FIRST LESSONS.
Summer came on apace. The field had been duly run over in both
directions with the shovel-plough, so as to leave between the
cross-ploughing little “hills” of earth, out of which sprang the
corn-clumps. The broad green ribbons of leaves fluttered in the wind,
making a soft murmur as of a forest. Olive took great delight in her
little flower-garden at the east end of the house, and worked and weeded
at it both early and late. Napoleon Pompey, typical negro boy, which
being interpreted means laziest of mortals, forgot his laziness to work
for “Mis’ Ollie” as he called her. Together they had planted their
balsams, trained their morning-glory, and rooted out brown beetles with
zeal, to be amply repaid in July by a glorious profusion of blossoms.
“This is my very ownest own garden,” said Olive, exhibiting her balsams
with pride to Ezra. “Mind, this is not community-land, it’s mine.”
“Does it make you enjoy the flowers more to think that nobody else has
them?” asked Ezra, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “Would it make
you any the happier to keep the sunshine all to yourself, do you think?”
“No, certainly not, that’s quite different. But I’ve planted these
flowers and grown them. I shall give them to whomsoever I like. You for
instance.” She smiled coaxingly at him.
“You pretty child,” he said, disarmed.
“Why, I brought some over to Mrs. Carpenter to-day. I went to help her
with her washing. And, do you know!” said Olive, “I was so amused.”
“At what?”
“Mr. Carpenter was educating his children.”
“He’s always doing that,” said Ezra.
“Yes, but to-day there was a special lesson. He was at Union Mills
yesterday, and he got a present for both of them, I mean two presents,
one for Johnny and one for Nelly. You know he is always saying boys and
girls would have the same tastes if they were brought up in the same
way.”
“He’ll find out one day, maybe, that boys will be boys, no matter how
you bring them up.”
“He has found it out already. Wait till you hear. By way of correcting
any early bias, he gave a hammer and nails to Nelly and a doll to
Johnny.”
“You don’t say so! What did the children do?”
“Well, they went off without a word, each carrying its toy, and Mr.
Carpenter told me his ideas about education, and how well they worked.
Suddenly we heard shrieks from behind the wood-pile where the children
were playing. We ran out to see what was the matter. Nelly had got a
handkerchief tied over the head of her hammer, and she was cuddling it
to sleep in her arms. Johnny had got some of the nails and was trying to
drive them into a piece of wood with the head of the doll for hammer.
Nelly was screaming because he was killing poor Dolly.”
Ezra laughed, and Olive joined in at the recollection of the scene. “You
cannot think how disappointed Mr. Carpenter looked. His wife said he’d
got something to do if he was expecting to cure little girls of dolls in
a hurry. We changed the presents and left him to reconcile it with his
theories as best he could; both children were quite happy and contented
afterwards.”
“Poor Carpenter! He’ll have to learn by bitter experience that he cannot
change human nature all at once,” said Ezra, sympathetically. “I fear
children are still in the savage stage of development, they are not
communists.”
“Nobody is communist about things they care very much about,” said
Olive, in desperate courage.
“Why, Ollie! What a thing to say! I am a thorough-going communist I
hope. I’d give the coat off my back without a pang.”
“Of course you would, because it is a horrid old thing any way, and men
look frights in coats always. Men don’t care about clothes, only just to
cover themselves and keep themselves warm. One rag would do as well as
another.”
“You are an incorrigible little individualist and a greedy one as well,
I do declare,” said Ezra, half laughing at her vehemence.
“No, it’s not that, only I see what is what,” replied Olive oracularly.
“And what might that be?”
“The Pioneers are only communistic for rubbish and rags, and not for
dolls and hammers. That’s what they are,” said Olive, with her face
aflame.
“Rubbish and rags! What an absurd thing to say. Who ever heard such
nonsense?” said Ezra, loftily ignoring his wife’s argument in a way that
wise men often affect.
“’Tisn’t nonsense,” said Olive hotly. “It is just what people say of
Perfection City.”
“What people say it?” asked Ezra.
“Well, Mr. Perseus for one,” said Olive, repenting of her daring in
getting into the subject at all.
“Mr. Perseus,” repeated Ezra with a sudden frown, “so you talk over our
principles with him. When did you do so last?”
“I don’t know exactly when. The other day. He often passes by here on
his way cattle-hunting. Sometimes he looks in for a moment, but
sometimes he can’t stay long, only to water his horse. Of course I talk
over the principles that have made you found a City here. Don’t you
suppose people know about them and talk them over eagerly? They are
different enough from the generality of people’s ideas, and Mr. Perseus
said they considered you only went a little way into communism, and had
a little bit of this and a little bit of that in common, and weren’t at
all logical. People sneer at Perfection City, I can assure you.”
“And you, doubtless, enjoyed his sneers,” retorted Ezra injudiciously.
“No, I didn’t, only I saw what other people say of us. Mr. Perseus,
even, once said he’d like to come and be a communist himself, if we were
only consistent throughout, and lived up to our principles.”
“You may tell your friend Perseus that he would not be a welcome
recruit,” said Ezra, in considerable agitation. “I may as well tell you
now what I have suspected for some time. I know pretty well who your
mysterious Mr. Perseus is. He is a man of the name of Cotterell. I know
him very well by sight and better still by reputation. To convince you,
I will just mention a point or two about his appearance. He is about
five feet ten in height, very fair in complexion, with a yellow
moustache, and bright blue eyes, and whenever he takes his hat off you
see the blue veins very markedly on his temples. He is, I suppose, what
a woman would call a very handsome man, and he usually rides a black
horse with a blaze on his face and white hind feet.”
“Yes, that’s the man,” said Olive who remembered the horse well, and who
moreover recognized the perfect accuracy of her husband’s description.
“Very well. Now I will tell you something about his character and
history. He is an Englishman and perhaps has been badly brought up. At
all events he hasn’t the morals we approve of. I know his libertine
London ways. He probably didn’t tell you about it, but I remember very
well the poor girl who shot herself the first summer we came here,
because Cotterell had abandoned her. If the neighbours had been quite
sure of all the facts of the case, there would in all probability have
been a shooting party at Cotterell’s house, so I was told. But they were
not quite sure so they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Accordingly he
still has his handsome face to go on with and maybe wreck more homes.
That is the career of Mr. Cotterell, alias Mr. Perseus,” said Ezra with
considerable heat.
“It was you who gave him the name of Perseus,” replied Olive also much
agitated. “He did not appear under a false name of his own accord. And
now that you tell me his real name I remember that was the one he gave
the first time I saw him, and he asked me if I had ever heard it
before.”
“I won’t say anything on that point, it may have been a joke on his
part, but it must stop now. Understand me, Olive. I don’t wish to seem
harsh, but you must not meet and talk with this man again. If you chance
on him, pass by and say you can have no further communication with him.
If he urges an objection, say I have forbidden you to see him, as I do
forbid you, here and now. He will take that for an answer, scoundrel as
he is, for among people of his stamp personal vanity does duty for
better feelings. He won’t come again to a house where the lady has once
shown him the door. You don’t in the least understand what his motives
are in this new-fangled interest of his in Perfection City, but I
understand them very clearly, and my wish is that you never see him
again. Harm is sure to come of it if you do.”
Olive was very much alarmed at her husband’s stern manner and peremptory
order, but she was also indignant. Mr. Perseus or Cotterell, as she must
now call him, had shown great respect and deference to her and had
evinced a desire to be guided by her to higher aspirations. She was not
sure of the meaning of some of his remarks, or rather she wished she
could find some other reasonable explanation for them than the one most
people would undoubtedly attach to them. Still she resented her
husband’s masterful manner.
“I will of course obey your orders, Ezra,” she said with a tart emphasis
on the word which made him wince, “because I hold old-fashioned ideas of
what wifely duty is, quite at variance with the high standard of
individual liberty as maintained and explained, I believe, by the
brethren of Perfection City. You may rest quite satisfied, I will obey
you.”
Having thus stabbed her husband in his most vulnerable point and
dexterously driven the poignard up to the hilt in the wound, Olive
walked away, leaving Ezra to feel himself a selfish brute.
Ezra spent a wretched half day of self-reproach, and then crept back
repentant, begging to be forgiven for being a tyrant to his poor little
pet. And his little pet who had paid for her pride with abundant tears,
allowed him to kiss her and fondle her and call her sweet silly names,
while she declared she never cared to see or speak to that wretched Mr.
Cotterell again, and no wonder he was ashamed of his own name, etc.,
etc., all in the most foolish and approved manner possible to the newly
married.
All the same, after a time Olive began to feel sorry for Mr. Cotterell,
and to pity him for the very errors of his past life, about which she
now saw that he was penitent without wishing to explain to her why. Also
she had very much enjoyed meeting him; he was so fresh, cultivated, and
original, in his conversation. It was really very dull sometimes with no
one to talk to, and the long hot day shimmering by, making her feel as
if she were a potato being slowly baked in a hotair oven. There was no
excitement in the house-work and—and it was very dreary sometimes. Men
delight in reverting to primitive savagery. The most highly civilized
man “reverts” in a way which is surprising both for completeness and for
rapidity, but women hate the process. Savage woman was a slave, and the
more completely a woman becomes subject to primitive conditions the more
closely she resembles a slave, and is in virtual bondage either to some
human being or to hampering circumstances.
Of appropriate companions of her own sex Olive had absolutely none. Mary
Winkle was a rigid reformer, a person all angles, of the sort that never
becomes a companion to anyone, for she was always on the war-path, and,
besides, between her and Olive there was an unexpressed, but no less
real, antipathy. Her daughter, Willette, that creature half boy, half
girl, and wholly wild, was always on horseback careering after stray
cattle, and though by her ignorance and eccentricity she sometimes
amused Olive, she had really no ideas beyond those very concrete ones
impressed upon her from without by her open-air life on the prairie.
Mrs. Carpenter was a good soul, but a mere stout housewife, with no
ideas and only one hope, namely, “that Carpenter would give up his
high-fallutin’ notions, an’ go back to York State, an’ settle down
comfortable again, an’ be a preacher in a Baptist church.” Mrs. Ruby was
old in body, but the youngest of them all in mind, except Uncle David,
who was her senior by four years. Mrs. Ruby believed in Perfection City,
though she reserved the right of private judgment on certain of the
tenets of its founders, and in particular, she had lately felt
misgivings as to the worldly wisdom of their principle of
non-resistance. She knew, however, that the Pioneers were going to show
the world the new and better way—the way which led into no competition
for supremacy, but into peaceful paths of universal progress. Property
and its attendant imps, greed, strife, jealousy, envy, hatred, and
malice, were all banished from Perfection City, and in their place peace
and good-will and perfect trust in each other were to reign forever. It
was a high ideal, but not a new one. It was eighteen centuries old,
though it had never yet been realised. Mrs. Ruby and Uncle David felt
sure they had reached the ideal, and all through Madame Morozoff-Smith,
the most whole-souled, unselfish, glorious woman of her century. It was
a pity she had not a larger theatre in which to present before mankind
the new principles of social life it was their privilege to put into
practice.