"THIS IS SOCIALISM!"
The working of George's oars and the rippling of water on the bow were
all that broke the silence as the skiff moved across the harbour.
Suddenly Ned lost sight of the swinging lantern that Josie had held at
the little landing stairs and without it could not distinguish the house
they had left. Here and there behind them were lights of various kinds
and sizes, shining blurred through the faint drizzle. He saw similar
lights in front and on either hand. Yet the darkness was so deep now that
but for the lantern on the fore thwarts he could not have seen George at
all.
There were no sounds but those of their rowing.
Nellie sat erect, half hidden in the umbrella Ned held over her. George
pulled a long sweeping stroke, bringing it up with a jerk that made the
rowlocks sound sharply. When he bent back they could feel the light boat
lift under them. He looked round now and then, steering himself by some
means inscrutable to the others, who without him would have been lost on
this watery waste.
All at once George stopped rowing. "Listen!" he exclaimed.
There was a swishing sound as of some great body rushing swiftly through
the water near them. It ceased suddenly; then as suddenly sounded again.
"Sharks about," remarked George, in a matter-of-fact tone, rowing again
with the same long sweeping stroke as before.
Nellie did not stir. She was used to such incidents, evidently. But Ned
had never before been so close to the sea-tigers and felt a creepy
sensation. He would much rather, he thought, be thirty-five miles from
water with a lame horse than in the company of sharks on a dark wet night
in the middle of Sydney harbour.
"Are they dangerous?" he asked, with an attempt at being indifferent.
"I Suppose so," answered George, in a casual way. "If one of them
happened to strike the boat it might be unpleasant. But they're terrible
cowards."
"Are there many?"
"In the harbour? Oh, yes, it swarms with them. You see that light," and
George pointed to the left, where one of the lights had detached itself
from the rest and shone close at hand. "That's on a little island and in
the convict days hard cases were put on it--I think it was on that
island or one like it--and the sharks saw that none of them swam
ashore."
"They seem to have used those convicts pretty rough," remarked Ned.
"Rough's no name," said George after a few minutes. "It was as vile and
unholy a thing, that System, as anything they have in Russia. A friend of
mine has been working the thing up for years, and is going to start
writing it up soon. You must read it when it comes out. It'll make you
hate everything that has a brass button on. I tell you, this precious Law
of ours has something to answer for. It was awful, horrible, and it's not
all gone yet, as I know."
He rowed on for a space in silence.
"There's one story I think of, sometimes, rowing across here, and hearing
the sharks splash. At one place they used to feed the dead convicts to
the sharks so as to keep them swarming about, and once they flung one in
before he was dead."
Nellie gave a stifled exclamation. Ned was too horror-struck to answer;
above the clicking of the oars in the rowlocks he fancied he could hear
the swish of the savage sharks rushing through the water at their living
prey. He was not sorry when George again rested on his oars to say:
"Will you land at the point this time, Nellie?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well, here you are! We've had a pretty fastish pull over, considering."
Two or three more strokes brought them to a flight of low stone steps. By
the light of the lantern Ned and Nellie were disembarked.
"I won't keep you talking in the rain, Nellie," said George. "I'm sorry
you are going away so soon, Hawkins. We could have given you some boating
if you had time. You might come out to-morrow afternoon--that's this
afternoon--if you haven't anything better to do."
"I'm very much obliged, but I was going to meet Mr. Geisner."
"That settles it then. Anybody would sooner have a yarn with Geisner.
We'll fix some boating when you're down again. You'll come again. Won't
he, Nellie? Good-bye and a pleasant trip! Good-bye, Nellie." And having
shaken hands by dint of much arm stretching, George pushed his boat away
from the steps and pulled away.
Nellie stood for a minute watching the lantern till it turned the point,
heading eastward. Then straightening the waterproof over her dress she
took Ned's arm and they walked off.
"He's a nice sort of chap," remarked Ned, referring to George.
"Yes, he's a great oarsman. He rows over to see Josie. Mrs. Stratton
calls them Hero and Leander."
"Why? Who were they?"
"Oh! Leander was Hero's sweetheart and used to swim across the water to
her so that nobody should see him."
"They're to be married, I suppose?"
"Yes, next month."
"Those Strattons are immense--what's that noise, Nellie?" he
interrupted himself. A strange groaning from close at hand had startled
him.
"Somebody asleep, I suppose," she answered, more accustomed to the Sydney
parks. But she stopped while, under the umbrella, he struck a match with
a bushman's craft.
By the light of the match they saw a great hollow in the rocks that
bordered on one side the gravelled footway. The rocks leaned out and took
in part of the path, which widened underneath. Sheltered thus from the
rain and wind a number of men were sleeping, outcast, some in blankets,
some lying on the bare ground. The sound they had beard was a medley of
deep breathing and snoring. It was but a glimpse they caught as the match
flared up for a minute. It went out and they could see nothing, only the
faint outline of path and rock. They could hear still the moaning sound
that had attracted them.
They walked on without speaking for a time.
"How did you know the Strattons?" resumed Ned.
"At the picture gallery one Sunday. She was writing some article
defending their being opened on the 'Sawbath' and I had gone in. I like
pictures--some pictures, you know. We got talking and she showed me
things in the pictures I'd never dreamed of before. We stayed there till
closing time and she asked me to come to see her.
"She's immense!"
"I'm so glad you like her. Everybody does."
"Has she any children?"
"Four. Such pretty children. She and her husband are so fond of each
other. I can't imagine people being happier."
"I suppose they're pretty well off, Nellie?"
"No, I don't think they're what you'd call well off. They're comfortable,
you know. She has to put on a sort of style, she's told me, to take the
edge off her ideas. If you wear low-necked dress you can talk the wildest
things, she says, and I think it's so. That's business with her. She has
to mix with low-necked people a little. It's her work."
"Does she have to work?"
"No. I suppose not. But I think she prefers to. She never writes what she
doesn't think, which is pleasanter than most writers find it. Then I
should think she'd feel more independent, however much she cares for her
husband. And then she has a little girl who's wonderfully clever at
colours, so she's saving up to send her to Paris when she's old enough.
They think she'll become a great painter--the little girl, I mean."
"What does that Josie do?"
"She's a music-teacher."
"They're all clever, aren't they?"
"Yes. But, of course, they've all had a chance. Ford is the most
remarkable. He never got any education to speak of until he was over 20.
The Strattons have been born as they live now. They've had some hard
times, I think, from what they say now and then, but they've always been
what's called 'cultured.' Everybody ought to be as they are."
"I think so, too, Nellie, but can everybody be as well off as they are?"
"They're not well off, I told you, Ned. If they spend £5 a week it's as
much as they do. Of course that sounds a lot, but since if things were
divided fairly everybody who works ought to get far more, it's not
extravagant riches. Wine and water doesn't cost more than beer, and the
things they've got were picked up bit by bit. It's what they've got and
the way it's put that looks so nice. There's nothing but what's pretty,
and she is always adding something or other. She idolises Art and
worships everything that's beautiful."
"Do you think it's really that sort of thing that makes people better?"
said Ned.
"How can it help making them better if their hearts are good? When what
is ugly and miserable in life jars on one at every turn because one loves
so what is harmonious and beautiful, there seems to me to be only one of
two things to be done, either to shut your eyes to others and become a
selfish egotist or to try with all your strength to bring a beautiful
life to others. I'm speaking, of course, particularly of people like the
Strattons. But I think that hatred of what is repulsive is a big
influence with all of us."
"You mean of dirty streets, stuffy houses and sloppy clothes?"
"Oh! More than that. Of ugly lives, of ugly thoughts, of others, and
ourselves perhaps, just existing like working bullocks when we might be
so happy, of living being generally such a hateful thing when it might be
so sweet!"
"I suppose the Strattons are happy?"
"Not as happy as everybody might be if the world was right. They
understand music and pictures and colouring and books. He reads science a
lot and paints--funny mixture, isn't it?--and she teaches the
children a great deal. They go boating together. They both work at what
they like and are clever enough to be fairly sure of plenty to do. They
have friends who take an interest in the things that interest them and
their children are little angels. They aren't short of money for anything
they need because they really live simply and so have plenty to spend.
And, then, they are such kind people. She has a way with her that makes
you feel better no matter how miserable you've been. That's happiness, I
think, as far as it goes. But she feels much as I do about children. She
is so afraid that they will not be happy and blames herself for being
selfish because other people's children never have any happiness and
would do anything to alter things so that it would be different. Still,
of course, they have a happy life as far as the life itself goes. I
think, the way they live, they must both feel as if they were each better
and knew more and cared for each other more the older they get."
"It must be very pleasant," said Ned, after a pause. They had reached the
higher ground and were passing under branches from which the rain-drops,
collected, fell in great splashes on the umbrella.
"Yes," said Nellie, after another pause.
"Do they go to church?" Ned began again.
"I never heard them say they did."
"They're not religious then?"
"What do you call religious?"
"They don't believe anything, do they?"
"I think they believe a very great deal. Far more than most people who
pretend to believe and don't," answered Nellie. There was a longer pause.
Then:
"What do they believe?"
"In Socialism."
"Socialism! Look here, Nellie! What is Socialism?"
They had passed the fig-tree avenue, turning off it by a cross path,
where a stone fountain loomed up gigantic in the gloom and where they
could hear a rushing torrent splashing. They were in the region of
gas-lamps again. Nellie walked along with a swiftness that taxed Ned to
keep abreast of her. She seemed to him to take pleasure in the wet night.
In spite of their long walking of the day before and the lateness of the
hour she had still the same springy step and upright carriage. As they
passed under the lamps he saw her face, damp with the rain, but flushed
with exercise, her eyes gleaming, her mouth open a little. He would have
liked to have taken her hand as she steadied the umbrella, walking arm in
arm with him, but he did not dare. She was not that sort of girl.
He had felt a proud sense of proprietorship in her at the Strattons'. It
had pleased him to see how they all liked her, but pleased him most of
all that she could talk as an equal with these people, to him so
brilliant and clever. The faint thought of her which had been
unconsciously with him for years began to take shape. How pleasant it
would be to be like the Strattons, to live with Nellie always, and have
friends to come and see them on a Saturday night! How a man would work
for a home like that, so full of music, so full of song, so full of
beauty, so full of the thoughts which make men like unto gods and of the
love which makes gods like unto men! Why should not this be for him as
well as for others when, as Nellie said, it really cost only what rich
people thought poverty, and far less than the workingman's share if
things were fairly divided? And why should it not be for his mates as
well as for himself? And why, most of all, why not for the wretched
dwellers in the slums of Sydney, the weary women, the puny children, the
imbruted men? For the first time in his life, he coveted such things with
a righteous covetousness, without hating those who had them, recognising
without words that to have and to appreciate such a life was to desire
ceaselessly to bring it within the reach of every human being. He could
not see how this was all to come about. He would have followed blindly
anybody who played the Marseillaise as Geisner did. He was ready to echo
any ringing thought that appealed to him as good and noble. But he did
not know. He could see that in the idea called by Mrs. Stratton "the
Cause" there was an understood meaning which fitted his aspirations and
his desires. He had gathered, his narrow bigotry washed from him, that
between each and all of those whom he had just left there was a bond of
union, a common thought, an accepted way. He had met them strangers, and
had left them warm friends. The cartoonist, white with rage at the memory
of the high rectory wall that shut the beautiful from the English poor;
the gloomy poet whose verses rang still in his ears and would live in his
heart for ever; the gray-eyed woman who idolised Art, as Nellie said, and
fanned still the fire in which her nearest kin had perished; the
pressman, with his dream of a free press that would not serve the money
power; the painter to whom the chiselled stone spoke; the pretty girl who
had been cradled amid barricades; the quiet musician for whom the
bitterness of death was past, born leader of men, commissioned by that
which stamped him what he was; the dressmaking girl, passionately
pleading the cause of Woman; even himself, drinking in this new life as
the ground sucks up the rain after a drought; between them all there was
a bond--"the Cause." What was this Cause? To break down all walls, to
overthrow all wrong, to destroy the ugliness of human life, to free
thought, to elevate Art, to purify Love, to lift mankind higher, to give
equality to women, to--to--he did not see exactly where he himself
came in--all this was the Cause. Yet he did not quite understand it,
just the same. Nor did he know how it was all to come about. But he
intended to find out. So he asked Nellie what the Strattons believed,
feeling instinctively that there must be belief in something.
"What do they believe?" he had asked.
"In Socialism," Nellie had answered.
"Socialism! Look here, Nellie! What is Socialism?" he had exclaimed.
They neared a lamp, shining mistily in the drizzle. Close at hand was a
seat, facing the grass. In the dim light was what looked like a bundle of
rags thrown over the seat and trailing to the ground. Nellie stopped. It
was a woman, sleeping.
There, under a leafy tree, whose flat branches shielded her somewhat from
the rain, slept the outcast. She had dozed off into slumber, sitting
there alone. She was not lying, only sitting there, her arm flung over
the back of the seat, her head fallen on her shoulder, her face upturned
to the pitying night. It was the face of a street-walker, bloated and
purplish, the poor pretence of colour gone, the haggard lines showing,
all the awful life of her stamped upon it; yet in the lamplight, upturned
in its helplessness, sealed with the sleep that had come at last to her,
sore-footed, as softly as it might have come to a little baby falling
asleep amid its play, there enhaloed it the incarnation of triumphant
suffering. On the swollen cheeks of the homeless woman the night had shed
its tears of rain. There amid the wind and wet, in the darkness, alone
and weary, shame-worn and sin-sodden, scorned by the Pharisee, despised
by the vicious, the harlot slept and forgot. Calm as death itself was the
face of her. Softly and gently she breathed, as does the heavy-eyed bride
whose head the groom's arm pillows. Nature, our Mother Nature, had taken
her child for a moment to her breast and the outcast rested there awhile,
all sorrows forgotten, all desires stilled, all wrongs and sins and shame
obscured and blotted out. She envied none. Equal was she with all. Great
indeed is Sleep, which teaches us day by day that none is greater in
God's sight than another, that as we all came equal and naked from the
unknown so naked and equal we shall all pass on to the Unknown again,
that this life is but as a phantasy in which it is well to so play one's
part that nightly one falls asleep without fear and meets at last the
great sleep without regret!
But, oh, the suffering that had earned for this forsaken sister the sweet
sleep she slept! Oh, the ceaseless offering of this sin-stained body, the
contumelious jeers she met, the vain search through streets and avenues
this wild night, for the blind lust that would give her shelter and food!
Oh, the efforts to beg, the saints who would not wait to listen to such a
one, the sinners who were as penniless! Oh, the shivering fits that walk,
walk, walk, when the midnight hours brought silence and solitude, the
stamps that racked her poor limbs when she laid down, exhausted, in
dripping garments, on the hard park seats, the aching feet that refused
at last the ceaseless tramping in their soaked and broken shoes! Oh, the
thoughts of her, the memories, the dreams of what had been and what might
be, as she heard the long hours toll themselves away! Oh, the bitter
tears she may have shed, and the bitter words she may have uttered, and
the bitter hate that may have overflowed in her against that vague
something we call Society! And, oh, the sweet sleep that fell upon her at
last, unexpected--as the end of our waiting shall come, when we weary
most--falling upon her as the dew falls, closing her weary eye-lids,
giving her peace and rest and strength to meet another to-day!
Ned stopped when Nellie did, of course. Neither spoke. A sense of great
shame crept upon him, he hardly knew why. He could not look at Nellie. He
wished she would move on and leave him there. The silent pathos of that
sleeping face cried to him. Lowest of the low, filthy, diseased probably,
her face as though the womanliness had been stamped from her by a brutal
heel of iron, she yet was a woman. This outcast and Nellie were of one
sex; they all three were of one Humanity.
A few hours before and he would have passed her by with a glance of
contemptuous pity. But now, he seemed to have another sense awakened in
him, the sense that feels, that sympathises in the heart with the hearts
of others. It was as though he himself slept there. It was as though he
understood this poor sister, whom the merciful called erring, and the
merciless wicked, but of whom the just could only say: she is what we in
her place must have become. She was an atom of the world of suffering by
which his heart was being wrung. She was one upon whom the Wrong fell
crushingly, and she was helpless to resist it. He was strong, and he had
given no thought to those who suffered as this poor outcast suffered. He
had lived his own narrow life, and shared the sin, and assisted Wrong by
withholding his full strength from the side of Right. And upon him was
the responsibility for this woman. He, individually, had kicked her into
the streets, and dragged her footsore through the parks, and cast her
there to bear testimony against him to every passer-by; he, because he
had not fought, whole-souled, with those who seek to shatter the
something which, without quite understanding, he knew had kicked and
dragged and outcasted this woman sleeping here. Ned always took his
lessons personally. It was perhaps, a touch in him of the morbidity that
seizes so often the wandering Arabs of the western plains.
Suddenly Nellie let go the umbrella, leaving it in his hand. She bent
forward, stooped down. The strong young face, proud and sad, so pure in
its maiden strength, glowing with passionate emotion, was laid softly
against that bruised and battered figurehead of shipwrecked womanhood;
Nellie had kissed the sleeping harlot on the cheek.
Then, standing erect, she turned to Ned, her lips parted, her face
quivering, her eyes flashing, her hand resting gently on the unconscious
woman.
"You want to know what Socialism is," she said, in a low, trembling
voice. "This is Socialism." And bending down again she kissed the poor
outcast harlot a second time. The woman never stirred. Seizing Ned's arm
Nellie drew him away, breaking into a pace that made him respect her
prowess as a walker ever after.
Until they reached home neither spoke. Nellie looked sterner than ever.
Ned was in a whirl of mental excitement. Perhaps if he had been less
natural himself the girl's passionate declaration of fellowship with all
who are wronged and oppressed--for so he interpreted it by the light of
his own thoughts--might have struck him as a little bit stagey. Being
natural, he took it for what it was, an outburst of genuine feeling. But
if Nellie had really designed it she could not have influenced him more
deeply. Their instincts, much akin, had reached the same idea by
different ways. Her spontaneous expression of feeling had fitted in her
mind to the Cause which possessed her as a religious idea, and had capped
in him the human yearnings which were leading him to the same goal. And
so, what with his overflowing sympathy for the sleeping outcast, and his
swelling love for Nellie, and the chaotic excitement roused in him by all
he had seen and heard during the preceding hours, that kiss burnt itself
into his imagination and became to him all his life through as a sacred
symbol. From that moment his life was forecast--a woman tempted him and
he ate.
For that kiss Ned gave himself into the hands of a fanaticism, eating of
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, striving to become as a god knowing
good from evil. For that kiss he became one of those who have the Desire
which they know can never be satiated in them. For that kiss he
surrendered himself wholly to the faith of her whose face was sad and
stern-mouthed, content ever after if with his whole life he could fill
one of the ruts that delay the coming of Liberty's triumphal car. To that
turning-point in his life, other events led up, certainly, events which
of themselves would likely have forced him to stretch out his hand and
pluck and eat. It is always that way with life changes. Nothing depends
altogether upon one isolated act. But looking back in after years, when
the lesser influences had cleared away in the magic glass of Time, Ned
could ever see, clear and distinct as though it were but a minute since,
the stern red lips of that pale, proud, passionate face pressed in
trembling sisterliness to the harlot's purple cheek.
As she put the key in the door Nellie turned to Ned, speaking for the
first time:
"You'd better ask Geisner about Socialism when you see him to-morrow--I
mean this afternoon."
Ned nodded without speaking. Silently he let her get his candle, and
followed her up the stairs to the room concerning which the card was
displayed in the window below. She turned down the bedclothes, then held
out her hand.
"Good-night or good-morning, whichever it is!" she said, smiling at him.
"You can sleep as long as you like Sunday morning, you know. If you want
anything knock the wall there."
"Good-night, Nellie!" he answered, slowly, holding her fingers in his.
Then, before she could stop him, he lifted her hand to his lips. She did
not snatch it away but looked him straight in the eyes, without speaking;
then went out, shutting the door softly behind her. She understood him
partly; not altogether, then.
Left alone in the scantily-furnished room, Ned undressed, blew out the
candle and went to bed. But until he fell asleep, and in his dreams
afterwards, he still saw Nellie bending down over a purpled, sin-stained
face, and heard her sweet voice whisper tremblingly:
"This is Socialism!"