 CHAPTER 1 I was twenty-two and without employment. I would not say by this that I was without occupation. In the world in which we live, set with daisies and kingfishers and undeciphered faces of men and women, I doubt I could be at a loss for something to occupy me. A swallow's back, as he turns in the sunshine, is so full of meaning. If you dwell in the country, you need but pin on a hat and slip out into a meadow, and there, in some bite of the hedge-row, you shall see spring buds untwisting, sulfur butterflies coquettin' here nightingale sing as they sang to Keats, and streamlets make madrigal as they wimpled for Marlowe. Nay, even here in London, where life is rarer, how can I cruise down the Strand without encountering strange barks, mysterious arvices that attract and intrigue me? That living stream is so marvelous. Once come they these shadows, and whither do they go, innumerable, silent, each wrapped in his own thought, yet each real to himself has eye to my heart. To me they are shooting stars, phantoms that flash afoot, the orbit of my life, one second and then vanish. But to themselves they are the center of a world, of the world, and I am but one of the meteors that dart across their horizon. I cannot choose but wonder who each is and why he is here, for one after another I invent a story. It may not be the true story, but at least it amuses me. Every morning I see them stream in from the unknown, by the early trains, and disperse like sparks that twinkle on the thin soot of the chimney-back. Then with small black bags bound for mysterious offices. What happens in those offices I have no idea. They may lend money or buy shares or promote Christian knowledge. I only know I see them come in the morning and flit again at night, sometimes the same figures, recognizably identical. They rush back, absorbed, to catch the train to the unknown as they rushed up from it earlier. So day after day the tide sets and ebbs, while I stand on the shore of the vast sea of London, like a child that watches, and Commissioner Lynn guards me. I have always been grateful to Mr. Samuel Butler for his eccentric theory that a woman wrote the Odyssey. I do not say that I agree with him. If I did I am not aware that any critic would attach the least importance to my opinion. But it is a soothing theory for us latter-day women. Without thinking it true I love to believe it. The Odyssey, you will grant, is the epic of the imagination. It is the epic of mystery. In the Iliad, which is the epic of fact, everything is clear-cut, distinct, commonplace. I do not conceive that a woman could have written the Iliad. Its theme would fail to interest her. That hard hand-play of battle counts for naught to our sex. Clang a bronze sword on ringing shield, rouses no echo in our heart or brain. It is a masculine poem. How practical it is. How cold. How every day. How mannish. Considering its august age, how little it gleams with the glamour of antiquity. Achilles in the Iliad is just a shifty politician and a droid public speaker. Achilles is just a petulant, ill-disciplined young warrior. I have met him in London, fresh home from the trance-ball. The whole mighty saga is a saga of men's ideas. So sharp is it in its outlines, so historical, so definite. But the Odyssey. Yes, I read in it clearly the fine hand of a woman. It has the vagueness, the elusiveness, the melting, hazy charm of feminine craft. It thrills with mystery, and woman is the mystic. Look at its glorious dimness. You describe its geography, unveiled outline only, as one beholds the paps of Diora on a day of sea fog through swaying sheets of white cloud from a fisherman's boat on the bay of Obann. It is a Celtic dreamland, from morning to night, in that enchanted poem, On and on we sail, past uncertain aisles or dubious blue headlands, Begirt with fantastic forms, and in perils of the sea more awesome than the real. Gods have reconstructed Priam's palace, I believe, from the description in the Iliad. That is man's way of describing. But who could reconstruct from the wrapped words of the Odyssey, Circe's island, or the gardens of Alcinois, peering and prying Schlemann found in the battle-epic a whole plan of the Troad, or at least read one into it. See even imagining you could construct a chart of the Mediterranean to show the homeward maze of the much-traveled wanderer from Iliad to Ithaca. The bare idea would indicate a misconception of the Odyssey, for those are the seas and islands that never were. They live but in the ghost geography of poets and women. As arguments indeed the proofs adduced seem to me preposterous. It is nonsense to say that in the Odyssey the chief role is played by women. Do women's books deal exclusively, or even mainly, with their own sex? Is not the titan, man, the strong, sardonic, woman-quelling hero, a recognized commonplace of women's fancy? I do not believe an Ithican lady wrote the Odyssey because of the relative importance of Penelope and Nasekeia. Surely even a man might have set Penelope at her web or Nasekeia at her tennis. In that I see nothing occult or esoterically feminine. Men must be aware that every seercy has the power of turning men into swine. They ought to know. They have seen it done daily. Now those are not the reasons that weigh with me. It is the wonder, the magic, the purple mystery of the Odyssey that tells to my mind in favor of its female authorship. And though I know Mr. Samuel Butler's theory is not true, I thank God I am woman enough nonetheless to embrace it. But what has all this to do with my story? The story I am setting out in my own fashion to tell you. A great deal. And besides, unless you let me tell it in my own wayward way, I can never get through with it. In that respect also I hold myself true woman. And this is the connection. If only we could have lived in those days, people say, I answer, you are living in them. It is not the days, not the places, not the things that change. But we who see them otherwise. After the Mediterranean is the same sea today as when the Ithican lady who wrote the Odyssey looked out upon its blue zones to behold it, peopled with strange forms and wizard shadows, for that nameless Sappho, that prehistoric Charlotte Bronte, that in Coet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Ionian maine swarmed alive with gorgons and harpies, as loch finna with herrings. Sirens sang on every rock to lure the seamen, promontories glowed red at set of sun with the forges of the Cyclops. You may steam down the prosaic Adriatic today in an Austrian Lloyd steamer, a fearsome behemoth, bellowing, snorting, flame-breathing, and identify those charmed shores of Hellenic fancy as laid down with soundings in the Admiralty Surveys. But that is your blindness. Scylla and Charybdis are there as of old, Tiziu who turned them into the Straits of Messina, Polyphemus still haunts his seaward cave, Tiziu who transform him into a custom house officer. Adventures are, to the adventurous, go through the world in search of Calypso, and you will surely find her. Be modern, and you will find only Williston Junction. That may suffice for you. I live in those days, as all lovers of the mystical have always lived in them, and I will go forth into the world in search of adventures. They are sure to come to me, for faith moves mountains. In every age, when the Princess Cleodoland is sent out from the city as a prey for the dragon, some youthful Saint George in celestial armor rides by in the nick of time on his snow-white steed and draws his trusty blade, and fights for her, and rescues her from the loathly thing. Else what were the use of faith and of poetry? In every age we fashioned the story anew in our passing manner, dressing it up in our own clothes, and fitting it to our particular modes and morals. But Tiz the same to the end through all disguises. The Greeks told it as the tale of Perseus and Andromeda. They made their hero, purely Greek, a triumphant young son of immortal Zeus, who rescues a beautiful princess with fair nude limbs like Parian marble from the devouring sea-monster. Medieval Italy made the sign of the cross, turned the son of Danae into a Christian martyr, and clad the beautiful nude maiden in clinging silk robes as it would feign have clad Malian Aphrodite herself when it converted her image into a crowned Madonna. The Renaissance came, and Cellini unclothed her again in his revived paganism to set her polished bronze limbs where every eye might see and stare in the piazza at Florence. Our modern novelists dress her up afresh in the princess robe of the day, sage green or crushed strawberry, and turn her loose on that slimy old dragon of the world till Prince Charming comes by as a baronet in a tennis suit to lay at her feet ten thousand a year and the title of My Lady. It is the old tale still, and who lists to tell it may trick it out once more in his own heart's fashion, for though there be nothing new under the sun, the old wonder is there as marvelous as ever if you choose to marvel at it. Each spring brings it back a perpetual miracle, so I set forth into the world a princess Cleodoland of the nineteenth century, ready to face the dragons that, as I well know, abound in it, and full of faith in the Saint George who will come to rescue me. I mean to sail away on my odyssey unabashed, touching at such shores as my chants to beckon, yet hopeful of reaching at last the realms of Alcinois, from all which you may guess, that I am a Gertin girl. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 The Struggle for Life You may guess it, I say, for it is no part of my plan to tell you. Being a woman, I throw out this hint to pique your curiosity. Let us return to the point that I was twenty-two and had no employment. Commissioner Lynn and I were alone and friendless. Four months earlier I had suffered a great loss. How great a loss I am not careful to assure you. It is far from my desire to make capital out of my inmost heart. I cannot spin phrases about my dead father. But by this time the first fierce numbness of my sorrow had worn away. I was no longer a stone. I was beginning to smile and to feel the sunshine. A certain quick silver light-heartedness in the veins of my race helps to conceal a background of feeling. Besides, I had my livelihood to earn. That is a great resource. The need for bread served to edge out my grief. My first four months had been assured me beforehand in the settlement. Before we paid in advance half-yearly, I wardened being a prudent soul who disliked bad debts and preferred the safe side. But when the four months of my deepest mourning were over, it was absolutely necessary for me to find employment. How it all came about, I need not inform you. The bank that broke, the electric light that failed, I was told the details in terms so crabbed that if I tried to repeat them I could but show my ignorance. It was not hard for me to be poor, for in the settlement we lived as the other East Enders live. And I had learned from my match-girls how to be hungry and merry. But my poverty hitherto had been that of the amateur. I had now to learn professional indigence. When I shook hands with Sister Phyllis and Sister Agatha at the door of the guild, leaving Commissioner Lynn in their charge for the moment, and went forth into the world to earn my living, I had six and eleven pence as available assets. I was a capitalist in my way. That formed my capital. Under these circumstances, I said to myself, the first thing for a prudent girl to do is to look out for lunch. The second thing is to look out for a situation. I did not pretend to pre-vision. On the contrary, I was born to take no heed for the morrow. I belonged to the tribe of the grasshopper, not that of the ant. But I had been so deeply impressed by Sister Phyllis's exhortations during my last four months in the guild, that I had taken pains to learn shorthand and typewriting. I did not then know that every girl in London can write shorthand, and that typewriting as an accomplishment is as diffused as the piano, else I might have turned my hand to some honest trade instead, such as millinery or cake-making. However, a typewriter I was, and a typewriter I must remain. So I set forth on my odyssey by walking down the phantom-haunted channel of the strand, and cast anchor for my first halt in an aerated bread shop. Every we are told demoralizes this age, and while I remain a typewriter, I am absolute to set my face against it. But a cup of coffee and a slice of seed-cake, not too luxuriously sweetened, lay well within the compass of my capital. I am a poor arithmetician, but I arrive by finger-lore at the net result that four pence from six and eleven pence leaves six and seven. I took up an evening paper which some recklessly extravagant customer had bequeathed to his successors, and my eye scanned the advertisements. Hands that waved a signal seemed to catch my glance. A sail on the horizon I cried to myself, and this is what I read. Shorthand and typewriter wanted, female, legal work. Apply Floor and Fingerman, 27B, Southampton Row. I felt myself already on the road to fortune, a glance at the date. It was today's paper. In matters of business, promptitude is everything. I would be the first to apply. I tossed off my hot coffee with unbecoming haste, and deeply impressed with the fact that in this age the struggle for existence has become one of the rights of woman. I hurried with all speed to Floor and Fingerman's. I was a shorthand and typewriter, female, and I was fully prepared to be as legal as they desired of me. I do not say that female is a poetical description. I have never heard it applied to Helwees or to Ophelia, not even by the grave-digger, though touchstone, to be sure, uses it once of Audrey. But the nineteenth century has a chivalry all its own which I scruple to depreciate. If it speaks of us as females, it has given us the bicycle, and it almost admits that we are as fit for the franchise as the forty-chilling lodger. It puts us a little lower than the navies, I call that magnanimity. I had made haste to run up Charing Cross Road, and when I reached Southampton Row, impressed by the importance of the struggle for existence, I believe I was absolute winner in the race against time for the position of shorthand and typewriter, female. Up two pair of stairs, where a notice led, I entered the outer office. Its keynote was fustiness. Three clerks, male, in seedy black coats, the eldest with hair the color of a foxes, went on chaffing one another for two minutes after I closed the door, with ostentatious unconsciousness of my insignificant presence. No doubt they inferred that I was a candidate for the post of shorthand and typewriter, female, and they treated me as such persons may look to be treated. Their talk turned upon that noble animal, the horse. They spoke also of the turf, by which I understood them to allude not so much to the greensword of the Downs as to the imperceptible moral turf of Fleet Street. The two younger were indeterminate young men, with straight black hair and features modelled on and oysters, as they appeared to be loftily unaware of my intrusion. I signified my presence by coughing slightly. It was the apologetic cough that stands for, I beg your pardon, but will you kindly attend to me? I did not permit even the cough, however, to hurry them unduly. The youngest of the three, a pulpy youth, adjusted his cuffs and completed some deep remarks upon two-year-old form, before he turned to stare at me. I suppose he was kind enough to be satisfied with my personal appearance, for after a while he wheeled round on his high stool and broke out with the chivalry of his age and class. Well, what's your business? My voice trembled a little, but I mustered up courage and spoke. I have called about your advertisement for a shorthand and typewriter female. He eyed me up and down. I am slender, and I will venture to say, if not pretty, at least interesting looking. How many words a minute, he asked, after a long pause. I stretched truth as far as its elasticity would permit. One ninety-seven, I answered, with an affectation of the precisest accuracy. To say two hundred were commonplace. The pulpy youth ran his eyes over me as if I were a horse for sale. I was conscious of my little black dress and hat, conscious also of a fiery patch in the center of my cheek. But if you struggle for life, you must expect these episodes. That's good enough, he said slowly, with a side glance at his fellow clerks. I had a painful suspicion that the words were intended rather for them than for me, and that they bore reference more to my face and figure than to my real or imagined pace per minute. The eldest clerk with the foxy head wheeled round and took his turn to stare. He had hairy hands and large goggle eyes. Got your own machine, he asked? Yes. What sort? A barlok. That'll do, he said, eyeing the rest. And again I detected an undercurrent of double meaning. He seemed to be expressing modified satisfaction at my outer personality. They questioned me for some minutes with equal grace and charm. Then the eldest rose slowly. I'll tell the governor, he murmured, and disappeared through a dingy door marked in large letters, Mr. Fingalman. In a short time he came back and beckoned me mysteriously. I followed him, trembling. He waved his hairy hand towards me as if to show me off to the man at the table. I felt disagreeably like Esther in the presence of Ahasuerus, a fat and oily Ahasuerus of fifty. This is the young person, he said, by way of introduction. Ahasuerus, otherwise Mr. Fingalman, inspected me in turn. I coiled before his glance. He was a commissioner for oaths and wore large round spectacles. Had experience, he asked at last. In person he was rotund and obviously wealthy, though twas a third-rate solicitors. A little, I replied, I had made up my mind to say lots beforehand. But when it came to the pinch, the ingrained bad habit of speaking the truth reasserted itself partially. Ahasuerus stared, what name, he asked, after a long stony gaze. I stammered out, Juliet Appleton, age twenty-two. He perused me up and down with his small pig's eyes, as if he were buying a horse, scrutinizing my face, my figure, my hands, my feet. I felt like a Circassian in an Arab slave market. I thought he would next proceed to examine my teeth, but he did not. Being satisfied himself as to externals, he went on to put me through my paces. "'Sit down there,' he said, pointing to a seat. "'Have you pen and notebook?' I produced my stylograph. He grunted approbation, and dictated for a few minutes a short business letter. Then he waved me to the typewriter. "'Transcribe,' he said, curtly. I sat down and transcribed. The chief clerk, meanwhile, stood by, with his hairy hands crossed in a curved attitude of ostentatious servility, which contrasted strangely with his outer office manner. When I had finished, he peered at my work, nodded and handed it over to Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus ran his eye up and down, grunting again. "'She'll do,' he said interrogatively. The chief clerk signed, yes. "'She's the first we've seen,' Ahasuerus interposed with caution in his tone. "'Saves trouble,' said the chief clerk. "'I was aware with a rush of hot blood that the chief clerk approved of me, and that to his lordly approbation, as to the sultan's vizier, I owed my appointment. The oriental monarch waved his pen towards the door. Very well, he answered, settled terms with her outside. You know what I give. Bother me no more with it. And wheeling round his swivel chair, he buried himself in his writing. The terms the vizier proposed were not wholly superior to the dreams of Ahasuerus, but they were a modest starvation. And after my East End experiences, I looked for no more. I accepted them without demure, and went forth into Southampton Row, an engaged typewriter. I have a mercurial temperament. My spirits rise and fall as if they were consuls. This success exalted me. I walked down Charing Cross Road, by no means as a rule, an exhilarating thoroughfare. In the seventh heaven, I had justified myself before the impartial tribunal of political economy. I could earn my own bread, but are doubtful. In the struggle for life, I had obtained a footing. This magnificent post of shorthand and typewriter, female, had been thrown open by advertisement to public competition. In that competition, I had won the day. My energy, my promptitude, the rapid resolution with which I had gulped down my coffee, burnt my tongue, and rushed off to Southampton Row, had secured for me the prize of a modest starvation. I had proved myself fittest by the mere fact of survival. Matthew Arnold had taught me, indeed, with much sweet reasonableness, that there was not any proper reason for my existing. But I liked to exist. The sole remaining question was, could I adapt myself to my environment? If so, I had fulfilled the whole gospel of Darwinism. End of Chapter 2. CHAPTER III Environment wins. It was a wrench to tear myself away from my old men and women in the isle of dogs. For I truly loved them. The operation left a scar that was slow to heal. I felt I did them good. My visits cheered them unlike the curates. My whimsical talk broke the monotony of old age and the East End. But doing good is a luxury, and I was now face to face with the strict necessity of earning my livelihood. Yet hope lies still at the bottom of Pandora's box. Though I had but six and seven pence in the world and starvation wages, I started blithely to my work at Floor and Fingalmans. I had found a room, meanwhile, to which my purse consented. The normal difficulties of lodging hunting had been aggravated in my case by the need for finding a house where I should not be separated from Commissioner Lin, which made a backyard a necessity. But I succeeded in surmounting them. Commissioner Lin, I may say, to allay your fears, is my mongrel Chinese bullpup. Like Ulysses, I have a dog. He is ugly, but a beauty. And oh, such a dear. I may starve, but the Commissioner shares my last crust. Geographically, my post was in the outer office. Early each morning I went in to the inner recess of Shushan, the palace, to receive Ahazuerus instructions, and to take down from his royal lips my shorthand notes, which I afterwards expanded on the typewriter in the anti-room. Ahazuerus was graciously pleased to like me. I found favor also in the eyes of the Grand Vizier. He was good enough to say my work was intelligent. I had doubts in my own mind as to the Vizier's competence to form an opinion on this pit. But was he not a man, a vote-wielding citizen empowered to take his share vicariously, in the councils of the nation, and was not I, but a shorthand and typewriter, female? I bowed to the wisdom of the superior sex and answered with a modest blush that I rejoiced to have earned his approval. The morning and afternoon were taken up in expanding letters and copying drafts of documents. Their style was execrable. The principal verb adroitly concealed itself. The principal adjective was usually a foreset. Now regarded as an epithet, I find a foreset colorless. Its monotony bored me. I suggested to Ahazuerus that his prose might be enriched by a greater variety of graphic adjectives, such as amethystine, prismatic, opalescent, imperian, or even colossal. But he stared at me coldly and replied in a curt voice that legal phraseology was necessarily limited. The grand Vizier also cavalierly rejected my mild suggestions for an enlarged vocabulary. He contented that I should model my composition on chitty-on-contract. He was right, of course, but I found the iteration of provided always in that well of legal English intensely irksome. The anti-room where I clicked was shared by the grand Vizier and the two other clerks. They talked incessantly. I was forced to continue my transcription without interruption in spite of their voices. I will admit that their discourse as such by no means distracted me in virtue either of its intrinsic attractiveness or of the nature of its subjects. It circled itself chiefly round the noble quadruped with divergences on rugby and association football. I did not gather that the Vizier and his satellites knew much at hers tanned about the breed of race-horses, nor could they have distinguished with ease between a fetlock and a cannon-bone. They loved to sport from afar. They were platonically horsey. But they were diligent students of a daily journal in the interest of manly pastimes, and they extracted from its pages many charming speculations as to the numerical chants of first and second favorites. They also spoke freely of the ladies of the music hall, as their tongues rippled on with peculiar London variants on the vowels of our native language. My typewriter continued to go click, click, click, till I was grateful for its sound as a counter-irritant to their inanity. That click, click, click became to me like music, if only because it drowned the details of the Lewis Spring meeting. I saw in it all a trail of Ibsen-esque adivism. The horse was the sacred beast of the English in the days of Woden, and in spite of St. Augustine and John Wesley, his worship still survives, its festivals attracting thousands of pilgrims each year to the centers of the cult at Epsom and Newmarket. Devotées may be known by their badge, a pink paper which blushes itself and is a cause of blushing in others. Another peculiarity of the Outer Office was its richness in dust, the dust specific to a solicitor's premises. I think in this age of sanitation I have kept my head tolerably unprejudiced on the subject of germs. I do not speak evil of bacteria with the reckless extravagance of the world at large. I am prepared to live and let live, nor do I deny to the bacilli of typhoid fever the common right to the struggle for existence. But the bacilli at Floor and Fingalmans, I must admit, were obtrusively aggressive. They carried the war into Africa. They flew about me visibly whenever I lifted a book. They settled in myriads on my poor black dress. They invaded my hair and required to be daily dislodged by violent hostilities. The three clerks seemed to me to disregard them altogether, and when I ventured timidly to suggest to duster, they were almost as horrified as when I proposed to vary the bald language of a rite by the introduction of a few graceful chromatic adjectives. Fustiness and mustiness are part of the profession, it seems. You must no more attempt to sweep the Aegean stables than to carry out that other Herculian task, the simplifying and codification of the law of England. For three mornings and three afternoons I endured Floor and Fingalmans. It was a question of self versus environment. I am a unit of the proletariat, and dear sister Agatha had impressed upon me often with her sad sweet smile, the fundamental truth that beggars must not be choosers. So I continued to click, click, click like a machine that I was, and to listen as little as possible to the calculated odds upon King Arthur for the Ascot cup till I was tired of the subject. On the fourth day, however, the rebel in my blood awoke. Not for nothing had my father's thought at Lexington. I felt I must strike one blow for freedom. The aforesaid office failed to respond to the needs of the party of the first part. I went out to lunch, half-resolved in the whirligig I call my mind, never to go back again. It was not the Grand Vizier with his hairy hands, his goggle eyes, and his false diamonds, though a certain insolent condescension in the creature's manner made me shrink from his presence. It was not the junior clerks, though the tone of voice with which they addressed me as Miss reminded me of the accent in which I had often heard men of their type bespeak defenseless barmaid, while their demeanor varied from the haughty to the condescending. It was a Hazuerus himself whose oriental leer drove me from the office. I felt sure a Hazuerus considered his manner killing a three-tailed basha with a natural gift of captivating Circassians. His smile was a smile that knows itself irresistible. He had not as yet ventured anything rude to me. But I scented prospective rudeness in the way he watched me come in and out, the way he beamed on me benignly, with his small pig's eyes, as who should say, see how bland and how pleasant I am? You must rejoice, mere female, to have secured the favour of so genial a gentleman, who revels in semi-detached affluence at bollum. I fled from his oily face, assured that the law was not my proper sphere. I would diverge into paths of more commonplace business. All this time I had been living upon capital. If you judge such conduct imprudent, remember that I could hardly have lived upon its interest. My six and seven pence was almost spent. I owed my landlady, at the single room I had taken, for bread and rent. I had nothing left for my own food or for Mr. Commissioner. The outlook was serious, dimly aware of failure in the struggle for life, inability to succeed in adaptation to the environment. I retired for lunch to a little shop close by, whose merits the Grand Vizier had from the first impressed upon me. At the table by my side set two middle-aged men. They were talking earnestly. I detected at once in the mellow tone of the better looking of the two that he was a Cambridge man and a political economist. The moral science's tripos has its special aroma. After the rippling tittle-tattle of the noble quadruped, I was glad to listen even to the voice of economics. I strained my ears. It was pleasant to hear educated men speak again, and their talk was full of interest. �You have been to see them,� the first voice said. �Yes,� the Cambridge man answered. �It is an interesting experiment, though foredoomed to failure. They say they want to try anarchy in practice. They have bought ten acres of wild land very cheap. They are getting it into tillage, and they mean to manage it upon Kropotkin's system of intensive culture. I saw at once what that meant. What a capital plan! Till the land to the utmost, so as to make the largest possible amount of food or roses. Come out of it. And anarchist, too. Why I was born an anarchist. Never could I endure being ordered about by anyone. After flooring thinglebans, click, click, click all day. What a vista of Eden! I sat apostolent at the gate of that paradise. Just to go out into the fields and till them anarchically. And have they no organization? None at all. He told me it was a band of brothers. I asked him by what rule they worked. He said each man or woman labored when he or she chose. If he didn't feel inclined, he left off for that day, and sat in the sun, basking. They cultivate in common. Each member of the community receives food and clothes, and at the end of the week, if any surplus remain, they divide it between them by way of pocket money. Then it acts so far. Yes, apparently. But it is new. They look healthy enough, though pallid, and they are certainly enthusiastic. I asked Rothenberg how he liked it. He said it was delightful, ten thousand times better than being a tailor in Paris. I could no longer restrain myself. A caprice seized me. I leaned across the table. Pardon me, I said, but may I venture to ask, as an anarchist in the grain, where shall I find this utopia, this eldorado of anarchy? The Cambridge man smiled. Near Horsham, he answered. But excuse curiosity, are you really an anarchist? I will join them, I cried, clasping my hands. I have every qualification. I am alone in the world. And penniless, splendid material for anarchy. Such a dillock anarchy, too. Do they receive mere women? I think the Cambridge man replied. They would be charmed to take you. But remember, they are uncultivated, the raw material of a state, rough working men and women. Go down and see them, by all means. But when you have inspected their home, I venture to hazard a guess, that you will decide it is not meant for ladies. I am young, I answered. I have tolerable strength and abundant energy. Misfortunes are nothing if one takes them in the spirit of camping out. Hardships cease to be hardships when you talk of them as roughing it. After all, it is only what we voluntarily do at a picnic up the river. At least I will go down and interview your anarchists. He scribbled their precise address on the back of an envelope, with a smile for my enthusiasm. I went home to my solitary room at once and sat down to my private and particular barlock, the same on which I am inditing these present memoirs, to write out my resignation to Floor and Fingalman. Gentlemen, whereas I, the undersigned, have worked for three days and upwards, be the same more or less to my great discomfort in your dingy, stingy, musty, and fusty office, and whereas I have found the post of shorthand and typewriter female, which you have deigned to bestow upon me in the aforesaid office, highly disagreeable to my mind and brain, owing as well to the impurity of the air as to the dullness and monotony of the terms employed in it, and whereas I am now desirous of seeking other and more congenial employment elsewhere than in the aforesaid dingy-ness, stingy-ness, musty-ness, and fusty-ness, as herein designated, now therefore this indenture witnesses, and know all men by these presence, that I have made up my mind not to return to your message or tenement this afternoon, nor on any subsequent date, but to relinquish entirely the aforesaid post of shorthand and typewriter female, with all in sundry the emoluments or salaries thereto pertaining, and to say good-bye to you, the aforesaid floor and fangalman, and to your grand vizier and other faithful satellites, in witness whereof I have here to set my hand and seal this twenty-first day of May, in the year of our lord, etc., etc., Juliet Appleton. I put it into an envelope and dropped it into the post, then I turned again, on my way, a free woman, free but penniless, hurrah for anarchy, flowery, bowery anarchy, in a careless-ordered garden, run wild with eglentine. Could a parry hope to storm that Eden? I had disbursed my last coin for lunch that morning. True, I still have my bicycle, and by its aid I might set off to join my unknown brothers, the anarchists, near Horsham. But my heart smote me, for I had not wherewith to pay my landlady. Had I worked out my week with a hazzuerus, no doubt I might have settled her bill, and gone on my way honestly. But I could not leave her in the lurch, nor indeed could I set out without the contents of my modest portmanteau. My effects must go with me. Thus the position teemed with difficulties. I had an aunt in London, of course. I suppose not even the most destitute are ever wholly deprived of the solace of a maiden aunt in London. Conscience suggested that in such a crisis I ought to consult her. But fortunately I belong to a generation which has analyzed conscience away. Go to the aunt, said duty. Stop away, said inclination. And inclination, as usual, won in a counter. I might almost say inclination walked over. If you doubt that these metaphors are becoming on a woman's lips, you must recollect that my style had been suffering for three days, from the enforced proximity of the Grand Vizier, his say-traps, and the noble quadruped. I could not go to the aunt. She was the average woman of the small fixed income, prosaic, stagnant, serenely literal, a placid pool that reflects its surroundings. It was her fixed belief that everything I did was in equal parts foolish and wicked. No doubt she was right, but her arguments vexed me. It is quite impossible for a young lady to do so, she said about many actions, which I knew from experience, to be not only possible but actual. So I avoided the aunt and set my face toward the shop windows for light and guidance. I found it, of course. Faith is always rewarded, or I like to think so. At a corner shop devoted to the sale of more or less genuine bric-a-brac, I saw in the window a charming little fra Angelico, almost a replica of a miniature I remembered to have noted at the Vatican. Whether it was authentic or not, I do not presume to decide. Who am I that I should give myself the heirs of a Morelli? But its naivete, its grace, its frank purity of color were obvious at once, even to the eye of a woman. The picture represented what is called in art the charity of St. Nicholas. Through an open door you see into the home of a poor nobleman, tis a dainty interior of an age when drab had not wholly ousted the primary hues. In the background his three starving daughters lie snugly in bed, a trio of innocent maidens, with pretty blonde heads of infantile guilelessness, laid on white pillows between dimity curtains. In the foreground the nobleman their father is seated. The picture of despair in a long vermilion robe and a brown study, without by a grated window the dear young saint himself, in florentine hose with a sleeveless jerkin, stands timidly on tiptoe, in the very act of dropping three purses of gold as dowries for the maidens through the open casement. The story is told with the peleucid simplicity of early Tuscan art. No heirs and graces, but just the bare outline of facts, which it behooves you to know. These girls are poor, their father is at his wit's end, and yonder amiable young gentleman in crimson and puce has come to their rescue, like a gallant Christian, with purses of gold very fat and opulent. I stood long and looked at it. It was so archly engaging. The clear cut outlines, the translucent hues, the sweet old world directness, the story-telling faculty, each charmed and beguiled me. After all I said to myself, St. Nicholas, not St. George, is the saint for me. My dragon is poverty, St. George for princesses, St. Nicholas for the poor and portionless maiden. I gazed at him long, with affectionate eyes. Then I went on my way towards the National Gallery, strengthened and comforted. Have you found out the true use of the National Gallery, I wonder? On three days in the week the British nation throws those stately rooms open free to any woman who chooses to enter them. I use them as my drawing-room. You get a comfortable chair to sit upon, for nothing. You get pictures to look at, and in winter the gallery is heated by flues, over which you can stand and warm your feet, gratis. I went in on this critical afternoon of my history, not only for rest, but in search of St. Nicholas, St. Nicholas of Myra, St. Nicholas of Bowery, St. Nicholas the giver of dowries to damsels. My dear father had been a lover of Italian art, and had taught me betimes the legends of the saints, without which Fra Angelico and Benozzo Ghazoli talk a strange tongue to you. I was certain now that St. Nicholas, St. George was my predestined patron. He was so good to the poor, and especially to maidens. In many pictures on those walls I beheld him as of old, in his bishop's robes, benign and benevolent, a model of suavity, holding the three golden balls which typify the three fat purses of gold he threw in at the window, to the starving daughters of the noblemen of Myra. He was the saint of the oppressed, the enslaved, the suffering. If knighthood had it St. George, serfdom had it St. Nicholas. I saw him again, with his three spheres of gold, traced by the hand of Raphael, in the Blenum Madonna, a courteous old gentleman here, bland and mild, and very sweet of feature. I saw him in many other less famous pictures, a friend in need, ever gentle and helpful, the patron of children, of the distressed, of the storm-tossed. I saw him in many guises, painted for the most part in what, in default of exact knowledge, I will call a chasable, but always as the deliverer. My heart went forth to him. Holy Nicholas, I murmured. You were my father's friend. Be my friend as well. Stand by me and protect me. I issued once more into the phantom-crowded strand. Below the streaming street was full of those hurrying, scurrying men with black bags, bound as ever for the unknown. But above I lifted my eyes and there, against the sky, I beheld the three golden balls of St. Nicholas, end of Chapter 4. CHAPTER V I drew a deep breath. He was the poor man's saint. His symbol has descended to the poor man's banker. Yet my confidence, after all, was not all misplaced. St. Nicholas, at a pinch, would provide my dowry. It flashed across me at a stroke what those golden balls meant. Never before had I defined their meaning, their intimate connection with my newly chosen patron. I caught at it now clearly. Nicholas, I knew, was the saint of the people, the saint of the laborer who toils for daily bread, of the fisherman who struggles with the stormy sea, of the orphan, of the slave, of the child, the captive, the prisoner, the unfortunate. No wonder, then, that his golden balls have survived as a badge of that generous profession which freely lends to all the poor who leave a pledge behind. I accepted the omen, tempest-tossed as I was. My precious typewriter might save me for the day from the present distresses. I hurried back to my attic in a street-off soho, packed it up in its case, and carried it with difficulty in my own small arms to the shrine of St. Nicholas. My errand I grant was new and repugnant. But necessity, like our magistrates, knows no law. I will not pretend that I passed those dubious portals without a flush of shame. Still I passed them bravely. How much asked the acolyte? I was inexperienced in the ritual of the sordid temple. Three pounds I queried tentatively. He cut me short with a gesture of contempt. We could do thirty shillings. I paid twenty pounds for it, I murmured. He shrugged his shoulders. An error of judgment, I should say. Thirty shillings. Do you take it? I was anxious to escape from the squalid place. Bundles of shabby clothes and square pigeon-holes daunted me. I accept, I said, gasping. He counted out the money and handed me a ticket. I fled like one followed, by a roaring wild beast. No quicker flies the aramaspian whom the griffin pursues. Nor did I pause or halt till I reached my own bower. Safe back in that strong cold I bolted and locked the door and washed the pollution off me in an orgy of cold water. Then the dignity of womanhood reasserted itself. I sat back in the one armchair and reflected. A freak is dear to my soul. I would pay my weekly bill before starting, carry my knapsack with me, and engage the room for another week in advance in case the anarchist should chance to prove too anarchic for my taste. And after that, who dare call me imprudent, tis the habit of twenty-two to burn its boats. When it takes measures for preserving them, you should give it credit for singular forethought. I had still my faithful bicycle. I rose betimes next morning and endued myself in my cycling costume, which, like all else about me, I trust, is rational. The commissioner and I stole silently down the stairs. Before London was well awake, we had left Westminster Bridge behind us in the haze, and were off on the open road on our way towards Horsham. Two palmers bent for the Holy Land of Anarchy. How light and free I felt! When man first set woman on two wheels with a pair of pedals, did he know I wonder that he had rent the veil of the harem in twain? I doubt it, but it was so. A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose. She can go where she will, no man hindering. I felt it that brisk May morning as I spanned down the road, with a tamo shanter on my head, and my loose hair traveling after me like a sky terrier. This thought I, to myself, is truly my odyssey, to play at being a latter-day Ulysses in London, among those crowded streets, is like a child's game, too much make-believe, but mounted here on the ship of the high road, scutting gaily downhill, or luffing against headwinds on a steep upward slope. I feel myself the heroine of a modern sea-epic. As I coast by narrow straits of hedge-bordered lane round some lumbering cart, I steer with care betwixt headland and whirlpool. Siren inns hang out signs to beckon me into port, piratical carts, buccaneering drays, skidding fast down-long slopes, strive to crush me as they pass like living symplegeties. In perils oft I yet feel the fresh wind in my teeth, and see the foam of May break over hawthorn promontories. Troy lies behind. In front of me beckons the peaceful Ithaca of my anarchist settlement. The road, indeed, was a pleasant one, lying at first among suburban quarters, pink with blossom at that perfect moment of the year, and heavy with lilac. It grew greener by degrees as it stretched out to the rising plain of Surrey, and then swelled up slowly into the great breaker of the chalk-downs. That huge wave of land rises in a long curve on the side towards London, but curls over abruptly by Box Hill and dorking. Like a billow that has hardened in the act of breaking, my way led me through a deep gorge that cuts the slope of this ridge at right angles. Beside a wandering stream, as though one stroke of some great magician's wand had cleft away for it through the barrier. The ravine is bordered to the left by a cliff-like edge, overgrown with juniper bushes. They call it the veil of myculem. Spring had put on her best frock for my visit. I rode at a good pace. Commissioner Lynn toiled behind with his tongue out. Then we broke into the open, where a steeple showed the way, and through a billowy common, crest after trough alternately, dotted thick with holly-trees across the wheeled of Sussex. A still, pearly pale sky hung over the misty level. Dispondent donkeys munched furs tops and mused pessimism. Trains dashed under bridges with long streamers of steam, as I rode over them unabashed, huge monsters of burnished brass snorting death from their throats, such as would have terrified the timid Achaean sailors. But I took no heed of them. I, the braver daughter of an iron age, trained to disregard dragons of that mechanical sort, and to fear only those against whom St. Nicholas is potent. I had seen one but yesterday on Margaratone's panel. The horses that passed over by my side reared and quivered at the ungainly monster. But my undaunted steel palfrey, himself a scion of the iron age, showed no sign of weakness. Or if he trembled it all, it was something wrong in the gearing. A mile or so from Horsham I diverged, as directed, down a crossroad to the left. T'was a level lane in Champagne country, bordered by a low hedge of close clipped maple. The fields were of leaden clay, so much I saw, where they were plowed, muddy and all but impassable, in wet weather, to meet which state of morass every cottage was approached by a small paved causeway of flags, giving a singularly distinctive note to the district. Many such I passed, each built of pale red brick, each tiled with mossy tiles, and each approached through a square of front garden by its town-like pavement. The lanes were amaze, running aimlessly hither and thither, one after another, as I tried it, led me back by circumvolutions to a rustic clappum-junction, the center of nowhere. Judge, if I was non-plussed, at one of the cottages I reigned up at last, and, leaning from my saddle, called out to a boy who was weeding the front patch. Can you tell me where I shall find the anarchist settlement? The boy looked up, taken aback. It was clear that the rationality of my dress astonished him, and indeed, to so rare to be rational in this world, that I was not surprised at his surprise. He stared at me with a frank provincial stare. I am not sure that he did not design heaving half a brick at me in recognition of my originality. But he contented himself with a few contumelious epithets, which did not hurt me. I flung him a penny, this softened his heart. He answered after a pause. I guess you mean them foreigners. The American blood in me was flattered by that, I guess. Thus my ancestors must have spoken here in Sussex long ago, before they went over in the Mayflower to fight in due time at Lexington. It is a point of honor with all Massachusetts folk to have gone over in the Mayflower. He was a sloop of a hundred and eighty tons, and must have carried thousands of steerage passengers. I am not sure about the tonnage, but there can be no doubt as to the passengers. They are probably foreigners, I replied, coming back to this century. At any rate they are newcomers, and I was told they had settled down somewhere near Pinfold. He waved his hand vaguely towards the quarter of the sunrise, and gave me directions of complicated topography. But he added after a moment for internal reflection. They baint the sort of folk for the likes of you to visit. Thank you, I answered. I am an anarchist myself, and I spurred on my mount round the corner where he directed me. The day, which was brisk when I started, had become by this time hot and windless, and the sun beat mercilessly. After various intricate twists and turns, ill deciphered from uncertain instructions, I found myself at last by the side of a pond, which formed the one fixed point in my guide's geography. He had called it a horse pond. It was a pretty little pool. Tall, glossy weeds grew lush by its edge. A gray-leaved willow drooped into it. Nigh-ads lurked among the broad green discs of the water lilies at its farther end. I was glad it was so taking. I accepted it as an omen of success in my wild goose-chase. From the first I was not without misgivings of my own wisdom, and thus seeking to fraternize with unknown anarchist brethren. But I knew how often fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, and I took the beauty of this horse pond as a foretaste of what I should find in the anarchist settlement. An old woman with sleeves tucked up and the par-boiled arms of a laundress stood near the door of a new brick cottage hard by. Can you tell me, I called out, where I can find Rothenburg? I omitted the mister as my Cambridge friend had warned me, that that harmless prefix acted on your anarchist, like the picadors dart on the bulls of Andalusia. Rothenburg? The old woman answered, transforming his name, as is the want of her class, into something significant in her own language. He's down yonder by the new glass-house, and she pointed with her hand towards a deep clay field just behind her cottage. I dismounted and led my bicycle gently through the mud. There was no egglentine. At the far end of the field, under shelter of a hedge which backed it to the north, I saw a slender, pale-faced young man in a blue continental blouse, digging a trench with a pick, to whose use he was evidently but little accustomed. Are you Rothenburg, I asked, in French? He looked up and smiled. My costume took his fancy. I am, he answered, in the same language, but with a marked Alsatian accent. What do you want with me, comrade? I am an anarchist, I said, simply, rushing straight to the point. I wish to join your community. He laid down his pick, and came up out of the trench. I could see him better now, a pallid, anemic young man, with a high, narrow forehead, watery, restless eyes, thin, yellow hair, and twitching hands that played nervously all the time with a shadowy moustache. I judged him at sight the very type of an eager-hearted, ineffectual enthusiast, a man born to failure as the sparks fly upward. He looked me over, all surprised. We are a party of working men, he objected, at last. Artisans, semstresses, laborers, we do not desire or court the aid of the bourgeois. Now I can endure most things, but not to be called a bourgeois. I colored a little, I suppose. At any rate, I answered, I am an ouvrière myself. I have nothing to do with a bourgeoisie. I have ridden down from London to link my fate with yours. Are you the head of this colony? He flushed somewhat, in turn, or rather faint streaks of pink stole over that bloodless face. We have no head, he answered. We are thoroughgoing anarchists. Equality is our aim. Since when do you belong to our party? Since I was born, I retorted boldly. I am anarchic by nature. Wherever there is a government, I am always against it. Let me join your band, and I promise disobedience. He eyed me suspiciously. This confession of faith seemed rather to disturb than to reassure him. He paused a moment. How did you hear of us? Casually, in an eating-house in London, from a Cambridge economist, who had been here to see you. When he spoke of you, I thought to myself, these are the people I want. I recognize my kind. I must go and join them. Ha! He was a cooperator. A voluntary cooperator. But he had not the whole truth. If he sent you here, you may be wrong. You are perhaps a Marxian? I perceived that there was an orthodoxy and a heterodoxy of anarchism. In which case, of course, I should be on the heterodox side. You will find me sound, I said, seeking to temporize. In my uncompromisingly anarchic anarchism of anarchy, I thought I could hardly be more mutinous than that. If it was rebellion they wanted, I was honestly prepared to rebel against the rebels. He drew out a cheap gun-metal watch. It is dinnertime, he said. Temporizing in return, the comrades will have assembled. Come up and discuss. We will see whether they are content to accept you as a companion. I confess I was disappointed. This seemed painfully close to a legislative assembly, at the very least to a folk moot or parish council. Did they mean to decide things by base show of hands? And if so, wherein did your anarchists differ from the ordinary coercive governmental authority? In the utopia I had framed for myself, every man or woman did that which was right in his own eyes, without prejudice to his equal freedom, to do that which was wrong, if he chanced to be so minded. Here I saw just a common joint-stock company, Anarchy Limited, end of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 The Inner Brotherhood We assembled in the large room of the first cottage I had seen, a sort of bare-balled dining-room big enough to feed some twenty or thirty souls, and ugly enough to take away their appetite forever. Its architect's name I would conjecture was Jeremiah. A new comrade Rothenberg said, waving his hand towards me, not ungracefully. Let us dine first and consider her afterward. This was an awkward introduction. I sat down to eat and drink, painfully conscious that the eyes of anarchic Europe were upon me. My long, unbroken ride had given me a keen edge for food. Still, apart from their scrutiny, I confess I et with an undercurrent of disgust. The meat and bread were wholesome, but I suspected their cleanliness. The napery too was coarse, and cried for the laundry. However, if one chooses to herd with anarchists, one must not be too particular on matters of diet. I et a hearty dinner, in spite of my doubts, and even drank some sour red wine, for they were not English enough yet to relish our beer, of which I was not sorry. Replenished by dinner, they drew apart, discussing me in low tones, and in cosmopolitan languages. I fancy I detected the ring both of Czech and Yiddish, tongues of which I do not profess an intimate knowledge, though my east end experiences had given me a distant nodding acquaintance with either. Most of them were Austrians, assorted, or else subjects of the Tsar, living here for their health, because they preferred England as a place of residence, to that part of the Russian territory which is called Siberia. From time to time they appealed to me on some point of my history. Where was I born? Of what nationality? Why did I wish to join them? I answered as best I might, though the ordeal was severe. It was bad enough to stand as Esther before a hausuares, but I realized now that I was set to perform the part of Vashti before a whole court of critical anarchists. At last Rothenberg, still fumbling with his moustache, had the happy thought to ask me my name. When I said Juliet Appleton, I saw that it moved them. The fact that I was a Juliet gave food to their fancy. Each man drew himself up and stroked his chin with the very air of a Romeo. Even the women smiled, for there were women among them, some four or five, with pretty curly-haired children. Then they began to instruct me in the doctrines of their sect. I was sworn to eternal friendship with all in sundry. The intricate Eleusidian mysteries of anarchy were explained to me as catechumen in Alsatian French and Bohemian German. I answered in such dialects of either tongue as I had at command. My profession of faith appeared to give satisfaction. Especially when, prompted by Rothenberg, I renounced Karl Marx and all his ways, and embraced with fervor the true faith of Bakunin, who or what Bakunin was I had not an idea. But I made up in zeal what I lacked in understanding. It began to dawn on me that sectarianism is of the nature of man, and that all things tend to fall into my doxy and your doxy. At last Rothenberg arrived at what he evidently considered a crucial point in his catechism. You understand, of course, that you must not form an idolatrous attachment to any one of the comrades to the exclusion of the others. I glanced around me at a dozen sorry specimens of the male of my species there ranged before me, and felt convinced at sight I could safely engage not to idolize excessively any one among them. And I said so. This assurance appeared to give the community boundless satisfaction. They turned next to my bicycle, which was a nice little machine, the nicest in England, indeed, like everyone else's. One or two of them were kind enough to accept my full membership at once by trying to ride it. I am tolerably tall for a woman, while the comrades, as I learned to call them, were for the most part undersized town bread working men of the skimpy order. Thus my machine just fitted them. They did not even require to shift the pedals. I showed them how to stick on, correcting the excessive line of grace in their initial curves. This obviously pleased them, and I think they formed a high idea of the new comrade herself, and more especially of the property she brought into the community. They had not an equal opinion of Mr. Commissioner. So I settled down at once as a full-fledged anarchist. Figure to yourself a group of naked cottages with bald slate roofs untempered by the years, no moss, no house leaks, drop down at random in a sticky clay cabbage field, and you see our colony. My first business was to behold where I was to abide. The rotund old lady whom I had found at the door of the first messwidge, or tenement, took me round to my cubicle, for they had a nomenclature of their own suited to the ways of anarchists. It was in a brand new building of pale pink brick, a sort of anemic brick which bore the same relation to healthy red brickiness that Rothenberg's complexion bore to normal humanity. It was vastly modern, like the views of its builders. It also betrayed the same painful lack of aesthetic tendencies. It cried for creepers. In front of it stretched a patch of utilitarian potato-ground. I would have preferred hollyhocks. There was no hall or passage. The door opened abruptly into a small parlor, behind lay three bedrooms of the minutest dimensions. Mine was tiny. However, I have always inculcated kindness to animals, and am not conscious of the faintest desire to swing a cat. So it sufficed very well for me. The bath entailed difficulties, no other anarchist being a slave to the habit, but a wooden wash tub and economy of space speedily overcame them. I unpacked my knapsack, put my room to rights, dusted the window-panes, and sallied forth to see what work the community demanded of me. The community was ranged outside my cottage-door as one man. It seemed that, unable to resist the combined attractions of the bicycle and a new comrade, they had decreed a half-holiday by universal suffrage, and were waiting without to let me teach them the use of the machine. But the commissioner, who was an unregenerate monopolist as to private property, effectively prevented its premature appropriation by a mute white protest. I trembled as I saw how many awkward youths desired to ride my precious cycle. But if you go in for Communism you must expect it to cut both ways. I had eaten their dinner. They must share my bicycle, for so it is written in the lawless law of anarchy. Most of these young men were good fellows in their way, very simple-hearted anarchists. I do not credit it that they could have blown up a czar, or even dropped a bomb into a suburban letterbox. They confined themselves to cabbages and passionate denunciation of the oppressors, but the ringleader in the attempt to borrow my bicycle from an absent comrade was an exception to the rule. He was a villainous-looking creature, the caliban of our island. His name was Leon. I think he must have been built after designs of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. He had Rufus hair, a nose without a bridge, and thick protruding lips. Those lips were a nightmare. I set him down as a judicious cross between a Swiss cretin and an albino negro. To make matters worse, like many other repulsive people, he had the habit, when he spoke to you, of coming up very close and breathing in your face, so that his protruding lips almost seemed to touch you. I had an irresistible impulse to say to him, Take, O, take those lips away. Only I knew if I did he would not understand. Or if he understood he would misunderstand me. I felt from the outset that I might have trouble with Leon. That first night, for some time, I was kept awake by a continuous concert which sorely puzzled me. It could not be Nightingale's. The note was not varied enough, nor was it the six great powers of Europe. The chorus was far too concordant. It reminded me most of the serenade made by the small green southern tree-frogs. But here, in Sussex, I lay awake and racked my brain. Next day saw the mystery. The hollow beyond our plot of intensive culture was marshy and weedy. It teamed with Natterjack's. I will own that till I came to pinfold. I wished not even that the Natterjack existed. I had rolled him into one with his cousin, the Toad. But our only British brother, a leather-dresser from Bermondsey, and a born naturalist, soon showed me the difference. Ever since I have met the Natterjack in society everywhere, he is the gentleman and the artist in his own family. Frogs croak, toads purr, but the Natterjack sings. He will admire his clear high note, trilled with a delicate tremolo. At last I fell asleep, a very wearied anarchist. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 A Mutinous Mutineer. I respected Rothenberg. He was a man of ideas. Of course they were wrong. But according to his rush-lights he acted them out. He seemed to me to have a shallow brain in a constant state of feverish agitation. He was a flamboyant rhetorician, a crisp denunciator. It did one's soul good to hear him declaim red-hot against kings, priests, and the intolerable tyranny of public opinion. The rest were shadows. Rothenberg, by comparison, was an intellectual titan. Even old Mrs. Pritchard of the parboiled arms, who lived in the community cottage with the bear Bald Hall, recognized his superiority. That there Rottenborough, she would say, with her arms at Kimbo, why he's worth the whole lot of them. She was a study in her way, Mrs. Pritchard, globular and emotional. Rothenberg's eloquence filled her eyes with tears. Why she was an anarchist I failed to perceive. She seemed as much out of place in that cosmopolite crew as a free Kirk elder in a chorus of menads. She told me they had convinced her. If so, she must have had a mind singularly open to conviction. I gather rather that she took to anarchy as she might have taken to primitive Methodism, the Salvation Army, or any other variety of dithorambic religion. There chanced to be no shakers or Mormons in the field at the moment, so Mrs. Pritchard fell back upon the allurements of Communism. She washed for the comrades a post, you may guess, which almost amounted to a ladylike sinicure. When I joined the community I did so in dead earnest. You may think I jest, but I assure you seriously that my first intention was to live and die in the bosom of anarchy. Even the first sight of the ten acres, with its fringe of natterjacks and its total lack of egglentine, did not damp my ardor, nor did the dinner at the outset. I reflected that I had taught a cookery class at the Guild, and that I could find an outlet for my energies in radical reform of the communal kitchen. It certainly afforded a noble chance for the reformer. Meanwhile I said nothing, though I ate every meal with an increasing undercurrent of distrust as to its cleanliness. At night we gathered in the community hall and decided the future of Europe. Within, as without, it had anemic brick walls, slightly inclined towards jaundice, and under its roof we listened drearily while Rothenburg settled the map of the twentieth century in unofficial harangues. Say for his torrent of eloquence, I found the hall depressing. Our community shared the common mania of the sectory, for placarding it sentiments. Only here, the Lord is my shepherd, and God bless our home, gave place to solidarité de la race humaine. No king, no laws, no taxes, das land für das Volk, u bi bene i bi patria, and free thought, free affection. I read these legends over and over till they pawled. In another respect also my comrades resembled the universal systematic. Their interests were confined to a single range. They were great on altruism, but one saw their eyes glaze over the moment one diverged from the beaten path of anarchic platitude. Rothenburg asked me the first day if I knew anything of gardening, anything of gardening. I could have told them at a glance that their cauliflower was planted three inches too close, while their views on spring carrots were absurdly elementary. I had been reared in the country, but I reflected that even among anarchists modesty befits a woman, and I answered that I hoped so. They wished to set me at first upon light work in the glass houses. Even those rough working men I could see, notable mainly for the whiteness of their faces and the redness of their politics, paid some homage to my gentility, though they would have denied it themselves. They were anxious to spare me as much as possible of manual labor, but I would have none of that. If I join their clan at all, I must join on equal terms. I am all for the absolute equation of the sexes. I wished to bear my part in the burdens of the community, so I devoted myself with a single mind to intensive culture. I may be dense, but after close inspection my impression is that intensive culture, were it not for its name, might readily be confused with ordinary gardening. Rothenberg was working on the foundations of a new glass house. To avoid Leon, whose province was potatoes, I took a pick and worked by the Alsatians side. He seldom spoke. When he did, he left off delving. His shallow brain had room for but one occupation at a time. It was curious to see him pause, push his crush hat from his brow, wipe his narrow forehead with his shirt sleeve, stroke the thin yellow hair, and then give vent to some deep philosophical speculation, which a child of ten might have considered profound. On the second day of my task at the trench, a sudden thought struck me. Rothenberg, I said, wielding my pick somewhat viciously. You have bought this land. How do you manage to hold it? He struck work as usual and turned the watery blue eyes upon me. We hold it, Juliette, he said. I was officially known to all the comrades as Juliette. We hold it. He paused as if I were drawing a tooth. We hold it by trustees. No other way is possible. The English law compels you? My faith, yes. We cannot own it as a community. And suppose some comrade were to refuse to work, and yet stick to his rooms. What could you do to get rid of him? That was a problem for Rothenberg. He fondled the thin yellow hair till I thought it would come out. He fingered the shadowy mustache, with that nervous hand till he made me frightened. I imagine, he said at last, after due deliberation, in a very slow tone, we would be compelled to call in the state to eject him. He uttered that hated word with visible effort. At Pellochisarum I dug my pick into the ground more viciously than ever. But I said nothing. Coercive practices. I saw I was back with my old friends aforesaid and this indenture witnesseth. Yet I will do the anarchist the justice to say that none of them seemed anxious to afford their pet bugbear. The state, the opportunity of trying this test case, they toiled hard and inefficiently. In the sweat of their brow they did very little. None of them could be called a specialist in gardening. Rothenberg himself had worked as a lady's tailor in Paris, he told me, and had flung up a post of fifty francs a week. Not bad wages for a working man, he observed, preening himself with the complacency of a willing martyr, to till the soil with intensive culture. I believe he was really a good tailor, spoiled, to make an indifferent gardener. Still one could not help respecting his enthusiasm. When I pressed him further on this head he admitted with regret that in the present state of the world only a chosen few, like you and me, Juliet, were fit for anarchy. I felt half inclined to retort, with the last of the Sandomanians, that I was know that sure of Juliet. However he thought it was well to begin the experiment. After all one should live up to one's highest ideal. I glanced around at the sodden field, the bald brick cottages, and had doubts in my mind, whether they did really fulfill my highest ideal. I worked hard with the rest. A certain sense of honor made me work my hardest. No bless oblige, and precisely in proportion as I saw the comrades, would be content to let me shirk some share of my task out of regard for my gentility. Did I feel it incumbent upon me to do my utmost possible? I wore my cycling suit in the fields, and labored like a man. I am not muscularly strong, but I have been well trained, and I honestly believe I was the most efficient workman in all that little group of incompetent town toilers. In my spare time I set about reforming the kitchen. The vegetarian dishes I had learned at the guild delighted the souls of the simple anarchists. My barley cutlets with tomato sauce were voted heavenly. In best lip-lipping teutonic, my vermicelli shape received the praise of bravissima from our neapolitan Luigi. This skill in cookery much increased my vogue among the men of the community, while the women were not sorry to have their task lightened by a little amateur assistance. If I have not said much here of the women and children, it is not for want of appreciation. They were the salt of the settlement. There was no nonsense of high principles about them. They had followed their husbands and fathers and brothers to this outland spot, as women will do, and they would have shouted viv l'emperre as heartily, to-morrow as they shouted viv l'emperre, when asked to-day. But they loved to applaud Rothenburg on the war-path of peace, and would have scalped anyone who doubted the truth of the chivaleths of fraternity. With the children I made great friends. Dear Ruffin tumble little things they oozed with merriment. My rational dress delighted them. So did Mr. Commissioner, with his white teeth, as soon as they had got over the first formalities. He suffered them to pull his tail like a lamb. We played games together at night, in the intervals of reorganizing European affairs and abolishing the capitalist. We romped like tomb-boys. My attempts to tell them Cinderella and the three bears in bad German, translated by the more knowing into Czech and Yiddish, were not a complete success. But neither were they a failure, for at any rate they resulted in happy laughter. Besides I taught them Katz-Kradl, and Katz-Kradl at least has escaped the curse of Babel. Still rocks lay ahead. My odyssey was not so quickly to bring me into port. By the end of the week a cloud took shape. I foresaw storms brewing. All the comrades were devoted in equal parts to myself and my bicycle. In the evenings when work was done, and we had watered the cavuages, I gave them lessons in turn on the mysterious monster. From the beginning it occurred to me that most of them were anxious to entice me away from the common field towards remotor lanes, where occasions for private talk were more easily obtained. But mindful of my promise not to form idolatrous attachments, I resisted the temptations of the polyglot falsts, who would feign have discoursed to me the words of love in many uncouth languages. It was my policy to keep close to the cottages and the other women, backed up by that round mountain of Britannic matronhood, the guileless Mrs. Pritchard. Besides, in the commissioner I had an efficient bodyguard. On Saturday came the weekly division of profits. We had done well that week, having sent consignments of early roses and asparagus to Guildford and London. We declared a dividend, a splendid communal dividend, at the rate of four shillings per head for adults and two shillings for children. I thought this profit magnificent. But just before the distribution of cash, Rothenberg strolled up to me as I was dandling a model-armed anarchist. His fingers twitched on the imperceptible moustache, more tremulously than ever. Juliet, he said briefly, I want to speak to you. He said it in the voice with which our principal at college was wont to summon us to her study for the discipline of exhortation. Free anarchist, though I was, I listened and trembled. Well, Rothenberg, I murmured, laying down the baby. The question is, do you mean to remain with us? Why, certainly, I cried, astonished. Did we not swear eternal friendship? But the comrades complained that you take no notice of them. No notice? Absurd. Why, I have taught them how to bicycle. Yes, but that is not everything. Friends should show friendliness. You hold them at arm's length. You keep yourself aloof. You have no camaraderie. I looked him hard in the face. He blinked his watery eyes. I knew he was sincere, a good honest anarchist, but he expected too much of me. Rothenberg, I said firmly, I call this coercion. No, no, not coercion, but comrades ought to be sociable. It is intolerable, I exclaimed. What is anarchy for, if we are each to be forced into talking to one another against our wills? I have done my week's work. I have cooked you good food. I have lent you my bicycle. And still you complain of me. The banded despots, which was our technical phrase to wit for the British government, could not do worse than that. Nor as bad as that either. They do not insist that one should make oneself agreeable. They are amply satisfied if man pays man's taxes. He twirled the non-existent moustache till he put a visible point on it. His fingers twitched painfully. I only tell you what the comrades are saying, he replied, in a deprecatory way. They find that you do not behave to them like a sister. In one word, they think that you give yourself the heirs of a superior person. You pose as an aristo. They believed when you came that you would amalgamate freely with us. We want no women who decline to fraternize. This was too much for my temper. I broke into open mutiny. I shall resign, I cried. You are bringing to bear against me the intolerable tyranny of public opinion. I shall go back to the freedom and comfort of the despots. His jaw dropped at this resolve. His eye glanced feelingly sideways towards the bicycle. For a moment I feared Commissioner Lynn would pin him. No, no, he cried. You must not do that. We all like and respect you. We wish you to remain, but we wish you to be a sister. Give me time to consider, to communicate with the comrades. Not one moment I answered, hardly liking this turn. Hand me over my money and let me go. I have worked for a week, and the laborer is worthy, at least, of his traveling expenses. I returned to London. He hurried back to the group who hung about the door of the community cottage, and spoke to them in low tones. Then he came again as omboy. All the comrades say, if you will reconsider your decision, they will no longer insist upon your altering your demeanor. I will not reconsider it, I replied, growing really frightened. For I caught Bayon's eye. I go at once, give me my money, and let me return to the world I came from. They debated again. Commissioner Lynn watched the case in my interest. Then one of the others approached. It was Leon, Caliban, the man with protruding lips. I had my hand on my bicycle, and was ready to mount it. This machine is ours, he said calmly, putting his face close to mine. Whatever any comrade brings into the community is common property. We will give you your dividend and let you go. But this you must leave with us. My blood was up. The old eve within me was roused. The American eagle in my heart flapped its wings. I remembered how my fathers had fought at Lexington. They were quite a property to me. Sir, I exclaimed, in my most commanding voice, you shall not touch my machine. If you venture to detain it, I tried to remember the worst phrases I had learnt at Floor and Fingalmen's. I will move for a mandamus, to compel you to show cause why you should escape the penalties of Premunairi. What it all meant I do not know, but I am sure the effect upon Caliban's mind was most salutary. I have ever since had a vastly increased respect for the law of England. They conferred again for a few minutes, with one eye on the commissioner. Then Rothenberg came forward once more as spokesman. Will you try it again for one week, he asked in a really grieved voice? We shall be sorry to lose you. Not for one day, I answered, a furtive gleam in Commissioner Lin's eye, lending me courage. Give me what I have earned and let me go. I asked for it with the greater confidence because I felt sure, in my own mind, I had done more effective work in the week than any of them. They paid me, murmuring. I retired to my cubicle, packed my knapsack in haste, returned to my machine, and laid my hand on it firmly. But within I was trembling like an Italian greyhound. Then I jumped into the saddle and waved my hand to my sworn brothers with an affectation of courage. Monsieur, I said, and to call them monsieur was to excommunicate myself, to deny camaraderie. Monsieur, you are a mass of conventions. I wish you the very good morning. Your rules are too stringent for me. I cannot away with them. I find myself too individual, too anarchic, for the anarchists. Then I waved my hand again and set my face sternly towards civilization, despotism, and the flesh-pots of Egypt. I was weary of dissent and longed for the Catholic Church of Humanity. I must go back to London and be once more a typewriter. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Typewriter Girl For the first three or four miles I kept on peddling steadily. I grazed the corners, not even daring to look back, for I was haunted by a terror that lay on with his lips was on the track behind me. But I heard only the cries of the anarchist babies calling to their playmate to come back in Czech and Yiddish, when I had escaped from the intricate tangle of Sussex lanes and found myself once more on the Queen's Highway of England. Under the protecting aegis of Britannia's shield, in spite of the blood of the pilgrim fathers, I paused to reflect upon the week's adventures. A bicycle in full swing I maintain is not an ideal place for calm reflection, hence the face of the bicyclist. Moreover, I had started without due attention to my screws, in my eagerness to escape from my sworn brothers, the anarchists, into the open air of banded despotism. So I called a halt and dismounted for a moment to tighten my loose joints metaphorically and literally. My knees still trembled under me, and the wraith of Caliban, panting over in the rear, still pursed its thick lips in my face to mock me. I felt like pliable when he abandoned Christian at the outset of his pilgrimage and slank back from the first slough to the city of destruction. For in the background of my heart I still loved and admired these simple earnest souls, eager after their kind to right human wrong and to attain human perfection. I saw their comic side, but I saw also that the root of the matter was in them. They had noble enthousiasms, all save Caliban. He was the serpent in that ten-acred Eden. When I got underway again, at a good easy pace, beneath rifts of blue through white summer cloud, I began to be aware that my first fortnight of free life had culminated in two distinct and acknowledged failures. I had failed to accommodate myself to the environment at Floor and Fingalmans. I had failed to accommodate myself to the public opinion of the anarchists at Pinfold. Environment was triumphing all along the line. I felt constrained to regard myself as one of the unfittest who do not survive, in whom no man pities. Resolving myself into committee of finance I found I had been acting with reckless extravagance. Cash in hand amounted to four and seven pence, of which some four shillings represented my week's earnings and seven pence my balance from the bounty of St. Nicholas, after settling for two weeks' rent in London with sundry expenses. It occurred to me now, too late, that I had practically been paying twice over for lodging, once in London, by cash, and once at the community, by giving my labor, in return, for a mere box of a cubicle. I felt so proud of this discovery in economics, however, that I was almost inclined to condone the error for the sake of its detection. In other ways also I was demonstrably worse off than when I started. I had worn my pretty brown cycling suit for a week in the stiff clay fields, not to mention the fact that I had splashed it with mud in the vicarious effort to rectify the lines of grace in my comrade's riding, and I had done my tires no good on the rough roads of Sussex. All together I was forced to confess to myself with shame that I returned to London after this escapade, not only a wiser, but a poorer woman to crown all I had no longer the use of my typewriter, the thirty pieces of silver for which I had betrayed, my entire stock in trade, the instrument of production, were spent and lost to me. St. Nicholas had proved but a broken reed. I had leaned upon him and he had pierced my hand. Never again should I trust the hypocritical smile on the face of that bland and benign impostor. I peddled on at half-speed. Little vocalists, ignorant of the name of Mendelssohn, caroled songs without words in the sky overhead, but my heart was heavy. Yet after all I had had my amusement, and bought my experience. A pheasant screamed. I mistook it for Caliban. Mr. Commissioner looked up in my face and sympathized. It was still early afternoon, for Saturday was a half-holiday. We had struck work at noon and dined before proceeding to the division of profits. June was almost come, and the days were lengthening. I hoped to reach London long before the hour at which the banded despots compelled us to light our red lamps in the public interest. Yet I was so delighted to have flung off the yoke of anarchy that I could have fallen on the neck of a banded despot had he appeared at that moment. Were it but in the guise of a Sussex county constable, the country smiled. If Eklentine, be sweetbriar, it bordered the road. If honeysuckle it scented the cottage porches. I rode on and on, glad to be free once more, though sorry to be poor, and doubtful where I could turn for the next few days bored and lodging. The words of the anarchist alphabet which I had learned, from the one British brother at Penfold, recurred strongly to my mind. F is the freedom that Old England brags about, if you haven't got a dinner, why you're free to go without. I felt sure I might soon taste that common privilege secured to all of us by Magna Carta. In this mood I coasted recklessly down a slight hill, near Holmwood, with my feet on the rest and my hands, too unconsciously removed from the handlebar. Behind me lay the wheeled. In front rose the trenchant rampart of the north-downs. At the foot of the slope was a sudden turn. As I reached the bottom my hand gripped the brake, too late. I was aware of a foreign body rushing eagerly round the curve, with flying fair hair, next of a considerable impact. Then of myself on the road, sprawling, and the foreign body with the fair hair, wringing its hands beside me. She was a woman, fortunately. I raised myself with dignity. It is always a good plan, in case of collision, to take the aggressive first. You came round that corner rather fast, considering how sharp it is. I observed in a coldly critical tone, whose effect was perhaps rather marred by the fact that my fingers were torn and bleeding. This was sheer bluff, and I knew it. Oh, I beg your pardon, she cried, clapping her hands to her ears in an agonized little paroxys. I saw that she was slight and fair, and evidently frightened. A wisp of a figure, a fluff of amber hair, blue eyes like April. It was a nasty spill I went on, growing severer in proportion, as I realized that my antagonist was little inclined to defend herself, which was a meanness on my part. You should slow round corners. I hope you have not hurt yourself. She set to cry all at once. A little, she answered, or rather, a great deal. She was a timid, small atomy. I began to regret my hasty sternness. The more so as I knew I was at least as much to blame as she, for I had run down the hill without my fingers on the brake, and had trusted to chance at the turn of the corner. All this, too, I admit with a wheel that had already been badly buckled. Happily Commissioner Lin did not take it into his head to seize her. I tried to console her, then I turned to my machine, which shows that I am a woman first and a cyclist afterwards, for I notice that your born cyclist looks first at her wheels, and only proceeds in the second place to inquire which of her limbs is broken. When I saw its condition, I recognized at once that my cup was full. All, all was lost. The front wheel was twisted out of human recognition. The tire was punctured. I saw seven and six pence, worth of repairs, staring me full in the face before I could fall back upon my base of operations in London. I blushed to confess it. But I followed her example. Lexington faded away. I burst into tears outright, and sank down on the ground by my broken cycle. I suppose the spill had shattered my nerves. Mr. Commissioner squatted on his haunches and stared at me. How long we might have sat there, mingling tears together. It were hard to say. Had not St. George come by in the nick of time, soared in hand, to rescue us, he was not mounted as usual on his milk-white steed, but more prosaically seated on the box of a dog cart. Yet what matters that? A cavalier is a cavalier, be he horseman or gigman. The knights who ride in all their pride around the frieze of the Parthenon are only knights in virtue of their possession of the noble quadruped, platonically adored by the Grand Vizier and his satraps. So I knew it was a St. George, though in place of a lance he had a lance in his instrument case. To unimaginative eyes he was the village doctor. He pulled up his horse by the roadside and called out to us cheerily. Anything wrong? Can I be of use to you? Not for me I broke out, fearing he would want to dress my wounds and be paid for it. I am not hurt at all. About this lady I do not know. She canned against me, and somebody seems to have fallen. St. George dismounted, if one can dismount from a dog cart. A genial giant. He looked at my hands which were torn and bleeding, and ingrained with sand and dirt from the road. Excuse me, he said gravely. This is worse than you think. You have had a nasty wrench. And besides, the soil contains— I know all that, I answered. The germs of Lakchaw. I have gone through an ambulance course, and helped the trained nurse at an East End settlement. Well, the germs must take their chance. Tetanus microbes have a right to live like the rest of us, I suppose. My manner was perhaps defiant. He smiled not unkindly, a boundless pacific of a smile. His ears alone checked it. Ha! an anarchist! He inquired glancing back in the direction whence I had come. Yes, I answered, from pinfold. Tired of it? Very much so. I am on my way back to London and the banded despots. He smiled again. You must let me dress your hand, he said persuasively. I drew back an alarm. Oh, no, I cried, for I had nothing to pay him with. Nonsense, he went on, with kind persistence, divining my thought in the hot flush that came over me. This is not a professional matter, a mere passing courtesy to a lady in distress. Let me drive you to my surgery, and then on to Holmwood Station. You won't be able to get those machines mended, so as to return to town tonight. I can pack them both in, and your friend will come with you. There was no resisting the frank kindliness of his big, genial smile. He was broad, shouldered, and large-hearted, with a face to match. I clambered up into the dog cart, and the fair girl sat behind. How he annihilated space, so as to pack in the bicycles as well, I have no idea. But the age of miracles is not past, nor yet the age of chivalry. St. George convinced me that both still exist. At a moment of despair, he revived my waning belief in human nature. At the surgery he washed my bleeding hands tenderly, spread an antiseptic ointment, and a cool rag on top, and bound it all up with womanly solicitude. At a faint protest I murmured at the end, how much am I in your debt? But he smiled his expansive smile and repeated, nothing, nothing. Then he examined the fair girl, who was the exact counterpart of Mikaila in the opera, and pronounced her sound in wind and limb, low nervously shaken. Mikaila wept at learning she was not hurt. She would have fainted, I think, if he had told her she was injured. When our wounds had been assuaged, he drove us down to the station. On the way Mikaila grew gradually calm enough to communicate her misfortunes. I want to get to Leith Hill, she said. I was going there when I was so unlucky as to upset this lady. My heart pricked me, but I refrained from confessing. Leith Hill, St. George cried, with his hearty, great laugh. Why, you are five miles out for it. You have taken the wrong road. You were straight on the way to Horsham when I met you. Oh, I was afraid of that, Mikaila exclaimed, beginning to cry again. She had a genius for tears that might have been utilized with great advantage for purposes of irrigation. I was cycling with a gentleman. Indeed, I put in coldly, but I am engaged to him. Of course, I answered. Having left Anarchy and all its works nine miles behind me, I affected to believe no young lady could be bicycling with a man unless he were engaged to her. And we kept together as far as dorking, Mikaila went on. But there I stopped to speak to some friends I met by chance in the street, and my escort went round the corner to buy some cigarettes. And when I hurried on again to catch him up, I could not discover him, and I am afraid I must go back alone to London. She spoke as though London were in the heart of Africa. The doctor laughed. You took quite the wrong turn, he said, or rather you kept straight on, when you should have swerved to the right. That unhappy young man must be seeking you now, on the summit of Leith Hill, with many qualms of conscience. Do you think so? Mikaila cried, wringing her hands once more. She was a study in helplessness. I could feel she was rich, brought up in cotton wool. And for her sake I was glad of it, for I wondered what she would do if she should ever find herself face to face with real misfortune.