The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack, Volume 1, page 121
“Happy,” said the girl. “You say you’re happy. While I—”
“Are not unhappy, surely?” asked Gabriel, leaning forward as he sat there beside her, and gazing keenly into her face.
“How should I know?” she answered. “Unhappy? No, perhaps not. But vacant—empty—futile!”
“Yes, I believe you,” Gabriel judged. “You tell me no news. And as you are, you will ever be. You will live so and die so. No, I won’t preach. I won’t proselytize. I won’t even explain. It would be useless. You are one pole, I the other. And the world—the whole wide world—lies between!”
Suddenly she spoke.
“You’re a Socialist,” said she. “What does it mean to be a Socialist?”
He shook his head.
“You couldn’t understand, if I told you,” he answered.
“Why not?”
“Oh, because your ideas and environments and interests and everything have been so different from mine—because you’re what you are—because you can never be anything else.”
“You mean Socialism is something beyond my understanding?” she demanded, piqued. “Of course, that’s nonsense. I’m a human being. I’ve got brains, haven’t I? I can understand a scheme of dividing up, or levelling down, or whatever it is, even if I can’t believe in it!”
He smiled oddly.
“You’ve just proved, by what you’ve said,” he answered slowly, “that your whole concepts are mistaken. Socialism isn’t anything like what you think it is, and if I should try to explain it, you’d raise ten thousand futile objections, and beg the question, and defeat my object of explanation by your very inability to get the point of view. So you see—”
“I see that I want to know more!” she exclaimed, with determination. “If there’s any branch of human knowledge that lies outside my reasoning powers, it’s time I found that fact out. I thought Socialists were wild, crazy, erratic cranks; but if you’re one, then I seem to have been wrong. You look rational enough, and you talk in an eminently sane manner.”
“Thank you,” he replied, ironically.
“Don’t be sarcastic!” she retorted. “I only meant—”
“It’s all right, anyhow,” said he. “You’ve simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can’t grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and waste and sin and misery of the present system. I don’t blame you. You’re a product of your environment. You can’t help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more vital ideas of the day?”
For a moment she fixed eager eyes on him, in silence. Then asked she:
“Ideals? You mean that Socialism has ideals, and that it’s not all a matter of tearing down and dividing up, and destroying everything good and noble and right—all the accumulated wisdom and resources of the world?”
He laughed heartily.
“Who handed you that bunk?” he demanded.
“Father told me Socialism was all that, and more,”
“What’s your father’s business?”
“Why, investments, stocks, bonds, industrial development and all that sort of thing.”
“Hm!” he grunted. “I thought as much!”
“You mean that father misinformed me?”
“Rather!”
“Well, if he did, what is Socialism?”
“Socialism,” answered the young man slowly, while he fixed his eyes on the smouldering fire, “Socialism is a political movement, a concept of life, a philosophy, an interpretation, a prophecy, an ideal. It embraces history, economics, science, art, religion, literature and every phase of human activity. It explains life, points the way to better things, gives us hope, strengthens the weary and heavy-laden, bids us look upward and onward, and constitutes the most sublime ideal ever conceived by the soul of man!”
“Can this be true?” the girl demanded, astonished.
“Not only can, but is! Socialism would free the world from slavery and slaves, from war, poverty, prostitution, vice and crime; would cleanse the sores of our rotting capitalism, would loose the gyves from the fettered hands of mankind, would bid the imprisoned soul of man awake to nobler and to purer things! How? The answer to that would take me weeks. You would have to read and study many books, to learn the entire truth. But I am telling you the substance of the ideal—a realizable ideal, and no chimera—when I say that Socialism sums up all that is good, and banishes all that is evil! And do you wonder that I love and serve it, all my life?”
She peered at him in wonder.
“You serve it? How?” she demanded.
“By spreading it abroad; by speaking for it, working for it, fighting for it! By the spoken and the printed word! By every act and through every means whereby I can bring it nearer and nearer realization!”
“You’re a dreamer, a visionary, a fanatic!” she exclaimed.
“You think so? No, I can’t agree. Time will judge that matter. Meanwhile, I travel up and down the earth, spreading Socialism.”
“And what do you get out of it, personally?”
“I? What do you mean? I never thought of that question.”
“I mean, money. What do you make out of it?”
He laughed heartily.
“I get a few jail-sentences, once in a while; now and then a crack over the head with a policeman’s billy, or maybe a peek down the muzzle of a rifle. I get—”
“You mean that you’re a martyr?”
“By no means! I’ve never even thought of being called such. This is a privilege, this propaganda of ours. It’s the greatest privilege in the world—bringing the word of life and hope and joy to a crushed, bleeding and despairing world!”
She thought a moment, in silence.
“You’re a poet, I believe!” said she.
“No, not that. Only a worker in the ranks.”
“But do you write poetry?”
“I write verses. You’d hardly call them poetry!”
“Verses? About Socialism?”
“Sometimes.”
“Will you give me some?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me some of them.”
“Of course not! I can’t recite my verses! They aren’t worth bothering you with!”
“That’s for me to judge. Let me hear something of that kind. If you only knew how terribly much you interest me!”
“You mean that?”
“Of course I do! Please let me hear something you’ve written!”
He pondered a moment, then in his well-modulated, deep-toned voice began:
HESPERIDES.
I.
My feet, used to pine-needles, moss and turf,
And the gray boulders at the lip o’ the sea,
Where the cold brine jets up its creamy surf,
Now tread once more these city ways, unloved by me,
Hateful and hot, gross with iniquity.
And so I grieve,
Grieve when I wake, or at high blinding noon
Or when the moon
Mocks this sad Ninevah where the throngs weave
Their jostling ways by day, their paths by night;
Where darkness is not—where the streets burn bright
With hectic fevers, eloquent of death!
I gasp for breath....
Visions have I, visions! So sweet they seem
That from this welter of men and things I turn, to dream
Of the dim Wood-world, calling out to me.
Where forest-virgins I half glimpse, half see
With cool mysterious fingers beckoning!
Where vine-wreathed woodland altars sunlit burn,
Or Dryads dance their mystic rounds and sing,
Sing high, sing low, with magic cadences
That once the wild oaks of Dodona heard;
And every wood-note bids me burst asunder
The bonds that hold me from the leaf-hid bird.
I quaff thee, O Nepenthe! Ah, the wonder
Grows, that there be who buy their wealth, their ease
By damning serfs to cities, hot and blurred,
Far from thy golden quest, Hesperides!...
II.
I see this August sun again
Sheer up high heaven wheel his angry way;
And hordes of men
Bleared with unrestful sleep rise up another day,
Their bodies racked with aftermaths of toil.
Over the city, in each gasping street,
Shudders a haze of heat,
Reverberant from pillar, span and plinth.
Once more, cribbed in this monstrous labyrinth
Sacrificed to the Minotaur of Greed
Men bear the turmoil, glare, sweat, brute inharmonies;
Denial of each simplest human need,
Loss of life’s meaning as day lags on day;
And my rebellious spirit rises, flies
In dreams to the green quiet wood away,
Away! Away!
III.
And now, and now...I feel the forest-moss...
Come! On these moss-beds let me lie with Pan,
Twined with the ivy-vine in tendrill’d curls,
And I will hold all gold, that hampers man,
Only the ashes of base, barren dross!
On with the love-dance of the pagan girls!
The pagan girls with lips all rosy-red,
With breasts upgirt and foreheads garlanded,
With fair white foreheads nobly garlanded!
With sandalled feet that weave the magic ring!
Now...let them sing,
And I will pipe a tune that all may hear,
To bid them mind the time of my wild rhyme;
To warn profaning feet lest they draw near.
Away! Away! Beware these mystic trees!
Who dares to quest you now, Hesperides?
IV.
Great men of song, what sing ye? Woodland meadows?
Rocks, trees and rills where sunlight glints to gold?
Sing ye the hills, adown whose sides blue shadows
Creep when the westering day is growing old?
Sing ye the brooks where in the purling shallows
The small fish dart and gleam?
Sing ye the pale green tresses of the willows
That stoop to kiss the stream?
Or sing ye burning streets, foul with the breath
Of sweatshop, tenement, where endlessly
Spawned swarms of folk serve tyrant masters twain—
Profit, and his twin-brother, grinning Death?
Where millions toil, hedged off from aught save pain?
Far from thee ever, O mine Arcady?...
His voice ceased and silence fell between the man and woman in the old sugar-house. Gabriel sat there by the dying fire, which cast its ruddy light over his strongly virile face, and gazed into the coals. The girl, lying on the rude bed, her face eager, her slim strong hands tightly clasped, had almost forgotten to breathe.
At last she spoke.
“That—that is wonderful!” she cried, a tremor of enthusiasm in her voice.
He shook his head.
“No compliments, please,” said he.
“I’m not complimenting you! I think it is wonderful. You’re a true poet!”
“I wish I were—so I might use it all for Socialism!”
“You could make a fortune, if you’d work for some paper or magazine—some regular one, I mean, not Socialist.”
He shook his head.
“Dead sea fruit,” he answered. “Fairy gold, fading in the clutch, worthless through and through. No, if my work has any merit, it’s all for Socialism, now and ever!”
Silence again. Neither now found a word to say, but their eyes met and read each other; and a kind of solemn hush seemed to lie over their hearts.
Then, as they sat there, looking each at each—for now the girl had raised herself on the crude bed and was supporting herself with one hand—a sudden sound of a motor, on the road, awakened them from their musing.
Came the raucous wail of a siren. Then the engine-exhaust ceased; and a voice, raised in some annoyance, hailed loudly through the maple-grove:
“Hello! Hello? What’s wrong here?”
Gabriel stepped to the sugar-house door:
“Here! Come here!” he shouted in a ringing voice that echoed wildly from between his hollowed palms.
As the motorist still sat there, uncomprehending, Gabriel made his way toward the road.
“Accident here,” said he. “Girl in here, injured. Can you take her to the nearest town, at once? She needs a doctor.”
Instantly the man was out of his car, and hastening toward Gabriel.
“Eh? What?” he asked. “Anything serious?”
In a few words, Gabriel told him the outlines of the tale.
“The quicker you get the girl to a town, and let her have a doctor and communication with her family, the better,” he concluded.
“Right! I’ll do all in my power,” said the other, a rather stout, well-to-do, vulgar-looking man.
“Good! This way, then!”
The man followed Gabriel to the sugar-house. They found the girl already on her feet, standing there a bit unsteadily, but with determination to be game, in every feature.
Five minutes later she was in the new-comer’s car, which had been turned around and now was headed back toward Haverstraw. The shawl and robe serving her as wraps, she was made comfortable in the tonneau.
“Think you can stand it, all right?” asked Gabriel, as he took in his the hand she extended. “In half an hour, you’ll be under a doctor’s care, and your father will be on his way toward you.”
She nodded, and for a second tightened the grasp of her hand.
“I—I’m not even going to know who you are?” she asked, a strange tone in her voice.
“No,” he answered. “And now, good luck, and good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” she echoed, her voice almost inaudible. “I—I won’t forget you.”
He made no answer, but only smiled in a peculiar way.
Then, as the car rolled slowly forward, their hands separated.
Gabriel, bareheaded and with level gaze, stood there in the middle of the great highway, looking after her. A minute, under the darkening arches of the forest road, he saw her, still. Then the car swung round a bend, and vanished.
Had she waved her hand at him? He could not tell. Motionless he stood, a while, then cleared away the barrier of branches that obstructed the road, took up his knapsack, and with slow steps returned to the sugar-house.
Almost on the threshold, a white something caught his eye. He picked it up. Her handkerchief! A moment he held the dainty, filmy thing in his rough hand. A vague perfume reached his nostrils, disquieting and seductive.
“More than eighteen dollars an ounce, perhaps!” he exclaimed, with sudden bitterness; but still he did not throw the handkerchief away. Instead, he looked at it more keenly. In one corner, the fading light just showed him some initials. He studied them, a moment.
“C. J. F.” he read. Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he folded the kerchief and put it in his pocket.
He entered the sugar-house, to make sure, before departing, that he had left no danger of fire behind him.
Another impulse bade him sit down on a rough box, there, before the dying embers. He gazed at the bed of leaves, a while, immersed in thought, then filled his pipe and lighted it with a glowing brand, and sat there—while the night came—smoking and musing, in a reverie.
The overpowering lure of the woman who had lain in his arms, as he had borne her thither; her breath upon his face; the perfume of her, even her blood that he had washed away—all these were working on his senses, still. But most of all he seemed to see her eyes, there in the ember-lit gloom, and hear her voice, and feel her lithe young body and her breast against his breast.
For a long time he sat there, thinking, dreaming, smoking, till the last shred of tobacco was burned out in the heel of his briar; till the last ember had winked and died under the old sheet-iron stove.
At last, with a peculiar laugh, he rose, slung the knapsack once more on his shoulders, settled his cap upon his head, and made ready to depart.
But still, one moment, he lingered in the doorway. Lingered and looked back, as though in his mind’s eye he would have borne the place away with him forever.
Suddenly he stooped, picked up a leaf from the bed where she had lain, and put that, too, in his pocket where the kerchief was.
Then, looking no more behind him, he strode off across the maple-grove, through which, now, the first pale stars were glimmering. He reached the road again, swung to the north, and, striking into his long marching stride, pushed onward northward, away and away into the soft June twilight.
CHAPTER XVI.
TIGER WALDRON “COMES BACK.”
Old Isaac Flint loved but two things in all this world—power, and his daughter Catherine.
I speak advisedly in putting “power” first. Much as he idolized the girl, much as she reminded him of the long-dead wife of his youth, he could have survived the loss of her. The loss of power would inevitably have crushed and broken him, stunned him, killed him. Yet, so far as human affection could still blossom in that withered heart, shrunk by cold scheming and the cruel piracies of many decades, he loved the girl.
And so it was that when the message came in, that evening, over the telephone, the news that Kate had been injured in an auto-accident which had entirely destroyed the machine and killed Herrick, he paled, trembled, and clutched the receiver, hardly able to hold it to his ear with his shaking hand.
“Here! You!” he cried. “She—she’s not badly hurt? She’s living? She’s safe? No lies, now! The truth!”
“Your daughter is very much alive, and perfectly safe,” a voice answered. “This is Doctor MacDougal, of Haverstraw, speaking. The patient is now having a superficial scalp wound dressed by my assistant. You can speak to her, in a few minutes, if you like.”
“Now! For God’s sake, let me speak now!” entreated the Billionaire; but the doctor refused. Not all Flint’s urging or bribing would turn him one hair’s breadth.
“No,” he insisted. “In ten minutes she can talk to you. Not now. But have no fear, sir. She is perfectly safe and—barring her wound, which will probably heal almost without a scar—is as well as ever. A little nervous and unstrung, of course, but that’s to be expected.”
