CHAPTER XXVI.
"GUILTY."
Speechless and dazed, Gabriel stared at her as though at some strangeapparition.
"Daughter of--of Isaac Flint?" he stammered, clinging to the bars.
"Come, come, lady, yuh can't stay no longer!" the officer againinsisted, tapping her on the shoulder. "Yuh'd oughta been out o' hereten minutes ago! No, nuthin' doin'!" he concluded, as she turned to himappealingly. "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 stoutheart, 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. Onlythink 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 ofgrief and tears. The officer, winking wisely to himself, thrust histongue into his cheek.
"Daughter of Isaac Flint, th' Billionaire!" he was thinking, withderision. "Oh, yes, billionaires' daughters would be visitin' Socialistsan' bums an' red-light con-workers like this geezer. Oh yes, sure, surethey 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 thetruth been known, who could have imagined the results?
For a long time after the girl had departed, Gabriel sat there in hiscell, motionless and sunk in deepest thought. His emotions passedrecording. That this woman, his ideal, his best-beloved, the cherished,inmost treasure of his heart and soul--she whom he had rescued, she whohad lain in his arms and shared with him that unforgettable hour in theold sugar-house--should now prove to be the daughter of his bitterestenemy, surpassed belief and stunned all clear understanding.
Flint! The very name connoted, for Gabriel, all that was cruel andrapacious, hateful, vicious and greedy; all that meant pain and woe anddeath to him and his class. Visions of West Virginia and Colorado rosebefore his mind. He heard again the whistle of the "Bull Moose DeathSpecial" 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 hisvulturine associates.
Flint! He whispered the name; and now he seemed to see the burning tentsat Ludlow; the fleeing women and children, shot down by barbarous thugsand gunmen, ghouls in human form! He saw the pits of death, where thecharred bodies of innocent victims of greed and heartless rapacity layin mute protest under the far Colorado sky. And more he saw, east andwest, north and south, of this man's inhuman work; and his thoughts,projected into the future, dwelt bitterly on the Air Trust now alreadyunder way--the terrible, coming slavery which he, Gabriel, had struggledto 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 allto me, is--is _his_ daughter!"
Flinging himself upon his hard and narrow bunk, he buried his head inhis powerful arms, and tried to blot out thought from his fevered brain;but still the current ran on and on and on, endlessly, maddeningly. Andto the problem, no answer seemed to come.
"She must know who I am," he pondered. "Even if her father has not toldher, the papers have. True, she doesn't believe the infamous chargeagainst me; but what then? Can she, on the other hand, believe thetruth, 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 horrorsof this capitalist Hell, that I have told her about? No! Human nature isincapable of such vast turnings from all the habits and environments ofa lifetime. In her veins flows the blood of that arch-criminal, Flint.Her thoughts must be, to some extent, his thoughts. She must share hisviewpoint, and be loyal to him. After this first flush of reactionagainst her father, she will go back to him. It is inevitable. Betwixther and me is fixed a boundless space, wider than Heaven and earth. Sheis one pole, and I the other. If I have any strength or resolution orphilosophy, now is the hour for its trial.
"This woman must be, shall be put away from every thought and wish andhope. And the word FINIS must be written at the end of the one briefchapter where our life-stories seem to have run along together in afalse harmony and a fictitious peace!"
Thus pondered Gabriel, in the gloom of his harsh cell, branded withcrime and writhing in the agony of soul that only those who lovehopelessly can ever know.
And Catherine, what of her? What were her thoughts, emotions,inspirations as--seeming to live in a dream, with Gabriel's eloquenceand the new vision of a better, saner, kindlier world shining throughher soul--she made her way back to the dingy hotel where now, shabby asit 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 suddensight. A deaf man, regaining his lost sense, cannot describe the suddenburst of sound that fills the new, strange world wherein he findshimself. So, now, this cultured, gently bred woman, for the first timein her life understanding the facts, glimpsing the tragedy and graspingthe answer to it all, felt that no words could compass her strangeexultation and enlargement.
"It--it's like a chrysalis emerging into the form of a light, swiftbutterfly!" she pondered, as, back in her room once more, she preparedto 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 ofthat company of earnest, noble men and women striving for life andliberty and joy for all the world. But with the help of the man I trustand honor and believe in, and--and love--perhaps I may yet be. Godgrant it may be so!"
She thought, a few minutes more, her face lighted by an inner radiancethat made its beauty spiritual and pure and calm. Then, having somewhatcomposed 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 role 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 thefires of the old man's terrible rage, had decided Flint to disinheritCatherine and to name him, Waldron, as his executor. Gabriel's ferventwish that she might be penniless, was granted.
On the very day this business was put through, practically deliveringthe Flint interests into Waldron's hands in the case of the old man'sdeath, a verdict was reached in Gabriel's case, at Rochester.
This case, crammed through the calendar, ahead of a large jam of otherbusiness, 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 iswritten 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, tooverset the mass of perjury and fraud enmeshing Gabriel, and to forcehis acquittal.
As easily might she have bidden the sea rise from its bed and flood thedry and arid wastes of old Sahara. Her voice and that of the Socialists,their lawyers and their press, sounded in vain. A solid battery ofcapitalist papers, legal lights, private detectives and othermeans--particularly including the majority of the priests andclergy--swamped the man and damned him and doomed him from the firstword of the trial.
Money flowed in floods. Perjury overran the banks of the River ofCorruption. Herzog branded the man a thief and fire-eater. Dope-fiendsand harlots from the Red-Light district, "madames" and pimps andhangers-on, swore to the white-slave activities of this man, who neveryet 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 anddirect statement, dynamitings, arsons, violence and rioting in manystrikes were laid at his door. His Socialist activities were dragged inthe slime of every gutter; and his Party made to suffer for evil deedsexisting only in the foul imagination of the prosecuting attorneys. Thefinest "kept" brains in the legal profession conducted the case fromstart 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 ofHell and drank full draughts of gall and wormwood--the verdict came.Came, and was flashed from sea to sea by an exulting press; and preachedon, and editorialized on, and gloated over by Flint and Waldron andmany, many others of that ilk--while Catherine wept tears that seemed todrain her very heart of its last drops of blood.
At last she knew the meaning of the Class Struggle and her terriblefather's part in it all. At last she understood what Gabriel had so longunderstood and now was paying for--the fact that Hell hath no fury likeCapitalism 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 countlesstoilers, opened the way to the sentence which Judge Harpies regrettedonly that he could not make more severe--the sentence which thedetectives and the prison authorities, well "fixed," counted on making adeath-sentence, too.
"Gabriel Armstrong, stand up!"
He arose and faced the court. A deathlike stillness hushed the room,crowded with Socialists, reporters, emissaries of Flint, privatedetectives and hangers-on of the System. Heavily veiled, lest some ofher father's people recognize her, Catherine herself sat in a back seat,very pale yet calm.
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say, why sentence should notbe pronounced upon you?"
Gabriel, also a little pale, but with a steadfast and fearless gaze,looked at the legal prostitute upon the bench, and shook his head innegation. He deigned not, even, to answer this kept puppet of the rulingclass.
Judge Harpies frowned a trifle, cleared his throat, glanced about himwith pompous dignity; and then, in a sonorous and impressive tone--hisbest asset on the bench, for legal knowledge and probity were nothis--announced:
"_It is the judgment of this court that you do stand committed to pay afine of three thousand dollars into the treasury of the United States,and to serve five years at hard labor in the Federal Penitentiary atAtlanta!_"