Air Trust
CHAPTER XXIX.
"APRES NOUS LE DELUGE!"
As Gabriel's voice fell to silence, after the last words, a stillnesscame upon the lamp-lit room, a hush broken only by the snapping of thepine-root fire on the hearth and by the busy ticking of the clock uponthe chimneypiece. Then, after a minute's pause, Craig reached over andtook Gabriel by the hand.
"I salute you, O poet of the Revolution now impending!" he cried, whileCatherine's eyes gleamed bright with tears. "Would God that _I_ couldwrite 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 hadallowed to die. "If it were I'd give that poem my front page, and flingits 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 mespread it. Don't waste words on praise, but plan with me, tonight, howwe can get this to the people--how we can perfect our finalarrangements--what we must do, now, at once, to meet the Air Trust anddefeat it before its terrible and unrelenting grip closes on the throatof 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 placeout. A week from now, they may have, and one of the most secure anduseful Socialist refuges in the country may be only a heap ofashes--like the ones at Kenwyck, Hampden, Mount Desert and Loftiss.Every day is precious. Every one helps to perfect Gabriel's disguise andadds materially to his strength."
"True," assented Gabriel. "We mustn't wait too long, now. That lastreport we got yesterday, by our wireless, ought to stimulate us.Brainard says, in it, that the Air Trust people are now putting thefinishing touches on the Niagara plant. That will give them condensingmachinery for over 90,000,000 horsepower, all told. As I see the thing,it looks absolutely as though, when _that_ is done, the whole Capitalistsystem 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 ourown President and Congress make the motions of governing; even let WallStreet play at finance and power. All, all are empty and meaningless!
"Power has been sucked dry, out of them all, comrades. You know as wellas 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 thecentral offices of the Air Trust; nay, right in Flint and Waldron's owninner office!"
Gabriel had stood up, while speaking; and now, pacing the floor of thebig living-room, glanced first at one eager and familiar face, then atanother.
"Comrades," said he, "we should not sleep, tonight. We should get outall our plans and data, all the dispatches that have come to us here,all the information at hand about our organization, whether open orsubterranean. We should make this room and this time, in fact, the placeand the hour for the planning of the last great blow on which hangs thefate of the world. If it succeed, the human race goes free again. If itfail--and God forbid!--then the whole world will lie in the grip ofFlint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage,our press forced into impotence--save our underground press--andpolitical action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, whenDiaz ruled, we have but one recourse!"
"And that is?" asked Catherine. "The general strike?"
"A final, general, paralyzing strike; and with it, the actual, physicaldestruction of the colossal crime of crimes, the Air Trust works atNiagara!"
A little silence followed. They all drew round the reading-table, now,near the fireplace. Mrs. Grantham brought a lamp; and Brevard, opening achest 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 weekor so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds totheir power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike andthe attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must cometo extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and weshall be eternally too late!"
"Extreme measures, yes," said Gabriel, while Brevard spread the papersout and sorted them, and Craig drew contemplatively at his pipe. "Themasters would have it so. Our one-time academic discussion about waysand means has become absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. We'reup against facts, now, not theories. God knows it's against the dictatesof my heart to do what must be done; but it's that or stand back and seethe world be murdered, together with our own selves! And in a case ofself-defense, no measures are unjustifiable.
"Whatever happens our hands are clean. The plutocrats are the attackingforce. They have chosen, and must take the consequences; they have sown,and must reap. One by one, they have limited and withdrawn everypolitical right. They have taken away free speech and free assemblage,free press and universal suffrage. They have limited the right to vote,by property qualifications that have deprived the proletariat of everychance to make their will felt. They have put through this NationalCensorship outrage and--still worse--the National Mounted Police Bill,making Cossack rule supreme in the United States of America, as theyhave made it in the United States of Europe.
"Before they elected that tool of tools, President Supple, in 1920, onthe Anti-Socialist ticket, we still had some constitutional rightsleft--a few. But now, all are gone. With the absorption and annexationof Canada, Mexico and Central America, slavery full and absolute settleddown upon us. The unions simply crumbled to dust as you know, in face ofall those millions of Mexican peons swamping the labor-market withstarvation-wage labor. Then, as we all remember, came the terribleseries of strikes in 1921 and 1922, and the massacres at Hopedale andBoulder, at Los Angeles and Pittsburg, and, worst of all, Gary. Thatfinished what few rights were left, that killing did. And then came thearmy of spies, and the proscriptions, and the electrocution of thosehundred and eleven editors, speakers and organizers--why bring up allthese things that we all know so well? _We_ were willing to play thegame fair and square, and _they_ refused. Say that, and you say all.
"No need to dwell on details, comrades. The Air Trust has had its willwith the world, so far. It has crushed all opposition as relentlessly asthe car of Juggernaut used to crush its blind, fanatical devotees. True,our Party still exists and has some standing and some representatives;but we all know what _power_ it has--in the open! Not _that_ much!" Andhe snapped his fingers in the air.
"In the open, none!" said Craig, blowing a cloud of smoke. "I admitthat, Gabriel. But, underground--ah!"
"Underground," Gabriel took up the word, "forces are now at work thatcan shatter the whole infernal slavery to dust! This way of working isnot our choice; it is theirs. They would have it so--now let them taketheir medicine!"
"Yes, yes," eagerly exclaimed Catherine, her face flushed and intense."I'm with you, Gabriel. To work!"
"To work, yes," put in Craig, "but with system, order and method. Myexperience in Congress has taught me some valuable lessons. Theuniversal, all-embracing Trust made marionettes of us, every one. Ourstrength was, to them, no more than that of a mouse to a lion. Theirsystem is perfect, their lines of supply and communication are without aflaw. The Prussian army machine of other days was but a bunglingexperiment by comparison with the efficiency of this new mechanism. Itell you, Gabriel, we've got to give these tyrants credit for beinginfernally efficient tyrants! All that science has been able to devise,or press and church and university teach, or political subservience makepossible, is theirs. And back of that, military power, and the courtsand the prisons and the electric chair! And back of all _those_, thepower to choke the whole world to submission, in a week!"
Gabriel thought, a moment, before replying. Then said he:
"I know it, Craig. All the more reason why we must hit them at once, andhit hard! These reports here," and he gestured at the papers thatBrevard had spread out under the lamp-light, "prove that, at the propersignal, eve
ry chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation--thekeynote of the whole situation.
"True, the government--that is to say, the Air Trust, and _that_ is tosay, Flint and Waldron--can keep men in every engine-cab in the country.They can keep them at every switch and junction. But this isn't France,remember, nor is it any small, compact European country. Conditions arewholly different here. Everywhere, vast stretches of track exist. Nopower on earth--not even Flint and Waldron's--can guard all thosehundreds of thousands of miles. And so I tell you, taking our datasimply from these reports and not counting on any more organizedstrength than they show, we have today got the means of cutting andcrippling, for a week at least, the movements of troops to Niagara. Andthat, just that, is all we need!"
A little silence. Then said Catherine:
"You mean, Gabriel, that if we can keep the troops back for a littlewhile, and annihilate the Air Trust plant itself, the great revolutionwill follow?"
He nodded, with a smouldering fire in his eyes.
"Yes," said he. "If we can loosen the grip of this monster for onlyforty-eight hours, and flash the news to this bleeding, sweating,choking land that the grip _is_ loosened--after that we need do no more._Apres nous, le deluge_; only not now in the sense of wreck and ruin,but meaning that this deluge shall forever wash away the tyranny andcrime of Capitalism! Forever and a day, to leave us free once more, freemen and women, standing erect and facing God's own sunlight, ourheritage and birthplace in this world!"
Catherine made no answer, but her hand clasped his. The light on hermagnificent masses of copper-golden hair, braided about her head,enhanced her beauty. And so for a moment, the little group sat thereabout the table--the group on which now so infinitely much depended; andthe lamp-glow shone upon their precious plans, reports and diagrams.
Into each others' eyes they looked, and knew the moment of finalconflict was drawn very near, at last. The moment which, in failure orsuccess, should for long years, for decades, for centuries perhaps,determine whether the world and all its teeming millions were to beslave or free.
They spoke no word and took no oath of life-and-death fidelity, thosemen and women who now had been entrusted with the fate of the world. Butin their eyes one read unshakable devotion to the Cause of Man,unswerving loyalty to the Great Ideal, and a calm, holy faith that wouldmake light of death itself, could death but pave the way to victory!