The Workingman's Paradise Part 17

"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 pa.s.sed 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 rus.h.i.+ng torrent splas.h.i.+ng. 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 pa.s.sed 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 proprietors.h.i.+p 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.ds and of the love which makes G.o.ds 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 Ma.r.s.eillaise as Geisner did. He was ready to echo any ringing thought that appealed to him as good and n.o.ble. 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, pa.s.sionately 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, s.h.i.+ning mistily in the drizzle. Close at hand was a seat, facing the gra.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+elded 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 G.o.d's sight than another, that as we all came equal and naked from the unknown so naked and equal we shall all pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.t 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 s.e.x; they all three were of one Humanity.

A few hours before and he would have pa.s.sed 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 crus.h.i.+ngly, 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.ser-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 pa.s.sionate emotion, was laid softly against that bruised and battered figurehead of s.h.i.+pwrecked 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 flas.h.i.+ng, 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 pa.s.sionate declaration of fellows.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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, pa.s.sionate 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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!"

CHAPTER X.

WHERE THE EVIL REALLY LIES.

Geisner was betimes at his appointment in the Domain. It was still the dinner hour, and though it was Sunday there were few to be seen on the gra.s.s or along the paths. So Ned saw him afar off, pacing up and down before the Art Gallery like a sentinel, an ordinary looking man to a casual pa.s.ser-by, one whom you might pa.s.s a hundred times on the street and not notice particularly, even though he was ugly. Perhaps because of it.

Neither of them cared to stroll about, they found. Accordingly they settled down at a shady patch on a gra.s.sy slope, the ground already dried from the night's rain by the fierce summer suns.h.i.+ne of the morning.

Stretched out there, Geisner proceeded to roll a cigarette and Ned to chew a blade of gra.s.s.

Below them a family were picnicking quietly. Dinner was over; pieces of paper littered the ground by an open basket. The father lay on his side smoking, the mother was giving a nursing baby its dinner, one little child lay asleep under a tree and two or three wore were playing near at hand.

"That reminds me of Paris," remarked Geisner, watching them.

"I suppose you are French?"

"No. I've been in France considerably."

"It's a beautiful country, isn't it?"

"All countries are beautiful in their way. Sydney Harbour is the most beautiful spot I know. I hardly know where I was born. In Germany I think."

"Things are pretty bad in those old countries, aren't they?"

"Things are pretty bad everywhere, aren't they?"

"Yes," answered Ned, meditatively. "They seem to be. They're bad enough here and this is called the workingman's paradise. But a good many seem glad enough to get here from other countries. It must be pretty bad where they come from."

"So it is. It is what it is here, only more so. It is what things will be in a very few years here if you let them go on. As a matter of fact the old countries ought to be wore prosperous than the new ones, but our social system has become so ill-balanced that in the countries where there are most people at work those people are more wretched than where there are comparatively few working."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, this way. The wealth production of thickly settled countries is proportionately greater than that of thinly settled countries. Of course, there would be a limit somewhere, but so far no country we know of has reached it."