CHAPTER XXXIII

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.