning in chains, with the bloody sweat of oppression.
These things and many more, such as were hard to write of,
I read in the words of the Socialist, patient, peaceful and sober,
Full of prophetic vision, above all things hopeful and patient,
Written in living flame at the Feast of the Leaders of Men....
CHAPTER XXIX.
“APRÈS NOUS LE DÉLUGE!”
As Gabriel’s voice fell to silence, after the last words, a stillness came upon the lamp-lit room, a hush broken only by the snapping of the pine-root fire on the hearth and by the busy ticking of the clock upon the chimneypiece. Then, after a minute’s pause, Craig reached over and took Gabriel by the hand.
“I salute you, O poet of the Revolution now impending!” he cried, while Catherine’s eyes gleamed bright with tears. “Would God that I could write like that, old man!”
“And would God that my paper was still being issued!” Brevard added, making a gesture with the pipe that, in his eagerness to hear, he had allowed to die. “If it were I’d give that poem my front page, and fling its message full in the faces of Plutocracy!”
Gabriel smiled a bit nervously.
“Don’t, please don’t,” he begged. “If you really do like it help me spread it. Don’t waste words on praise, but plan with me, tonight, how we can get this to the people—how we can perfect our final arrangements—what we must do, now, at once, to meet the Air Trust and defeat it before its terrible and unrelenting grip closes on the throat of the world!”
“Right!” said Craig. “We must act at once, while there’s yet time. today, all seems safe. The Air Trust spies haven’t ferreted this place out. A week from now, they may have, and one of the most secure and useful Socialist refuges in the country may be only a heap of ashes—like the ones at Kenwyck, Hampden, Mount Desert and Loftiss. Every day is precious. Every one helps to perfect Gabriel’s disguise and adds materially to his strength.”
“True,” assented Gabriel. “We mustn’t wait too long, now. That last report we got yesterday, by our wireless, ought to stimulate us. Brainard says, in it, that the Air Trust people are now putting the finishing touches on the Niagara plant. That will give them condensing machinery for over 90,000,000 horsepower, all told. As I see the thing, it looks absolutely as though, when that is done, the whole Capitalist system of the world will center right there—focus there, as at a point. Let kings and emperors continue to strut and mouth vain phrases; let our own President and Congress make the motions of governing; even let Wall Street play at finance and power. All, all are empty and meaningless!
“Power has been suc
ked dry, out of them all, comrades. You know as well as I know—better, perhaps—that all real power in the world, today, whether economic or political—nay, even the power of life and death, the power of breath or strangulation, has clotted at Niagara, in the central offices of the Air Trust; nay, right in Flint and Waldron’s own inner office!”
Gabriel had stood up, while speaking; and now, pacing the floor of the big living-room, glanced first at one eager and familiar face, then at another.
“Comrades,” said he, “we should not sleep, tonight. We should get out all our plans and data, all the dispatches that have come to us here, all the information at hand about our organization, whether open or subterranean. We should make this room and this time, in fact, the place and the hour for the planning of the last great blow on which hangs the fate of the world. If it succeed, the human race goes free again. If it fail—and God forbid!—then the whole world will lie in the grip of Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage, our press forced into impotence—save our underground press—and political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when Diaz ruled, we have but one recourse!”
“And that is?” asked Catherine. “The general strike?”
“A final, general, paralyzing strike; and with it, the actual, physical destruction of the colossal crime of crimes, the Air Trust works at Niagara!”
A little silence followed. They all drew round the reading-table, now, near the fireplace. Mrs. Grantham brought a lamp; and Brevard, opening a chest near the book-case, fetched a portfolio of papers, dispatches, plans, reports and data of all kinds.
“Gabriel’s right,” said he. “The time is ripe, now, or will be in a week or so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds to their power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike and the attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must come to extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and we shall be eternally too late!”
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