The Transgressors Part 42

"That is all the more reason for your offering up prayers for their souls."

"Were they of my faith?" inquires the priest.

"They are dead now and faith has nothing to do with the matter. We want you as a Christian to p.r.o.nounce the words of the burial service over these bodies."

"One of these men was a murderer," further protests the priest.

"Which one?" demands Trueman.

"They say Mete killed German Purdy," is the response.

"And a hundred men within call of us will tell you that Gorman Purdy killed fifty men in his time," retorts a bystander. These words, so bitter yet so just, would be cruel indeed for the ears of Ethel Purdy; but she has lapsed into semi-consciousness. Harvey still holds her in his arms; he seems oblivious of the burden he has borne for more than a mile and a half.

"I cannot go through the forms of the church over the grave of these men," the priest declares emphatically. "It would be a sacrilege. But I will say a prayer for their departed spirits."

On the tombs that range in a wide semi-circle from the entrance, the crowd has taken points of vantage. Those who cannot force their way to the inner circle about the grave, stand aloof, yet where they can observe the simple, impressive ceremonies.

In a thin, querulous voice the prayer is asked. It is such an invocation as might have been uttered over the remains of two gladiators. Blood is upon the head of each; the prayer craves forgiveness. As the priest concludes, the bodies are wrapped in the shawls and lowered into the grave.

While the earth is being replaced, Trueman speaks to Ethel. She partially revives, and seems to understand that her father's body is being interred. When this thought has been fully grasped she realizes that she is being supported in Harvey's arms. She makes an instinctive effort to escape from his clasp; an instant later she looks up into his face and asks: "You will not leave me?" She pauses. "Give my millions to the people. I hate the thought of money. Only tell me that you will not desert me!"

"No, my darling," comes the whisper, "I shall never be parted from you again, so long as we live. The priest could not perform the burial service; he can, however, make us man and wife."

As he speaks, Harvey places Ethel gently on her feet.

Standing side by side at the grave which holds victor and vanquished in the great war for the recovery of the rights of man, Harvey Trueman and Ethel Purdy present a strange contrast. He is the acknowledged leader of the plain people; she is the richest woman in America. For him, every one within reach of his voice has the deepest love and admiration; for the hapless woman beside him, there is not a man or woman who would turn a hand to keep her from starving.

If the men and women of Wilkes-Barre can be made to sanction the union of Trueman and Ethel Purdy, is there any reason to doubt that the question of social inequalities can be settled without bloodshed?

Trueman determines to venture his election, his future, his life, to win the greatest triumph of his career, a wife whom the world despises as the favorite of fatuous fortune.

With a voice vibrant with emotion he addresses the mult.i.tude. Now by subtle argument, now by impa.s.sioned appeal he pictures the conditions that made Ethel's life so utterly different from theirs; how it was impossible for her to sympathize with them when she had known no sorrow, when her every wish had always been gratified. He pictures her as she appears before them; a daughter whose father has been stricken, as if by a blow from Heaven; a woman left friendless; for the friends of prosperity are never those of adversity. Thus he awakens a feeling of pity in the hearts of the people for the woman they have so recently reviled. Pity gives place to love as he tells them that Ethel Purdy wishes to give to the citizens of Wilkes-Barre the millions that her father has h.o.a.rded; when he concludes by telling them that she is to become his wife, an acclaim of rejoicing is given.

The priest, this time without reluctance, p.r.o.nounces Harvey Trueman and Ethel Purdy man and wife.

"Go to your homes, my good brothers and sisters," Trueman counsels, "for to-morrow you enter upon your inheritance through the speedy channel of voluntary restoration; you are blessed of all men and women, perhaps, because you have long been the most grievously sinned against.

"Let no one commit an act of violence. It is from you that the country is to take its signal; you have curbed the hand of anarchy. What you have done will strengthen others to be patient. No one will have to wait longer than the next election to have wrongs set right."

The silence that awe induces takes possession of the people. They disperse quietly to their homes. At two o'clock there is no one on the streets.

The Coal and Iron Police, who have been lost in the mountains, enter the town at that hour to find it, to all appearances, deserted.

Harvey and Ethel accompany the priest to the parish house, where they remain for the night.

All the events of the afternoon and night have been telegraphed abroad.

When morning dawns the people of the country and the world at large read of the uprising of the miners of Wilkes-Barre, of the attempt to wreck the train bearing the militia; of the rescue by Sister Martha at the sacrifice of her life; the stirring scene at the palace and the final obsequies and marriage ceremonial. All are known to the world. In the chaotic state of the public mind, this example of reasonable action is needed. Spread by the power of the pen, it wins man's greatest victory, a victory of peace.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE NEW ERA.

From every section of the country the news of the pending election gives promise of a victory for the Independence party. The people have accepted the a.s.surances of Harvey Trueman that he will not countenance violence on the part of the radical element of either the people or the Plutocrats. His conspicuous action at Wilkes-Barre is an incontestible proof of his sincerity, and also demonstrates that the ma.s.ses are not desirous of reverting to an appeal to force in order to regain their rights. If the man whom the public hails as a deliverer can be elected, all the evils of the Trusts and monopolies, it is believed, can be settled amicably.

So strong has the sentiment in favor of the Independence party become, that for days before the election great parades of the workingmen in the princ.i.p.al cities celebrate the coming victory of the people.

Yet the subsidized press maintains a defiant position, and gloomily predicts that anarchy will prevail upon the announcement of the election of the Independence party's candidates.

This foreboding has little or no effect on the minds of the earnest workers; they are ready to trust their interests to men who have proven themselves honest champions of right, rather than suffer the bondage imposed by the Magnates.

Trueman, since the hour of his marriage, has spent much of his time in Wilkes-Barre. He decides that it is better for him to guide the closing days of the campaign from his home.

After settling the estate of Gorman Purdy, and turning over to the workingmen the mines, furnaces and breakers that were owned by the late Coal King, Harvey and his wife go to live in a comfortable villa in the suburbs.

By her voluntary surrender of the $160,000,000 which the criminal practices of Gorman Purdy had ama.s.sed, Ethel becomes the idol of the people, not only of Wilkes-Barre, but of the entire country. She gives substantial proof of the sincerity of her promise made at the grave of her father. This act of altruism does much to avert any reaction of the turbulent elements of the large cities.

The prospect of regaining the public utilities by purchase and the establishment of governmental departments to control them in the interests of the people as a whole, is made bright by the magnificent example that is furnished by the towns of Pennsylvania.

Harvey Trueman establishes the leaders of the Unions as the managers of the mines and breakers. Under his direction the profits of the business are divided proportionately among all the inhabitants of the town in which the works are located; those who work receive as their wage one-half of the net proceeds from the sale of their products. The remaining fifty per cent, is turned into the public treasury.

Had the millions of the Purdy fortune been distributed to the people by a per capita allotment, each man and woman of Wilkes-Barre might have been made independently rich. But this would defeat the ends which Ethel and Harvey wish to attain. They desire to see every citizen prosper according to his or her personal effort. So when every one in Wilkes-Barre is set to work at a profitable trade or occupation, the residue of the fortune, some $125,000,000, is used to establish a similar system of co-operation in neighboring mining districts.

In the thirty days that intervenes between the acts of annihilation and the election, two hundred and fifty thousand miners and other operatives in Pennsylvania are benefiting by the disburs.e.m.e.nt of the Purdy millions. This army of prosperous men makes the state certain of going to the Independents. The electoral votes of the Keystone state, it is certain, will decide the election.

As an object lesson which speaks more eloquently than words, Harvey adopts a suggestion which Sister Martha had made at the opening of the campaign and which had not been used because of lack of funds.

Biograph pictures of happy and contented miners in Pennsylvania, under the co-operative system, showing them at their work and at their decent homes, surrounded by their families, well fed, and clothed, are obtained in manifold sets. To contrast with these, there are pictures taken from the actual scenes in other parts of the country, showing women harnessed to the plow with oxen; women at work in the shoe factories, the tobacco factories, the sweat-shops. Pictures of the children who operate the looms in the cotton mills and the carpet factories are obtained to be contrasted with those which exhibit children at their proper places in the school room and on the lawns of the city parks.

The pomp of the Plutocrats and the dest.i.tution of the ma.s.ses is portrayed by these striking contrasts.

With this terrible evidence the Independents carry their crusade into every city. The princ.i.p.al public squares of the cities are used to exhibit the biograph pictures. Night after night the crowds congregate to view the pictorial history of the Plutocratic National Prosperity.

That which arguments cannot do in the way of weaning men from party prejudice the picture crusade accomplishes.

One of the side lights of the great drama that is being enacted is the sentiment that develops for the Committee of Forty. Memorial societies in the states from which the several committeemen hailed, are formed to give the martyrs, as the forty are now called, a decent burial.

Thirty-nine of the martyrs are thus honored by public interment.

The one missing committeeman is William Nevins. He is supposed to be buried in the wrecked tunnel under the English channel. It is impossible to repair the damage done by the explosion; futile efforts are made by sub-marine divers to locate the exact point at which the break in the tunnel was made. The action of the water has totally obliterated the breach. So to the public this watery grave must remain the resting place of the genius who conceived the plan for the restoration of the rights of man.

All of the details of the committee come to light through the papers found on the body of Hendrick Stahl, secretary of the committee. The fact that Nevins was alone responsible for the plan of annihilation and that Trueman knew absolutely nothing of it, is incontestibly established.

This takes away the last argument of the Plutocrats who seek to connect Trueman with the act of Proscription.

And Nevins? What of him?

He has not kept his pledge to the committee by dying with the Transgressor who was a.s.signed to him. His pledge to G.o.d, to follow the committee the day after the atonement, has not been kept.