Title: Windmills: A book of fables
Author: Cannan, Gilbert
Language: English
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[Illustration: Windmills

Gilbert Cannan]



  WINDMILLS

  A BOOK OF FABLES

  BY
  GILBERT CANNAN

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK      B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.      MCMXX



  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
  B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.

  PRINTED IN U. S. A.



  TO
  D. H. LAWRENCE



  ... _a huge terrible monster, called Moulinavent, who, with four
  strong arms, waged eternal battle with all their divinities,
  dexterously turning to avoid their blows, and repay them with
  interest._

                                                   A TALE OF A TUB



CONTENTS


  SAMWAYS ISLAND, 1

      I TITTIKER, 3

     II THE BISHOP, 5

    III ARABELLA, 7

     IV THE SKITISH NAVY, 10

      V CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS, 15

     VI HOSTILITIES, 16

    VII SIEBENHAAR, 18

   VIII MORE OF SIEBENHAAR, 22

     IX SIEBENHAAR ON WOMEN, 24

      X LOVE, 26

     XI MUSIC, 26

    XII ADRIFT, 29

   XIII HUNGER, 31

    XIV MILITARY, 31

     XV NAVAL, 37

    XVI NATIONAL, 38

   XVII REUNION, 41

  XVIII BETROTHAL, 42

    XIX REACTION, 44

     XX HOME, 46


  ULTIMUS, 49

      I THE SON OF HIS FATHER, 51

     II QUESTIONS, 53

    III CIVILISATION, 57

     IV WAR AND WOMEN, 62

      V WIRELESS, 65

     VI BICH IS OBSTINATE, 67

    VII PLANS, 72

   VIII IN FATTISH WATERS, 74

     IX AN AFTERNOON CALL, 77

      X THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, 80

     XI HIGH POLITICS, 82

    XII THE PUBLIC, 87

   XIII THE EMPEROR, 89

    XIV WAR, 93

     XV SIEBENHAAR ON SOCIETY, 97

    XVI PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS, 98

   XVII PEACE, 102

  XVIII THE RETURN OF THE ISLAND, 104


  GYNECOLOGIA, 107

      I HISTORY, 109

     II CASTAWAY, 112

    III MY CAPTOR, 114

     IV THE CHANGE, 117

      V THE HOMESTEAD, 121

     VI OBSEQUIES, 124

    VII SLAVERY, 127

   VIII A STRANGE WOOING, 128

     IX THE RUINED CITY, 130

      X THE OUTLAWS, 132

     XI EDMUND, 135

    XII THE NUNNERY, 138

   XIII IN THE CAPITAL, 142

    XIV THE EXAMINATION, 146

     XV MEN OF GENIUS, 149

    XVI REVOLUTION, 153


  OUT OF WORK, 159

      I MR. BLY’S HEART BREAKS, 161

     II MR. BLY IS IMPRISONED, 162

    III THE DARK GENTLEMAN, 163

     IV THE DARK GENTLEMAN’S STORY, 165

      V COGITATION, 167

     VI CONFLAGRATION, 167

    VII TIB STREET, 169

   VIII MR. BLY’S SERMON, 171

     IX THE EFFECT OF MR. BLY’S SERMON, 173

      X THE WIDOW MARTIN, 173

     XI MAKING A STIR, 175

    XII MAKING A STIRABOUT, 176

   XIII SPARKS FLYING, 177

    XIV SMOULDERING, 178

     XV SUCCOUR, 178

    XVI ON THE ROAD, 181

   XVII JAH, 183

  XVIII JAH SPEAKS, 185

    XIX SONG, 186

     XX MORNING, 187

    XXI HOPE, 187



PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION


Prophecy of an event is unlikely to be interesting after it and this
may be the reason why my prophetic utterances regarding the Great War
took the form of Satire. The first of these fables has a history. It
was published originally in London as a little orange-covered booklet,
called Old Mole’s Novel and it was issued simultaneously with Old Mole,
a character to whom I was so attached that it gave me great pleasure
to attribute authorship to him. Only a small edition was printed and
it soon ran out of print. A copy of it reached Germany and fell into
the hands of a group of young men who were incensed by the nonsense
the high-born Generals and Admirals were talking in the Reichstag and
I received enthusiastic letters asking for more so that these caustic
prophecies might circulate in Germany and serve as an antidote. That
was more encouragement than I had received in England and so, for my
German friends, who had the advantage of living under a frank and not a
veiled Junkerdom, I composed the remaining fables and finished them a
few months before the outbreak of war. The translation was proceeded
with but so far as I know the book was never issued in Germany. It
appeared in England early in 1915 and this intensely patriotic effort
of mine was condemned as unpatriotic because we had already caught the
German trick of talking of war as holy. It sold not at all in its first
expensive edition because it was not a novel, nor an essay, nor a play
and the British public had no training in Satire, but I have since had
letters from both soldiers and conscientious objectors saying that
the book was their constant companion and solace, and I have recently
learned that in a certain division of the British Army it was declared
to be a court-martial offense for any officer to have the book in his
possession, presumably on the principle that the soldier must not read
anything which his superiors cannot understand. That of course was good
for the sale of the book and the cheap edition also ran out of print
just about the time when the shortage of paper produced a crisis in the
affairs of authors and publishers.

The book was useful to me when the time came as evidence that my
objection to war was not an objection to personal discomfort, the
element of danger, owing to my ill health, not arising as a point at
issue, though that would not have made any difference to my position.
My objection to war is that it does not do what its advocates say it
does, and that no good cause can be served by it. Good causes can only
be served by patience, endurance, sympathy, understanding, mind and
will.

The attempt to remove militarism and military conceptions from among
human preoccupations is a good cause and that I will serve with the
only weapon I know how to use--the pen, which they say is mightier than
the sword or even the howitzer. Having applied myself to this service
before the outbreak of the Great War, which for me began in 1911, I was
not to be diverted from it by the panic confusion of those who were
overtaken by the calamity rather than prepared for it. With Windmills,
my essay on Satire, my critical study of Samuel Butler, the Interlude
in Old Mole, I was an active participant in the Great War before it
began, but of course no one pays any attention to a prophet, especially
when he is enough of an artist to desire to give his prophecy permanent
form. That indeed was my mistake. Had I thundered in the accents of
Horatio Bottomley instead of clipping my sentences to the mocking
murmur of satire I might have been a hero to some one else’s valet, not
having one of my own. Peace has her Bottomleys no less renowned than
war, but I am afraid I am not among their number, for I have long since
returned to the serious business of life, the composition of dramatic
works, and I am in the position that most ensures unpopularity, that
of being able to say ‘I told you so.’

I am a little alarmed when I consider how closely the Great War
followed my prophecy of it and turn to the fables, Gynecologia and
Out of Work, which follow logically from the other. A world governed
by women as lopsidedly as it has been by men would be much like that
depicted here, and the final collapse, if it came, would surely follow
the lines indicated in Out of Work. None of us knows exactly of what we
are a portent and who can imagine to what Lady Astor’s flight into fame
may lead? If I had not already dedicated this book to my friend D. H.
Lawrence I would, without her permission, inscribe upon it the name of
the first woman to take her Seat in the worst club in London, the House
of Commons.

                                                         GILBERT CANNAN.

New York, 1919.



Samways Island


I: TITTIKER

George Samways awoke one night with a vague distressful feeling that
all was not well with his island. The moon was shining, but it was
casting the shadow of the palm tree in which he slept over the hollow
wherein he cooked his meals, and that had never happened before.

He was alarmed and climbed down his palm tree and ran to the tall hill
from which he was accustomed to observe the sea and the land that
floated blue on the edge of the sea. The ascent seemed longer than
usual, and when he reached the summit he was horrified to find a still
higher peak before him. At this sight he was overcome with emotion and
lay upon the earth and sobbed. When he could sob no more he rose to his
feet and dragged himself to the top of the furthest peak and gazed out
upon an empty sea. The moon was very bright. There was no land upon the
edge of the sea. He raised his eyes heavenwards. The stars were moving.
He looked round upon his island. It was shrunk, and the forests were
uprooted and the little lake at the foot of the hill had disappeared.
Before and behind his island the sea was churned and tumbled, as it
was when he pressed his hands against the little waves when he went
into the water to cleanse himself.

And now a wind came and a storm arose; rain came beating, and he
hastened back to the hole in the ground he had dug for himself against
foul weather. Then, knowing that he would not sleep, he lit his lamp of
turtle oil and pith and read _Tittiker_.

_Tittiker_ was the book left to him by his father whom he had put
into the ground many years before, even as he had seen his father do
with his mother when he was a little child. He had been born on the
island, and could just remember his mother, and his father had lived
long enough to teach him how to fish and hunt and make his clothes of
leaves, feathers, and skins, and to read in _Tittiker_, but not long
enough to give him any clue to the meaning of the book. But whenever
he was sad it was a great solace to him, and he had read it from cover
to cover forty times, for it was like talking to somebody else, and it
was full of names and titles, to which he had attached personages, so
that the island was very thickly populated. Through _Tittiker_ he knew
that the earth moved round the sun, that the moon moved round the earth
and made the tides, that there were three hundred and sixty-five days
in the year, seven days in the week, and that printing is the art of
producing impressions from characters or figures.


II: THE BISHOP

When, the next morning, he crawled out of his lair he saw a man
strangely clad in black, with a shiny corded hat on his head and an
apron hanging from his middle to his knees, gazing up into his palm
tree and down into his kitchen. The man in black saw him and, in the
language of _Tittiker_, said:

“Alas, my poor brother!”

“Are you my brother?” asked George.

The man in black stepped back in amazement.

“You speak Fattish?” he cried.

“I have had no one to speak to for many years,” replied George; “but my
father spoke as you do.”

“Let us pray,” said the man in black, kneeling down on the sands.

“Pray? What is that?”

“To God. Surely you are acquainted with the nature of God?”

The word occurred in _Tittiker_.

“I often wondered what it was,” said George.

“Ssh!” said the man in black soothingly. “See! I will tell you. God
made the world in six days and rested the seventh day....”

“It took me nearly six days to dig my father’s grave, and then I was
very tired.”

“Ssh! Ssh! Listen.... God made the world in six days, and last of all
he made man and set him to live in his nakedness and innocence by the
sweat of his brow. But man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge
and became acquainted with original sin in the form of a serpent,
and his descendants were born, lived and died in wickedness and were
reduced to so terrible a plight that God in His mercy sent His son to
point the way to salvation. God’s son was crucified by the Jews, was
wedded to the Church, and, leaving His bride to carry His name all over
the world and bring lost sheep home to the fold, ascended into Heaven.
But first He descended into Hell to show that the soul might be saved
even after damnation, and He rose again the third day. His Church,
after many vicissitudes, reached the faithful people of Fatland, which
for all it is a little island off the continent of Europe, has created
the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. The Fattish people have
been favoured with the only true Church, whose officers and appointed
ministers are deacons, priests, rural deans, prebendaries, canons,
archdeacons, deans, bishops, archbishops. I am a Bishop.”

“All that,” said George, “is in _Tittiker_.”

And he recited the names and salaries of six dioceses, but when he
came to the seventh the Bishop blushed and bade him forbear.

“That,” he said, “is my diocese.” And he swelled out and looked down
his nose and made George feel very uncomfortable, so that to bridge the
difficulty he went back to the Bishop’s story.

“I like that,” he said. “And Hell is such a good word. I never heard it
before.”

“Hell,” replied the Bishop, “is the place of damnation.”

“Ah! my father used to say ‘damnation.’”

“Ssh!”

“There is something about Jews in _Tittiker_, but what is original sin?”

The Bishop looked anxiously from left to right and from right to left
and in a very low, earnest voice he said:

“Are there no women on your island?”


III: ARABELLA

Even as the Bishop spoke there came round the point a creature than
whom George had not even dreamed of any more fair. But her garments
seemed to him absurd, because they clung about her nether limbs so as
to impede their action. She came with little steps toward them, crying:

“Father!”

“My child! Not dead!”

“No, dear father. I have been drying myself over there. I have been
weeping for you. I thought I was the only one saved.”

“So I thought of myself. What a wonderful young woman you are! You look
as if you were going district visiting, so neat you are.”

George was staring at her with all his eyes. Never had he heard more
lovely sounds than those that came from her lips.

“My daughter, Arabella,” said the Bishop.

She held out her hand. George touched it fearfully as though he dreaded
lest she should melt away.

“I like you,” he said.

“I’m so hungry,” cried Arabella.

“I could eat an ox,” declared the Bishop.

George produced a kind of bread that he made from seeds, and the leg
of a goat, and went off to the creek near by to fetch some clams. He
also caught a crab and they had a very hearty breakfast, washed down
with the milk of cocoanuts. The Bishop had explained the situation to
Arabella, and she said:

“And am I really the first woman you have ever seen!”

“I had a mother,” replied George simply, “But she was not beautiful
like you. She dressed differently and her legs were fat and strong.”

“There, there!” said the Bishop. But Arabella laughed merrily.

The Bishop told how they had been with nineteen other Bishops and
their families upon a cruise in the steam-yacht _Oyster_, each Bishop
engaging to preach on Sundays to the lay passengers, and how the
propeller had been broken and they had been carried out of their course
and tossed this way and that, and finally wrecked (he thought) with the
loss of all hands, though the wireless operator had stuck to his post
to the last and managed to get off the tidings of the calamity with
latitude and longitude into the air.

It all conveyed very little to George, but it was an acute pleasure to
him to hear their voices, and as they talked he looked from one to the
other with a happy, friendly smile.

He was very proud to show his island to his visitors, but distressed
at the havoc wrought by the storm, and he apologised for its unusual
behaviour in moving.

“It has never done it before,” he explained, and was rather hurt
because Arabella laughed.

He showed them where, as far as he could remember, his father and
mother lay buried, and he took them to the top of the hill, and to
amuse them caught a goat and a little kind of kangaroo there was in
the forest, and a turtle. He displayed his hammock in the palm tree and
showed how he curled up in it and wedged himself in so as not to fall
out, and promised to prepare two other trees for them. They demurred.
The Bishop asked if he might have the lair, and Arabella asked George
to build her a house. He did not know what a house was, but looked it
up in _Tittiker_ and could find mention only of the House of Swells and
the House of Talk. Arabella made a little house of sand; he caught the
idea and spent the day weaving her a cabin of palm branches and mud
and pebbles. He sang whole passages from _Tittiker_ as he worked, and
when it was finished he led Arabella to the cabin and she smiled so
dazzlingly that he reeled, but quickly recovered himself, remembered as
in a vision how it had been with his mother, flung his arms round her
neck and kissed her, saying:

“I love you.”

“I think we had better look for my father,” said Arabella.


IV: THE SKITISH NAVY

For three nights did the Bishop sleep in the lair and Arabella in
her cabin. A grey scrub grew on the Bishop’s chin, and during the
daytime he instructed George solemnly and heavily as he delivered
himself of his invariable confirmation address,--(on the second day
he baptised George in the creek, and Arabella was delighted to be his
god-mother)--with an eager pride as he told him of the Skitish Isles
where his diocese and the seat of the Empire lay. The United Kingdom,
he said, consisted of four countries, Fatland, Smugland, Bareland, and
Snales, but only Fatland mattered, because the Fattish absorbed the
best of the Smugs and the Barish and the Snelsh and found jobs for the
cleverest of them in Bondon or Buntown, which was the greatest city in
the world. He assured George that he might go down on his knees and
thank God--now that he was baptised--for having been born a Fattishman,
and that if they ever returned to Bondon he would receive a reward for
having added to the Skitish Empire.

George knew all about the Emperor-King and his family, and liked the
idea of giving his island as a present. He asked the Bishop if he
thought the Emperor-King would give him Arabella.

“That,” said the Bishop, “does not rest with the Emperor-King.”

“But I want her,” answered George.

Thereafter the Bishop was careful never to leave his daughter alone,
so that at last she protested and said she found Mr. Samways very
interesting and was perfectly able to take care of herself.

So she was, and next time George kissed her she gave him a motherly
caress in return and he was more than satisfied; he was in an ecstasy
of happiness and danced to please her and showed her all the little
tricks he had invented to while away the tedium of his solitude, as
lying on his back with a great stone on his feet and kicking it into
the air, and walking on his knees with his feet in his hands, and
thrusting his toe into his mouth. He was downcast when she asked him
not to repeat some of his tricks.

On the fourth day, for want of any other employment, the Bishop decided
to confirm George, who consented willingly when he learned that
Arabella had been confirmed. The ceremony impressed him greatly, and he
had just resolved never to have anything to do with Original Sin when
a terrifying boom broke in upon their solemnity. Some such noise had
preceded the detachment of the island, and George ran like a goat to
the top of the hill, whence, bearing down, he saw a dark grey vessel
belching smoke and casting up a great wave before and leaving a white
spume aft. Also on the side of the island away from his dwelling he saw
two sticks above water, and knew, from the Bishop’s description, that
it must be the steam-yacht _Oyster_. He hastened back with the news,
and presently the vessel hove in sight of the beach, and it conceived
and bare a little vessel which put out and came over the waves to the
shore. A handsome man all gold and blue stepped out of the little
vessel and planted a stick with a piece of cloth on it on the sands and
said:

“I claim this island for the Skitish Empire.”

“This island,” said the Bishop, “is the property of Mr. George Samways.”

“Damme,” roared the man in gold and blue, “it isn’t on the chart.”

“Mr. Samways was born here,” said Arabella with the most charming smile.

“Yes.” George saw the man glance approvingly at Arabella and was
anxious to assert himself. “Yes, I was born on the island, but it broke
loose in a storm.”

The officer roared again, the Bishop protested, the men in the boat
grinned, and at last Arabella took the affair in hand and explained
that her father was the Bishop of Bygn and that they had been in the
ill-fated _Oyster_.

The officer removed his hat and begged pardon. They had received
messages from the _Oyster_, but the bearings were wrongly reported.
Sighting land not marked on the chart, they had decided to turn in to
annex it, but, of course, if Mr. Samways were a Skitish subject that
would be unnecessary, and--hum, ha!--All’s well that ends well and it
was extremely fortunate.

Arabella said that Mr. Samways was not only a Skitish subject but a
member of the Church of Fatland, and would be only too pleased to
hand over his island to the Colonial or whatever office might desire
to govern it. Mr. Samways was, so far, the island’s whole permanent
population and would gladly give all particulars. For herself she was
only anxious to return to Fatland, and was excited at the prospect of
travelling on board one of the Emperor-King’s ships of war. Meanwhile
would Mr. ----

“Bich.”

--would Mr. Bich stay to luncheon?

Mr. Bich stayed to luncheon. In the afternoon he made a rough survey
of the island, sounded the surrounding waters, declared that movement
had ceased, and that so far as he could make out the island was fast
on a submarine reef, with which it had collided so violently that
a promontory had cracked and was even now sinking, and with it the
_Oyster_.

Careful examination of the shore on that side of the island revealed
no more than the bodies of two Lascars, two nailbrushes, a corded silk
hat, a Bible, a keg of rum and five tins of condensed milk. In that
awful shipwreck had perished nineteen Bishops and their families, a
hundred and ten members of the professional and trading classes, the
crew, the captain, mates, and a cat.

They stood there on that wild shore amid the solitude of sea and sky,
the Skitish officer, the Bishop, Arabella, and George Samways, and
their emotions were too deep for words.


V: CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS

The ship lay-to, and, while the Captain and Mr. Bich discussed the
island in the language of their trade, the Bishop, whenever possible,
preached a sermon, or discoursed on the beauties of nature; but
Arabella took George under her protection, had his hair cut and his
beard shaved, and with a smile bought of the youngest sub-lieutenant
a suit of his shore-going clothes, a set of shirts, collars, and all
necessary under-garments. George found them most uncomfortable, but
bore with them for her sake.

As the result of the eloquence of Mr. Bich the Captain went ashore
and returned to report that, the promontory now having sunk to the
depths of the ocean, a very decent harbour had been made and the island
would be valuable to the Empire as a coaling-station. His pockets were
bulging when he came aboard, and Arabella elicited from Mr. Bich that
the island was rich in precious stones and metals, and that the pebbles
of which her cabin had been built were emeralds and aquamarines such as
had never before been seen. Arabella told her father, and he bade her
say nothing, adding impressively:

“We must protect Mr. Samways’ interests.”

But George was thinking of nothing but the best means of obliterating
Mr. Bich, upon whom it seemed to him that Arabella was casting a too
favourable eye.


VI: HOSTILITIES

As the ship steamed away from the island the smoke of another vessel
was sighted. It was signalled, but no reply was hoisted. There was
great excitement on board and the chief gunner said:

“Let me have a go at them.”

The Captain stood upon the bridge, a figure of calm dignity with a
telescope to his eye. Mr. Bich explained to Arabella and George that
the ship was a Fatter ship, and that the Fatters had lately been taking
islands on the sly without saying anything to anybody, because they
were jealous of the Skitish Empire and wanted to have one too.

“Do islands make an Empire?” asked George.

“Anything you can get,” replied Mr. Bich.

The Fatter ship was making for the island. After her went the grey
vessel, and it was a nose-to-nose race who should first reach the
harbour. The Fatter ship won. The grey vessel fired a gun. The gig was
lowered and the Captain, looking very grim and determined, put off in
her.... Arabella dropped a pin and it was heard all over the vessel.
It was a relief to all on board when the Bishop knelt and offered up
a prayer for the Captain’s safety. The Amen that came at the end of
it brought the tears to George’s eyes, and his blood ran cold when it
swelled into a cheer as the Captain’s gig broke loose from the Fatter
ship and came tearing over the smooth waters.

The Captain’s face was very white as he stepped on deck and called Mr.
Bich and the other officers to his state-room, and whiter still were
the faces of Mr. Bich and the officers when they left it. The vessel
shook with the vibration of the engines: there was a strange and stormy
muttering among the men: the vessel headed for the open sea. George was
taken to his cabin and locked in. He lay down on the floor and tried
to go to sleep. A roaring and a rumbling and a banging and a thudding
made that impossible. The shaking made him feel so sick that he wished
to die. Near by he could hear Arabella weeping, and that was more
than he could bear. He thrust and bumped against his door and worked
himself into a sweat over it, but it seemed that it would not give. As
he reached the very pit of despair, the door gave, the floor gave, the
walls heaved in upon him; in one roaring convulsion he was flung up and
up and up, and presently came down and down and down into the sea. It
tasted salt and was cool to his sweating body and he was glad of it.


VII: SIEBENHAAR

He was not glad of it for long, because he soon became very cold and
was nipped to numbness. He assumed that it was the end, and felt a
remote regret for Arabella. Other thought he had none.

When he came to himself he was, or seemed to be, once more in the room
from which he had been so violently propelled, but there were two men
standing near him and talking in a strange tongue. Presently there came
a third man who spoke to him in Fattish.

“Hullo! Thought you were done in,” said the man.

George stared.

“Done in. Dead.”

“Yes, I was.”

The man laughed.

“Funny fellow you are. Eyes just like a baby.”

“Where is Arabella?” asked George. “Where am I?”

“Give you three guesses,” said the man.

“On a ship?”

“Right.”

“The Emperor-King’s ship?”

“No. The King-Emperor’s. You have the honour to be the first prisoner
in the great Fattero-Fattish war.”

“War? What is that?”

“War? You don’t know what war is? Have you never read a newspaper?”

“I have only read _Tittiker_. It tells about a War Office, but I never
knew what it was for.”

“My name’s Siebenhaar, engineer and philosophical student, and I fancy
you are the man I have been looking for all my life. You should be
capable of a pure idea....”

“What,” asked George, “is an idea?”

Siebenhaar flung his arms around him and embraced him and recited a
long poem in his own language.

“You shall be presented at the Universities!” he said. “You shall be a
living reproach to all writers, thinkers, artists, and I, Siebenhaar,
will be your humble attendant.”

“Did I say anything unusual?”

“Unusual? Unique! Colossal! The ultimate question! ‘What is war? What
is an idea?’ Ach?”

George insisted on an explanation of the meaning of war, and then he
asked why the Fattish and the Fatters should be intent upon mutual
destruction, and also what the difference between them might be.

“Difference?” said Siebenhaar. “The Fattish drink beer that you can
hold; the Fatters drink beer that runs through you. That is all there
is to it.”

With that he sent for some Fatter beer and drank a large quantity
himself and made George taste it. He spat it out.

“Is that why they are making war?”

Siebenhaar smacked his lips.

“Man,” he said, “is the creature of his internal organs, almost, I
might say, their slave. The lungs, the heart, the kidneys, the stomach,
the bladder, these control a man, and every day refashion him. If
they do their work well, so does he. If they do it ill, then so does
he. Each of the organs has secretions which periodically choke their
interaction, and bring about a state of ill-humour and discomfort in
which the difference between man and man is accentuated, and their good
relations degenerate into hatred and envy and distrust. At such times
murders are committed and horrible assaults, but frequently discretion
prevails over those desires, suppresses them but does not destroy them.
They accumulate and find expression in war, which has been led up to
by a series of actions on the part of men suffering from some internal
congestion. Modern war, they say, is made by money, and the lust for
it. That is no explanation. No man becomes a victim of the lust for
money except something interferes with his more natural lusts: no man,
I go so far as to say, could so desire money as to become a millionaire
except he were const----”

“But what has this to do with beer?” interrupted George.

“I’m coming to that,” continued Siebenhaar.

“Beer taken in excess is a great getter of secretions, and man is so
vain an animal as to despise those whose secretions differ from his
own. What is more obvious than that the implacable enemies of the
Eastern hemisphere should be those whose drink is so much the same
but so profoundly different in its effects? Internal congestion may
bring about war, but in this war the material is undoubtedly supplied
by beer. And I may add, in support of my theory, that once war is
embarked upon, those engaged in it suffer so terribly from internal
disorganisation as to become unanswerable for their actions, and so
mad as to rejoice in the near prospect of a violent death. Moltke was
notoriously decayed inside and the state of Napoleon’s internal organs
will not bear thinking on.”

George protested that he had never heard of Napoleon or Moltke, and
Siebenhaar was on the point of embracing him, when, muttering something
about Fatter beer, he rose abruptly and left the room.


VIII: MORE OF SIEBENHAAR

“There is a woman aboard,” said Siebenhaar when he returned. “I suppose
you have never seen a woman?”

“Two,” said George simply.

Siebenhaar slapped his leg.

“Have you any theory about them?” he asked.

“Theory? I don’t know what theory is. I loved them. I put my arms round
their necks and rubbed my face against their soft faces. It was very
nice. I should like to do it every night before I go to sleep. I should
like to do it now.”

“You shall,” said Siebenhaar, and he went out and came back with
Arabella.

George leaped from his berth and flung his arms round her neck and
embraced her, and she was so surprised and delighted that she kissed
him, and Siebenhaar wept to see it.

“I don’t know who you are, madam,” he said, “but if I were you I should
stick to that young man like a barnacle to a ship’s bottom. I would
creep into his heart and curl up in it like a grub in a ripe raspberry,
and I would go down on my knees and thank Heaven for having sent me
the one man in the modern world who may be capable of a genuine and
constant affection. You have him, madam, straight from his mother’s
arms, with a soul, a heart, as virgin as I hope your own are.”

Arabella disengaged herself from George’s now ardent embrace, drew
herself up, and with the haughtiness of her race, said:

“My father was a bishop of the Church of Fatland.”

“That,” said Siebenhaar, “does not exempt you from the normal internal
economy of your sex or its need of the (perfectly honest) love of the
opposite sex. My point is that you have here an unrivalled opportunity
of meeting an honest love, and I implore you to take it.”

“I would have you know,” retorted Arabella, “that I am engaged to my
late father’s chaplain.”

“War,” said Siebenhaar, “is war, and I should advise you to seek
protection where it is offered.”

“If you would hold my hand in yours,” said George to Arabella, “I think
I should sleep now. I am so tired.”

Arabella held George’s hand and in two minutes he was asleep.


IX: SIEBENHAAR ON WOMEN

“There are some,” said Siebenhaar, “who regard women as a disease, a
kind of fungoid distortion of the human form. But only the very lowest
species are hermaphrodite, and the higher seem to be split up into
male and female for the purpose of reproduction without temporary
loss of efficiency in the task of procuring food. The share of the
male in the act of reproduction is soon over, and among the wisest
inhabitants of the globe the male is destroyed as soon as his share is
performed. Human beings are not very wise: they have an exaggerated
idea of their importance; and they are reluctant to destroy the life of
their kind except in occasional outbursts of organised homicide such
as that on which we are now engaged. The share of the female entails
the devotion of many months, during which she needs the protection of
the male, whom, for that reason, and also because she hopes to repeat
the performance, she retains by every art at her disposal. Hence has
arisen the institution of marriage, which pledges the male to the
protection of the female and their offspring. Whether a moral principle
is engaged in this institution is a question upon which philosophers
cannot agree. It is therefore left out of most systems of philosophy.
Mine is based on my answer to it, which is that there is no moral
principle engaged. Morality is for the few who are capable of it. Few
men have the capacity for ideas, but all men love women, except a
few miserable degenerates, who prefer a substitute. There is no idea
in marriage. It is an expedient. Sensible communities admit of open
relief from it; in duller communities relief has to be sought in the
byways. And still no moral principle is engaged. It is a matter only
of supplying the necessities of human nature. Now, love is a different
affair altogether. Love is an idea, a direct inspiration. It alone
can transcend the tyranny of the internal organs and lead a man not
only to perceive his limitations but within them to create beauty, and
creative a man must be directly he becomes aware of the heat of love in
the heart of a woman. There is no other such purging fire, none that
can so illuminate the dark places of the world or so concentrate and
distil such lightness as there is. All evil, I have said, comes from
congestion; to release the good a purge is necessary, and there is no
purge like woman. Therefore, madam, I do most solemnly charge you to
tend the fire of love in your heart. Never again will you find a man so
sensible to its warmth--(most men can see no difference between love
and indigestion)--Oh, madam, discard all thoughts of marriage, which is
an expedient of prudence, which is cowardice, of modesty, which is a
lure, of innocence, which in an adult female is a lie, to the winds, do
exactly as you feel inclined to do, and love. Madam ----”

But by this Arabella was asleep. She had sunk back against George, her
lovely tresses lay upon his shoulder, and her hand clasped his.

Siebenhaar wiped away a tear, heaved a great sigh, took his beer-mug in
his hand and crept away on tip-toe.


X: LOVE


XI: MUSIC

On deck was a band playing dirge-like dragging hymns, for the Admiral
of that ship was a very pious man and believed that the Almighty was
personally directing the war against the enemies of Fatterland, and
would be encouraged to hear that ship’s company taking him seriously.

No sooner did Siebenhaar set foot on deck than he was arrested.

The Chaplain had listened to every word of his discourse and reported
it to the Admiral, who detested Siebenhaar because he was always
laughing and was very popular with the crew. Word for word the
Chaplain had quoted Siebenhaar’s sayings, so that he could deny nothing
but only protest that it was purely a private matter, a series of
opinions and advice given gratuitously to an interesting couple.

“Nothing,” roared the Admiral, “is given to the enemies of our country.”

“We are all human,” said Siebenhaar. “I was carried away by the
discovery of human feeling amid the callousness of this pompous war.”

The Admiral went pale. The Chaplain shuddered. The officers hid their
faces.

“He has spoken against God’s holy war,” said the Chaplain.

“That’s all my eye,” said Siebenhaar. “Why drag God into it? You are
making war simply because you have so many ships that you are ashamed
not to use them. The armament companies want to build more ships and
can invent no other way of getting rid of them.”

“God has given us ships of war,” said the Chaplain, “even as He has
given us the good grain and the fish of the sea. Who are we that we
should not use them?”

The sub-Chaplain had been sent to discover the effect of Siebenhaar’s
advice upon the enemies of Fatterland. The accused had just opened
his mouth to resume his defence when the sub-Chaplain returned and
whispered into the ear of his chief.

“God help us all!” cried the Chaplain. “They are desecrating His ship!”

There was a whispered consultation. George and Arabella were brought
before the court, and if George was the object of general execration,
Arabella won the admiration of all eyes, especially the Admiral’s, who
regarded his affections as his own particular, private and peculiar
devil and was now tempted by him. The Chaplain held forth at great
length; the Admiral grunted in apostrophe. Only Siebenhaar could
interpret. He said:

“They say we have blasphemed their God of War. I by giving advice, you
by acting on it. It is not good to be fortunate and favoured among
hundreds of mateless males. It will go hard with us.”

“And Arabella?” asked George.

“They will keep Arabella,” replied Siebenhaar.

They were silenced.

A boat was stocked with corned beef, biscuits, and water. George and
Siebenhaar were placed in it and it was lowered. The band resumed its
playing of dirge-like dragging hymns, and through the wailing of the
oboes and the cornet-à-piston George could hear the sobs of Arabella.


XII: ADRIFT

“Now,” said Siebenhaar, “you have an opportunity to exercise your
national prerogative and rule the waves.”

George made no reply. His internal organs were supplying him with an
illustration of Siebenhaar’s theory. The waves did just as they liked
with the boat, sent it spinning in one direction, wrenched it back in
another, slipped from under it, picked it up again and every now and
then playfully sent a drenching spray over its occupants.

Siebenhaar talked, sang and slept, and, when he was doing none of these
things, ate voraciously.

“I insist on dying with a full stomach,” he said when George protested.

George ate and slept and thought of Arabella, when he could think at
all.

“Death,” said Siebenhaar, “must be very surprising: but then, so is
life when you penetrate its disguises and discover its immutability.
We hate death only because it is impossible to pretend that it is
something else, so that it comes at the end of the comedy to give us
the lie. After this experience I think I shall change my philosophy
and seek the truth of life with the light of death. You never know: it
might become fashionable. Women like their thoughts ready-made, and
they like them bizarre. Women are undoubtedly superior to men....”

But by this time George was in such a state of discomfort that he lay
flat on his face in the bottom of the boat and groaned:

“I am going to die.”

“Eat,” said Siebenhaar, “eat and drink.” And he offered corned beef and
water.

“I want to die,” moaned George, and he wept because death would not
come at once. He hid his face in his hands and howled and roared.
Siebenhaar himself ate the corned beef and drank the water, and went on
eating and drinking until he had exhausted all their supply. Then he
curled up in the bows and went to sleep and snored.

And the waves changed their mood and gave the boat only a gentle
rocking.

George opened his eyes and gazed up into the sky. It was night and the
stars were shining brilliantly. Red and yellow and white they were and
they danced above him. He was astonished to find that he did not wish
to die. He was very hungry. He crawled over to Siebenhaar and shook him
and woke him up.

There was neither food nor water in the locker.

“In the great cities of the civilised world,” said Siebenhaar, “there
are occasional performers who go without food for forty days. We shall
see.”

“I am thirsty,” whimpered George.

“Those occasional performers,” returned Siebenhaar, “drink water and
smoke cigarettes, and they are sheltered from the elements by walls of
glass. We shall see.”

With that he turned over and went to sleep again.


XIII: HUNGER

George’s face was sunk and his eyes glared. Siebenhaar tried to spit
into the sea, but it was impossible. He was daunted into silence.

Another day began to dawn.

“If this goes on,” said George in a dry whistling croak of a voice, “I
shall eat you.”

And he glared so at Siebenhaar’s throat that the philosopher turned up
his coat collar to cover it.


XIV: MILITARY

At dawn a shower of rain came. They collected water in George’s boots.
They had already eaten Siebenhaar’s.

Thus revived, George stood up, and on the edge of the sea saw blue land
and little white sails. They came nearer and nearer, and presently they
were delivered by a little vessel that contained one white man and ten
negroes. Neither George nor Siebenhaar could speak, but they pointed to
their bellies and were given to eat.

“I recant,” said Siebenhaar. “There is nothing to be learnt from death,
for death is nothing. The stomach is lord of life and master of the
world.”

With that he recounted their adventures and the reason for their being
in such a woeful plight. The master of the ship, on learning that
Siebenhaar was a Fatter, said that he must deliver him up as a prisoner
when they reached Cecilia, the capital of the Fattish colony which they
would see as soon as the fleet--for it was a fishing fleet--turned into
the bay.

“As a Philosopher,” said Siebenhaar, “I have no nationality. As an
engineer--but I am no longer an engineer. The Admiral and the Chaplain
will have seen to that. My life is now devoted to Mr. Samways, as in
a certain narrower sense it has nearly been.” And he told the master
of the ship how George was by birth the proprietor of the island in
dispute between the two nations, and how the island shone with precious
stones and glittered with a mountain of gold. The master’s cupidity was
aroused, and he agreed to grant Siebenhaar his liberty on the promise
of a rich reward at the conclusion of the war. He was a Fattishman, and
could not believe that there would be any other end than a Fattish
triumph.

A pact was signed and they sailed into Cecilia, the governor of which
colony was Siebenhaar’s cousin and delighted to see him and to have a
chance of talking the Fatter language and indulging in philosophical
speculations for which his Fattish colleagues had no taste. He welcomed
George warmly on his first entry in a civilised land, and was delighted
to instruct him in the refinements of Fattish manners: how you did
not eat peas or gravy with your knife, and how (roughly speaking)
no portion of the body between the knees and shoulders might be
mentioned in polite society, and how sneezing and coughing and the like
sudden affections were to be checked or disguised. George talked of
Arabella and the wonderful stir of the emotions she had caused in him.
Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch (for that was his name) was greatly
shocked, and told how in the best Fattish society all talk of love was
forbidden, left by the men to the women, and how among men the emotions
were never discussed, and how, since it was impossible to avoid all
mention of that side of life, men in civilisation had invented a system
of droll stories which both provided amusement and put a stop to the
embarrassment of intimate revelations.

However, as George’s vigour was restored by the good food he ate in
enormous quantities, he could not forbear to think of Arabella or to
talk of her. He spoke quite simply of her to a company of officers, and
they roared with laughter and found it was the best story they had ever
heard.

When the officers were not telling droll stories, they were playing
cards or ball games or boasting one against the other or talking about
money.

George asked what money was, and they showed him some. He was
disappointed. He had expected something much more remarkable because
they had been so excited about it. They told him he must have money,
and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch gave him a sovereign. A man in
the street asked George to lend him a sovereign and George gave it to
him. The officers were highly amused.

The adventurers had not been in Cecilia above a week when the town was
besieged and presently bombarded. Except that there was a shortage of
food and that every day at least thirty persons were killed, there was
no change in the life of the place. The officers told droll stories and
played cards or ball games or boasted one against the other or talked
about money. They ate, drank, slept, and quarrelled, and George found
them not so very much unlike himself except that he was serious about
his love for Arabella, while they laughed. He asked Siebenhaar what
civilisation was. Said the philosopher with a wave of his hand:

“They have built a lot of houses.”

“But the ships out there are knocking them down.”

“They have made railways from one town to another.”

“But the black men have torn the railways up.” (For the native tribes
had risen.)

Said Siebenhaar:

“No one can define civilisation. It means doing things.”

“Why?”

“Thou art the greatest of men,” replied Siebenhaar, and his face beamed
approbation and love upon his friend. But to put an unanswerable
question to Siebenhaar was to set him off on his theories.

“First,” he said, “the stomach must be fed. Two men working together
can procure more food than two men working separately. That is as far
as we have got. Until the two men trust each other we are not likely to
get any further. Until then they will steal each other’s tools, goods,
women, and squabble over the proceeds of their work and make the world
a hell for the young. When one man steals or murders it is a crime:
when forty million men steal, murder, rape, burn, destroy, pillage,
sack, oppress, they are making glorious history, a lot of money, and,
if they like to call it so, an Empire. But Empire and petty thefts
are both occasioned by the lamentable distrust of the two men of our
postulate.”

“But for Arabella,” said George, “I could wish I had never left my
island.”

News of the war came dribbling in. The island had been twice captured
by the Fatter fleet, and twice it had been evacuated. The Fatters had
suffered defeat in their home waters but had gained a victory in the
Indian seas. Came news that the island had again been captured, then
the tidings that the whole of the Fatter fleet and army was to be
concentrated upon Cecilia and the colony of which it was the capital.

“Why?” asked George.

“Because a new reef of gold has been discovered up-country.”

The bombardment grew very fierce. From the mountain above the town
ships of war could be seen coming from all directions, and some of them
were Fattish ships, but not enough as yet to come to grips with the
Fatter fleet.

The inland frontiers were attacked but held, though with frightful loss
of life. Then one night from the Fatter fleet came a landing party,
and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch called a council of war, and the
officers sat from ten o’clock until three in the morning debating what
had best be done.

At half-past one the landing party were only a mile away. A shell
burst in the street as George was walking to his lodging and three men
were killed in front of him. It was the first time he had seen such a
thing. It froze his blood. He gave a yell that roused the whole town,
ran, was followed by a crowd of riff-raff seizing weapons as they went,
and rushed down upon the enemy, who had stopped for a moment to see
two dogs fighting in the road. They were taken by surprise and utterly
routed.

There is no more rousing episode in the whole military history of
Fatland. George was for three days the hero of the Empire. He received
by wireless telegraphy countless offers of marriage, ten proposals
from music-hall engagements, and by cable a demand for the story of
the fight from the noble proprietor of a Sunday newspaper. It was
impossible to persuade that noble proprietor that there was no extant
photograph of Mr. Samways, and a fortune was spent in cablegrams in the
fruitless attempts to do so.


XV: NAVAL

As it turned out the concentration on Cecilia was a fatal tactical
error, directly traceable to the King-Emperor, who had never left the
capital of Fatterland and had been misled by certain telegrams which
had been wrongly deciphered. The entire Fattish navy was collected
upon the bombarding fleet and utterly destroyed it.

George and Siebenhaar watched the engagement from the mountain above
Cecilia. It was almost humorous to see the huge vessels curtsey to the
water and so disappear. It was astonishing to see the Fattish admiral
surround nine of his own vessels and cause them also to curtsey and
disappear.

“What in hell,” said George, who had by now learned the nature of an
oath, “what in hell is he doing that for?”

“That,” said Siebenhaar, “is for the benefit of the armament
contractors. A war without loss of ships is no use to them.”

And suddenly George burst into tears, because he had thought of all
the men on board, and was overcome with the futility of it all and the
feeling that he was partially to blame for having been born on his
island.


XVI: NATIONAL

The Fattish are an emotional race. They had overcome the Fatters, and
the only outstanding hero of that war was George. They insisted on
seeing George. They clamoured for him. They sent a cruiser to fetch him
from Cecilia, and the commander of that cruiser was none other than
Mr. Bich, who had won promotion.

His astonishment was no less great than George’s, but his adventures
were less interesting. After the destruction of the ship he had been
saved by a turtle which had been attracted by his brass buttons and had
allowed him to ride on his back so long as they lasted. He had had to
give it one every twenty minutes, and had just come to his last when
he was seen and rescued. He had thought himself the only survivor, and
when he heard that Arabella also had been delivered from the waves
there came into his eye a gleam which George did not like.

The voyage was quite monotonously uneventful and George was glad when
they reached Fatland. The Mayor, Corporation, and Citizens, also dogs
and children, of the port at which he landed, turned out to meet him;
he was given the freedom of the borough, and a banquet, and at both
ceremony and meal he was photographed.

In Bondon he was given five public meals in two days. He was so
bewildered by the number of people who thronged round him that he
left all arrangements in Siebenhaar’s hands, and Siebenhaar liked the
banquets.

He was received by the Emperor-King and decorated, and the
Empress-Queen said: “How do you do, Mr. Samways?”

He was followed everywhere by enormous crowds, and outside his lodgings
there were always ten policemen to clear a way for the traffic. His
romantic history had put a polish on his fame: the motherless and
fatherless orphan, all those years alone upon an island; no woman in
Fatland old or young, rich or poor, but yearned to be a mother to him
and make up to him for all those years. And then the wonderful story
of his acceptance of the Fattish religion, his reception on those
golden sands into the church at the hands of the good Bishop of Bygn,
after the appalling disaster to the _Oyster_. All was known, and the
emotional Fattish found it irresistibly moving. George in all innocence
created a religious revival such as had never been known. The theatres,
music-halls, picture palaces were deserted: no crowds attended the
football matches or the race-meetings, and when the newspapers had
exhausted the Story of George Samways their circulation dropped to next
to nothing. The situation for certain trades looked black indeed.

But of all of this George recked nothing. His one thought was for
Arabella.


XVII: REUNION

Siebenhaar took a malicious delight in the ruin of the newspaper trade,
and pledged George to attend a mammoth church meeting in Bondon’s
greatest hall of assembly. There were forty bishops on the platform,
and a Duke presided. George entered. There were tears, cheers, sobs,
sighs, groans, conversions; and hundreds suddenly became conscious of
salvation, swooned away and were carried out.

The Duke spoke for fifty minutes. Mr. Samways (he said) would now tell
the story of his--er--er--“Have I got to say something?” said George to
Siebenhaar.

“Tell them,” said Siebenhaar, “to look after the stomach and the rest
will look out for itself.”

George advanced toward the front of the platform and beamed out upon
the eager audience.

Arabella let a pin drop and it could be heard all over the hall.

It _was_ Arabella! For a moment George could not believe his eyes. It
was she! He leaped down from the platform, took her in his arms and
covered her with kisses.

So strong was the hypnotic power of his fame that there was no male in
that huge audience but followed his example, no female, old or young,
rich or poor, but yielded to it. In vain did the bishops protest and
quote from the marriage service of the Fattish Church; in vain did they
go among the audience and earnestly implore the individual members
of it to desist. They replied that George Samways had revealed a new
religion and that they liked it.

And above the tumult rose the voice of Siebenhaar saying: ---- But what
he said is unprintable.


XVIII: BETROTHAL

How he escaped from the pandemonium George never knew, but his first
clear recollection after it was of being borne swiftly through the
streets of Bondon with Arabella in his arms, she weeping and telling
him of the hard and vile usage she had been put to on the Fatter ship,
for the Admiral was a horrid man. She told him how she had at last been
taken to the Fatterland and there, by her father’s influence--(for
her father also had been marvelously delivered from an untimely
end)--released and sent, first-class at the expense of the Fatter
Government, home to Fatland, and how she had there resumed her old
life of district visiting and tea parties and diocesan conferences and
rescuing white slaves and had been content in it until she had seen
him, when all her old love had sprung once more into flame and she
would never, never desert him more. George wept also and protested that
he would never leave her side.

She took him to her home, and her father, who had been prevented by
indisposition from attending the meeting, blessed him and made him
welcome.

It was very late and George drew Arabella to his side and said he would
send for his things.

“Things!” said the Bishop.

“We love each other,” replied George.

“Do you propose to marry this man?” asked the Bishop.

Arabella blushed and explained to George that he must go away until
they were married, and the Bishop revealed the meaning of the word.

“But why?” asked George.

“It is so ordained,” said the Bishop, and George was exasperated.

“I love Arabella,” he cried. “What more do you want? And what on earth
has it got to do with you or anybody else? I love Arabella, and my love
has survived shipwreck, starvation, explosion, battle, murder, and the
public festivities of Fatland....”

With extraordinary cynicism the Bishop replied:

“That may be. But it is doubtful if it will survive marriage; therefore
marriage is necessary.”

This illogical argument silenced George. The Bishop finally gave his
consent and the marriage was arranged to take place in a month’s time,
and the announcement of the betrothal was sent to the only remaining
morning newspaper.


XIX: REACTION

There were great rejoicings when peace between Fatland and Fatterland
was signed and ratified, and the day was set apart for an imposing
ceremony at the Colonial Office, when George’s island was to be
solemnly incorporated in the Empire.

In a little room high up in the huge offices Field-Marshals, Admirals,
and Cabinet Ministers foregathered. The State Map of the World was
produced and the island was marked on it, and George with his own hand
was to have the privilege of underlining its name in red ink. It was
an awful moment. George dipped his pen in the ink--(it was the first
time he had ever held a pen in his hand and he had to be instructed in
its use); he dipped his pen in the ink, held it poised above the map,
when the door opened and a white-faced clerk rushed in with a sheet of
paper as white as his face. This he gave to the Colonial Secretary, who
collapsed. The Lord High Flunkey took the paper and said:

“Good God!”

George dropped the pen and made a red blot on the State Map of the
World.

The Lord High Flunkey pulled himself together and said:

“My Lords and Gentlemen, the South Seas Squadron commissioned to annex
the new island reports that it has moved on and cannot be found.”

“This is a serious matter, Mr. Samways,” said the senior Admiral.

“I’m awfully sorry,” answered George, and he walked out of the room.

It had been arranged that when George underlined the name of his island
on the map, the national flag should be run up on the offices so that
the expectant crowd should know that the Empire had been enlarged and
the war justified. There was an appalling silence as George left the
building. He slipped into the crowd before he was recognized and before
the awful news had spread.

There was a groan, a hoot, a yell, and the crowd stormed and raved.
Stones flew, and soon there was not a window in that office left
unbroken.

The Government resigned, and with its fall fell George Samways. He was
not the object of any active hostility. He was simply ignored. It was
as though he had never been. When he called at the Bishop’s house to
see Arabella, the footman stared through him and said the Bishop would
be obliged if he would write. George took the fellow by the scruff of
the neck and laid him on the floor. Then he ran upstairs to Arabella’s
room.

“You!” she said.

“Yes. I love you.”

“We can’t be married now.”

“No. We needn’t wait now. You’re coming with me.”

He assisted her to pack a small handbag, and with that they set forth.

At George’s lodgings they found Siebenhaar in argument with the master
of the ship, who had delivered them and had now come to Bondon to claim
his reward. He had sailed from Cecilia in his own ship, which was even
now at the docks.

“We will sail in her,” said George, “and we will find my island.”

“Find the island? The whole navy’s looking for it!”

“It will come to me,” said George.

And Siebenhaar embraced Arabella and congratulated her on having taken
his advice.


XX: HOME

They had a pleasant voyage, saw the sea-serpent twice, and when they
came to the South Seas every night George sang those strange melodious
chants that he had made out of _Tittiker_. One night when they had been
at sea nigh eight months up and down the Southern Seas and almost into
the Antarctic, George fell into a kind of swoon and said:

“She is coming, she is coming, my mother, my land.”

And Arabella, fearing for his reason, implored Siebenhaar to distract
him with talk, and the master of the ship to make for the nearest port.
But George silenced Siebenhaar, and in an unearthly voice he crooned:

  “Cathoire Mor, or the Great--had thirty sons.

  Conn Ceadchadhach, called the Hero of the Hundred Battles--slain.

  Conaire--killed.

  Art-Aonfhir, the Melancholy--slain in battle.

  Lughaidh, surnamed MacConn--thrust through the eye with a spear in a
  conspiracy.

  Feargus, surnamed Black-teeth--murdered at the instigation of his
  successor.

  Cormac-Ulfhada--‘A Prince of the most excellent wisdom, and kept the
  most splendid court that ever was in Bareland’; choked by the bone of
  a fish at supper....”

Near dawn he rose to his feet and stood with outstretched arms,
yelling at the top of his voice:

  “Connor, or Conchabhar--‘died of grief, being unable to redress the
  misfortunes of his country.’

  Niall-Caillie--drowned in the river Caillie.

  Turgesius--‘expelled the Barish historians, and burnt their books’;
  thrown into a lough and drowned....”

And Siebenhaar lifted up his eyes in wonder, for there was such a note
of triumph in George’s voice.

The sun was casting up his first rosy glow upon the sky, and against
it, dark blue, almost purple, stood a tall hill that grew. There was
little wind, but the ship sped forward.

“My beloved! My island!” cried George, and Arabella fell upon his neck.

As the sun rose above the horizon they slipped ashore upon the yellow
sands, and George’s palm tree bowed to them and they four, George,
Arabella, Siebenhaar and the master of the ship, joined hands and
danced together.

Then George took Arabella to the little cabin and he said:

“The house I built for you.”

But Siebenhaar said:

“I am devilish hungry.”



Ultimus


I: THE SON OF HIS FATHER

Though her love for George never faded, Arabella could not take kindly
to life on the island. She bore herself cheerfully until she was with
child, and then, when she began to plan careers for her son, she was
oppressed by the absence of opportunity which that life could afford.
She told herself that when she was dead and Siebenhaar was dead and
George was dead the boy would be left alone with the Captain, who was
only a common man. She had another two months to go when the Captain
disappeared one night with his ship and a cargo of rubies and emeralds.
The blow was too much for her: the only means of communication with the
world of Bishops and white slaves was gone; she sank into a profound
melancholy: the boy was born before his time; and she died.

George flung himself on the sands and wept and swore he would call the
boy Judas, because he had betrayed him. However, Siebenhaar protested,
saying that, as the boy could not be christened, it was not right to
give him a Biblical name. He said that he personally should call him
Ultimus as he bade fair to be the last of his line, unless, as had
happened before, the island should insist on its population being
continued. For that was how, after much cogitation, the philosopher had
come to explain the previous strange adventure. George was indifferent,
but from hearing Siebenhaar call the boy Ultimus he also adopted the
name, not knowing its sad significance. Bearing deeply imprinted in his
soul the marks of his unhappy contact with the world, George forbade
all mention of it in his son’s presence. Never was he to know of the
hateful race who inhabited Fatland, and of the indomitable Fatters
whose admiral had so shamefully treated his mother. However, Siebenhaar
used to talk in his sleep, and he often slept in the middle of the day.
When he was six years old little Ultimus came to his father and said:

“What is God? What is an engine? Is the world round? What is a mother?
Who is Siebenhaar’s father? What is a professor? Why does Siebenhaar
talk in two ways? If you helped me to be born why can’t I help some one
else? Is a Bishop a kind of man? Did I kill my mother, and how did I
do it if I never saw her? Is this your island? What is an island? Are
there other sorts of land? Are the stars land? Is the moon land? Is the
sun land? If you are my father, why isn’t Siebenhaar some one’s father?
Are all big men fathers? How do they do it? There are two kinds of
goats, why aren’t there two kinds of men? If there are she-goats, why
aren’t there she-men? What is a ship? Siebenhaar is always talking
about ships. What is money? Are you a King? There is a King in Fatland.
When is a father grand?...”

George gave one despairing look at his son. He groaned:

“Arabella, my love, my love.”

Then he walked out into the sea and disappeared. A few hours later his
body was washed up on the shore, and Siebenhaar had to explain to the
boy that his father was dead. Ultimus said:

“He walked out into the sea.”

“To such peace,” replied Siebenhaar solemnly, “do we all come.”


II: QUESTIONS

If the boy’s questions were fatal to his father they were a delight
to Siebenhaar, who had no further scruple about giving instruction,
for, in the hardship and solitude which had been his fate since his
encounter with George, his philosophy had matured and he saw that the
remaining years of his life might be spent in the instruction and
preparation of a disciple.

They would sit for hours together on the sands drawing maps and
diagrams for illustration. Siebenhaar had no knowledge which he
did not communicate to Ultimus, who by the time he was seventeen
was a master of mathematics, German philosophy, the rudiments of
physics, chemistry, geology, physiology, biology, psychology, botany,
meteorology, astronomy. They made wind and stringed instruments and
played duets composed of what Siebenhaar could remember of Beethoven.
The boy was a good sculptor and painter, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker,
a mason, a cook, an engineer, a weaver, a tailor, a cobbler. He could
read and write five languages, was familiar with the geography of the
whole world, and knew the situations of the best brothels in all the
first-class ports. When he began to have needs which there was no means
of satisfying, Siebenhaar explained them to him:

“You are now reaching that state of man which reveals the futility of
all knowledge, since you are awakened to desires which no knowledge can
satisfy. Rest assured that in the world your case would be no better,
but rather would be aggravated by opportunity and failure. You are, at
any rate, spared the tragedy of your father whose love destroyed the
object of his desire and reduced him to a morbid condition in which
your healthy wish for knowledge was more than he could bear. It is
right to wish for knowledge, because only through that can we recognise
our ignorance, and see the humour of our position. If you can see that
you can be happy and glad that you have lived.”

Poor Ultimus tried hard to do so, but he often retired from their
conversations to weep, and Siebenhaar would find him sitting in the
water consoling himself with music. The unhappy youth became a prey to
boredom and wearied of the arts and sciences and discussions with which
they filled the day. They had long ago arrived at the conclusion that
there was no God, no ascertainable purpose in the universe, and nothing
in life but the fun or nuisance of living. He became romantic and
plagued Siebenhaar for stories, love-stories, bawdy experiences, the
tale of his meeting with George, and the deathless fable of the love of
George and Arabella. From that he came to delight in the idea of war,
and Siebenhaar explained to him how wars came about: how in the first
place men were obsessed by superstitions about God, each community
believing itself to be specially favoured and inspired by the unseen
powers, and ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, as poverty,
disease, corruption, bad art, inefficiency, and domestic unhappiness.
As a consequence each community was jealous of every other, and
supported its claims to moral superiority and divine favour with a
great show of force, of armed ships on the sea and trained men on the
land.

To illustrate his remarks Siebenhaar concocted explosives and Ultimus
found such great amusement in them and was so busy destroying the
houses he had built, the statues he had made, the engines he had
contrived, that the philosopher was forced to change his theory of war
and to see that it has its roots in boredom.

Thereafter Ultimus was alternately busy with the arts and sciences and
with destroying all his works when he was bored with them and could not
help recognising their futility. As his explosives upset Siebenhaar’s
nerves and the tranquillity he required for his contemplation, they
made an arrangement that Ultimus should give notice of his destructive
intentions when he felt them coming on. Then Siebenhaar would retire to
the other side of the island and leave him to it.

The boy made a careful study of explosives and experimented with them
until he could send huge palm trees hundreds of feet into the air. It
became his ambition to blow up the mountain. He made several attempts,
but could not succeed. He blew great holes in it and discovered mines
of gold and diamonds and platinum and various new earths which, when
mixed with his explosive, increased its power. But the mountain
seemed to be capable of absorbing any shock. He had just given up his
experiments in despair when Siebenhaar came rushing over in a great
state of excitement to say that the island had moved a degree and a
half.

The two men looked at each other incredulously, not daring to believe
in what was thumping in both their minds. They prepared a new charge,
took their bearings, exploded it, and found that they were moving at
the rate of twenty-three knots an hour, N.N.W. The next charge they
placed so that the island moved W.N.W.

They could then navigate and go whither they pleased. They embraced,
danced, killed a goat, and drank heavily to celebrate their triumph.


III: CIVILISATION

The north point of the island was a rocky headland, a precipice
hundreds of feet above the sea-level. Beyond it jutted three jagged
rocks. One morning Siebenhaar found on one of these rocks the hull of
a vessel, and when he looked closer he saw a man sitting disconsolate
upon it. He fetched Ultimus, who threw stones to attract the man’s
attention. It was impossible to make him hear. They gesticulated to
tell him to swim to his right, and at last he caught their meaning,
stripped and plunged into the sea. They had already stopped the island,
which was now making only a gentle way, so that there was no danger of
his being run down.

By the time they reached the shore the man was already sitting on the
sands drying himself and eating a cocoa-nut. He was above middle age,
and had a little fat belly and long thin legs. Siebenhaar addressed him
in Fattish, and the man said he was a Rear-Admiral in the Fattish Navy
and would like to know what in hell they meant by ruining his battle in
which he had got the Fatters fairly on the run.

“Battle?” said Siebenhaar.

“Yes. Four cruisers, six destroyers, and torpedo craft. All gone on the
rocks. The most amazing thing in all my long experience. Not a sign of
a rock on the chart. You must have got the Fatters first, for their
firing suddenly ceased. Who are you? What are you?”

Siebenhaar told him it was Samways Island.

The man’s jaw dropped.

“I spent the best part of three years after that,” he said. “I
originally annexed it for the Empire.”

“Not,” cried Siebenhaar. “_Not_ Mr. Bich?”

“Bich is my name.”

Siebenhaar disclosed his identity and Rear-Admiral Bich covered his
amazement and emotion with a volley of expletives. He asked after
George, and when he was told that both he and Arabella were dead he
could not check his tears.

He shook Ultimus warmly by the hand and said he was the very spit of
his father, with a strong look of his mother. Then he added: “I must
not forget my duty as an officer, and, as a matter of form, I claim the
island once more for the Empire.”

“If you do,” said Ultimus quietly, “I shall blow you in pieces. I know
how the Fattish Empire treated my father, and, but for your kindly
thoughts of my mother, I would send you to join the ships which I am
only too happy to have destroyed if such a disaster can cause any
genuine commotion in Bondon. I will further caution you to be careful
what you say, as I am unaccustomed to society other than that of the
wise Siebenhaar, and already feel my soul filled with dislike and
contempt for you. This island is my island by inheritance, it is moving
by my will and I shall allow you to stay on it just as long as you are
useful to me.”

Rear-Admiral Bich saw the strength of Ultimus’ position and was silent
until Siebenhaar asked him for news of civilisation, when he expressed
surprise that they had not heard of the war.

“War?” said Siebenhaar. “Are they still at that game? Why, we were told
that the Fattero-Fattish war was to be the last.”

“That,” replied the Admiral, “was a mere skirmish. There are six or
seven nations at war with Fatterland.”

“Alas! my poor country!” cried the philosopher. “I knew how it would
be. Their infernal greed and conceit, their confusion of mind, their
slothfulness, their desire for discipline, their liking for monuments
and display, their want of tact, all these defects needed but success
for them to grow into active vice and plunge them into disaster. To
any nation a period of successful peace is fatal. The employment of
commercial cunning unredeemed by any other exercise of the mind is,
after a time, unutterably boring, and the most obvious relief from it
is found in the ideal of a nation in arms. Now that is a barren ideal.
To train men for so stupid and brutal a trade as the soldier’s is to
increase the already excessive amount of stupidity and brutality in the
world. To maintain large bodies of stupid and brutal men in arms is in
the end to be forced to find an excuse for using them. Human nature,
I fear, is incurably pugnacious and destructive. I have had to amend
many of my more optimistic opinions concerning the human race since I
have had the privilege of watching the development of our young friend
yonder. He is normal, healthy and intelligent, and acquainted with all
the resources of civilisation, physical and mental. There is hardly a
practical discovery of modern science that I have not placed at his
disposal for his use and amusement, but these do not satisfy him. He
is not exposed to the nervous pressure to which in our crowded modern
states I used to ascribe outbreaks of hostility. No. In the absence of
an enemy he must declare war upon his own handiwork, upon the elements,
upon the very earth itself.”

“Before you go any further,” said the Rear-Admiral, “I should like
something to eat, and I should like to explain that on our side in the
war is the right. The Fatters have behaved like savages. They have
burned cities, murdered old men and children, raped women and committed
every outrage.”

“I have seen something of warfare myself,” said Siebenhaar. “It is
a bestial occupation. When a man has become accustomed to slaughter
by license, what is there to make him stop at minor offences such as
theft, rape, and wounding? Soldiers who are unchaste in peace do not
become chaste when war is declared. In a friendly country the women
consent. In a hostile country some of them protest, generally because
they are panic-stricken and in terror of worse happening to them.”

“This war,” said the Rear-Admiral, “is holy.”

“I am a Fatter,” replied Siebenhaar, “and the Fatters have been taught
for generations that all war is holy and sanctifies all that is done in
its name.”

“We,” said the Fattishman, “fight like gentlemen.”

“And,” retorted the philosopher, “like gentlemen you burn and rape and
pillage.”

“Your conversation,” said Ultimus, “has interested me extremely. I am
filled with a burning desire to see civilisation, war, soldiers, and,
above all, women. We will go to the centre of civilisation, and if I do
not like it I shall blow it in pieces.”

“Two can play at that game,” said Bich. “We have explosives too.”

For answer, Ultimus reached out and pressed two wires together. There
was a rumble, a crash, a thud, and hundreds of tons of rock were torn
away from the side of the mountain and hurled into the air to fall,
miles away, into the sea.


IV: WAR AND WOMEN

As a sailor, Charles Bich, though middle-aged, liked nothing better
than to talk about women. He was sentimental about them, but at the
same time sensually appreciative of their beauty. To such an extent did
he inflame the young man’s imagination that Siebenhaar had to protest.

“It is a shame,” he cried, “that the son of such a father should be
polluted with the obsessions of civilised men.”

With the air of leaving no more to be said, Ultimus remarked:

“I like them.”

“So do all unintelligent men,” replied Siebenhaar, “and they are driven
mad by them and hope against hope for the day when all restraint will
be removed. This is another potent factor in the production of war.
Women are not to the same degree subject to these terrible obsessions,
but they do regret their limited opportunities in the organised society
of peace. Further, in times of war they like to think that men are
fighting for them, and they love to be regaled with stories of violence
and outrage, especially those who have been entirely chaste, and have
no hope of anything else.”

The Rear-Admiral blushed.

“When we fight,” he said, “we fight for our country, our King, our
Empire, for the all-red map of the world.”

“These,” replied Siebenhaar, “are words. Country, King, Empire, are
protective ideas. What you love and what you defend is your mode of
living, which you have adopted partly because you have a prejudice in
favour of it, partly because you like it better than any other you
can conceive. Your living consists in eating, drinking, consorting
with women, and rearing any family you may produce. Everything else
is introduced merely to disguise any unpleasantness there may be in
the exercise of those functions. For the most part they are lies,
illusions, hallucinations, obsessions, which you find convenient to
cloak your unimportance. As a naval officer you justify the absurd
occupation by which you procure your livelihood. My young friend here
is under no such painful necessity and I wish him to be spared all
mental confusion.”

“Personally,” interrupted Ultimus, “I do not wish to be influenced by
either of you. You, sir,” addressing Siebenhaar, “have given me all
the knowledge and wisdom you have stored up in your adventurous life,
and you, sir, have out of your life of duty, given me a new interest
in the two things, war and women, which have hitherto been denied me.
I am much obliged to you, and, if you don’t mind we will continue the
erection of the wireless installation we began yesterday, because I am
anxious to establish communication with the world as soon as possible.”

Ultimus and Bich retired to the top of the mountain leaving Siebenhaar
sadly tracing on the sands a rough caricature of a woman. So horrible
was it to him that he could not finish it and obliterated it with his
foot.


V: WIRELESS

Every day brought messages from the world. The Fattish had made
a glorious retreat of sixty miles. The Waltzians were offering a
glorious resistance to the Grossians. With the help of God the Fatters
had gloriously evacuated their trenches on the west, and heroically
withdrawn from a river on the east. With assistance from above the
Fattish navy had swept the Fatter flag from the seven seas. The
Bilgians had been nobly extinguished, though their flag was still
flying and their King ruled over a flooded country. Hundreds of
thousands of men were killed, wounded, and lost. From country to
country General congratulated General, Admirals sent their applause to
Field-Marshals, Statesmen exchanged bravos, and monarchs thanked each
other and God for timely assistance.

Rear-Admiral Bich said: “Isn’t it glorious--glorious?”

“At present,” replied Ultimus, “I am so confused that I can make
nothing of it. Why are they all so pleased with themselves? Do they
like to think of thousands of men dying?”

“They have died for their country. They are heroes.”

“I don’t see that. I cannot imagine myself going out of my way to die
for my island, and Fatland is also an island.”

“Ah!” said the Rear-Admiral. “But there are no women on your island, no
little ones, no homes.”

“There is Siebenhaar who has been father and mother to me, master and
instructor.”

“Well! Suppose you saw men designing to murder Siebenhaar, would you
not raise a hand to defend him?”

“Not if I saw there was not the remotest chance of saving him. But that
is nonsense. No one would want to murder Siebenhaar.”

“I don’t know about that. There are times when he is so exasperating
that I hardly dare answer for myself.”

“That is absurd,” replied Ultimus. “You know that I should destroy you
at once if you did anything to Siebenhaar. The case might be different
if you were in such a position that there would be consequences. But
why deal with hypothesis when you are confronted with facts?”

The simple sailor was no hand at an argument, and just at that moment
there came the news of the loss of a Fattish fleet after an encounter
with the Fatters, with an account of the heroic death of the Commander,
Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Bich.

Unfortunately the island was not yet in a position to transmit messages
and the unhappy Bich had to rest inactive, crushed with the burden of
the news of his own death and his inability to contradict it.

“You see,” said Ultimus, “you _have_ died for your country, you are a
hero, and you do not like it at all.”


VI: BICH IS OBSTINATE

The point was argued for many days. Bich would not withdraw from his
assertion that it was glorious to die for his country, but at the same
time he could not disguise his distress at having done so.

“If I had died,” he said, “it would have been glorious.”

“Only in the eyes of your countrymen,” said Siebenhaar. “You already
have that, and if you had died you would not have known anything about
it.”

“There is a heaven above,” cried Bich.

“Which you could never have entered. Has not Heaven enjoined you not to
kill and not to resist evil?”

“In the service of my country!”

“What does heaven know of your country? Heaven is eternal. Its laws are
for eternity. Your country, your Empire are mere temporary arrangements
for the convenience of a few millions of men and women who wish to
profit by the labours of people less fortunate than themselves. You are
therefore contending that it is glorious to die for a man’s material
advantage, or, in other words, for political and financial vested
interests.”

“I am prepared at any moment to die for my country.”

“You _have_ died.”

“I have not.”

“You have died and been given the glory attaching to such death.”

“That is what I cannot bear.”

“Then,” said Ultimus, “I will give you a root which will procure you
a perfectly painless death. I see that you do not mind dying for your
country so long as you do not know about it.”

“And that,” put in Siebenhaar, “is where he is consistent. He is like
all the men of his time and condition; he does not mind living, in
fact he quite likes it, so long as he knows nothing about it and is
not called upon to realise what he is doing. When he is faced with the
consequences of such insensibility he is so appalled that he welcomes
the idea of death, if he can find some excuse for it. Therefore he
has invented a myth called his country and proposes to die for that.
According to his prejudices it is cowardly to draw a fire-arm upon
himself, but it is right and brave to place himself in the line of
some one else’s fire. Such a condition of imbecility is extremely
infectious. It sweeps through crowds of men like a disease through
cattle. But, as men are indomitably hopeful, they do not destroy each
other, as you, Ultimus, might suppose. No, they wait until they can
discover another crowd of men in the same lamentable condition, and
fall upon them in the hope of a victory which shall restore their
self-conceit and once more blind them to the appalling consequences of
their own ill-doing. And here, at last, we do touch upon one of the
prime causes of war. Superficially it looks as though the immediate
cause was this, that the governors of States make such a mess of the
affairs with which they are entrusted and reduce their people to so
lamentable a condition that they must seek war as an outlet, and to
give the male populace as soldiers the food which they have made it
impossible for them to earn as workers. There is also the consideration
that a large proportion of the male populace will be removed from all
possibility of making trouble. That is an interesting but a superficial
view which attaches more blame to the rich than they deserve. No. A
more profound analysis gives us the result I have previously indicated,
that wars are invariably due to moral epidemics. And, since the human
race will always be subject to them, there will always be war.”

Ultimus had withdrawn at the beginning of the discussion. Having no
knowledge of men in herds, he could not follow the line of Siebenhaar’s
argument. He returned now to say that he had obliterated another
battle. On this the Rear-Admiral was excited and wished to know what
ships he had seen and what flag they were flying.

“I do not know,” replied Ultimus, “but there were nine ships attacking
three and that struck me as so unfair that I decided to make an end of
it.”

“But they may have been Fattish ships! Have you no regard for human
life?”

Said Ultimus:

“There was no sign of anything human. They looked like flies on the
water. When I see three scorpions attacking a smaller insect I always
kill the scorpions for their cowardice and the insect for having called
down their anger upon itself.”

Rear-Admiral Bich drew himself up to his full height and said:

“As a Christian I protest. As an officer and a gentleman I must ask you
to put me ashore at the first opportunity. They may be Fattish ships
which you have destroyed. My King and country need me.”

“Come, come,” interposed Siebenhaar, “your King and country are
probably doing very well without you. They have an immense geographical
advantage which only the blind jealousy of the Fatters makes it
impossible for them to admit. You are already a hero; poems have in
all probability been written to your memory. You had better stay with
us. It will be much more amusing to see what effect Ultimus has on
civilisation than to plunge back into the fever which has seized it.”

The Rear-Admiral looked scornful and very proud and said:

“Herr Siebenhaar, on our previous acquaintance only the protection
of the late heroic Mr. Samways prevented me from denouncing you as a
Fatter spy. I have not forgotten.”

“What,” asked Ultimus, “is a spy?”

“Spies,” replied Siebenhaar, “are corrupt and useless people who are
sent out to frighten a hostile nation by making them think that the
enemy knows more about them than they do themselves. They are only used
when the desire for war is very strong. They exercise a paralysing
effect upon the civil population and deliver them up to the guidance of
their own military authorities. They are like microbes which carry the
war fever from one country to another. I regret that Sir Charles should
have so small an opinion of my intelligence as to think that my country
would make so trivial a use of me.”

“I can’t stand all this talk,” muttered the Rear-Admiral, and he went
away and all night long paced up and down the sands on the other side
of the island, imagining that he was once more serving his King and
country on his own quarter-deck.


VII: PLANS

In secret the indomitable servant of his country made himself a boat,
a coracle of palm branches and mud, and when, a week later, they came
in sight of land and Ultimus put in close to have a good look at it and
the little white city built by the mouth of a river, he put off in it
without so much as saying good-bye or thank you for the hospitality he
had received.

“He will come back,” said Siebenhaar; “he will come and try to annex
the island. No Fattish officer can resist an island and the Fattish
have been known to waste thousands of lives in order to add a bare rock
or a pestilential swamp to their Empire. It is an amiable lunacy which
my unhappy race, who cannot appreciate their geographical disadvantage,
are trying to emulate. What is the news of the war to-day?”

“The official reports all agree in saying that there is no further
development. Every capable man in every country is now bearing arms.
All other activity is at a standstill. Stern measures have had to be
taken by the various governments to stop the emigration of pregnant
women to the peaceful countries on the other side of the world.”

“Ah!” said Siebenhaar, “I thought that would happen, I thought the
women would revolt as soon as war ceased to be an excitement and
became a trade.”

“Some of the Governments,” added Ultimus, “are paying women over
forty-five years of age to go.”

Siebenhaar chuckled.

“It is time we interfered, Ultimus. When they lose their sense of
humour so far as that, it is time for action. We will go to Fatland.
Where are we now?”

“Off the coast of Africa.”

“We will lie out to sea until we have prepared the island against all
dangers. First of all we will blow up the harbour. Then we will mine
the shores all round. We will prepare the rocks on the tops of the
mountains for missiles and we will lay in a great stock of your new
transmissible explosive. We will then block the mouth of the great
Fattish river, and we shall see what we shall see. An intelligent use
of explosives should be able to counteract and if necessary to crush
the fatuous use of them that is now being made. We will try persuasion,
threats, and violence in that order to stop the war, and if then we
cannot succeed we will abandon the human race altogether and return to
our own Southern Seas.”

“You forget,” expostulated Ultimus, “that I was drawn here out of
curiosity as to something else besides the war, and that is, woman.”

“A man,” said Siebenhaar, “bears a grudge against woman for his birth;
he is a fool to burden himself with others against her.”

“As I imagine them,” replied the young man wistfully, “they are
beautiful.”

“Lord, Lord,” cried Siebenhaar, “if only a young man would be content
with his imaginings.”


VIII: IN FATTISH WATERS

The island moved proudly up the Fattish channel, until they came within
sight of the land on either side of it. Here was drawn up a great array
of ships like those which had been destroyed in the Southern Seas. On
the foremost of the ships were hoisted a number of little flags which
Siebenhaar interpreted as saying:

“Good morning. Welcome home.”

Now, the fragmentary message recorded by the wireless gave the clue to
the purport of this signal. There had been a great rally of the Fattish
Empire, one colony had sent sacks of flour, another black currants,
another black men, another brown sugar; all came to the aid of the
motherland in her need, all forgot their grievances and vowed that they
never would be slaves. In the face of such a demonstration no doubt as
to whether the Fattish empire really existed could survive. Men who
would not admit black, brown, or yellow men to their clubs welcomed
them to their trenches. Such unity, such loyalty, such brotherhood,
must lead to victory. But victory was slow in coming and it was
becoming difficult to maintain interest in the war, when, suddenly,
there burst upon the Fattish public the news that the lost island was
responding to the call and even now coming to place its unique powers
of motion at the service of the Emperor-King. The miraculous had
happened. Once more it was obvious that the right was on the Fattish
side. Once more the streets of Bondon were thronged as on the eve of
the declaration of war. The map of the world with the red blot made
by George Samways was taken down and copies of it were sold for the
Imperial relief fund. It was supposed that George Samways, the only
hero of the last war, was on the island and had induced it to return to
the fold. His downfall was forgotten, his heroism remembered.

Ultimus stopped the island and entered into communication by wireless
with the Fattish fleet.

“Is that Samways Island?”

“Yes.”

“Is George Samways aboard?”

“No. His son and his friend, Siebenhaar.”

“What nationality is Siebenhaar?”

“Fatter.”

“He must be taken prisoner.”

“Nonsense. He is an ex-engineer, now a philosopher.”

“Fatter philosophers are writing the most scurrilous abuse of the
Fattish.”

“Siebenhaar has been for the last twenty years on the island.”

“Tell him to change his name before landing, or he will have to
register.”

“We have no intention of landing.”

“We did not get your last message correctly.”

“We have no intention of landing.”

“Don’t understand. May we send a deputation?”

Ultimus replied:

“I will receive one Cabinet Minister and the most beautiful woman in
Fatland. I shall be in the mouth of the river by two o’clock. You
had better move your ships and be very careful of the backwash. I
understand that the shores of the channel are strewn with wrecks.”

Frantic messages then passed between the ships and the Admiralty in
Bondon. It would be extremely awkward to have the island in the river,
blocking the channels to the port, but the public were thinking of
nothing but the island, and, in default of George Samways, were quite
prepared to take his son to be their darling. There must not be a
hint anywhere of the possibility of the island’s being, after all,
disloyal. The Fattish had been very reticent about their relations with
God, whereas the Fatters had claimed him as their ally. The Fattish
had been favored with miracles, even as the Children of Israel. It was
decided to retain the miracle in the face of all risks and Mr. Samways
was promised that a Cabinet Minister accompanied by the most beautiful
woman in Fatland should call at four o’clock on the following day.

The fleet turned and steamed away out of sight.


IX: AN AFTERNOON CALL

The acknowledged most beautiful woman in Fatland was none other than
Arabella’s sister. She was fifty-three, but had managed to preserve
her reputation by the discreet publication of her connection with
illustrious men. She had one rival for the honour of the visit to the
island, a lovely creature, a brilliant singer of popular ballads, who,
during the crisis, had carried all before her and swept hundreds of
young men into the army with her famous ditty: “Won’t I kiss you when
you come back home?” However, her claims were disposed of by Arabella’s
sister astutely pointing out that she was the aunt of the young man
on the island, and therefore, if necessary, could be alone with him in
perfect propriety.

In a motor launch she came out with the Lord High Chief of the
Admiralty in full-dress uniform.

No sooner did she set eyes on Ultimus than she burst into tears and
cried that he was the living image of Arabella. She kissed him and he
drew back outraged and cried:

“Don’t do that again.”

Siebenhaar explained:

“Your nephew, madam, has never seen a woman before and is naturally
alarmed. Your voice must sound strangely to his ears and your costume,
if you will forgive me, leaves room for considerable doubt as to the
normality of your anatomy. I think it would be as well if you made no
attempt to reassure him, but allowed him to look at you and to grow
accustomed to you while I engage your companion in conversation.”

With that he turned to the Lord High Chief and said:

“You can imagine that I am astounded to return after a long absence to
find civilisation plunged once more in the barbarism of war. Surely no
single one of the combatants has anything to gain by it.”

“The war, sir, was not of our seeking.”

“But you were prepared for it?”

“By God we were. I had seen to that.”

“Then you were prepared to join issue in any quarrel that might be
sought?”

“We pledged our word to the Grossians and the Bilgians. Besides,
sir, apart from all that, the Fatters are jealous of our Empire, and
they have deliberately plotted for years to oust us commercially and
politically. They want us wiped off the map. But when it comes to
wiping----”

“Does it ever come to that?” asked Siebenhaar. “Is Athens dead while
Plato lives? Is Rome forgotten while Virgil and Lucretius live in the
minds of men? Was there ever more in Spain than lives in Cervantes?”

“I don’t know about that,” said the Lord High Chief; “but the Fatters
want to dominate the world.”

“So did Alexander: so did Napoleon: but they wrought their own ruin.”

“This is too deep for me,” replied the politician. “I want something
that the newspapers can get hold of. I want to know what you are up
to, how you found the island, how it came to move again, and, if it
isn’t a miracle of loyalty, what is it? Also I want to know what your
intentions are, because if you are not here to support us we shall have
to place you both under arrest,--er--that is, after you have moved the
island out of harm’s way.”

Ultimus took Siebenhaar aside and said: “I want to go away. I have
been looking at the woman, and I think she is horrible.”


X: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

The Lord High Chief towards the end of the interview adopted a
peremptory tone and ordered the island to be taken through the enemy’s
minefield and then to blockade the enemy’s fleet. The island was to
be called H.M.S. Samways, to be manned with the crew of a first-class
battleship and commanded by a senior admiral. Ultimus refused
point-blank. He owed nothing to Fatland, and was not going to have
his island or his inventions used in a cause which he as yet did not
understand. The Lord High Chief stormed and blustered until Siebenhaar
told him the truth about Bich’s battle and the nature of the invention
of which Ultimus had spoken. The Lord High Chief went pale and muttered
that he should have thought his country’s cause good enough for any
man. However, since they were so obstinate, he invited the islanders
ashore and undertook to satisfy their curiosity with regard to the war,
or the events which immediately preceded it. Arabella’s sister proposed
that they should stay in her house, but her invitation was refused.

No sooner had the visitors put off in the launch than Ultimus moved the
island further up the river until all channels were blocked and no ship
could get either in or out.

“Now,” said Ultimus, “they will treat me with respect, and will not
rest content until they have satisfied me and persuaded me to move the
island once more.”

The effect he desired was produced. They were taken up to Bondon in one
of the Royal motor-cars, and a whole floor in one of the most expensive
hotels was placed at their disposal. For the first time in his life
Ultimus slept in a bed and was so hot that he could not bear it. He
rang the bell in the middle of the night and a little chambermaid
appeared.

“Take that thing away,” said Ultimus.

The little chambermaid stared at him.

“I don’t want it. I don’t like it,” he said, glowering at the girl’s
face. It was like a flower, like a star; it was beautiful. Ultimus
could not take his eyes off it. Her eyes smiled back at his amazed
curiosity. He stood and reeled and said:

“I love you.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the little chambermaid.

“My father said the Fattish were false. I asked them to send me the
most beautiful woman in the land and they sent me a hideous old
creature.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah! Why did they not send you? We could have gone away at once, away,
away, where there are no old women, no battleships, no beds.”

The little chambermaid by this time was fascinated, and she stayed with
Ultimus all night, while he talked and told her how he had desired to
see a woman and was now satisfied and never wished to see another, and
how when he had seen the war he and she would retire to the island.

“Oh, sir,” said the little chambermaid. “And shall I be a Queen? And
won’t the Fatters ever be able to get near the island? They all say the
Fatters do awful things to women.”

Ultimus took her to his breast and they were joined in the mystical
union of a kiss; and for many hours no word passed between them.

In the morning they were disturbed by Siebenhaar, who came in
unsuspectingly, saw what had happened and withdrew discreetly, gave
orders to the management that Mr. Samways was not to be disturbed, and
went out to see Bondon in war-time.


XI: HIGH POLITICS

The streets were full of young men in uniform. In the parks were young
men without uniform being drilled. Except for policemen, hall-porters,
street-scavengers, the town was empty, and when Siebenhaar asked a
policeman why it was so, he was informed that everybody had gone to
look at the island.

Said the constable: “There was nothing like it since I was a boy, when
the war began.”

Siebenhaar was taken aback.

“How long?” he said.

“Well! It’ll be a matter of fifteen years now, though it’s difficult to
remember. It goes on. Things get quiet in the winter. Then it begins
again with the fine weather, with a new list of Fatter atrocities. Then
there’s a new promise from the Emperor of Grossia; then we have another
rally of the Empire and things become livelier.”

“I am astonished,” said Siebenhaar, “that a great free nation like the
Fattish should tolerate such a state of affairs.”

“Bless you,” said the policeman, “I’ve forgotten what peace was like.
There’s a few old gentlemen hold meetings to talk about it, but we’re
used to it by now. I remember there used to be scares about our being
invaded, but they soon came to an end. We all take our spell at the
fighting, and, if we come home, settle down to work of one sort or
another. There’s no doubt about it, the Fatters would make a nasty mess
of things if we didn’t keep them bottled up.”

Siebenhaar protested: “Surely you yourselves are making a nasty mess of
things?”

“Oh!” replied the policeman. “That’s over the water. You soon forget
about it when you get back home. It would be funny, sir, if that there
island were to put a stop to the war. We’d hardly know what to do with
our young men.”

Siebenhaar’s blood boiled. A great nation, with a tradition of freedom,
could acquiesce in such arrest of its life, such wanton sacrifice of
its youth!

He visited the Lord High Chief and found him just out of his bed in a
suit of blue silk pajamas. Breakfast was laid before him and he offered
Siebenhaar coffee. It was refused.

“I am come, sir, to tell you that the island will not be used to assist
you. It will be used to stop the war.”

“Stop the----?”

“As I say.”

“Come, come, sir. The war cannot be stopped until all parties to it
agree to our terms of settlement. It is a matter of high politics,
which it takes an expert to understand. We have the matter well in
hand. The country was told at the beginning that it was to be a long
war. It will be finished when our terms are agreed upon and not before.”

“And those terms are----?”

“They are known to my colleagues and myself. When the settlement is
concluded they will be laid before the country.”

“And have you, sir, during the last fifteen years ever risked your life
on land or sea? Have you suffered in pocket or in health? Have you been
deprived of even a luxury?”

“For fifteen years I have been the hardest worked man in the country.
I have practically lived in this office. When things were going badly
with us I made speeches up and down the country.”

“Asking young men to give their lives and thank God for the privilege
of dying before they had tasted the full sweetness of life.”

“It is their country’s life against theirs.”

“You say so.”

“The Fatters will make an end of us if they don’t.”

“Have you made an end of the Fatters?”

“No. But we will before we have done.”

“Are the Fatter women all stricken with barrenness?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then you cannot make an end of the race.”

“We can smash their Empire.”

“A word. Can you smash a word? You seem to me, sir, to talk and act as
though a nation were an abstraction instead of a collection of human
beings, bound together by language, manners, and religion.”

“It is a matter of high politics.”

“It seems to me, sir, that war is the logical outcome of your view
of national life, and that a nation without a war is not a nation. I
should imagine that a war greatly facilitates the task of government.
The rich can always be trusted to look after themselves, but the
poor are rendered impotent. I cannot raise a hand to support either
such a view or such a condition. You have attained the ideal of high
politics, the sacrifice of domestic affairs to international relations.
I congratulate you. I decline all further hospitality at your hands.
My young friend has already realized one of his ambitions. I shall
request the Emperor of Fatterland to satisfy the other. We shall go
to Fatterland to-morrow and see the war which you have been able to
confine to other countries.”

“Herr Siebenhaar,” shouted the Lord High Chief, “you shall do no such
thing. The public has taken the island to its heart. You will consider
yourself under arrest.”

Siebenhaar smiled sweetly:

“I have seen the Fattish public take Mr. George Samways to its heart
and I have seen it reject him. I do not think you will arrest me, for,
before leaving the island we arranged an explosion to take place
two days from now in case of our non-return. Such an explosion would
project thousands of tons of rock over your city.”


XII: THE PUBLIC

Ultimus refused to be separated from the lady of his choice, and when
Siebenhaar said he must return to the island the little chambermaid
declared her willingness to go if she could be married first.

“You need not worry about that,” grumbled Siebenhaar. “There will be no
other women on the island, no one to care whether you are married or
no, no one to bully you if you have dispensed with the ceremony, and
Ultimus has no relations except his aunt, who will never forgive him
for his frankness. I warn you that on our island you will find none of
the excitements of the great hotel, neither the advantages of society
nor its disadvantages.”

“I will come,” said the little chambermaid, “if you will let me tell my
mother that I am married. It would kill her if she thought I was not.”

“A lie more or less in a community is no great matter, since its
existence depends upon lies,” said Siebenhaar.

So the chambermaid wrote to her mother, packed her belongings in her
tin box, and with Siebenhaar and Ultimus was driven in the royal
motor-car to the docks. The last few miles they drove through enormous
cheering crowds, men, women, and children, singing as they went.

  “Won’t I kiss you when you come back home,
        My soldier boy!
  For my heart is with you as you cross the foam,
        My soldier boy!
    You are big and you are brave,
    From the Huns our homes to save,
    Or to find a hero’s grave.
  Won’t I kiss you when you come back home!”

A motor launch took them swiftly out to the island and there Ultimus
was proud to show the little house he had built and the gardens he had
made.

In the afternoon they went up to the top of the mountain, where an
amazing sight met their eyes. Through the smoke loomed the towers and
domes and chimneys of the great city, and on the banks of the river for
miles stretched the crowds of people, and others came along the roads,
pouring in on foot, in carts, and wagons. Ultimus was seized with
nausea, which soon gave place to rage and he stamped his foot on the
ground and cried:

“There are too many of them. Let me destroy them.”

But Siebenhaar wept and said:

“Rather destroy those heartless men who herd them like cattle and
rob them of the fruits of their labour and bid them believe in a God
whom they deny, a national idea which they can maintain only by the
destruction of life and the ruin of the nation. Destroy those who
sacrifice beauty to their pleasures, and love to their obstinate pride.
See, the city must be empty now, destroy it.”

Ultimus moved his hand and in one moment the domes, towers and chimneys
of the city disappeared. The island moved and the crowd, seeing that
which they had come to see, clapped their hands and shouted until the
island disappeared.


XIII: THE EMPEROR

In a few hours they were off the coast of Fatterland, and had
blocked up the harbour where the Fatter fleet lay in hiding from the
overwhelming superiority of the Fattish. The Emperor himself, who had
already heard of the destruction of Bondon, came out to greet them. He
had information as to Siebenhaar’s previous career and he decorated him
at sight with a Silver Eagle. To Ultimus he handed an Iron Cross.

The Emperor was dressed in a large brass helmet, a white suit with a
steel cuirass, and enormous shining boots. He was a little man and very
pompous.

“God,” he said, “has blessed you.”

“How do you know?” asked Siebenhaar.

“God,” said the Emperor, “has preserved the Fatterland, through me.”

“On this island,” retorted Siebenhaar, “we are accustomed to talk
sense. There would have been no need for God or anybody else to defend
Fatterland if you had not so wantonly destroyed peaceful relations with
other countries.”

The Emperor removed his helmet.

“What a relief!” he said. “No one has ever talked sensibly to me
before. You don’t know how sick I am of being an Emperor with everybody
assuming that I don’t wish to think of anything but my own dignity. I
am not allowed to think or talk of anything else.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Siebenhaar, “that a dignity which
requires over a million soldiers to maintain it is hardly worth it?
Have you ever thought that the million soldiers are maintained not for
your dignity, but because their housing, their feeding, their equipment
are all exceedingly profitable to a few men?”

“I have often thought that,” replied the Emperor, “but I have never
found a soul willing to discuss it with me. When I meet other Emperors
the same dreadful thought haunts all of us, but none of us dare speak
of it, for we are watched night and day, and what we are to say to
each other is written by young men in the Government Offices.”

The Emperor began to cry.

“Four million men have been killed since the war began, and everybody
says it is my fault. I didn’t make the war, I didn’t, indeed I didn’t.
It was not in my power to make war, any more than it is in my power to
stop it. Horrible things have been done by the soldiers.”

“Poor wretches!” said Siebenhaar. “How can they be anything but
bestial, deprived as they are of all that makes life sweet?”

“How, indeed?” asked the Emperor. “Thousands have died of dysentery,
or cholera, and enteric and typhoid. Hundreds of thousands more of
starvation and exposure. It is impossible, I tell you, impossible to
prevent organisation breaking down. Contractors!” He shook his fists.
“Ah! There is nothing contractors will not do, from sending bad food
to insisting on being paid for food they have never sent. Ah! the
villains! the villains! And to think that my name is being execrated
throughout the world.”

The Emperor looked about him uneasily.

“And now, Herr Siebenhaar, what am I to tell them on my return? That
your marvellous island is the gift of God to the Fatter people?”

“Say nothing,” replied Siebenhaar, “except that Mr. Ultimus Samways
wishes to see the war. We are neutral territory. If we have damaged
Bondon we have in coming here cleared your minefields and we propose
to keep your fleet bottled up and shall destroy it unless Mr. Samways
returns in safety within a week.”

“We have had a delightful talk and it has been refreshing to me to
discover a philosopher who is greater than an Emperor.”

Siebenhaar laughed and said he looked forward to the day when
capitalists and contractors discovered that the world contained a power
greater than their own.

“I also,” said the Emperor, “possess an island. I shall be happy when
the war is over and I can retire to it and live in peace and devote
myself to the delightful and harmless pursuit of painting bad pictures.”

He promised that an airship should be sent for Ultimus, and said
good-bye cordially and regretfully. As he put his helmet on he said:

“I have to wear this infernal thing, though it always gives me a
headache.”

“Now,” said Siebenhaar to Ultimus, “you have seen the unhappy
individual who is called the man-eater of Europe.”

“Was that the Emperor?” asked the chambermaid. “Why, they told me he
had a tail and always walked about with bleeding baby’s legs in his
hands!”


XIV: WAR

The airship was a great delight to the inventive genius of Ultimus.
He had it brought to earth on the shore and examined the engines and
propellers, and its ingenious steering apparatus. The officer in
charge of it was discreet and silent, a stiff martial gentleman whose
intelligence and humanity were completely hidden by his uniform. He
had brought a declaration to be signed by Ultimus, saying that he was
a non-belligerent and did not represent any newspaper. For Siebenhaar
he had brought a bundle of newspapers of every country so that he might
read what the nations were saying of each other.

At last Ultimus’ curiosity was satisfied, and he stepped into the
observation car, the engines started purring and the great fish-shaped
balloon rose into the air.

Ultimus was surprised to see how little his island was and when they
passed over into Fatterland he cried:

“Why, there is room for everybody! How wrong I was to hate the Fattish
for being so many! Why do not some of them come and live here if there
is no room for them on their island?”

“They’d have a warm time of it if they did,” said the officer.

“Why? Don’t you like the Fattish?”

“They are pirates and thieves. They are jealous of our honest
commercial success. They and they only are responsible for this war.
They have set half the nations of Europe to attack us, but they attack
in vain. We are glorious warriors, but they are only commercial
travellers.”

“In Fatland,” replied Ultimus, “they say that they are glorious
warriors, but you are only machines. And they say that you are jealous
of their Empire, and for years have been planning to destroy their
fleet.”

“What nonsense!” said the officer.

They had been thousands of feet in the air, often above the clouds.

“We are approaching the western frontier.”

They descended. A booming and roaring came up and a queer crackling
sound. There were flashes of light and puffs of smoke, but nowhere were
there signs of any men save far, far away on the roads behind the lines
of smoke and flashes of light.

“That,” said the officer, “is the war.”

“But where are the men who are doing it?”

The officer pointed to black zigzag parallel lines in the ground.

“They are there. Those are trenches. They are impregnable. Years ago,
at the beginning of the war there was some barbarous fighting with
bayonets, but since we took up those positions there is nothing but
what you see. Each year makes those positions stronger, nothing can
move the armies from them. While the war lasts, they will be held. Is
it not splendid? It is just the same on the eastern frontier, though
the line there is a hundred miles longer. Ah! It is the greatest war
the world has ever seen.”

They came lower until they could see into the trenches. There were
men playing cards, others sleeping; another was vomiting. Another was
buttoning up his trousers when his head was blown off. His body stood
for a moment with his hand fumbling at his buttons. Then it collapsed
ridiculously. One of the men who was playing wiped a card on his
breeches and then played it. Another man went mad, climbed out of the
trenches and rushed screeching in the direction whence the missile had
come.

“I have seen enough,” said Ultimus. “Why do they go there?”

“Because if they did not Fatterland would be overrun with the savages
hired by the Fattish.”

“Would that be worse?”

“It would not last so long,” replied the officer, “but we should have
lost our honour as a nation.”

“That,” said Ultimus, “is exactly how the most beautiful woman in
Fatland talks. What is this honour?”

“It is holy,” said the officer with so fatuously fervent an expression
that Ultimus laughed.

“Does your Highness wish to see the eastern frontier?”

“No, thank you. That is enough.”

The airship soared up. It was now night. The stars came out and Ultimus
mused:

“Out of all the planets why should this be tortured with the life of
men? Is it their vast numbers that drive them mad? Or are they so vile
that war is their normal condition and peace only a rest from it?”

For the first time Ultimus responded to the beauty of the world. They
flew low over mountains, and great rivers and wide valleys. The variety
of it all entranced him, accustomed as he was to the monotony of the
sea and the narrow limitations of the island. Apart from the horror of
war it was amazing to him that men should desert such loveliness to
spend their days in holes dug in the ground.


XV: SIEBENHAAR ON SOCIETY

Meanwhile on the island the philosopher and the chambermaid lived
through difficult hours. The girl wept without ceasing and said if
she had known how dull it was going to be she never would have come.
Remembering Arabella’s dissatisfaction, Siebenhaar said:

“Women have no resources within themselves. They take life too
seriously. It is never amusing to them. Society is organised for their
protection and amusement and they take no interest in it, and let men,
who are only worried or irritated by it, bring it to ruin without a
protest. Women are the criminals who are responsible for everything,
for they encourage men in their vanity and weaken them in their power.
They desire safety, and detest originality, intellect, imagination.”

The chambermaid sobbed: “I thought it was going to be fun to be a
Queen, but there is no fun in reigning over sticks and stones.”

“Women,” said Siebenhaar, “want their lovers and their babies and their
fun. When they have to choose between the three, they choose their fun.
No. They are not the criminals; it is men who are that for letting
them have their fun to keep them quiet. Oh! Ultimus, that was a true
instinct of yours to destroy them in their thousands!”


XVI: PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Ultimus was gone exactly a week, during which time he saw all the
preparations for the war, the countless widows and orphans created by
it, the stoppage of other business, the immense activity at arsenals,
boot factories, and cloth mills, and chemical laboratories, the soup
kitchens for the starving, among whom he was horrified to see thousands
of men who had returned maimed from the trenches. What perhaps appalled
him most was the gaiety of the children.

He mentioned this to Siebenhaar on his return. The philosopher said:

“They have been born since the war began and do not conceive of life
being otherwise.”

“It must end,” said Ultimus, and he sank into a deep reverie. The
strangest result of his experience was that the sight of the little
chambermaid filled him with disgust. When he thought of the peaceful
and profoundly stirring existence out of which he and Siebenhaar had
come he could not but contrast it with the obscene excitement in which
he had found her. That she could accept and welcome his embraces when
she knew, as he did not, the bestiality towards maintaining which the
energies of Europe were devoted, filled him with so bitter an anguish
that he could hardly endure the sight of her. When he thought that he
and she might be bringing another life into a world made so unworthy
of human life, then he thought that he could never forgive her. His
impulse was to escape, to leave the benighted nations to their fate,
but, when he thought of the suffering he had seen, he found that he was
bound to them by more than curiosity. He had seen war and could not
rest until he had done his utmost to expunge it from the minds of men.
He had lived in a pure happiness familiar with all the intellectual
discoveries of the human mind; now he had gained the love of beauty and
a more passionate incentive to live. What room was there now among all
those millions of men for intellect and beauty?

Siebenhaar had made good use of the newspapers.

“It is clear to me,” he said, “that this war happened through stupidity
and jealousy. They all invented excuses for it after the outbreak of
hostilities. There is no reason why it should not end as suddenly as it
began. It is too much to expect men debauched by fifteen years of war
to see reason, but they will understand force. We will use force.”

Together they drew up the following manifesto:

                                                     SAMWAYS ISLAND,
                                                             OFF EUROPE.

  We, the undersigned, lately arrived in Europe, on discovering its
  unanimous betrayal of civilisation, hereby declare as follows:

  (1) We have destroyed Bondon.

  (2) The power which did that will be used against any of the present
  belligerents not consenting to lay down their arms.

  (3) Upon the declaration of peace the fleets of the hostile nations
  are to be collected and sunk, the guns and ammunition of the various
  disbanded armies having first been laded in them. Neutral nations
  will then be invited by us to destroy their fleets and disband their
  armies.

  (4) Nations in future will have no high political relations with each
  other except through a central government.

  (5) Recognising the natural pugnacity of the human race and its
  love of spectacular effect, we suggest that in future nations which
  arrive at a complete misunderstanding should, with the consent of the
  central government, declare war on each other for a period of not
  less than one week and not more than one month, the nations to place
  in the firing line only the incurably diseased, the incorrigibly
  criminal, the lunatic and the imbecile, and all of those convicted of
  exploitation and profit-sharing.

  (6) Not more than two thousand men are to be employed on either side,
  and the sphere of operations is to be narrowly limited. If desired,
  and to encourage a knowledge of the horror of war, we suggest that
  such wars be paid for by admitting spectators at a price.

  (7) Wars are only to take place in August.

  (8) Naval war is to be prohibited altogether as too barbarous. The
  central government will maintain an armed fleet for the suppression
  of pirates.

  (9) Weapons and machines designed for the destruction of human life
  are only to be manufactured by the central government.

  (10) Acknowledging that follies do not die easily and that nations at
  war will always desire territory as a trophy, we are willing to place
  the island at the service of the central government as the prize to
  be fought for. It can always be found by wireless.

  (11) We submit that there shall be no discussion of the terms of
  settlement until the central government is set up and a proper
  tribunal is constituted to deal with all claims. The first step in
  the interest of parties is disarmament, and upon that we insist.

                                    (Signed)          IGNATZ SIEBENHAAR.
                                                      ULTIMUS SAMWAYS.



XVII: PEACE

This manifesto was transmitted by wireless to all parts of the world.
It was published in the newspapers of America, and therefore could
not be suppressed by the various National Committees for Keeping the
Public in the Dark. Ultimus received invitations to all the capitals
of the belligerent nations. He said that if they had anything to say
they could say it by wireless. Meanwhile if nothing was said the Fatter
fleet would be destroyed within a week: the Fattish fleet immediately
after it: and the various ports and capitals would one by one meet the
fate of Bondon.

A great deal was said. Almost every day mean little men, who looked as
though they had been fat only a short time before and then scorched,
arrived to offer Ultimus his own price for his new explosive. They all
said the same thing: the enemy alone was responsible for the war and
it would never end until the enemy was destroyed. Therefore, in the
interests of civilisation and universal peace, Mr. Samways ought to
sell, nay, give to humanity the secret of his invention.

“I am using it in the interests of civilisation,” said he, “and, as you
see, I am resisting all temptation to make money out of it. The proper
use of an explosive is that for which I made mine, namely, to destroy
every ugly and useless thing I had made.”

And the mean little men went away. Two of them committed suicide on
their way back to shore, so troubled were they at being deprived of
the monopoly which had enabled them to drive millions of men to the
slaughter that the rest might be miserable slaves in their hands.

As a matter of fact, these two had been ruined by the destruction
of Bondon, upon which they had been dependent for the world-wide
circulation of their credit.

Day after day brought the news of the suicide of one great financier
after another, and the army contractors, realising that they might
not be paid for their efforts, abandoned them. No food or supplies
reached the armies, which came home in search of food. The Emperors
of Fatterland and Grossia fled to their country estates. The Emperor
of Waltzia had been dead for ten years, though his death had been
concealed.

Before long a number of intelligent men from every country had met
in Scandinavia and a central government was proclaimed. The Fattish,
Fatter, Grossian, Waltzian, and Coqdorian fleets were collected in the
North Sea, and Ultimus had the great satisfaction of driving the island
through them.


XVIII: THE RETURN OF THE ISLAND

And now Ultimus could breathe again. Came the news every day of
tremendous rejoicings in all the countries, and in all the name of
Ultimus Samways was blessed. He was asked by every one of them to
anchor his island off their shores, but he replied:

“Not until the lunatic that is in every European is dead, can I dwell
among you. It is easy for you, whose lives are shallow to forget. But
I have seen and suffered and I cannot forget. When you have discovered
the depths in your own lives and each man recognises the profound
wonder of every other, then will the thought of the philosopher
Siebenhaar be as fertile seed among you and you will reap the harvest
of brotherhood.”

When he had sent this message to the United States of Europe he sought
out the little chambermaid and said to her:

“I beg your forgiveness. I have let the horror of war break in upon my
devotion to you. We are making for the Southern Seas. If you prefer it
you can retire to Bondon, though I must warn you that your luxurious
hotel is now a hospital for the cure of astute business men.”

The little chambermaid replied:

“I did want to go to see the fun when peace was declared, having seen
the fun in the streets when they declared war. But it’s come over me
now that I love you and only you, and I want to be by your side to give
you all the happiness you have brought into my heart.”

And Siebenhaar said:

“This is a mystery past the understanding of men, but the
understanding is its servant.”



Gynecologia


I: HISTORY

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.


II: CASTAWAY

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.


III: MY CAPTOR

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.


IV: THE CHANGE

“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.


V: THE HOMESTEAD

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.”


VI: OBSEQUIES

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.


VII: SLAVERY

In my own country I have often remarked the cruel lack of consideration
with which women treat their servants, but here I was appalled by the
bland inhumanity of the conduct of these women toward myself. I was
given no wages and no liberty. (I could not keep my engagement with
Audrey.) I was a hind, and lived in horror of the degradation into
which I saw that I must sink. Day after day of the cruel work of the
fields brought me to a torpid condition in which I could but blindly
obey the orders given me when I returned home. Especially I dreaded
the evenings on those days when the mistress of the house went to the
district stores, for she always returned out of temper and found fault
with everything I did. Also, when she was out of temper, her readings
from the Book of Christmas were twice as long as usual.

I was some weeks in this melancholy condition, not knowing how I could
make my escape and indeed despairing of it, when I was sent on a
message to the next farm. On the way back I met Audrey, at the sight of
whose young beauty I forgot the despair which latterly had seized me.
I rushed to her and caught her up in my arms and kissed her. Thereupon
she said she would never go back, but would stay with me forever. I
could not deny her, for I had found in her the incentive which I had
lost in my growing indifference to my fate. She was but a child, and
the only gracious being I had met in this ill-fated country. Hand
in hand we wandered until dusk, when I hid her in the hay-loft and
returned to my duties.

I was severely chidden for my long absence and ordered during the
next week to wear the Skirt of Punishment, a garment of the shape
fashionable among women at the time of the great change. Poor Audrey
could not help laughing when she saw me in it, but having no other
clothes I had to put off all thought of escape until I was released
from punishment. Never before had I realised how cramped the mind could
become from the confinement of the legs. My week in a skirt came very
near to breaking my spirit. Another four days of it and I believe I
should have grovelled in submissive adoration before my tyrant. Only my
nightly visits to Audrey kept me in courage and resolution.


VIII: A STRANGE WOOING

The youngest of the women in the homestead was the last to speak to
me. She was dark and not uncomely, and I had often noticed her at the
readings smile rather fearfully at her own thoughts. Once my eyes had
met hers and I was shocked by the direct challenge of her gaze. At the
time I was disturbed and uneasy, but soon forgot and took no notice of
the woman except that I felt vaguely that she was unhappy. But soon
I was always meeting her. I would find her lurking in the rooms as I
came to scrub and clean them. Or she would appear in the lane as I came
home from the fields, or I would meet her in the doorway, so that I
could not help brushing against her. A little later I missed one of my
stockings as I got up in the morning and had to go barefoot until I had
knitted another pair.

One night as I was creeping off to my poor Audrey, now deadly weary of
her close quarters in the hay, to my horror I met this woman clad in
her night attire. She vanished and I went my way thoroughly frightened.
I told Audrey to be ready to come with me next day, for we were spied
upon and could not now wait, as we had planned, until my little thefts
from the larder had given us a sufficient store of food.

Nothing happened the next day and I gave up my determination to ransack
the larder. That night as I opened the door I found the woman pressed
against it, so that she fell almost into my arms. She clung to me
wildly, assured me that I was the most beautiful man she had ever
seen, and tried to press me back into my room, her tone, her whole
bearing conveying an invitation about which it was impossible to be
mistaken. It chilled me to the heart, coming as it did so suddenly out
of the coldness engendered by the rigid separation of the sexes and the
deliberate humiliation of men in that woman-ridden region. As gently as
I could I put her from me, though it was not so easy, and I rushed out
into the night. I could not tell Audrey what had happened, but as soon
as I saw her I felt that the moment for our escape had come. If we did
not seize it I should be denounced and tickled, if not worse. We crept
away and made straight across the fields and at dawn hid in a wood.


IX: THE RUINED CITY

I was relieved to hear from Audrey that there were no newspapers. She
told me that a man from her farm had run away but was never found.
There were always new men coming, because it was impossible for them
to obtain food except what they could kill. In the summer there were
always men wandering about the country, but they came back in the
winter and were glad to work for their board and lodging. I soon
understood this, for when we had exhausted our store we were often a
whole day without a morsel passing our lips, and I began to see the
foolhardiness of my attempt at liberty. Again and again I besought
Audrey to leave me, but she would not. She could always have obtained a
meal for herself had she gone alone to a house, but wherever I went I
was asked for my registered number, and at first had not the readiness
to invent one. At last I told one woman I was 8150. She asked me what
district and I did not know. On that she bundled me out and I was lucky
to escape detention. When I asked Audrey about the registration she
said all men were registered with a number and a letter. The men on her
farm had been L.D. Next time I said I was L.D. 8150, and when asked my
business I said I was taking my young miss to the nunnery at O. Either
my answer was satisfactory or Audrey’s beauty was the passport it would
be in any normal country, for we were handsomely treated and given a
present of three cheeses to take to the nuns.

We ate the cheeses and were kept alive until, after a fortnight’s
journey, we came on a dismal mass of blackened buildings. We entered
the city, once world-famous for its textiles, and never have I
been so near the hopelessness of the damned. The remains of a dead
civilisation; decomposing and festering; grass grew in between the
cobbles of the streets; weeds were rank; creepers covered the walls
of the houses and their filthy windows. Huge factories were crumbling
away, and here and there we came on immense piles of bricks where the
chimneys had tumbled down. For miles we walked through the streets and
never saw a soul until as we turned a corner into a square we came on a
sight that made me think we had reached the lowest Hell.


X: THE OUTLAWS

There was a great fire in the middle of the square, and round this was
a tatterdemalion crew of men and women. They were roasting an ox, and,
as they waited for it, they sang and danced. When we approached near
enough to hear what they were singing I blushed and felt aggrieved for
Audrey. Many of the men and women were perfectly shameless in their
gestures, and I wished to go back the way we had come. However, we had
been seen, and were drawn into the light of the fire and asked to give
an account of ourselves. I told them I was an American citizen only
too anxious to return to my own country now I had seen the pass to
which theirs had been brought. Audrey clung to me, and I said she was
my little cousin whom I had come to deliver, and that, having wandered
hungry for so many days, we had taken refuge in the town in the hope
of faring better. We were given stools to sit on, and slices of the
best cut of the ox were put before us. The rest drank spirits and wine
from some cellar in the town and were soon more crazy than ever, and
more obscene, but with my belly full of good meat I was not offended
and preferred their debauchery to the icy virtue which had so horribly
oppressed me at the homestead. Audrey was excited by it all, but I knew
that her innocence could take no harm.

Presently there was only one man sober besides myself. He came towards
me and invited me to stay the night in his house where he lived alone
with his son. I liked the looks of the man. He was poorly clad, but in
the old fashion of coat and trousers, whereas the costumes of the men
in the square were strange and bizarre.

As we walked through the dark streets our new friend told me that all
the great cities of Fatland were in this condition, abandoned to the
dregs of the population, degraded men and women, idle and lawless, with
the leaven of the few proud spirits who would not accept the new regime
and found a world governed by women as repulsive as a world governed
by men. I was astonished at this, for I could not then see, as later
I saw, the abomination of civilised life as I had known it at home.
Perhaps a sailor, for whom life ashore means pleasure and relief from
responsibilities, cannot feel injustice and inequality. On the sea he
has his own way of dealing with those poisons.

The house we came to was small but comfortable. My new friend explained
that he was able to keep alive by dealing with the outlaws, who kept
money current among themselves, and, indeed, had come to regard him
as their counsellor and peacemaker, and never returned from their
raids without bringing him some tribute. Seeing me dubious of the
morality of this, he explained that under the old order he had been
a shareholder in joint-stock companies and accepted his share of the
profits without scruple as to how they had been obtained. He told me
further that he was quite alone in the city, and that no one else
maintained the old life. He had registered himself in compliance with
the law, but could not leave the mathematical work to which his life
had been devoted, for he believed that he would achieve results which
would survive all the vicissitudes of Fattish civilisation even as the
work of Pythagoras had survived ancient Greece. The number of outlaws,
he said, was growing, and there would eventually be a revolution, to
lead which he was preparing and educating his son, Edmund. His own
sympathies, he declared, had at first been with the women, who had been
driven to extricate the country from the vicious circle of war into
which it had been drawn by the egregious folly of men. But when, having
achieved this, they abused their power and, in the intoxication of
their success, defied nature herself, then he had abandoned all hope
and had taken the only means of dissociating himself from the life of
his country, namely, by staying where he was. To be sure the women had
established agriculture on a sound basis, but it was vain for them to
breed cattle if they would not breed themselves.

I asked him if he was a widower. He said No.


XI: EDMUND

This man’s son was the most charming boy I ever set eyes on. He was
eighteen, but had the carriage and assurance of a young man in his
prime, most resolute and happy. He liked talking to me and was more
communicative than his father. For a fortnight he would work steadily
at his books, imbibing the principles of government in the philosophers
from Plato down. He thought they were all wrong, said so, and but
for his simplicity I should have put him down as conceited. It was
very slowly as I talked to him that I came to realise the revolution
in thought produced by the great European wars and the terrible
consequences, how fatal they had been to the old easy idealism. The new
spirit in its generous acceptance of the gross stuff of human nature
and its indomitable search for beauty in it has been expressed for
all time by our poet, Hohlenheim, and I only need state here that I
encountered it for the first time in that ruined city. Not, however,
till Hohlenheim expressed it did I recognise it.

But for Hohlenheim I could believe in a Providence when I think of
Edmund and Audrey. They were as bee and flower. The honey of her
beauty drew him and he was hers, she his, from the first moment. I had
regarded her as a child and was amazed to see how she rejoiced in him.
I had expected more modesty until I reflected how in such darkness as
that which enveloped Fatland love must blaze. It flared up between
them and burned them into one spirit. So moved was I that all other
marriage, even my own, has always seemed a mockery to me.

How gracious Audrey was to me! She promised me that Edmund would hurry
up his revolution so that I could return to my own country, but I was
given to understand that the position was very difficult, because his
own mother was Vice-Chairwoman of the Governing Committee. For a week
at a time Edmund would be away rounding up outlaws, and, at great risk,
preaching to the kilted and registered men in the fields. Had he been
caught he would have been tickled to death.

After a time I went with him on his expeditions. It was amazing how his
eloquence and his personality produced their effect even on the dullest
minds. The stream of men proceeding to the ruined city increased every
day, and we began to have enough good people to suppress the reckless
rioters somewhat and to organise the life of the town something after
the fashion of the Italian city-state, except that we made no warlike
preparations whatsoever. Most encouraging of all, we had a growing
number of young women coming into the place, and thankful as they were
to escape the nunneries or the spinsterhood of the farms, they quickly
found mates and produced children. The birth of every baby was made a
matter of public rejoicing.

But alas! my ill-luck pursued me. On one of our expeditions we were
cut off and surrounded in a field by a patrol of women. Edmund managed
to escape, but I was captured and tortured into making a confession of
what was going on in the ruined city. I did not see how my confession
could do any harm, and I don’t know what happened, but though my
friends must have known where I was they made no attempt to rescue
me or to communicate with me. I think I should have died rather than
confess but for the thought of my wife. My strongest passion then was
to see her again. Let that, if excuse is needed, be mine.


XII: THE NUNNERY

As Edmund disappeared through a gap in the hedge I was attacked by a
mob of women, screaming at the top of their voices. They talked me into
a state of stupefaction and led me dazed in the direction of a great
building which I had taken for a factory or workhouse. Here with the
leader of my captors I was hustled through a little gate with the mob
outside hooting and yelling:

“Man! Man! Man!”

I was flung into a cell and left there to collect my wits, which I
found hard of doing, for I was near the limits of my endurance, and I
did not see how I could hold out against the numbing influence of such
absolute feminism. In the society to which I had been accustomed men,
whatever their misdeeds, had always treated women with indulgence, but
here the life of a man was one long expiation for the crime of having
been born. I had spirit enough left in me to revolt, but my feeling
could only express itself in bitter tears. I wept all night without
ceasing, and the next day I was so weak and ill that I slept from utter
exhaustion.

Bread and water were handed in to me through a hole in the door, but
the bread was sour and the water was foul to my taste. Once again I
fell a victim to the sense of hallucination, and when at last the door
of my cell was opened and a human figure entered I was half-convinced
that I was honoured with a visitation by an angel. I fell on my knees
and the “angel” called me to my senses by saying:

“Fool, get up.”

I obeyed and my visitor informed me that she was the Medical
Superintendent come to inspect me. I was ordered to strip and stand in
the middle of the cell while the superintendent walked round me and
surveyed me as farmers do with cattle. She prodded my flesh and asked
me my age and what illnesses I had had. She sounded my lungs and tested
my heart and appeared to be well satisfied. As she scanned my person
there came into her eyes a quizzical, humorous look, in which there was
a certain kindly pity, so that I was reassured and plucked up courage
to ask where I was and what was going to be done with me. I was told
that I was in the great nunnery of O, and that my destiny depended
upon her report. I asked her to make it a good one and she laughed. I
laughed too, for indeed mine was a most ridiculous position, standing
there stark naked under her scrutiny. It became necessary for me to
cover myself, and when I had done so we still stood there laughing like
two sillies. She said:

“You’ll do.”

“For what?”

“I can give you a certificate for fatherhood.”

I gasped and protested that I was married, and expressed my horror of
any such misconduct as she proposed. She ignored my protest and said:

“The mothers of your children will be carefully chosen for you.”

On that I roared with laughter. The idea was too preposterous. The
superintendent reproved me and said that any ordinary man would give
his eyes to be in my position, which I owed entirely to my wonderful
physique. I declared my unwillingness and demanded as an American
citizen to be set at liberty. She told me that the idea of nationality
was not recognised and that I must serve the human race in the way
marked out for me. “How?” said I. “Marked out for me? By whom?” I was
assured by my own physical fitness. I protested that I could not look
upon fatherhood as a career, but was told that I must consider it among
the noblest. I maintained that it could never be for a man more than
an incident, significant and delightful no doubt, but no more to be
specialized in than any other natural function. Argument, however, was
impossible, for on this subject the superintendent’s humour deserted
her. However, her interest was roused and she was more friendly in her
attitude, and consented to explain to me the institution which she
served. It was not in the old sense a nunnery, for its inmates were
not vowed to seclusion, and though portraits of William Christmas were
plentiful on its walls, there was no formal devotion to his memory.
It was literally a garden of girls. Female children were brought from
the affiliated crèches to be trained and educated for the functions of
life to which they were best fitted. The intelligent were equipped for
the sciences, the strong for agriculture, the quick and cunning for
industry, the beautiful for maternity. Male children were farmed out
and given no instruction whatever, since they needed no intelligence
for the duties they had to perform. “But the birth-rate?” I said, and
received the answer: “Should never be such as to complicate the problem
of food. It is better to have a small sensible population than one
which is driven mad by its own multitude.”

I was far from convinced and said: “Such a world might a student of
bees dream of after a late supper of radishes.”

My new friend replied that I had not lived through the nightmare of
the great wars, or I would be in a better position to appreciate the
blessings of a scientific society. She admitted that men were perhaps
treated with undue severity, but added that, for her part, she believed
it to be necessary for the gradual suppression of the masculine conceit
and folly which had for so long ravaged the world. In time that would
right itself, the severity would be relaxed, and men would assert an
undeniable claim to a due share in the benefits of civilisation. In the
meanwhile, she would do all in her power to befriend me. I implored her
to certify me unfit for fatherhood, but she would only yield so far as
to declare that I was in need of a month’s recuperation and distraction.

With that ended my interview with that extraordinary woman, who in
happier circumstances would have been a glory to her sex.

I was presently removed from my cell to a pleasant room in the lodge
by the gate, and I was made to earn my keep by working in the garden.
At the end of a week I was despatched by road to the capital to appear
there before the examining committee of the department of birth.


XIII: IN THE CAPITAL

As luck would have it my guardian on the long journey by road--for
motor-cars had not been renounced--was a little chatterbox of a woman,
who coquetted with me in the innocent and provocative manner of the
born flirt. She meant no harm by it, but could not control her eyes
and gestures. I encouraged her to make her talk, and she told me it
would have gone hardly with me but that the medical superintendent
had been passing by the gate of the nunnery as I was thrust in. But
for her I should have been condemned to work in the sewers or to sell
stamps in the post office, menial work reserved for criminals, for the
authorities were becoming exasperated with the agitation for the rights
of men. The outlaws no one minded. They inhabited the ruined cities
and sooner or later would be starved out. It was absurd to expect the
new society to be rid altogether of the pests which had plagued the
old, but every reasonable woman was determined that for generations men
should not enjoy the rights which they had so wantonly abused.

“But,” I said, “men never claimed rights.”

“No,” answered my coquette, “they stole them when we were not looking.
They insisted that we should all be mothers, so that we should be too
busy to keep them out of mischief.”

“My dear child,” said I, “it is the women who have kept us in mischief.”

“No one can say,” she replied, “that we do not keep you out of it now.”
And she gave me one of those arch involuntary invitations which have
before now been the undoing of Empires. I could not resist it. I seized
her in my arms and kissed her full on the lips.

I half expected her to stop the car and denounce me, but when she had
made sure that the girl driving had not seen she was undisturbed and
remarked with a charming smile:

“Some foreign ways are rather pretty.”

I repeated the offence, and by the journey’s end we were very good
friends and understood each other extremely well. She agreed with me
when I said that all forms of society were dependent upon a lot of
solemn humbug. She said yes, and she expected that before she had done
she would be put upon her trial. I did not then understand her meaning,
for we parted at the door of a large house, where she was given a
receipt for me. She saluted me, the dear little trousered flirt, by
putting her finger to her lips as the car drove off.

There were no women in that house. Its inhabitants were a number
of young men like myself, all superb in physique and many of them
extremely handsome, but they were all gloomy and depressed. I was
right in guessing them to be other candidates for fatherhood. They
were guarded and served by very old men in long robes like tea-gowns.
Horrible old creatures they were, like wicked midwives who vary their
habit of bringing human beings into the world by preparing their dead
bodies to leave it. But the young men were hardly any better: they were
dull, stupid, and listless, and their conversation was obscene.

We had to spend our time in physical exercise, in taking baths and
anointing our bodies with unguents and perfumes. We were decked out
in beautiful clothes. Embroidered coats and white linen kilts. In the
evenings there were lectures on physiology, and we were made to chant
a poetical passage from the works of William Christmas, a description
of the glory of the bridegroom, of which I remember nothing except an
offensive comparison with a stallion.

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.


XIV: THE EXAMINATION

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.


XV: MEN OF GENIUS

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.


XVI: REVOLUTION

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.



Out of Work


I: MR. BLY’S HEART BREAKS

In a little house, one of many such houses, in a town, one of many such
towns in Fatland, sat Nicholas Bly, a small stationer and newsagent,
by the bedside of his wife. She said: “Ain’t I thin, Nick?” and again
she said: “My hair is only half what it was.” And he said: “It’s very
pretty hair.” She smiled and took his hand in hers and she died. When
Nicholas Bly was quite sure that she was dead, when he could believe
that she was dead, he did not weep, for there were no tears in his
eyes. He said nothing, for there were no words in his mind. He felt
nothing, for his heart was breaking, and so little was he alive that
he did not know it. His wife was dead, his two children were dead, his
shop was closed, and he had two shillings in the world, and they were
borrowed.

He went out into the street and when he saw a well-fed man he hated
him: and when he saw a thin hungry man he despised him; on returning
to his house he found there a Doctor and a Parson. The Doctor said his
wife had died of something with two long Latin names.

“She starved,” said Nicholas Bly.

The Parson said something about the will and the love of God.

“The devil’s took her,” said Nicholas Bly.

The Parson cast up his eyes and exhorted the blasphemer to seek comfort
in duty and distraction in hard work.

“I’m out of work,” said Nicholas Bly; “the devil’s took my work and my
wife and my two children. Hell’s full up and overflowed into this ’ere
town and this ’ere street. We must fight the devil with fire and bloody
murders.”

The Parson and the Doctor agreed that the poor fellow was mad.


II: MR. BLY IS IMPRISONED

Nicholas Bly’s stomach was full of emptiness, the heat of his blood
parched his brains, and his sleep was crowded with huddling bad dreams.
He ate crusts and cabbage stalks picked up out of the gutter, and when
he was near mad with thirst he snatched beer jugs from children as they
turned into the entries leading to their houses. His days he spent
looking for the devil. Three nights he spent moving from one square
with seats round it to another, and on the fourth night he heard of a
brick-field where there was some warmth. He slept there that night and
was arrested. The magistrate said:

“I am satisfied that you are a thoroughly worthless character, an
incurable vagabond, and if not yet a danger, a nuisance to society....”

(The magistrate said a great deal more. He was newly appointed and
needed to persuade himself of his dignity by talk.)

Nicholas Bly was sent to prison.


III: THE DARK GENTLEMAN

When he left the prison Nicholas Bly realised that he had legs to walk
with but nowhere to go, hands to work with but nothing to do, a brain
to think with but never a thought. He was almost startled to find
himself utterly alone, and his loneliness drove him into a hot rage. In
prison he had thought vaguely of the world as a warm place outside, to
which in the course of days he would return. Now that he had returned
the world had nothing to do with him and he had nothing to do with it.
He prowled through the streets, but a sort of pride forbade him to
eat the cabbage stalks and crusts of the gutters, and to rob children
of their parents’ beer he was ashamed. He looked for work, but was
everywhere refused, and he said to himself:

“Prison is the best the world can do for men like me.”

But he was determined to give the world a better reason for putting him
in prison than sleeping in a brick-field because it was warm. The world
was cold. He would make it warm. The devil was in the world: he would
burn him out, use his own element against him.

He chose the largest timber-yard he could find, and that night he stole
a can of petrol, and when he had placed it in a heap of shavings went
out into the street to find some matches. He met a seedy individual in
a coat with a fur collar and a broad-brimmed hat, who looked like an
actor, and he asked him if he could oblige him with a match.

“Lucifers,” said the seedy individual and gave him three.

Nicholas Bly returned to the timber-yard with the matches. He struck
one. It went off like a rocket. The second exploded like a Chinese
cracker, and he was just lighting the third when he heard a melancholy
chuckle. He turned his head and found the seedy individual gazing at
him with an expression of wistfulness.

“Like old times,” said the seedy individual.

Nicholas Bly lit the third match and it flooded the whole yard with
Bengal light, and still he had not set fire to his petrol.

“Gimme another match,” said Nicholas Bly; “watch me set fire to the
yard and go and tell.”

“I have no more,” replied the stranger. “Those were my last. I no
longer make fire or instruments of fire. No one wants my tricks. I have
lost everything and am doomed.”

“I have lost my wife, my children and my work.”

“I have lost my kingdom, my power and my glory.”

“The devil took them,” answered Nicholas Bly.

“I wish I had,” replied the stranger.


IV: THE DARK GENTLEMAN’S STORY

Nicholas Bly fetched a screech loud enough to wake a whole parish. The
dark gentleman pounced on him firmly and gagged him with his hand, and
his fingers burnt into the newsagent’s cheek.

“Be silent,” said the dark gentleman, “you’ll have them coming and
taking you away from me. Will you be silent?”

Nicholas Bly nodded to say he would be silent. Then he said:

“If you didn’t take them, who did?”

“Jah!” said the devil, for the dark gentleman was no other. “Jah took
them. Jah does everything now, at least I am forced to the conclusion
that he does, since I find everything going on much the same. I knew
how it would be. I knew he would find it dull only dealing with
virtuous people. It was very sudden. I was deposed without any notice
just in the middle of the busiest time I’d had for centuries. I have
had a horrible time. No one believed in me. For years now I have only
been used to frighten children, and have occasionally been allowed to
slip into their dreams. You must agree that it is galling for one who
has lived on the fat of human faith--for in the good old days I had far
more souls than Jah. I haven’t been in a grown man’s mind for years
until I found yours open to me.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Nicholas Bly. “I want my wife. I want
my two children. I want my work.”

“Anything may be possible if you will believe in me.”

“I’ll believe in anything, I’d go to Hell if I could get them back.”


“There is no Hell,” said the devil.


V: COGITATION

This was a little difficult for Nicholas Bly. For a long time they sat
brooding in the darkness of the timber-yard. Then said Nicholas Bly:

“Seeing’s believing. I see you. I believe in you. You’re the first
critter that’s spoke to me honest and kindly this many a long day. You
seem to be worse off than I am. We’re mates.”

“Thank you,” said the devil. “In the old days I used to offer those who
believed in me women, wine, song and riches. But now we shall have to
see what we can do.”

“I want to spite that there Jah.”

“We will do our best,” said the devil.

With that they rose to their feet, and as they left the timber-yard the
devil shook a spark out of his tail on to the petrol, so that they had
not gone above a mile when the wood was ablaze and they could see the
red glow of the fire against the sky.


VI: CONFLAGRATION

Gleefully the devil took Mr. Bly back to watch the blaze, and they were
huddled and squeezed and pressed in the crowd. A fat woman took a
fancy to the devil and put her arm round his waist.

“Where are you living, old dear?” she said.

“You leave my pal alone,” said Nicholas Bly.

But the devil gave her a smacking kiss, and she slapped his face and
giggled, saying:

“Geeh! That was a warm one that was.”

And she persisted until the devil had confessed his name to be Mr.
Nicodemus. Then she said she had a snug little room in her house which
he could have--his pal too if they were not to be separated.

Mr. Bly demurred, but Mr. Nicodemus said:

“You can only get at Jah through the women.”

So they pursued the adventure and went home with the fat woman, but
when she reached her parlour she plumped down on her knees and said
her prayers, and the devil vanished, and she was so enraged that she
swept Nicholas Bly out with her broom. He hammered on her door and
told her why his friend had vanished, and that if she would say her
prayers backward he would return. She said her prayers backwards and
Mr. Nicodemus returned.


VII: TIB STREET

The fat woman’s name was Mrs. Martin, and when she found that her
beloved had a tail she was not at all put out, but to avoid scandal,
cut it off.

All the same there was a scandal, for the fascination of Mr. Nicodemus
was irresistible, and the house was always full of women, and whenever
he went out he was followed by a herd of them. Mrs. Martin was jealous,
Mr. Bly sulked and Mr. Nicodemus had a busy time placating indignant
husbands and lovers. Not a house in Tib street but was in a state of
upheaval. The men sought consolation in drink, and presently there was
hardly one who had retained his work.

“We are getting on,” said Mr. Nicodemus. “We are getting on. In the
good old times men left their work to follow me, and it used to be a
favourite device of mine to make their work seem so repulsive to them
that they preferred thieving or fighting or even suffering to it. If we
end as we have begun, then Jah will be as isolated as you and I have
been.”

And he chuckled in triumph and bussed Mrs. Martin.

“That,” said she, “reminds me of Martin; and he was a oner, he was.
That’s worth anything to me.”

With that the good creature bustled off to arrange for a week’s charing
to keep her lodgers in food.

Shortlived, however was the triumph of Mr. Nicodemus, for, with the
women neglecting their homes and the men their work, the children
sickened and died, and no day passed but two or three little coffins
were taken to the cemetery. And in their grief the women remembered
Jah, and went to church to appease His wrath. The men were sobered and
returned to work, but at wages punitively reduced, so that their last
state was worse than their first, for the women were now devoted to Jah
and the children were empty and their bellies were pinched.

Nicholas Bly cursed Jah. The sight of the little coffins being taken
out of Tib Street reminded him of his own children and he went near mad
and vowed that Jah was taking them because He was a jealous God, one
who had taken Hell from the devil and their children from men in the
purblindness of His fury.

And he began to preach at the corner of Tib Street.


VIII: MR. BLY’S SERMON

He said:

“There are many filthy streets in this town, but this is the filthiest.
Who made it filthy? Jah! It is the nature of man to love his wife and
his children, to dwell with them in peace and loving-kindness. But for
all his love, wherewith shall a man feed his wife and children? What
clothing shall he give them? What shelter find for them? Go you into
this street and look into the houses. You will find crumbling walls,
broken stairs, windows stuffed with clouts: you will find bare shelves
and cupboards: you will find dead children with never so much as a
whole shroud among them. You will say that perhaps they are better
dead, but I say unto you that if a man’s children be dead wherewith
shall he feed his love? And without a full love in his heart how shall
a man work or live or die? Are we born only to die? And if life ends
in death what matters it how life be lived? But, I say unto you, that
because life ends in death a man must see to it that all his days are
filled with love, which is beauty, which is truth. And I say unto you
when your eyes are filled and bleeding with the pain of the sights
you shall see here, go out into the fields and to the hills and the
great waters and see the sun rise and shed his light and go down and
cast his light upon the moon, and draw vapour from the earth and bring
it again in the rain; and feel the wind upon your faces, and see the
sodden air hang upon the earth until the coming of the storm to cleanse
its foulness: and do you mark the flight of the birds, the nesting of
the birds, the happy fish in the waters, the slow beasts in the fields:
observe the growth of trees and plants, and grasses and corn. Then you
shall know the richness of love among the creatures that know not Jah.
They die and are visited with sickness even as we, but theirs is a free
life and a free death unconfined by any sickness of the mind or tyranny
of Gods and Demons. We alone among creatures are cheated of our desires
and perish for the want of food amid plenty, and are cut off each from
his full share of the abounding love of the world. Who takes our share?
Jah! Who kills our love? Jah! Who filches the best of our thoughts, the
keenest sap of our courage? Who fills our lives and homes with darkness
and despair, and meanness and emptiness? Jah! I know not who Jah is,
nor whence He came, but I will dethrone Him.”


IX: THE EFFECT OF MR. BLY’S SERMON

Street oratory was at that time very common, but there was a note in
Mr. Bly’s eloquence which attracted many of the inhabitants of the
district, especially the young, and he achieved a certain fame. No
one knew exactly what he was talking about, for, except for expletive
purposes, the word Jah had dropped out of the vernacular. Mr. Bly
was assumed to be some kind of politician, and he was certainly more
exciting than most. Therefore his audiences were twice as large as
those of any other speaker. Seeing this, a Labour Agitator came to
him and offered him a place on his committee and a pound a week as a
lecturer.

“I can speak about nothing but Jah,” said Mr. Bly.

“Speak about anything you like so long as you catch their ears,” said
the agitator.

So Mr. Bly accepted the offer.


X: THE WIDOW MARTIN

When Mr. Bly told his infernal companion of his engagement Mr.
Nicodemus said:

“Talking is a very human way of creating a disturbance. My way and
Jah’s way is the way of corruption. We unseat the mind and poison the
soul with unsatisfiable desires. But if you wish it I will go with you.
We have lit a fire in Tib Street that will burn itself out without us.”

“I should like your company,” replied Mr. Bly. “It helps me to be
reminded that Jah has been unjust to more than human beings. It
redoubles my fury and kindles my eloquence. I am determined to earn my
pound a week and drive Jah out of the land.”

The devil began to draw on his shabby fur coat. Mrs. Martin had been
listening to their conversation. She burst in upon them and vowed that
her Nick should never, never leave her. With horrible callousness Mr.
Nicodemus told her that he was pledged to Mr. Bly, and asked her for
his tail. She refused to give it up, and was so stubborn that, at last,
after they had argued with her, and pleaded and stormed, and bribed
and bullied, she said she would produce his tail if she might go with
them; and they consented, for Mr. Nicodemus said that if he were ever
returned to power he would be in need of his tail, and indeed would be
a ridiculous object without it, his system of damnation being supported
by tradition and symbol and ritual.

They had a merry supper-party, and that night took train for the town
appointed for Mr. Bly’s first appearance on a political platform.


XI: MAKING A STIR

Where other politicians dealt in statistics, which, after all, are but
an intellectual excitement, a kind of mental cats’-cradle, our orator
sounded three notes: he appealed to a man’s love of women, his love of
children, and led his audience on to hatred of Jah. To the first two
they responded, were persuaded that they were as he said, cheated and
betrayed, and, though they could not follow him further without losing
their heads, they lost them and were filled with hatred. And as Mr.
Bly never made any reference either to Government or Opposition his
speeches were reported in the newspapers on both sides, and aroused
the greatest interest through the country. The well-to-do found
breakfast insipid without his utterances, and, to support him, they
subscribed largely to the funds of the organisation which promoted his
efforts. His salary was raised to two pounds a week on the day when a
Conservative organ published his portrait and a leading article on the
golden sincerity of the Working Classes.


XII: MAKING A STIRABOUT

Where other orators damned everything from sewing cotton to
battleships, and so could not avoid giving offence, Mr. Bly damned only
Jah and hurt nobody’s feelings. But he produced an effect. He laid
every grievance at Jah’s door, and roused so much enthusiasm that at
last he began to believe in his power.

It is not often that the people find a leader, and when they do they
expect him to lead. They were impatient for Mr. Bly to reveal to them a
line of action, and here he was puzzled. It was one thing (he found) to
talk about Jah, another to bring Jah to book. He had no other machinery
than that of the Labour Agitators, who had been making elaborate
preparations for a strike. Their preparations were excellent, but their
followers were reluctant. They could provide them with no adequate
motive. In vain did they talk of the dawn of Labour, the Rights of the
Worker, and a Place in the Sun; to all these the people preferred the
prospect of pay on Saturday. Nothing could stir them, until, at last,
at one of Mr. Bly’s meetings when he was being hailed as a leader and
implored to lead, and at his wit’s end what to do, upon a whisper from
behind, he said:

“Strike! Strike against Jah! You are workers! Why do you work? To feed
your children. Your children die. Strike, I say, strike while the
iron is hot, the iron that has entered into your souls from the cruel
tyranny of Jah! There is no other enemy. You have no other foe....”

He did not need to say more. The fat was in the fire.


XIII. SPARKS FLYING

The fat crackled and sputtered. In thirty-six hours the business of
the town was at a standstill, and by that time Mr. Bly had visited
three other towns, and they too succumbed to his passion. At every town
he visited he was welcomed with brass bands and red carpets, and his
orders were obeyed. The Labour Agitators of the neighbouring countries
desired his services and cabled for him, and he promised to go as soon
as Jah was driven out of Fatland.

The strikes were begun in feasting and merrymaking, and things were
done that delighted Mr. Nicodemus and the widow Martin’s heart:

“The men are becoming quite themselves again.”

And Mr. Nicodemus gazed upon it all and sighed:

“Ah! If only Hell were open!”

The widow Martin gazed upon him voluptuously and muttered:

“It would be just ’Eaven to keep that public you’re always talking
about for ever and ever with you.”


XIV: SMOULDERING

The strikers soon came to grips with want and the very poor were
brought to starvation. Only the more fiercely for that did their
passion glow. They forgot all about Mr. Bly and Jah: they were only
determined not to give in. They knew not wherefore they were fighting,
and were savagely resolved not to return to their old ways without some
palpable change. Forces and emotions had been stirred which led them to
look for a miracle, and without the miracle they preferred to die. The
miracle did not come and many of them died.


XV: SUCCOUR

With a moderate but assured income the Fattish are humane, that is to
say, they grope like shadows through life and shun the impenetrable
shadow of death. They shuddered to think of the very poor dying with
their eyes gazing forward for the miracle that never came, and they
said:

“To think of their finding no miracle but death! It is too horrible.
Can such things be in Fatland? Why don’t we do something?”

So they formed committees and wrote to the newspapers and started
various funds; and they invited Mr. Bly to lecture in aid of them.

He came to Bondon, lectured, and became the fashion. He discovered to
his amazement that there were rich people in Fatland, and these rich
people formed Anti-Jah societies. Enormous sums of money were collected
for the strikers, because the rich were so delighted to be amused. Mr.
Bly amused them enormously. Mr. Nicodemus gave a course of lectures
on the Kingdom from which Jah had deposed him, and Mrs. Martin held
meetings for women only, to expound her views of men. For years the
rich people had not been so vastly entertained, and they poured out
money for the strikers.

Unfortunately their subscriptions could buy little else for the very
poor but coffins, and of them the supply soon came to an end.

Famine and pestilence stalked abroad, but only the more fiercely
did Mr. Bly urge the destruction of Jah, and the more blindly and
desperately did the starving poor of Fatland look for the miracle.

But soon not only were the poor starving, but the comfortable, the
tradespeople, the professional classes, the humane persons with
moderate but assured incomes were faced with want. Rats were now five
shillings a brace, and a nest of baby mice was known to fetch four
shillings.

When the rich found their meals were costing them more than a pound a
head then they forgot their craze and Mr. Bly, and Mr. Nicodemus and
the widow Martin withdrew from Bondon. Mr. Bly was no longer reported
in the newspapers. His name had become offensive, the bloom had gone
from his novelty, the varnish from his reputation, and the sting out of
his power.

In all the towns gaunt spectre-like men began to sneak back to work,
and Mr. Bly was nigh frenzied with rage, disgust and despair.

“It is Jah!” he said. “It is Jah. He has crept into the hearts of men.
He has stirred their minds against me. Oh! my grief. He has used me to
bring men lower yet, so that they will live in viler dwellings, and eat
of fouler food, and be more meanly clad, more verminous than ever. The
women will be lower sluts and shrews than they have ever been, and of
their children it will be hard to see how they can ever grow into men
and women. Deeper and deeper into the pit has Jah brought us, and there
is now no hope.”

And in his agony he remembered how in his childhood he had been taught
to pray to Jah, and he knelt and prayed that he might come face to
face with Jah, to tell Him what He had done, and to implore Him to
make an end of His cruelty and to destroy all at once.

Hearing him pray Mr. Nicodemus fled from his side and left him alone
with the Widow Martin. Said she:

“Don’t take on so, dearie. A man’s no call to take on so when he has a
woman by his side. There’s nothing else in the nature of things, but
men and women only. If we starve, we starve: and if we die, we die,
it’s all one. Have done, I say, there’s always room for a bit o’ fun.”

“Fun!” cried Mr. Bly.

And the comfortable creature took his head to her bosom, and there he
sobbed out his grief.


XVI: ON THE ROAD

So the strike ended, and Nicholas Bly walked from town to town marking
its effects. It was as he had foreseen, and men were lower than before,
and every night he prayed that he might meet Jah to curse Him to His
face. For days on end he would utter never a word, but the widow Martin
stayed with him and saw that he ate and drank, stealing, begging,
wheedling, selling herself to get him food. She would say:

“It’s not like Mr. Nicodemus. There’s very little fun in him, but a
woman doesn’t care for fun when she’s sorry for a man.”

He was a grim sight now, was Nicholas Bly. His ragged clothes hung and
flapped on him as on a scarecrow. His cheeks were sunken and patched
with a dirty grey stubble. His eyes glared feverishly out of red
sockets, and they seemed to see nothing but to be asking for a sight
of something. There was a sort of film on them, but the light in the
man shone through it. His shoulders were bowed and his thin arms hung
limply by his side, but always his face was upturned, and he shook as
he walked, like a flame.

The malady in him drove him to the heights. His desire was to be near
the sky. Presently he forsook the towns and went from one range of
hills to another seeking the highest in Fatland.

At last after many days he reached the highest hill, and there he lay
flat on his face and would neither eat nor drink. By his side sat
the widow Martin, and she made certain that he was going to die, and
produced two pennies to lay upon his eyelids when death should come.

On the third day he turned over on his back and said:

“Jah is coming.”

And it was so.

Up the steep path came a man with a great beard and a huge nose and
eyes that twinkled with the light of merriment and shone with the
tenderness of irony, and blazed with the fire of genius. By his side
walked a slim dark figure, and with a joyful cry the widow Martin
declared it to be Mr. Nicodemus.

Nicholas Bly sat up and began to rehearse all the curses that in his
bitterness he had prepared.


XVII: JAH

He began:

“By the dead bodies of the children of men; by the plagues and diseases
of the bodies of women; by the festering----”

Very quietly Jah took His seat by his side and motioned to Mr.
Nicodemus to take up his position in front of them. In a voice of the
most musical sweetness and with a rich full diction He said:

“As we made the ascent I was expostulating with my friend here for
the absurdity of his attempt to reinstate himself in the world. There
is no Hell. Neither is there a Heaven. These places live by faith as
we have done. It is a little difficult for us to understand, but we
have no occasion for resentment. Separately it is impossible for us to
understand. My meeting with my dark friend here led me a little way on
the road towards a solution. The four of us may arrive at something.”

The widow Martin scanned Jah closely:

“You’ve been a fine man in your time.”

“I have never been a man,” replied Jah sadly. “Nor have I been able
to play my part in human affairs. Like my friend here I have been an
exile. I have been forced to dwell in the mists of superstition, even
as he has been confined in the dark depths of lust. Until now I never
understood our interdependence. I am the imagination of man. He is
man’s passion. Together we can bring about the release of love in his
soul. Separately we can do nothing to break his folly, his stupidity,
his brutality, his vain selfishness. Without us he can be inquisitive
and clever, vigorous and energetic, but he remains insensible, unjust,
cruel and cowardly.”

And Nicholas Bly roused himself and he seemed to grow, and the film
fell from his eyes and he cried:

“Blessed be Jah, blessed be Nicodemus, blessed be man and the heart of
man, blessed be woman and the love of woman, blessed be life, blessed
be death!”

So saying he rose to his feet. Before his face the sun was sinking in
the evening glory: behind him the moon rose.


XVIII: JAH SPEAKS

A great wind blew through Nicholas Bly’s hair and he bowed his head in
acceptance of the wonder of the universe.

As the moon rose to her zenith Jah said:

“There are Wonders beyond me and God is beyond imagination. My dwelling
is in the mind of men, but I have been driven therefrom. My friend here
should dwell in the heart of man, but he has been unseated. Together we
should win for man his due share of the world’s dominion and power, and
should be his sweetest stops in the instrument of life. For without us
is no joy, and with us joy is fierce. I speak, of the woman also, for
she is the equal of man and his comrade.”

And as the moon was sinking to the west Jah said:

“We have suffered too long, and we have brought forth nothing. Let us
no longer be separate, but let us, man, woman, God and Devil, join
together to bring forth joy, for until there is joy on earth there
shall not be justice, nor kindness, nor understanding, nor any good
thing. We are but one spirit, for the spirit is one, and none but the
undivided spirit can see the light of the sun.”

Even as he spoke the sun came up in his majesty, dwarfing the mighty
hills, and Nicholas Bly raised his head and saw Nicodemus in the
likeness of a lusty young man, fine and splendid in his desire, and Jah
in the shape of a winged boy. And as he saw them they disappeared, and
he said:

“They have vanished into the air.”

From the scarred hillside came an echo:

“Into the air.”


XIX: SONG

Then did Nicholas Bly sing:

  “I have lived, I have loved, I have died,
    And my spirit has burned like a flame;
  In the furnace of life my soul has been tried,
    I have dwindled to ashes of shame.

  I have glowed to the winds of my own desire,
    I have flickered and flared and roared,
  Through the endless night has flashed my delight
    To declare my joy in the Lord.

  For the Lord is life and I am His,
    And His are my shame and my pride.
  My song is His: my Lord sings this:
    I have lived, I have loved, I have died.”


XX: MORNING

Waking, the woman said:

“How is it with you, my man?”

He answered:

“I feel truly that I am a man.”

Gazing upon the woman, he saw that she was beautiful.


XXI: HOPE

They came down from the hills, and a mist descended upon them, and
presently a driving rain. They were glad of each other, and smiled
their joy upon all whom they met. Nicholas Bly never ceased to make
songs, and as he sang the woman laughed merrily. The songs he made he
sang to many men, but none would listen except the drunken man in the
public-houses.

One day a very drunken man asked Nicholas Bly to sing a song again, and
he refused, because he wished to sing a better song. The man offered
him a mug of beer to sing again, but he refused, saying:

“I do not sing for hire.”

The man despised him and drank the beer himself, saying:

“It’s a silly kind of sod will sing for nothing.”

And he would hear no more.

So it was everywhere. None could understand that Nicholas Bly should
sing for the delight of it or that there could be a joy to set him
singing. In the end, and that soon, his heart broke and he died, and
Fatland is as it is.

Mr. Nicodemus and Jah were never seen again, nor in Fatland is there
trace or memory of them.

But within the womb of the woman was the child of her man, so that she
gazed in upon herself with a great hope. In this she was so absorbed
that the insensibility of the Fattish moved her not at all and she
forgot to apply for her maternity benefit.


  THE END OF
  WINDMILLS



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.



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