EQUALITY
Barbara asked Wolf for permission to visit Norman in prison.
The Regent shook his head.
"No, my little beauty, it's not wise. I promise you that not a hair of
his head shall be harmed. He is safe and well. If you wish to test my
power, try to bribe my guards and see him."
Day after day Barbara sought in vain to gain admittance to the jail,
send or receive a message from within. Her lover had disappeared as
completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed his body.
The episode of the dredge was the last effort to question the power of
the regent. The day after its capture Wolf put the men who had helped
Norman build it to work operating the big machine, and its huge pumps
began to throb in perfect time, piling ton on ton of gold-bearing sand
and gravel into the flumes, as faithful to the touch of the thief who
had stolen it as to the hand of the man of genius who invented it.
The head machinist he ordered to build five duplicates, and placed
the entire working force of the mechanical department at once on the
job.
The daily _New Era_ received a number of protests against the outrage
of the inventor's arrest and imprisonment. Two protests were signed by
the names of the writers, Diggs and the Bard. There appeared in the
paper a warning editorial against sneaks who, under cover of the cause
of justice, were seeking to aid treason and rebellion against the
State.
Diggs and the Bard were summoned before Wolf in person.
The regent fixed his gray eyes on Diggs, and the man of questions
forgot to smile.
"You are not dealing with an amateur now, Diggs," Wolf said, with a
sneer. "The insulting letter you wrote----"
"I--I--beg your pardon, Mr. Regent," Diggs stammered, "my questions
were asked in the spirit of honest inquiry."
"I understand their spirit, sir," Wolf growled. "And don't you
interrupt me again when I'm talking! Your article was seditious. I've
a mind to imprison you a year, but as this is your first offence I'll
simply transfer you from the department of accounts to that of garbage
and sewerage. Report at once to the overseer."
Diggs's lips quivered and he tried to speak, but Wolf froze him with a
look and he dropped to a seat.
"I said report at once, sir, to the overseer of the department of
garbage and sewerage. Did you hear me?" Wolf thundered.
Diggs leaped to his feet stammering and retreating.
"Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Excuse me. I was only waiting for Comrade Adair,
sir! Excuse me, sir, I'll go at once!"
He stumbled through the door and disappeared.
The Bard of Ramcat watched this scene with increasing terror. He had
prepared an eloquent and daring appeal for freedom of speech. He tried
to open his mouth, but Wolf's gaze froze the blood in his veins. His
tongue refused to move. He sat huddled in a heap, trembling and
shifting uneasily in his seat.
At length the regent spoke with sneering patronage:
"You wield a facile pen, Adair. I admire the glib ability with which
you pour out gaseous matter from your overheated imagination."
The Bard scrambled to his feet and bowed low in humble submission,
fumbling his slouch hat tremblingly.
"I meant no harm, sir, I assure you. A great leader of your power and
genius can make allowances for poetic fervour. I'm sure you know that
my whole soul is aflame with enthusiasm for our noble Cause!"
"Well, upon my word," Wolf laughed, "you're developing into a nimble
liar! You used to be quite brutal in the frankness of your
criticisms."
"But I see the error of my way, sir," the Bard humbly cried.
"Then I'll remit your prison sentence also and merely transfer you to
the stone-quarry. We need more common labourers on the rock-pile there
preparing the macadam for the court of the regent's palace. Report at
once to the foreman of that gang."
"Thank you, sir," the Bard stammered, feebly, as he backed out of the
room.
The poet bent his proud back over the stone-pile for two weeks and
suddenly disappeared.
His hat was found on a rustic seat on a high cliff whose perpendicular
wall was washed by the sea. Beneath this hat lay his last manuscript
protest to the world. It was entitled:
"The Journal of Roland Adair, Bard of Ramcat." It was written in blank
verse and proved a most harrowing recital of the horrors he had
suffered at the hands of the tyrant regent. With eloquence fierce and
fiery he called on the slaves who were being ground beneath his heel
to rise in their might and slay the oppressor. He had chosen to die
that his death-song might stir their souls to heroic action.
Search was made on the beaches for his body in vain. His wife's grief
was genuine and a few of his friends gathered with her on the tenth
day after his disappearance to express their sorrow and appreciation
in a brief formal service.
Diggs was delivering a funeral oration bombarding Death, Hell, and the
Grave with endless questions, when suddenly the Bard appeared, pinched
with hunger, his clothes covered with dirt, his long hair dishevelled
and unkempt. He had evidently been sleeping in the open.
His friends stood in wonder. His wife shrieked in terror.
The Bard solemnly lifted his hand and cried:
"I stood on the hills and waited for slaves to rise and fight their
way to death or freedom. And no man stirred! Did they not find my
death-song?"
Diggs spoke in timid accents:
"The regent destroyed it."
"Yes, yes, but before my death I anticipated his treachery. I left ten
mimeographed copies where they could be found by the people. If they
have not been found my death would have been vain. I waited to be
sure. I've come to ask."
"They were found all right," his wife cried, angrily. "And if Wolf
finds you now----"
She had scarcely spoken when an officer of the secret service suddenly
laid his hand on the Bard's shoulder and quietly said:
"Come. We'll give you something to sing about now worth while!"
His wife clung to the tottering, terror-stricken figure for a moment
and burst in tears. His friends shrank back in silence.
The regent had him flogged unmercifully; and Roland Adair, the Bard of
Ramcat, ceased to sing. He became a mere cog in the wheel of things
which moved on with swift certainty to its appointed end.
The social system worked now with deadly precision and ceaseless
regularity. No citizen dared to speak against the man in authority
over him or complain to the regent, for they were his trusted
henchmen. Men and women huddled in groups and asked in whispers the
news.
Disarmed and at the mercy of his brutal guard, cut off from the world
as effectually as if they lived on another planet, despair began to
sicken the strongest hearts, and suicide to be more common than in the
darkest days of panic and hunger in the old world.
A curious group of three huddled together in the shadows discussing
their fate on the day the Bard was publicly flogged.
Uncle Bob led the whispered conference of woe.
"I tells ye, gemmens, dis beats de worl'! Befo' de war I wuz er slave.
But I knowed my master. We wuz good friends. He say ter me, 'Bob
you'se de blackest, laziest nigger dat ebber cumber de groun'! And I
laf right in his face an' say, 'Come on, Marse Henry, an' le's go
fishin'--dey'll bite ter-day'! An' he go wid me. He nebber lay de
weight er his han' on me in his life. He come ter see me when I sick
an' cheer me up. He gimme good clothes an' a good house an' plenty ter
eat. He love me, an' I love him. I tells ye I'se er slave now an' I
don't know who de debbil my master is. Dey change him every ten days.
Dey cuss an' kick me--an' I work like a beast. Dis yer comrade
business too much fer me."
"To tell you the truth, boys," said a bowed figure by old Bob's side,
"I lived in a model community once before."
"Oh, go 'long dar, man, dey nebber wuz er nudder one!" Bob protested.
"Yes. We all wore the same thickness of clothes, ate the same three
meals regularly, never over-ate or suffered from dyspepsia; all of us
worked the same number of hours a day, went to bed at the same time
and got up at the same time. There was no drinking, cursing,
carousing, gambling, stealing, or fighting. We were model people and
every man's wants were met with absolute equality. The only trouble
was we all lived in the penitentiary at San Quentin----"
"Des listen at dat now!" Bob exclaimed.
"Yes, and I found the world outside a pretty tough place to live in
when I got out, too. I thought I'd find the real thing here and
slipped in. What's the difference? In the pen we wore a gray suit.
We've got it here with a red spangle on it. There they decided the
kind of grub they'd give us. The same here. There we worked at jobs
they give us. The same here. There we worked under overseers and
guards. So we do here. I was sent up there for two years. It looks
like we're in here for life."
"How long, O Lord, how long, will Thy servant wait for deliverance?"
cried Methodist John, in plaintive despair. "If I only could get back
to the poorhouse! There I had food and shelter and clothes. It's all
I've got here--but with it work, work, work! and a wicked, sinful,
cussin' son of the devil always over me drivin' and watchin'!"
John's jaw suddenly dropped as a black cloud swept in from the sea and
obscured the sun. A squall of unusual violence burst over the island
with wonderful swiftness. The darkness of twilight fell like a pall,
and a sharp peal of thunder rang over the harbour.
John watched the progress of the storm with strange elation, quietly
walked through the blinding, drenching rain to the barn, and drew from
the forks of two trees a lightning-rod about thirty feet long which
Norman had finally made for him in answer to his constant pleading.
The tip of the rod was pointed with a dozen shining spikes.
John seized this rod, held it straight over his head, and began to
march with firm step around the lawn. He walked with slow, measured
tread past the two big colony houses to the amazement of the people
who stood at the windows watching the storm. He held his lightning-rod
as a soldier a musket on dress-parade, his eyes fixed straight in
front. As he passed through the floral court between the two buildings
he burst into an old Methodist song, his cracked voice ringing in
weird and plaintive tones with the sigh and crash of the wind among
the foliage of the trees and shrubbery:
"I want to be an angel,
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead,
A harp within my hand."
Over and over he sang this stanza with increasing fervour as he
marched steadily on through every path around the buildings, his
rain-soaked clothes clinging to his flesh and flopping dismally about
his thin legs. As the storm suddenly lifted he stopped in front of the
kitchen, dropped his rod, and sank with a groan to his knees taking up
again his old refrain:
"How long, O Lord, how long?"
Old Bob ran out and shook him.
"Name er God, man, what de matter wid you? Is you gone clean crazy?
What you doin' monkeyin' wid dat lightnin'-rod?"
John lifted his drooping head and sighed:
"You see, neighbour, I don't like to kill myself. It's against my
religion. It seems like taking things out of the hands of God. But I
thought the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, might be kind
enough to spare me a bolt if I lifted my rod and put myself in the
way. If he had only seen fit to do it, I'd be at rest now in the
courts of glory!"
"Dis here's a sad worl', brudder," Bob said comfortingly. "'Pears lak
ter me de Lawd doan' lib here no mo'."
Before John could reply, a guard arrested him for disorderly conduct.
The regent kicked him from his office and ordered him to prison on a
diet of bread and water for a week.
The slightest criticism of his reign Wolf resented with instant and
crushing cruelty. His system of spies was complete and his knowledge
of every man's attitude accurate and full. Where-ever he appeared, he
received the most cringing obeisance.
Especially did women tremble at his approach and count themselves
happy if he condescended to smile.