burial. There was no more ceremony than in a civilised country is given
to the interment of a dog, and in the house I only heard the old man
referred to twice. The youngest of the women said, “He was a dear old
idiot,” but the mistress of the house shut her mouth like a trap on the
words: “One the less.”
But a day or two later I found upon the grave a pretty wreath of wild
flowers, and that evening under a hedge I came on a little girl, who
was crying softly to herself. I had not seen her before and was puzzled
to know where she came from. She said her name was Audrey and she lived
at the next farm, where they were very unkind to her, and she used to
meet the old man in the fields and he was very nice to her, and when
she heard he was dead she wanted to die too. The men on the farm were
rough and dirty, and the women were all spiteful and suspicious.
When I asked her if she had put the wreath on my old friend’s grave,
she was frightened and made me promise not to tell anyone. Of course I
promised, and I took her home. As we parted we engaged to meet again in
the wood half-way between our two houses.
VII: SLAVERY
In my own country I have often remarked the cruel lack of consideration
with which women treat their servants, but here I was appalled by the
bland inhumanity of the conduct of these women toward myself. I was
given no wages and no liberty. (I could not keep my engagement with
Audrey.) I was a hind, and lived in horror of the degradation into
which I saw that I must sink. Day after day of the cruel work of the
fields brought me to a torpid condition in which I could but blindly
obey the orders given me when I returned home. Especially I dreaded
the evenings on those days when the mistress of the house went to the
district stores, for she always returned out of temper and found fault
with everything I did. Also, when she was out of temper, her readings
from the Book of Christmas were twice as long as usual.
I was some weeks in this melancholy condition, not knowing how I could
make my escape and indeed despairing of it, when I was sent on a
message to the next farm. On the way back I met Audrey, at the sight of
whose young beauty I forgot the despair which latterly had seized me.
I rushed to her and caught her up in my arms and kissed her. Thereupon
she said she would never go back, but would stay with me forever. I
could not deny her, for I had found in her the incentive which I had
lost in my growing indifference to my fate. She was but a child, and
the only gracious being I had met in this ill-fated country. Hand
in hand we wandered until dusk, when I hid her in the hay-loft and
returned to my duties.
I was severely chidden for my long absence and ordered during the
next week to wear the Skirt of Punishment, a garment of the shape
fashionable among women at the time of the great change. Poor Audrey
could not help laughing when she saw me in it, but having no other
clothes I had to put off all thought of escape until I was released
from punishment. Never before had I realised how cramped the mind could
become from the confinement of the legs. My week in a skirt came very
near to breaking my spirit. Another four days of it and I believe I
should have grovelled in submissive adoration before my tyrant. Only my
nightly visits to Audrey kept me in courage and resolution.
VIII: A STRANGE WOOING
The youngest of the women in the homestead was the last to speak to
me. She was dark and not uncomely, and I had often noticed her at the
readings smile rather fearfully at her own thoughts. Once my eyes had
met hers and I was shocked by the direct challenge of her gaze. At the
time I was disturbed and uneasy, but soon forgot and took no notice of
the woman except that I felt vaguely that she was unhappy. But soon
I was always meeting her. I would find her lurking in the rooms as I
came to scrub and clean them. Or she would appear in the lane as I came
home from the fields, or I would meet her in the doorway, so that I
could not help brushing against her. A little later I missed one of my
stockings as I got up in the morning and had to go barefoot until I had
knitted another pair.
One night as I was creeping off to my poor Audrey, now deadly weary of
her close quarters in the hay, to my horror I met this woman clad in
her night attire. She vanished and I went my way thoroughly frightened.
I told Audrey to be ready to come with me next day, for we were spied
upon and could not now wait, as we had planned, until my little thefts
from the larder had given us a sufficient store of food.
Nothing happened the next day and I gave up my determination to ransack
the larder. That night as I opened the door I found the woman pressed
against it, so that she fell almost into my arms. She clung to me
wildly, assured me that I was the most beautiful man she had ever
seen, and tried to press me back into my room, her tone, her whole
bearing conveying an invitation about which it was impossible to be
mistaken. It chilled me to the heart, coming as it did so suddenly out
of the coldness engendered by the rigid separation of the sexes and the
deliberate humiliation of men in that woman-ridden region. As gently as
I could I put her from me, though it was not so easy, and I rushed out
into the night. I could not tell Audrey what had happened, but as soon
as I saw her I felt that the moment for our escape had come. If we did
not seize it I should be denounced and tickled, if not worse. We crept
away and made straight across the fields and at dawn hid in a wood.
IX: THE RUINED CITY
I was relieved to hear from Audrey that there were no newspapers. She
told me that a man from her farm had run away but was never found.
There were always new men coming, because it was impossible for them
to obtain food except what they could kill. In the summer there were
always men wandering about the country, but they came back in the
winter and were glad to work for their board and lodging. I soon
understood this, for when we had exhausted our store we were often a
whole day without a morsel passing our lips, and I began to see the
foolhardiness of my attempt at liberty. Again and again I besought
Audrey to leave me, but she would not. She could always have obtained a
meal for herself had she gone alone to a house, but wherever I went I
was asked for my registered number, and at first had not the readiness
to invent one. At last I told one woman I was 8150. She asked me what
district and I did not know. On that she bundled me out and I was lucky
to escape detention. When I asked Audrey about the registration she
said all men were registered with a number and a letter. The men on her
farm had been L.D. Next time I said I was L.D. 8150, and when asked my
business I said I was taking my young miss to the nunnery at O. Either
my answer was satisfactory or Audrey’s beauty was the passport it would
be in any normal country, for we were handsomely treated and given a
present of three cheeses to take to the nuns.
We ate the cheeses and were kept alive until, after a fortnight’s
journey, we came on a dismal mass of blackened buildings. We entered
the city, once world-famous for its textiles, and never have I
been so near the hopelessness of the damned. The remains of a dead
civilisation; decomposing and festering; grass grew in between the
cobbles of the streets; weeds were rank; creepers covered the walls
of the houses and their filthy windows. Huge factories were crumbling
away, and here and there we came on immense piles of bricks where the
chimneys had tumbled down. For miles we walked through the streets and
never saw a soul until as we turned a corner into a square we came on a
sight that made me think we had reached the lowest Hell.
X: THE OUTLAWS
There was a great fire in the middle of the square, and round this was
a tatterdemalion crew of men and women. They were roasting an ox, and,
as they waited for it, they sang and danced. When we approached near
enough to hear what they were singing I blushed and felt aggrieved for
Audrey. Many of the men and women were perfectly shameless in their
gestures, and I wished to go back the way we had come. However, we had
been seen, and were drawn into the light of the fire and asked to give
an account of ourselves. I told them I was an American citizen only
too anxious to return to my own country now I had seen the pass to
which theirs had been brought. Audrey clung to me, and I said she was
my little cousin whom I had come to deliver, and that, having wandered
hungry for so many days, we had taken refuge in the town in the hope
of faring better. We were given stools to sit on, and slices of the
best cut of the ox were put before us. The rest drank spirits and wine
from some cellar in the town and were soon more crazy than ever, and
more obscene, but with my belly full of good meat I was not offended
and preferred their debauchery to the icy virtue which had so horribly
oppressed me at the homestead. Audrey was excited by it all, but I knew
that her innocence could take no harm.
Presently there was only one man sober besides myself. He came towards
me and invited me to stay the night in his house where he lived alone
with his son. I liked the looks of the man. He was poorly clad, but in
the old fashion of coat and trousers, whereas the costumes of the men
in the square were strange and bizarre.
As we walked through the dark streets our new friend told me that all
the great cities of Fatland were in this condition, abandoned to the
dregs of the population, degraded men and women, idle and lawless, with
the leaven of the few proud spirits who would not accept the new regime
and found a world governed by women as repulsive as a world governed
by men. I was astonished at this, for I could not then see, as later
I saw, the abomination of civilised life as I had known it at home.
Perhaps a sailor, for whom life ashore means pleasure and relief from
responsibilities, cannot feel injustice and inequality. On the sea he
has his own way of dealing with those poisons.
The house we came to was small but comfortable. My new friend explained
that he was able to keep alive by dealing with the outlaws, who kept
money current among themselves, and, indeed, had come to regard him
as their counsellor and peacemaker, and never returned from their
raids without bringing him some tribute. Seeing me dubious of the
morality of this, he explained that under the old order he had been
a shareholder in joint-stock companies and accepted his share of the
profits without scruple as to how they had been obtained. He told me
further that he was quite alone in the city, and that no one else
maintained the old life. He had registered himself in compliance with
the law, but could not leave the mathematical work to which his life
had been devoted, for he believed that he would achieve results which
would survive all the vicissitudes of Fattish civilisation even as the
work of Pythagoras had survived ancient Greece. The number of outlaws,
he said, was growing, and there would eventually be a revolution, to
lead which he was preparing and educating his son, Edmund. His own
sympathies, he declared, had at first been with the women, who had been
driven to extricate the country from the vicious circle of war into
which it had been drawn by the egregious folly of men. But when, having
achieved this, they abused their power and, in the intoxication of
their success, defied nature herself, then he had abandoned all hope
and had taken the only means of dissociating himself from the life of
his country, namely, by staying where he was. To be sure the women had
established agriculture on a sound basis, but it was vain for them to
breed cattle if they would not breed themselves.
I asked him if he was a widower. He said No.
XI: EDMUND
This man’s son was the most charming boy I ever set eyes on. He was
eighteen, but had the carriage and assurance of a young man in his
prime, most resolute and happy. He liked talking to me and was more
communicative than his father. For a fortnight he would work steadily
at his books, imbibing the principles of government in the philosophers
from Plato down. He thought they were all wrong, said so, and but
for his simplicity I should have put him down as conceited. It was
very slowly as I talked to him that I came to realise the revolution
in thought produced by the great European wars and the terrible
consequences, how fatal they had been to the old easy idealism. The new
spirit in its generous acceptance of the gross stuff of human nature
and its indomitable search for beauty in it has been expressed for
all time by our poet, Hohlenheim, and I only need state here that I
encountered it for the first time in that ruined city. Not, however,
till Hohlenheim expressed it did I recognise it.
But for Hohlenheim I could believe in a Providence when I think of
Edmund and Audrey. They were as bee and flower. The honey of her
beauty drew him and he was hers, she his, from the first moment. I had
regarded her as a child and was amazed to see how she rejoiced in him.
I had expected more modesty until I reflected how in such darkness as
that which enveloped Fatland love must blaze. It flared up between
them and burned them into one spirit. So moved was I that all other
marriage, even my own, has always seemed a mockery to me.
How gracious Audrey was to me! She promised me that Edmund would hurry
up his revolution so that I could return to my own country, but I was
given to understand that the position was very difficult, because his
own mother was Vice-Chairwoman of the Governing Committee. For a week
at a time Edmund would be away rounding up outlaws, and, at great risk,
preaching to the kilted and registered men in the fields. Had he been
caught he would have been tickled to death.
After a time I went with him on his expeditions. It was amazing how his
eloquence and his personality produced their effect even on the dullest
minds. The stream of men proceeding to the ruined city increased every
day, and we began to have enough good people to suppress the reckless
rioters somewhat and to organise the life of the town something after
the fashion of the Italian city-state, except that we made no warlike
preparations whatsoever. Most encouraging of all, we had a growing
number of young women coming into the place, and thankful as they were
to escape the nunneries or the spinsterhood of the farms, they quickly
found mates and produced children. The birth of every baby was made a
matter of public rejoicing.
But alas! my ill-luck pursued me. On one of our expeditions we were
cut off and surrounded in a field by a patrol of women. Edmund managed
to escape, but I was captured and tortured into making a confession of
what was going on in the ruined city. I did not see how my confession
could do any harm, and I don’t know what happened, but though my
friends must have known where I was they made no attempt to rescue
me or to communicate with me. I think I should have died rather than
confess but for the thought of my wife. My strongest passion then was
to see her again. Let that, if excuse is needed, be mine.
XII: THE NUNNERY
As Edmund disappeared through a gap in the hedge I was attacked by a
mob of women, screaming at the top of their voices. They talked me into
a state of stupefaction and led me dazed in the direction of a great
building which I had taken for a factory or workhouse. Here with the
leader of my captors I was hustled through a little gate with the mob
outside hooting and yelling:
“Man! Man! Man!”
I was flung into a cell and left there to collect my wits, which I
found hard of doing, for I was near the limits of my endurance, and I
did not see how I could hold out against the numbing influence of such
absolute feminism. In the society to which I had been accustomed men,
whatever their misdeeds, had always treated women with indulgence, but
here the life of a man was one long expiation for the crime of having
been born. I had spirit enough left in me to revolt, but my feeling
could only express itself in bitter tears. I wept all night without
ceasing, and the next day I was so weak and ill that I slept from utter
exhaustion.
Bread and water were handed in to me through a hole in the door, but
the bread was sour and the water was foul to my taste. Once again I
fell a victim to the sense of hallucination, and when at last the door
of my cell was opened and a human figure entered I was half-convinced
that I was honoured with a visitation by an angel. I fell on my knees
and the “angel” called me to my senses by saying:
“Fool, get up.”
I obeyed and my visitor informed me that she was the Medical
Superintendent come to inspect me. I was ordered to strip and stand in
the middle of the cell while the superintendent walked round me and
surveyed me as farmers do with cattle. She prodded my flesh and asked
me my age and what illnesses I had had. She sounded my lungs and tested
my heart and appeared to be well satisfied. As she scanned my person
there came into her eyes a quizzical, humorous look, in which there was
a certain kindly pity, so that I was reassured and plucked up courage
to ask where I was and what was going to be done with me. I was told
that I was in the great nunnery of O, and that my destiny depended
upon her report. I asked her to make it a good one and she laughed. I
laughed too, for indeed mine was a most ridiculous position, standing
there stark naked under her scrutiny. It became necessary for me to
cover myself, and when I had done so we still stood there laughing like
two sillies. She said:
“You’ll do.”
“For what?”
“I can give you a certificate for fatherhood.”
I gasped and protested that I was married, and expressed my horror of
any such misconduct as she proposed. She ignored my protest and said:
“The mothers of your children will be carefully chosen for you.”
On that I roared with laughter. The idea was too preposterous. The
superintendent reproved me and said that any ordinary man would give
his eyes to be in my position, which I owed entirely to my wonderful
physique. I declared my unwillingness and demanded as an American
citizen to be set at liberty. She told me that the idea of nationality
was not recognised and that I must serve the human race in the way
marked out for me. “How?” said I. “Marked out for me? By whom?” I was
assured by my own physical fitness. I protested that I could not look
upon fatherhood as a career, but was told that I must consider it among
the noblest. I maintained that it could never be for a man more than
an incident, significant and delightful no doubt, but no more to be
specialized in than any other natural function. Argument, however, was
impossible, for on this subject the superintendent’s humour deserted
her. However, her interest was roused and she was more friendly in her
attitude, and consented to explain to me the institution which she
served. It was not in the old sense a nunnery, for its inmates were
not vowed to seclusion, and though portraits of William Christmas were
plentiful on its walls, there was no formal devotion to his memory.
It was literally a garden of girls. Female children were brought from
the affiliated crèches to be trained and educated for the functions of
life to which they were best fitted. The intelligent were equipped for
the sciences, the strong for agriculture, the quick and cunning for
industry, the beautiful for maternity. Male children were farmed out
and given no instruction whatever, since they needed no intelligence
for the duties they had to perform. “But the birth-rate?” I said, and
received the answer: “Should never be such as to complicate the problem
of food. It is better to have a small sensible population than one
which is driven mad by its own multitude.”
I was far from convinced and said: “Such a world might a student of
bees dream of after a late supper of radishes.”
My new friend replied that I had not lived through the nightmare of
the great wars, or I would be in a better position to appreciate the
blessings of a scientific society. She admitted that men were perhaps
treated with undue severity, but added that, for her part, she believed
it to be necessary for the gradual suppression of the masculine conceit
and folly which had for so long ravaged the world. In time that would
right itself, the severity would be relaxed, and men would assert an
undeniable claim to a due share in the benefits of civilisation. In the
meanwhile, she would do all in her power to befriend me. I implored her
to certify me unfit for fatherhood, but she would only yield so far as
to declare that I was in need of a month’s recuperation and distraction.
With that ended my interview with that extraordinary woman, who in
happier circumstances would have been a glory to her sex.
I was presently removed from my cell to a pleasant room in the lodge
by the gate, and I was made to earn my keep by working in the garden.
At the end of a week I was despatched by road to the capital to appear
there before the examining committee of the department of birth.
XIII: IN THE CAPITAL
As luck would have it my guardian on the long journey by road--for
motor-cars had not been renounced--was a little chatterbox of a woman,
who coquetted with me in the innocent and provocative manner of the
born flirt. She meant no harm by it, but could not control her eyes
and gestures. I encouraged her to make her talk, and she told me it
would have gone hardly with me but that the medical superintendent
had been passing by the gate of the nunnery as I was thrust in. But
for her I should have been condemned to work in the sewers or to sell
stamps in the post office, menial work reserved for criminals, for the
authorities were becoming exasperated with the agitation for the rights
of men. The outlaws no one minded. They inhabited the ruined cities
and sooner or later would be starved out. It was absurd to expect the
new society to be rid altogether of the pests which had plagued the
old, but every reasonable woman was determined that for generations men
should not enjoy the rights which they had so wantonly abused.
“But,” I said, “men never claimed rights.”
“No,” answered my coquette, “they stole them when we were not looking.
They insisted that we should all be mothers, so that we should be too
busy to keep them out of mischief.”
“My dear child,” said I, “it is the women who have kept us in mischief.”
“No one can say,” she replied, “that we do not keep you out of it now.”
And she gave me one of those arch involuntary invitations which have
before now been the undoing of Empires. I could not resist it. I seized
her in my arms and kissed her full on the lips.
I half expected her to stop the car and denounce me, but when she had
made sure that the girl driving had not seen she was undisturbed and
remarked with a charming smile:
“Some foreign ways are rather pretty.”
I repeated the offence, and by the journey’s end we were very good
friends and understood each other extremely well. She agreed with me
when I said that all forms of society were dependent upon a lot of
solemn humbug. She said yes, and she expected that before she had done
she would be put upon her trial. I did not then understand her meaning,
for we parted at the door of a large house, where she was given a
receipt for me. She saluted me, the dear little trousered flirt, by
putting her finger to her lips as the car drove off.
There were no women in that house. Its inhabitants were a number
of young men like myself, all superb in physique and many of them
extremely handsome, but they were all gloomy and depressed. I was
right in guessing them to be other candidates for fatherhood. They
were guarded and served by very old men in long robes like tea-gowns.
Horrible old creatures they were, like wicked midwives who vary their
habit of bringing human beings into the world by preparing their dead
bodies to leave it. But the young men were hardly any better: they were
dull, stupid, and listless, and their conversation was obscene.
We had to spend our time in physical exercise, in taking baths and
anointing our bodies with unguents and perfumes. We were decked out
in beautiful clothes. Embroidered coats and white linen kilts. In the
evenings there were lectures on physiology, and we were made to chant
a poetical passage from the works of William Christmas, a description
of the glory of the bridegroom, of which I remember nothing except an
offensive comparison with a stallion.