CHAPTER XXIX
We found the Anarchist at his own fireside, playing with a kitten. Two children stood at his knee, and he was telling them stories, while the kitten made dashes at his long gray beard.
He lived in one of the workmen’s houses that have lately sprung up on the outskirts of the city. They are two-story houses, made of brick, with narrow windows and narrow stone doorsteps. Standing, row after row in uniform regularity, they look like blocks made for some queer game which nobody ever plays.
The Anarchist reached out both hands to me with a cordial smile. He was doubly cordial when I introduced the Tailoress and told him why I had come.
That was right, he said, as he seated us in great wooden rocking-chairs. We werestarting a movement in the right direction. Organization alone could protect women against atrociously low wages and against long hours of work. They were now absolutely at the mercy of their employers.
“There ain’t no animal,” said the Anarchist, raising his arm in a sweeping gesture, “that gets so little wage in proportion to its work as half the women in this city. And that’s because they don’t organize. They ain’t got the fraternity spirit. They’re comin’ on, but in one respect the men’s ahead. The Brotherhood of Man is fur outstrippin’ the Sisterhood of Women!
“But draw up by the fire and warm ye,” he added, dropping the tone of a demagogue for a natural voice. “It’s a right cold day out-doors.”
The Anarchist’s large, patriarchal figure looked out of place in this tiny sitting-room. His gray age emphasized the newness of his surroundings. He should have for a background, I thought, the great elms and weather-beaten porches of an ancestral farmhouse, instead of the gaudywall-paper and cheap, stained wood-work of this roughly finished room.
My companion did not look at the apartment. Her gaze was fastened on the Anarchist, and a look, now of terror, now of kindling enthusiasm, dilated her eyes.
The difficulty, the Anarchist repeated, was with the women themselves. They would not band together to demand their rights, because they were afraid. They did not want to do anything “unladylike.” It seemed to me that under the flowery and confused style, there was much sound sense in his remarks.
“Now if you,” he said, rising and striding up and down the room, with his long cretonne dressing-gown flapping about his slippered heels, “if you could influence any shop of ill-paid girls to form a union for mutual protection of each other, and to go out on a strike, for their lawful rights, which are theirs, you would be opening the eyes of the captive and letting the maimed and halt and blind go free!”
I do not know whether the Tailoressliked the rhetoric, but the idea had taken possession of her. Her face was illumined by a new inspiration. She looked, with her high cheek bones and her deep-set eyes, like an ancient Sybil about to deliver a solemn message.
The Anarchist seated himself again in his great rocking-chair, and one of the children—a curly-headed boy of four—crept to his knee, and cuddled down on his shoulder.
“More,” coaxed the boy, “more Jack and the Bean-stalk.”
The Anarchist looked up at us with smiling pride.
“Is this a grandchild?” I asked.
“No, no; he belongs to one of my neighbours. The two of ’em come over to play with me since I give up work. I had to do it. What with organizin’ and the conferences and the committee-meetings, I couldn’t get time for no work.”
I did not mean to look inquiringly at my host, but perhaps I did, for he continued:—
“The organization helps us considerable,and my wife, she sews. We manage to get along.”
I fancied that the Anarchist’s wife had laid aside her sewing and was getting supper, for she was moving up and down in the kitchen. I wondered if she were tired.
The Tailoress was rapt and silent, with a Jeanne D’Arc look upon her face. She was too much absorbed to hear the friendly remarks that the Anarchist was making.
“I’m glad you come to me,” he said. “I’ll do all I can to help on your enterprise. There’s nothin’ in the world I wouldn’t do for a woman.”
To check the thoughts that the busy footsteps in the kitchen suggested, I asked the Anarchist a question.
“Isn’t the idea of combining for any purpose contrary to your principles? I thought that the first article in your political creed was that each man should stand alone.”
“E-ventually,” answered the Anarchist, with deliberation. “That’s the eyedeal. This is only a perliminary step. We’vegot to combine first to break the bands of unlawful power. It’s jest the same thing I said the other night at the banquet. I reckon I scairt ye a little then?” he queried, with a broad smile. “I don’t know but what I ought to have said less, and yet I don’t know as I had. Those are only my temporary sentiments.”
“Yes?” I said, suggestively.
“I’m a man of peace,” said the Anarchist, slowly. “A man of peace. I want to see the day when we all stand side by side, free and equal, and no man the minion of any other. That’s anarchy, that is. There won’t be no injestice then, for there won’t be no gover’ment to meddle and mess things up. We’ll all work separate and harmonious, and every man will know that his interests and the interests of his neighbour are eyedentical.
“But I tell you,” he cried, starting up suddenly, and then subsiding for the sake of the child nestled on his arm, “we’ve got to fight to bring about this peace! The gover’ment’s on our shoulders, and it’s gotto be got off. That’s somethin’ we can’t do without co-operation, and we’ll hev to fight together.
“And it’s comin’,” he added solemnly. “The crisis is comin’. It won’t be long before the worm will turn. Soon you’ll see the poor worms of the dust ridin’ triumphant on the whirlwinds of war!”