I, CONRAD P. LEWIS, of Crown Imperial, Pa., U.S.A., do hereby declare that the following narrative of my adventures is a plain truthful tale with nothing added or taken away. At the end of a long life I am able to remember unmoved things that for many years I could not call to mind without horror and disgust. Even now I cannot see the charming person of my daughter without some faint discomfort, to be rid of which (for I would die in peace) I have determined to write my story.
The whole civilised world will remember how, during the years when Europe was sunk under the vileness of a scientific barbarism, there was suddenly an end of news from Fatland. Our ships that sailed for her ports did not return. Her flag had disappeared from the high seas. Her trade had entirely ceased. She exported neither coal nor those manufactured goods which had carried her language, customs, and religion to the ends of the earth. Her colonies (we learned) had received only a message to say that they must in future look after themselves, as, indeed, they were as capable of doing as any other collection of people. In one night Fatland ceased to be.
It was at first assumed that her enemies the Fatters had invaded and captured her, but, clearly, they would not destroy her commerce. Moreover, the Fatters were at that time and for many years afterwards living in a state of siege, keeping nine hostile nations at bay upon their frontiers. This was the last of the great wars, leading, as we now know, to the abolition of the idea of nationality, which endowed a nation with the attributes of a vain and insolent human being, so that its actions were childish and could only be made effective by force. When that idea died in the apathy and suffering and bitterness of the years following the great wars then the glorious civilisation which we now enjoy became possible.
The disappearance of Fatland took place shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, which, from the practice which the Europeans had in those days, was always accomplished with great expedition. Every four years or so, when the exhausted nations once more had enough young men over eighteen, there would be some little quarrel, or an arranged assassination, or an ambassador would be indiscreet. One war, I remember, broke out over a scuffle between two bakers in the streets of Bondon: they were a Fattishman and a Fatter, and they had been arguing over the merits of the Fattish loaf and the continental bâton. The Press of both countries took it up: their governments had a good class of troops that year and they did not hesitate to use them. We, in the Western world, were accustomed to it by then and knew how to keep our trade alive through neutral countries. Also, I regret to say, we had engaged upon the dreadful traffic in war material. In those days we were still bounded by the primitive civilisation of Europe. We had not been wakened to manhood and the way of life and eternity, we had not been taught to be elemental in our own elemental continent by the sublime masterpiece of Junius F. Hohlenheim.
When it became clear that Fatland could not be in the hands of the Fatters: when, moreover, we were told that she was taking no part in the last and bloodiest of the wars, and when, after many months, there came no news of any kind, then our merchant-monarchs (now happily extinct) fitted out an expedition, with credentials to the Fattish Government, if any. Wild rumors had spread that the Gulf Stream was diverted, making the Skitish islands uninhabitable, but I had just then returned from a voyage to Norroway and knew that it was not so. I had gazed at the coasts of the mysterious islands with pity, with curiosity, with sad and, I must own it, sentimental longing. Were they not our home? We were still colonists in those days, always looking to other lands than that in which we lived. “O Fatland,” I cried. “O mother inviolate!” But we had the captain’s wife on board and she laughed and said that was not the adjective to apply to a mother.
ON my return I married and put my savings into my father-in-law’s brush-making business, which was almost at once ruined, and I had to go to sea again. Government money had been got for the expedition I told you of, and I knew that pay would be higher on that account. I sent in an application, and, having an uncle well placed, was taken on as third officer. A dirty little gunboat had been put in commission, and directly I set eyes on her I knew the voyage would be unlucky. We were but three days out when we had trouble with the propeller shaft and were carried far north among the ugliest ice I ever saw, and narrowly escaped being caught in a floe. Fortunately we ran into a southward current in the nick of time and, with a fresh wind springing up, were quickly out of danger. However, the years of war had added another peril to those of nature. We fouled a mine among the islands of Smugland and were blown to bits. At the time I was standing near a number of petrol cans, and when I came to the surface of the water I found some of them floating near me. I tied six of them together and they made a tidy little raft, though it was very uncomfortable. On them I drifted for four days until hunger and thirst were too much for me and I swooned away. I was then past agony and my swoon was more like passing into an enchantment than a physical surrender.
I was not at all astonished, therefore, when I came to my senses to find myself in a bed with a man sitting by my bedside. Very glad was I to see him, and I cried out in a big voice:
“Kerbosh! If I ain’t got into heaven by mistake.”
The man shook his head sadly and said:
“Heaven? No.”
But I could not shake off the feeling that I was in Heaven. The man had long hair and a beard, and I could be pardoned for taking him for Peter. He wore a rough shift, a long kilt below his knees, and thick stockings, and by his elbow on a little table, was another stocking which he had been knitting. He gave me food and drink, and I at once felt stronger, but somewhat squeamish, so that the sense of hallucination clung about me. When I asked where I was, the man tiptoed to the door, opened it and listened, then returned to my bedside and said in a whisper:
“It is as much as my place is worth, but I would warn you as man to man to make good your escape while you may. As man to man, I say it, man to man.”
He was so terribly excited as he said this that I decided in my own mind that he was a harmless lunatic, one of the many whom the great wars had rendered idiotic. To humour him I repeated:
“As man to man.”
And I put out my hand. He seized it and said in a desperate voice:
“I am old enough to be your fa——”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and in absolute terror he stopped, took up his knitting and plied the needles frantically.
THE footsteps came up to the door of the room in which I lay. The door opened to reveal a truly remarkable figure; plump, short, with a tousled mop of reddish-grey hair and a wide, pleasant, weather-beaten face. This figure was clad in a loose blue coat and Bulgarian trousers, very baggy about the hips and tight about the calves; not at all an unbecoming costume, though it both puzzled and pained me. So much so that I pretended to be asleep, for I was averse to being made to speak to this strange object. A woman’s voice addressed the man with the knitting and asked him how I was. He replied that I had come to my senses and gone to sleep again. As luck would have it, the food I had eaten so hastily began just then to cause me acute discomfort, and my body, escaping my control, relieved itself after its fashion. Thereupon the woman, perceiving that I was malingering, fell upon me and shook me until my teeth rattled and delivered herself of an oration upon the deceitfulness of man. I was still suffering acutely and could offer no resistance, though I cried out that I was an American citizen and neutral and should have the matter brought to the ears of my Government.
“In this country,” said my assailant, “men are men and are treated as such, and we do not recognize the existence of any other country in the world. You will get up now and place your superior strength at the service of those who feed you and as far as possible justify your existence.”
The man with the knitting had crept from the room. He returned with a shift, a kilt and stockings like his own. I was made to put these on, the woman, in defiance of all decency, watching me and talking shrilly all the time. Then she drove the man and myself out of doors and set us to work at hoeing in a field of turnips, while she whistled to a dog that came bounding over a hedge, and trudged off in the direction of a wood.
“Who is she?” said I. “Is she your wife?”
“Wife?” answered he. “Wife! There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage. She is a farmer, and I, who was once a Professor of Economics, am her labourer. Intellectually I am in despair, but physically I am in such rude health that I cannot entertain the thought of self-destruction long enough to commit the act. She is my niece, and when the change came she undertook, as all women did, to provide work for her male relatives above a certain age.”
“Change?” I whispered. “What change?”
“Have you not heard?” he said. “Is the country severed from the civilised world?”
I informed him of the expedition which I had joined. He gave a long hopeless sigh and fell into a great silence which moved me far more than his words had done. We plied our hoes in the immense field which was situated in a desolate region of slight undulations the outlines of which were blurred with rank growth.
Presently I broke in upon his silence to ask his name.
“I was,” he murmured, “I was Professor Ian Baffin.”
“Can it be possible?” I cried, for the fame of that great man was world-wide, and during the notorious Anti-Trust elections in my country his works had been in every cultured home. I told him this, but it brought him no comfort.
“At the time of the change,” he said, “I and fifty other Professors and Fellows of Colleges published a manifesto in which we pointed out the disasters that must ensue, and we even went so far as to promise them degrees at the major universities, but the change came and the universities were destroyed.”
“What change?” I asked again.
He leaned on his hoe and gazed toward the setting sun.
“ABOUT the tenth year of the second of the great wars,” he said, “there was a convulsion in the country. A young idealist appeared who with fiery and vulgar eloquence proclaimed that war was the triumph of the old over the young, to whom since the world began justice had never been done. The old, he said, were in the position of trustees who had betrayed their trust and instead of working for the benefit of the endless army of the young who came after them, devoted all their energies to robbing them of their birthright. To extricate themselves from the punishment which must otherwise have fallen on them they exploited the courage and love of adventure of the young and set them to destroy each other. So successful had they been in this device that they could count on using it at least once in every generation, and politicians knew that when they were at the end of their tether they could always procure a continuance of their offices and emoluments by declaring war. This had been the condition of civilised existence for so many thousands of years that it was generally accepted and the truth was never suspected until our young idealist arrived with honey on his lips for the young and gall and bitter invective for the old. He rushed up and down the country persuading young men on no condition to take up arms. ‘Government?’ he said. ‘What government do you need except such as will provide you with roads, railways, lighting, bread for the incapacitated, and drainage for all?’ I signed a manifesto against him too. His ignorance of economics was pitiful. In the end martial law was proclaimed and he was shot. The young men did not listen to him, but the young women did. Shooting him was a mistake. It gave his name the magic of martyrdom. By the thousand, women, old, young, and middle-aged, cherished his portrait in their bosoms, prayed to him in secret, vowed themselves to his cause, and remained chaste. Nunneries were founded in his name, but so potent was the spell of his martyrdom, so overwrought were the women of this country by the many crises through which we have passed, that amid all the temptations of life they were dedicated to his memory and preserved their virginity. They said if the country can find no better use for our sons than to send them to the slaughter and disablement, we will breed no sons. The Government was warned, but like all governments they could not see beyond the system by which they governed, and when at last they were convinced that something serious was happening, they could think of no other remedy than that of giving votes, i.e. a share in the system by which they enjoyed their positions. At first, to show their contempt for the Government, the women did not use their votes until the country was shown by an energetic and public-spirited woman that another war was in the making. An election was forced and the Government was defeated. At the conclusion of the second great war you may remember that Bondon was destroyed, and with it the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Palace. A new capital was chosen, but as Fatland was no longer the center of the world’s credit system, finance had lost its old power. A new type of politician had arisen, who, in order to win favour with the women, set himself to do all in his power to make government impossible. The enormous numerical superiority of the women made their leaders paramount in the land, though there was still officially a Cabinet and a House of Swells. On the third and last outbreak of hostilities the officials made their final despairing effort and declared war on Fatterland, but they had no army. They had been unable to rebuild their fleet as all the other countries had done. They were helpless. The Cabinet and the House of Swells, to set an example to the country, armed themselves and went to the front, taking with them the last ten thousand young men in the country. They never returned and the country was left populated solely by old men, cripples, and women, of whom a few thousand were pregnant. These were interned. A committee of influential women was formed and issued a decree that Fatland would henceforth have no share in male civilisation. Men had, to cut a long story short, made a mess of things, and women would now see what they could do. They began by abolishing property in land. The first, the only important thing was to feed the population. The State guaranteed to everybody food, housing, and clothes. Able-bodied women were to take charge of their male relatives and make them useful. Decent women, that is to say virgins, were to work on the land. All women guilty of childbirth were to be sent to work in the factories. I cannot remember all the laws made, for my memory has been impaired by my sufferings, but they were all dictated by an unreasoning and venomous hatred of men. We are little better than slaves. They laugh at us affectionately, but they despise and ignore our thoughts. They have defied every economic law, but astonishingly they continue to live.”
“Indeed,” said I, “the world goes on. The sun sets and will rise as it has done these millions of years, with change upon change, folly upon folly beneath it. We turn up the earth for the food we eat and so we live. Truly I think there is some wisdom in these women.”
The sun went down, a bell rang in the farmhouse, we shouldered our hoes and returned thither, each busy with his own thoughts.
TO my annoyance I found that the bell was not a summons to a meal, but to a meeting of the family of five women for a kind of a service. This consisted in reading aloud from the speeches of William Christmas, the idealist who had provoked this monstrous state of affairs. His portrait hung on the wall opposite the door, and I must confess that his face was singularly beautiful. The woman who had roused me from my bed read a passage beginning: “The tyranny of the old is due to their stupidity, which neither young men nor women have yet had the patience to break through.” And as she closed the book she said, “Thus spake William Christmas.” Whereupon the other women muttered, “of blessed memory, which endureth for ever and ever. Amen.” These women were plain and forbidding. Their eyes were fixed on the portrait with a dog-like subjection which I found most repulsive. They stood transfixed while the woman-farmer declaimed: “For guidance, William Christmas, spirit of woman incarnate, we look to thee in the morning and in the evening, in our goings out and our comings in, and woe to her who stumbles on the way of all flesh into the snares of men.” On that the five of them turned and glared sorrowfully at my old friend and me until I was hard put to it not to laugh. The meeting then came to an end, and we were told to prepare supper. We withdrew to the kitchen, and there Professor Baffin began to snigger, and when I asked him what amused him he said:
“The joke of it is that this Christmas, like all idealists, was as great a lecher as Julius Cæsar. It was his lechery made his position in the old order of society impossible.”
I laughed too, for I had begun dimly to understand the passion which moved these virgins in their chastity, and I was filled with a fierce hatred of the lot of them, and resolved as soon as possible to escape.
We cooked a meal of fish and eggs, and having laid the table we had to wait on the family. I was struck by the triviality of their discourse and the absence from it of any general argument. The five women twittered like sparrows in mid-winter and not once did they laugh. They talked of the condition of their beasts and their crops, and so earnest, so careful were they that I understood that it must be barren soil indeed that would resist their efforts. They were discussing what goods they would requisition from the district store in return for their contribution to the State granaries. I wondered if they had succeeded in abolishing money, and upon enquiry I found that they had. The Professor told me that they had abolished everything which before the change had made them dependent upon men and their pleasure.
“But why do you men stand it?” I cried.
“We would starve else. We have no credit. Contributions to the State granaries are not accepted from men, nor are men allowed to trade direct with the stores.”
“But cannot they revolt and use their strength?”
“The strange thing is,” said the Professor, “that men cannot now endure the sight of each other. They are as jealous of each other as women were in the old days. Besides, writing is forbidden, and no book is allowed save the posthumous works of the lecherous William. The libraries were destroyed on the same day as the arsenals. Intelligence is gagged. Thrift and a terrible restless activity are now our only virtues.”
“And art?”
“Art? How should there be art? It was never more than the amusement of women in their idleness. They are no longer idle and I must admit that they are admirably methodical in their work, energetic and straightforward as men never were. But it is ill living in a woman-made world and I shall not be sorry when death comes.”
DEATH came to the old man that night, and so surprised him that he was unable to feel anything. I had been put to sleep in the same room with him and was awakened by his talking. He was delivering himself of what sounded like a lecture, but he broke off in the middle to say:
“This is very astonishing. I am going to die.”
I struck a light, and there he was lying with a smile of incredulity upon his face, and I thought that, if we were sentient beings when we were born, so and not otherwise we would accept the gift of life. So and not otherwise do we greet all manifestations of life which have not become familiar through habit.
I was grateful to the old man for giving me the key to my own frame of mind. I spoke to him, but he was dead.
His loud discourse had roused the mistress of the house who came knocking at the door, saying:
“Baffin, if you don’t behave yourself I shall come and tickle you.”
So astounded and outraged was I at this address that I leapt out of my bed, donned my kilt, and said:
“Come in, woman, and see what you have done. This learned old man, whose mind was one of the glories of the world, has been driven to his death, starved, deprived of the intellectual habits through which a long life had been——”
I got no further, for the woman flung herself upon me and tickled my sides and armpits until I shrieked. Two other women came rushing up and held me on the floor, and then with a feather they tickled my feet until I was nearly mad. I wept and cried for mercy, and at last they desisted and withdrew, leaving me with the corpse, to which they paid not the slightest attention.
The next morning I was told to dig a grave and to prepare the body for 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The humiliation was terrible, and when I remembered the superintendent speaking of “the mothers of my children” I was seized with a nausea which I could not shake off, until, two days after my arrival, an epidemic of suicide among the candidates horrified me into a wholesome reaction against my surroundings. I found it hard to account for the epidemic until I noticed the coincidence of the disappearance of the most comely of the young men with the periodic visits of the high officials. This pointed, though at first I refused to believe it, to the vilest abuse of the system set up by the women in their pathetic attempt to solve the problem of population scientifically. Far, far better were it had they been content with their refusal to bear children and to impose chastity upon all without exception, and to let the race perish. Must the stronger sex always seek to degrade the weaker? My experience in that house filled me with an ungovernable hatred of women. The sight of them with the absurdities of their bodies accentuated by the trousered costumes they had elected to adopt filled me with scorn and bitter merriment. The smell of them, to which in my hatred I became morbidly sensitive, made me sick. The sound of their voices set my teeth on edge.
Such was my condition when, after three weeks’ training, I was called before the examination committee.
NOTHING in all my strange experiences astonished me so much as the lack of ceremony in this matter of fatherhood. It was approached with a brutal disinterestedness, a cynical disregard of feeling equalled only by men of pleasure in other countries. I was filled with rage when I was introduced to the committee of middle-aged and elderly women and exposed to their cold scrutiny. First of all I was told to stand at the end of the hall and repeat the poem of William Christmas. I had been made to get it by heart, but in my distress I substituted the word Ram for the word Stallion. The chairwoman rapped angrily on the table.
“Why do you say Ram for Stallion?”
I replied: “Because it more aptly describes my condition. There is nobility in the stallion, but the ram is a foolish beast.”
There was a consultation, after which the chairwoman bade me approach and said:
“Your medical report is excellent but we are afraid you lack mental simplicity. You are an educated man.”
“I am an American citizen,” I replied proudly, “and I protest against the treatment to which I have been subjected.”
“We know nothing of that,” retorted the chairwoman. “You are before us as L.D. 8150, recommended for paternal duties and, if passed, to be entered in the stud-book. Your record since you have been in the country is a bad one, but points to the possession of a spirit which for our purposes may be valuable.”
I said: “You may call me what you like; you may register me in any book you please, send me where you choose, but I am a married man and will not oblige you.”
Then a fury seized me and I shouted:
“Can you not see that you are driving your people into madness or disaster, that you will soon be plunged again into barbarism, that your science is destroying the very spirit of civilisation? I tell you that even now, as you work and plan and arrange, there is growing a revolt against you, a revolt so strong that it will ignore you, as life in the end ignores those who would measure it with a silver rod.”
The chairwoman smiled as she rejoined:
“Those are almost identically the words I addressed to the late Prime Minister of Fatland when, after thirty years of prevarication, he was persuaded to receive a deputation. I am afraid we must reject you as a candidate for the duties for which you have been trained. In the ordinary course you would be put upon your trial and committed to a severe cross-examination, an art which has been raised by us to the pitch of perfection. As it is, we are satisfied that you are labouring under the disadvantage of contamination from a man-governed society and are probably not guilty of the usual offences which render candidates unfit. We therefore condemn you as a man of genius, and order you to be interned in the suburb set apart for that class.”
I bowed to cover my amazement, a bell was rung, and I was conducted forth. Outside, meeting another candidate, green with nervousness, I told him I had been rejected, whereupon he plucked up courage and asked me how I had managed it. I told him to say Billy-Goat instead of Stallion.
I HAD not then met Hohlenheim and did not know what a man of genius was, and for genius I still had a superstitious reverence. Before I left the committee hall I was given a coloured ribbon to wear across my breast and a brass button to pin into my hat. On the button was printed M.G. 1231. What! said I to myself, Over a thousand men of genius in the country! never dreaming that some of them might be of the same kind as myself, so obstinate are superstitions and so completely do they hide the obvious.
As I passed through the streets of the capital I found that I was the object of amused contemptuous glances from the women, who walked busily and purposefully along. There were no shops in the streets, which were bordered with trees and gardens and seemed to be very well and skilfully laid out. I was free to go where I liked, or I thought I was, and I determined not to go to the suburb, but to find a lodging where I could for a while keep out of trouble and at my leisure discover some means of getting out of the abominable country. Coming on what looked like an eating-house, I entered the folding doors, but was immediately ejected by a diminutive portress. When I explained that I was hungry she told me to go home.
I was equally unfortunate at other places, and at last put their unkind receptions down to my badges. Is this, I thought, how they treat their men of genius? My applications for lodgings were no more prosperous, and I was preparing to sleep in the streets when I met an enormously fat man wearing a ribbon and button like my own. He hailed me as a comrade, flung his arm round my shoulder and said: “The cold winds of misfortune may blow through an æolian harp, but they make music. Ah! Divine music, in paint, in stone, in words, and many other different materials.” “I beg your pardon,” said I, “but the wind of misfortune is blowing an infernal hunger through my ribs, and I should be obliged if you will lead me to a place where I can be fed.” “Gladly, gladly. We immortals, living and dead, are brothers.” So saying he led me through a couple of gardens until we came to a village of little red houses set round a green, in the center of which was a statue. “Christmas!” I cried. “Christmas it is,” said my guide, “the only statue left in the country, save in our little community, where the rule is, Every man his own statue.”
Community within community! This society in which I was floundering was like an Indian puzzle-box which you open and open until you come to a little piece of cane like a slice of a dried pea.
However, I was too hungry to pursue reflection any further and without more words followed my companion into one of the little red houses, where for the first time for many months I was face to face with a right good meal. Here at any rate were sensible people who had not forgotten that a man’s first obligation is to his stomach. I ate feverishly and paid no heed to my companions at table, two little gentlemen whom at home I would have taken for elderly store-clerks. When at last I spoke, one of the little gentlemen was very excited to discover that I was an American. “Can you tell me,” he said, “can you tell me who are now the best sellers?”
“What,” I asked, “are they?”
They looked at each other in dismay.
“We were best sellers,” they cried in chorus.
After the meal they brought out volumes of cuttings from the American newspapers, and I recognised the names of men who had in their works brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips.
“Do I behold,” I said, “the authors of those delightful books which have made life sweeter for thousands?”
They hung their heads modestly, each apparently expecting the other to speak. At last my fat friend said:
“Brothers, we will have a bottle of port on this.”
The port was already decanted and ready to his hand. Over it they poured out their woes. Publication had stopped in Fatland. There was no public, and the public of America had been made inaccessible. How can a man write a book without a public? It would be sheer waste of his genius. When a man has been paid two hundred dollars for a story he could not be expected to work for less, could he? I supposed not, and the little man with the long hair and pointed Elizabethean beard cried hysterically:
“But these women, these harpies, expect us to work for their bits of paper, their drafts on their miserable stores. When they drew up their confounded statutes they admitted genius: they acknowledged that we should be useless on farms or in factories. They allowed us this, the once-famous garden suburb, for our residence and retreat, but they made us work—work—us, the dreamers of dreams! But what work? The sweet fruits of our inspiration? No. We have been set to edit the works of William Christmas, to write the biography of William Christmas, to prepare the sayings of William Christmas for the young. No Christmas, no dinner, and there you are. Is such a life tolerable?”
“No!” cried the fat man.
“What is more,” continued the indignant one, “we are asked to dwell among nincompoops who have never had and never could have any reputation, young men who used to insult us in the newspapers, cranks and faddists who have never reached the heart of the great public and are jealous of those who have. And these men are set to work with us in our drudgery, and they are paid exactly at the same rate. Fortunately many of them waste their time in writing poetry and drama while we do their work and make them pay in contributions to our table. Pass the port, brother.”
They spent the evening reading aloud from their volumes of press cuttings, living in the glorious past, while they appealed to me every now and then for news of the publishing world in America. I invented the names of best sellers and made my hosts’ mouths water over the prices I alleged to be then current. They were so pleased with me that they pressed me to stay with them and to work on the new Concordance of Christmas.
WORK on the Index, I soon found, meant preparing the whole mighty undertaking, while my three men of genius smoked, ate, drank, slept, talked, and went a-strolling in the capital. There was this advantage about being a man of genius that I was free to come and go as and when I liked, though I was everywhere scoffed at and treated with good-humoured scorn. I was always liable to insult at the hands of the high-spirited young women of the capital who held places in the Government offices and had acquired the insolent manners of a ruling class. However, I soon learned to recognise the type and to avoid an encounter, though my poor old friends often came home black and blue.
There was a great deal more sense in Christmas than I had at first supposed, and, as I progressed with my work, I saw that what he meant was very near what Edmund and his father had been at, namely, that men and women, if only they set about it the right way, can find in each other the interest, amusement, and imaginative zest to dispel the boredom which is alone responsible for social calamities. His appeal had been to men, but he had only reached the ears of women, and they had hopelessly misunderstood him. They had expected him to have a new message and had taken his old wisdom for novelty by identifying it with his personality. He had not taken the precaution to placate the men of genius of his time. Without a marketable reputation they could not recognise him. They refused to acknowledge him and drove him into the strange courses which made him seem to the nerve-ridden women of the country new, fresh, and Heaven-sent. Certainly he had genius, as my professional men of genius had it not, and it came into too direct a contact with the public mind. The smouldering indignation of ages burst into flame. More and more as I worked I was filled with respect for this idealist and with pity for the human beings who had followed him to their undoing. His insight was remarkable, and I made a collection of his works to take back with me to America, if I should ever go there.
I stayed in the Suburb of Genius for a couple of years, very pleased to be away from the women, and among people many of whom were amusing. There were painters and sculptors, who spent their time making Christmas portraits and effigies, cursing like sailors as they worked. Very good company some of these men, and most ingenious in their shifts and devices to dodge the rules and regulations with which they were hemmed in. Some of them had smuggled women into their houses and lived in a very charming domesticity. I envied them and was filled with longing for my home.
One day as I was at my work I came on an unpublished manuscript of Christmas. It contained a poem which I liked and a saying which fired me. This was the poem:
“The woman’s spirit kindles man’s desire,
And both are burned up by a quenchless fire.
Let but the woman set her spirit free,
Then it is man’s unto eternity.
It is a world within his hands, and there
They two may dwell encircled in a square.”
I could never quite make sense of it, but it seized my imagination as nonsense sometimes will, and prepared it for the convulsion which was to happen.
This was the saying:
“There will come one after me who shall build where I have destroyed, and he shall capture the flame wherewith I have burned away the dying thoughts of men.”
The words haunted me. They were in none of the Christmas books, nor in the biography. I inserted it in the Concordance and in a new edition of the Speeches, on my own responsibility and without saying a word to my employers. There might or might not be trouble, but I knew that the Chairwoman of the Governing Committee was a vain old creature and would take the words to mean herself. To my mind they pointed straight to Edmund. I knew that his cause was gaining ground and that, if I could gain sufficient publicity for the saying, his following would be vastly increased.
I was on good terms with the chief of the publishing department and was able to persuade her to announce that the new edition of the Speeches was the only one authorised by the Governing Committee; all others to be called in. The success of my trick exceeded all my dreams. There was something like an exodus from the capital.
I met my dear Audrey one day. She had come to spy out the land. Her news was glorious. For miles round the once ruined city the farms were occupied with happy men and women working together to supply food for the towns, which in return furnished their wants from its workshops, which the toilers filled with song as they worked. The fame of it was everywhere growing. Other ruined cities had been occupied. Two of the great nunneries were deserted. Edmund with a great company of young men had taken possession of a town by the sea and opened the harbour and released the ships.
“Ships!” I said. “There are ships sailing on the sea!”
That settled it. No more men of genius for me. That night I spent in chalking up the saying of William Christmas on the walls of the capital. The next morning I was with Audrey wandering about the streets, hearing Edmund’s name on all lips, and then, satisfied that all would be well, I made for the sea-board.
It was good to see America again, but I suffered there as acutely as I had done in Fatland. I had been among women who, if misguided, were free. My dear wife and I could never understand one another and she died within a very few years after my return of a broken heart. I thought I could not survive her, and should not have done but for my fortunate encounter with Hohlenheim, who could understand my loathing of woman in Fatland, of man in America, draw it up into his own matchless imagination and distil the passion of it into beauty.