_VIVE L’ANARCHIE!_
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 divined 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 labourer 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 the
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 type-writer
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 in 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
Arimaspian whom the gryphon pursues. Nor did I pause or halt till I
reached my own bower. Safe back in that stronghold, 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
arm-chair, 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 anarchists 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 so it was. 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 span down the road,
with a Tam o’ Shanter on my head, and my loose hair travelling after me
like a Skye 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, scudding gaily down hill, or luffing against head-winds 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 Symplegades. 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 a way 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 Vale of Mickleham. Spring had put on her best frock for my
visit. I rode at a good pace. Commissioner Lin 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 Weald of Sussex. A still, pearly-pale
sky hung over the misty level. Despondent donkeys munched furze-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 Achæan 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 Margaritone’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 at all, ’twas something wrong in the
gearing.
A mile or two from Horsham I diverged, as directed, down a cross-road to
the left. ’Twas a level lane in champaign country, bordered by a low
hedge of close-clipped maple. The fields were of leaden clay—so much I
saw where they were ploughed—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 a maze, running
aimlessly hither and thither. One after another, as I tried it, led me
back by circumvolutions to a rustic Clapham Junction, the centre of
Nowhere. Judge if I was nonplussed.
At one of the cottages I reined 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, ’tis 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 furriners.”
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 honour with all Massachusetts folk to have gone over in the
_Mayflower_. She was a sloop of 180 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 new-comers. 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 bain’t the sort o’ folk for the likes o’
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 grey-leaved
willow drooped into it; Naiads lurked among the broad green disks 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 in thus seeking to fraternise
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 parboiled 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 Mr., as my Cambridge friend had warned me that that
harmless prefix acted on your anarchist like the picador’s dart on the
bulls of Andalusia.
“Rottenborough?” the old woman answered, transforming his name, as is
the wont 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
eglantine. 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, anæmic 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, sempstresses, labourers. We do not desire
or court the aid of the _bourgeois_.”
Now, I can endure most things, but not to be called a _bourgeoise_. I
coloured a little, I suppose; at any rate, I answered, “I am an
_ouvrière_ myself. I have nothing to do with the _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
thorough-going 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 recognise my kind. I must go and join
them.’”
“Ha! He was a co-operator. A voluntary co-operator. 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 temporise, “in my uncompromisingly
anarchic anarchism of anarchy.” I thought I could hardly be more
mutinous than that. If ’twas rebellion they wanted, I was honestly
prepared to rebel against the rebels.
He drew out a cheap gun-metal watch. “It is dinner-time,” he said,
temporising 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 anarchist 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.