The Workingman's Paradise Part 11

"Stop, Ned! For shame's sake! How dare you speak to him like that?"

Nellie interrupted, jumping up and coming between the two men. Ned leaned eagerly forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes flaming, his face quivering, his teeth showing. Geisner leaned back quietly, alternately sipping his wine and water and taking a whiff from his cigarette.

"Never mind," said Geisner. "Sit down, Nellie. It doesn't matter." Nellie sat down but she looked to Mrs. Stratton anxiously. The two women exchanged glances. Mrs. Stratton came quickly across to Geisner.

"It does matter," she said to him, laying her hands on his head and shoulder and facing Ned thus. "Not to you, of course, but to Ned there.

He does not understand, and I don't think you understand everything either. It takes a woman to understand it all, Ned," and she laughed at the angry man. "Why do you say such things to Geisner? He does not deserve them."

Ned did not answer.

"I'm not defending the rest of us, only Geisner. If you only knew all he has done you would think of him as we do."

"Connie!" exclaimed Geisner, flus.h.i.+ng. "Don't."

"Oh! I shall. If men will keep their lights under bushel baskets they must expect to get the covers knocked off sometimes. Ned! This man is a martyr. He has suffered so for the people, and he has borne it so bravely."

There was a hush in the room. Ned could see Connie's full underlip pouted tremulously and her eyes swimming, her hands moved caressingly to and fro. His face relaxed its pa.s.sion. The tears came again into his eyes, also. Geisner smoked his cigarette, the most unmoved of any.

"If you had only known him years ago," went on Connie, her voice trembling. "He used to take me on his knee when I was a little girl, and keep me there for hours while great men talked great things and he was greatest of them all. He was young then and rich and handsome and fiery, and with a brain--oh, such a brain!--that put within his reach what other men care for most. And he gave it all up, everything--even Love,"

she added, softly. "When he played the Ma.r.s.eillaise just now, I thought of it. One day he came to our house and played it so, and outside the people in the streets were marching by singing it, and--and--" she set her teeth on a great sob. "My father never came back nor my brother, and Harry there came one night and took Josie and me away. We had no mother. And when we saw this man again he was what he is now. It was worse than death, ten thousand times worse. Oh! Geisner, Geisner!" The head her hand rested on had sunk down. What were the little man's thoughts? What were they?

"But his heart is still the same, Ned," she cried, triumphantly, her sweet voice ringing clear again. "Ah, yes! His heart is still the same, as brave and true and pure and strong. Oh, purer, better! If it came again, Ned, he would do it. Sometimes, I think, he doubts himself but I know. He would do it all again and suffer it all--that worse than death he suffered. For, you see, he only lives to serve the Cause, in a different way to the old way but still to serve it. And I serve the Cause also as best I can, even if I wear--" she shrugged her shoulders. "And Harry serves it still as loyally as when, a beardless lad, he risked his life to care for a slaughtered comrade's orphan children. And Ford, too, and Nellie here, and Arty and Josie and George. But Geisner serves it best of all if it be best to give most. He has given most all his life and he gives most still. And we love him for it. And that love, perhaps, is sweeter to him than all he might have been."

She knelt by his side as she ceased speaking, and put her arms round his neck as he crouched there. "Geisner!" Nellie who was nearest heard her whisper in her childhood's tongue. "Geisner! We have seen the dry bones become men. We have poured our blood and our brain into them and if only for a moment they have lived, they have lived. Ah, comrade, do you recollect how you breathed soul into them when they shrank back that day?

They moved, Geisner. They moved. We felt them move. They will move again, some day, dear heart. They will move again." Then, choking with sobs, she laid her head on his knees. He put his arms tenderly round her and they saw that this immovable little man was weeping like a child. One by one the others went softly out to the verandah. Only Ned remained. He had buried his face in his hands and sat, overwhelmed with shame, wis.h.i.+ng that the floor would open and swallow him. From outside came the ceaseless lap-lap-lapping of water, imperceptibly eating away the granite rock, caring not for time, blindly working, destroying the old and building up the new.

The touch of a hand roused Ned. He looked up. Mrs. Stratton had gone through the door concealed by the hangings. Geisner stood before him, calmly lighting another cigarette with a match. There was no trace of emotion on his face. He turned to drop the match into an ash tray, then held out both hands, on his face the kindly smile that transfigured him.

Ned grasped them eagerly, wringing them in a grip that would have made most men wince. They stood thus silently for a minute or two, looking at one another, the young, hot-tempered bushman, the grey-haired, cool-tempered leader of men; between them sprang up, as they stood, the bond of that friends.h.i.+p which death itself only strengthens. The magnetism of the elder, his marvellous personality, the strength and majesty of the mighty soul that dwelt in his insignificant body, stole into Ned's heart and conquered it. And the spirit of the younger, his fierce indignation, his angry sorrow, his disregard for self, his truth, his strong manhood, appealed to the weary man as an echoing of his own pa.s.sionate youth. Then they loosened hands and without a word Geisner commenced to walk slowly backwards and forwards, his hands behind him, his head bent down.

Ned watched him, studying him feature by feature. Yes, he had been handsome. He was ugly only because of great wrinkles that scored his cheeks and disfigured the fleshless face and discoloured skin. His eyebrows and eyelashes were very thin, too. His hair looked dried up and was strongly greyed; it had once been almost black. His lips were thin, his mouth shapeless, only because he had closed them in his fight against pain and anguish and despair and they had set thus by the habit of long years. His nose was still fine and straight, the nostrils swelling wide.

His forehead was rugged and broad under its wrinkles. His chin was square. His frame still gave one the impression of tireless powers of endurance. His blue eyes still gleamed unsubdued in their dark, overhanging caverns. Yes! He had lived, this man. He had lived and suffered and kept his manhood still. To be like him! To follow him into the Valley of the Shadow! To live only for the Cause and by his side to save the world alive! Ned thought thus, as Connie came back, her face bathed and beaming again, her theatre dress replaced by a soft red dressing gown, belted loosely at the waist and trimmed with an abundance of coffee coloured lace. Her first words were a conundrum to Ned:

"Geisner! Haven't you dropped that unpleasant trick of yours after all these years? Two long steps and a short step! Turn! Two long steps and a short stop! Turn! Now, just to please me, do three long steps."

He smiled. "Connie, you are becoming quite a termagant."

She looked at Ned questioningly: "Well?"

"Oh, Ned and I are beginning to understand one another," said Geisner.

"Of course," she replied. "All good men and women are friends if they get to the bottom of each other. Let us go on the verandah with the rest. Do you know I feel quite warm now. I do believe it was only that ridiculous dress which made me feel so cold. Give me your arm, Ned. Bring me along a chair, Geisner."

CHAPTER VII.

A MEDLEY OF CONVERSATION.

Ned dreaded that rejoining the others on the verandah, but he need not have. They had forced the conversation at first, but gradually it became natural. It had turned on the proper sphere of woman, and went on without being interrupted by the new-comers. n.o.body took any notice of them. The girls were seated. Stratton lay smoking in the hammock. The other men perched smoking on the railing. The gaslight had been turned down and in the gloom the cigar ends gleamed with each respiration. In spite of the damp it was very cosy. From the open door behind a ray of light fell upon the darkness-covered water below. Beyond were circling the lights of Sydney. Dotting the black night here and there were the signal lamps of anch.o.r.ed s.h.i.+ps.

"We want perfect equality for woman with man," a.s.serted Ford, in a conclusive tone of voice.

"We want woman in her proper sphere," maintained Stratton, from the hammock.

"What do you call 'her proper sphere?'" asked Nellie.

"This: That she should fulfil the functions a.s.signed to her by Nature.

That she should rule the home and rear children. That she should be a wife and a mother. That she should be gentle as men are rough, and, to pirate the Americanism, as she rocked the cradle should rock the world."

"How about equality?" demanded Ford.

"Equality! What do you mean by equality? Is it equality to scramble with men in the search for knowledge, narrow hipped and flat-chested? Is it equality to grow coa.r.s.e and rough and uns.e.xed in the struggle for existence? Ah! Let our women once become brutalised, masculinised, and there will be no hope for anything but a Chinese existence."

"Who wants to brutalise them?" asked Ford.

"What would your women be like?" asked Nellie.

"Look out for Madame there, Stratton!" said George.

"What would my women be like? Full-lipped and broad-hearted, fit to love and be loved! Full-breasted and broad-hipped fit to have children!

Full-brained and broad-browed, fit to teach them! My women should be the embodiment of the nation, and none of them should work except for those they loved and of their own free will."

"Sort of queen bees!" remarked Nellie. "Why have them work at all?"

"Why? Is it 'work' for a mother to nurse her little one, to wash it, to dress it, to feed it, to watch it at night, to nurse it when it sickens, to teach it as it grows? And if she does that does she not do all that we have a right to ask of her? Need we ask her to earn her own living and bear children as well? Shall we make her a toy and a slave, or harden her to battle with men? I wouldn't. My women should be such that their children would hold them sacred and esteem all women for their sakes. I don't want the shrieking sisterhood, hard-voiced and ugly and unlovable, perpetuated. And they will not be perpetuated. They can't make us marry them. Their breed must die out."

"In other words," observed Nellie; "you would leave the present relations.h.i.+p of woman to Society unchanged, except that you would serve her out free rations."

"No! She should be absolutely mistress of her own body, and sole legal guardian of her own children."

"Which means that you would inst.i.tute free divorce, and make the family matriarchal instead of patriarchal; replace one lopsided system by another."

"Give it him, Nellie," put in Connie. "I haven't heard those notions of his for years. I thought he had recanted long ago."

"Well, yes! But you needn't be so previous in calling it lopsided," said Stratton.

"It is lop-sided, to my mind!" replied Nellie. "What women really want is to be left to find their own sphere, for whenever a man starts to find it for them he always manages to find something else. No man understands woman thoroughly. How can he when she doesn't even understand herself?

Yet you propose to crush us all down to a certain pattern, without consulting us. That's not democratic. Why not consult us first I should like to know?"

"Probably because they wouldn't agree to it if you led the opposition, Nellie. We are all only democratic when we think Demos is going our way."

This from Ford.

Arty slipped quietly off the railing and went into the sitting-room.

Connie leaned back and watched him through the open door. "He's started to write," she announced. "He's been terribly down lately so it'll be pretty strong, poor fellow." She laughed good-naturedly; the others laughed with her. "Go on, Nellie dear. It's very interesting, and I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Oh! He won't answer me," declared Nellie, in a disgusted tone.

"I should think not," retorted Stratton. "I know your womanly habit of tying the best case into a tangled knot with a few Socratic questions. I leave the truth to prove itself."