by Robin Paige
Jack was a marvelous conversationalist, as one might expect of a famous adventure writer, and the words flowed out of him in a wild torrent. He had sailed before the mast on the last of the seal-hunters to leave San Francisco Bay, he said, and felt “absolutely exalted” when he stood at the wheel of the wildly careering schooner, guiding it through a maelstrom of waves. “When I have done such a thing,” he said expansively, “I glow all over. Every fiber of me thrills with it.”
Nellie started to say that she felt exactly the same way when she was on the stage, but he was hurrying on to tell her about how he had nearly lost his life among the icebergs of the Bering Sea, and while she was still gasping at the brutal dangers of that desolate scene, he began to describe the harrowing winters he had spent searching for gold in the Klondike, where he had learned to love the loud, clear call of wolves in the echoing wilderness. She had barely transformed him in her mind from sailor and seal-hunter to gold-seeker, when he was describing how he had hitched his way right across the United States in a railway boxcar, and then had only just missed being elected Mayor of Oakland, California—in fact, he would have been elected if he hadn’t run on the Socialist ticket, because Socialists weren’t quite the thing in America just yet.
But they would be, he insisted, stubbing out his cigarette in his coffee cup. There would be a revolution, it was absolutely inevitable, and then the millions of people (like himself) whose birthrights had been denied would rise up and reclaim them from the capitalists who had stolen them. That Jack London was a Socialist and spoke so warmly against the destructive powers of capitalism was somewhat surprising to Nellie, because she had thought—naively, it seemed—that only capitalists could afford to eat roast duck at the Carlton.
Over their liqueurs, the conversation turned to another event that seemed to have caught Jack’s fancy, for he told the story with an amusing panache. He was walking down Hampstead Road when a bird’s nest fell out of the sky and onto the pavement in front of him. Looking up, he saw to his great surprise a woman scrambling across a roof, and then, to his delight, descending straight down an iron fire-ladder and practically into his arms, while on the street at his very elbow, the police were bustling three men into a police van. Questioning those around him, he learned that the woman who jumped off the ladder and disappeared into the crowd was none other than the editor of the Clarion, an Anarchist newspaper, and that she was escaping from a raid. He seemed to find this whole affair wonderfully amusing and stimulating.
“That would be Charlotte Conway,” Nellie said, glad that she was at last able to contribute something to the conversation, which up to that point had been mainly his. “I know her quite well, actually. In fact, I’ve already heard all about her narrow escape. She told me herself.”
Jack’s dark eyes glinted with excitement. “She told you? You mean, you know where she is?”
Nellie frowned. Things might be a bit blurry from everything she’d had to drink, but she still had her wits about her. “I know where she was,” she said cautiously. “She’s not there now.”
“Then where is she?”
Feeling that there was an odd urgency about the question, Nellie put on a mysterious smile. “Why, she could be anywhere,” she said lightly. “Those Anarchists, you know. Always so independent, never wanting to ask for anything.”
“Somehow I guessed that about her,” Jack said, half to himself. “A free spirit, nothing held back, nothing denied. Mate woman.”
Nellie frowned, puzzled by the phrase mate woman. In her experience, men (especially sailors and Aussies) considered one another as mates, and animal pairs were thought of as mates, and sometimes married people spoke of their spouses as mates. Mate woman didn’t make much sense, if Jack was thinking of Lottie.
Still, she didn’t want him to suspect that she herself was withholding something, so she only smiled and said, “That’s Lottie, a free spirit,” adding, “The last time I saw her, she had cut her hair short and disguised herself as a young man.”
“The hell you say!” Jack exploded into a raucous laugh. “A man, huh? What a woman!” Catching her curious glance, he said, still chuckling, “Well, then, if you see her, let her know I’m looking for her. I’m dying to interview her—get her opinion about the East End and what’s going on there. I’ll wager she knows more than most about what I’m interested in. As an Anarchist, that is.”
With a twinge of jealousy, Nellie thought that there might be more to it than that, but she just shrugged. “I’m sure she does,” she said, tossing her head carelessly. “Well, if I happen to run into her again, I’ll see if she wants to talk to you.”
His face darkened, and for an instant, she thought he was going to say something. But then he smiled, glanced at his watch, and hoisted himself off the settee. “Say, it’s still early, Nell. I’ve been hearing about Earl’s Court, and I want to see it. Let’s go have some fun.” And without waiting for her to reply that she was actually a little tired and would prefer to end the evening now, he was striding toward the door.
The rest of the evening—the night, really—was a blur. Nellie was more tired than she had thought, but she tried to put her weariness aside and match Jack’s boundless, boisterous energy. She had been many times to Earl’s Court, but always found it most enticing in the evening, when darkness threw a mysterious cloak of illusion and fantasy over the scene. In the center of the Court was a lake rimmed with colored lights that cast shimmering pools of color across the surface. There was an exotic stone grotto at one end and a bridge across the middle, where one could stand and watch little electric launches designed to look like gliding swans. At one side of the lake, boats full of people swept down a tall water-chute and into the water with a giant splash. From beyond the bridge Nellie could hear the sprightly sound of a German band playing a polka, and a Chinese dragon railway puffed real steam as it ran around the lake, its miniature cars filled with squealing passengers. And then there was the Exhibition Court, in which all sorts of side-shows were offered, and there was champagne to drink.
During the day Earl’s Court was always crowded with children and their nannies, but at night it attracted people of all classes: wide-eyed servant girls in their Sunday best strolling on the arms of their gawking beaux; and top-hatted men of the world squiring velvet-clad ladies decked with glittering jewelry. If any of these lovely ladies were no better than they should be, it would have been exceedingly difficult to pick them out from the others, for the multihued gaslights cast a shimmering veil over all, softening sharp features, sweetening sour tempers, and disguising illicit intentions.
With so many other well-dressed ladies around her, Nellie did not feel at all out of place in her velvet finery, although she was not entirely comfortable when Jack insisted that they tour the India Exhibit. This was a circus-like coterie of snake-charmers, jugglers, exotic (and smelly) leopards, and veiled women dancers with bare navels and bare feet, the latter much applauded by a great crowd of drunken men. In fact, by now Nellie had rather got the idea that Jack preferred the gaudy excitement and bawdy silliness of Earl’s Court to the earlier elegance of the Carlton. But perhaps that was simply the American in him. She had not known many Americans, but she had the idea that they thrived on excitement, as Jack certainly seemed to do.
She decided that this was definitely the case when he bought more champagne, and then tickets on the Big Wheel, and they found themselves sailing up and up into the cool dark night, the bright lights and sparkling music wafting eerily up out of the fog below.
“Not as tall as the Ferris wheel in Chicago,” Jack said critically, and began to rock their carriage to see how far he could make it swing, until Nellie squealed with fear. “But I guess it’ll do.” He smiled down at her and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “Hell,” he said. “I know it’ll do.”
Nellie shivered with pleasure, and when Jack bent to kiss her, it was easy to kiss him back, gently at first and then fiercely, with a passion she had not realized was in her. A
nd when the ride was over, he took her hand and led her to the exit, and into a cab, and there was more kissing, far more than Nellie (for she did not have nearly the experience she pretended) had ever before allowed. And within a very short while they were at her door and she was clinging giddily to his arm and fumbling for her key, and he was taking it from her and letting them both into the little house.
And then he was pulling her dress off her shoulders, not at all gently, and yanking off his shirt and trousers. As his intention became clear, she tried to push him away, crying “No, no, please, no!” with a mounting fright, as much at the urgency of her own whirling desire as at the brutal roughness of his hands and mouth. But he pulled her to him as if her resistance only fueled his passion, and as he pushed her onto the bed, still crying out in protest, she realized how incredibly strong he was. There was no use in fighting, for he would do just as he willed. He would take what he wanted, without restraint.
Everything became very blurry after that, and when Nellie woke in the gray light of an early morning, she had a savage headache, her mouth was as dry as a desert, and her body ached as if it had been assaulted—as, to tell truth, it had. She lay for a moment, not quite remembering what had happened, and then sat up in bed, clutching the rumpled sheets around her nakedness.
Jack was gone, but there was a pencilled note on the dresser, in a sprawling, careless script. “Dear Nell,” it said. “Thanks for the evening. Remember, if you happen to see Miss Conway, let her know I’d give anything to talk to her. Yrs, JL”
Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, Nellie, still naked, stood for a very long time with the note in her hand. Then she took it to the fireplace, where she knelt down and put a match to it, watching as it flared into an orange flame, then fell into a heap of black ash. By the time the last spark had died, there was a hard ache in her throat and her eyes were swimming with tears. She had the feeling that something very precious had been taken from her, and she had received nothing in return.
CHAPTER TEN
Anarchism dramatized the war between the two divisions of society, between the world of privilege and the world of protest . . . . It was the last cry of individual man, the last movement among the masses on behalf of individual liberty, the last hope of living unregulated, the last fist shaken against the encroaching State, before the State, the party, the union, the organization closed in.
Barbara Tuchman,
The Proud Tower
Adam Gould sat on a wooden chair in a dark cage in a small room in the depths of Holloway Prison. Across from him, on another wooden chair on the other side of the wire barricade, sat Mr. Morley, of Masters, Morley, and Dunderston, the solicitor sent to him by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. Morley was thin as a broom-straw, stiff-necked and nearly bald, and with a dour and depressed demeanor. He felt—no, he knew, and gloomily asserted as much—that nothing short of a miracle could save Adam from the retributive power of the law.
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times,” he added in a sour whisper, as if he did not wish to be overheard by the guard, who stood not ten paces away. “Anarchists are trouble. And, sir, you have asked for it. Hanging about the offices of the Clarion, consorting with known Anarchists. Nothing good can come from the Anarchist principle, I say, and that’s the short and the long of it.” He sniffed contemptuously. “Nothing, to put it in the fewest possible words.”
Adam sighed, for Morley had never been a man to put anything into the fewest possible words, and his political persuasions were already very well known. Like most of those involved with the trade unions, he felt that the Anarchists were nothing but inept bunglers, and dangerous in their ineptitude. “What I want to know,” Adam said patiently, “is whether you’ve heard anything from Miss Conway.”
“No, and not likely to, either,” Morley rejoined, in a low, dispirited tone, as if oppressed and deadened by the burden of his gloom. He took out a large white handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud honk. “Infernal places, prisons,” he muttered. “Dank and musty. Not good for the lungs, nor for the heart, nor for the spirit. In short, not good at all. In fact, I do truly believe that each time I am forced to come here, I—”
“I hope that Miss Conway will attempt to contact me,” Adam said crisply, attempting to stem the flow of words, “if only to let me know that she is safe. You will give me her message, I trust.”
“Safe!” harrumphed Morley with an ill grace, pocketing his handkerchief and straightening his cuffs. “Took to her heels like a common vagabond, did she not? Disappeared into the crowd without a thought for anyone’s safety and welfare but her own, as I heard the tale. Anarchists!” he hissed. “Nothing but trouble from them, especially the women. And that’s what got you into this difficulty in the first place, isn’t it, Gould? Hanging about with that Anarchist woman? You might have had better sense.”
Adam sighed. He had worked with Morley on the Taff-Vale matter, and knew that the man was a solicitor, not a barrister, and thus could not represent him in court. Instead, Morley would consult a barrister, present his instructions for the handling of Adam’s case, and pay the barrister’s fee, which would be charged, along with his own, to the ASRS. He straightened his shoulders and took a different, more professional tack. “Well, then, Morley, p’rhaps we should get down to business. Have you learnt the charge? What do they say I’ve done?”
“Have I learnt the charge, he asks. Have I learnt the charge?” Mr. Morley rolled his eyes heavenward in mute appeal to a higher power, then pulled his brows into a stern frown and focused his gaze upon Adam. “Very well, sir,” he growled. “The charge against you, sir, is made under the Explosive Substances Act of 1883. You are accused of the possession of explosives with intent to endanger life. If you are convicted, you are likely to be sentenced to fifteen to twenty years of penal servitude.” He waggled his finger at Adam. “Little good you will do the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants if you should be found guilty. Precious little good you are doing them now.”
Possession of explosives? Adam felt a great surge of relief at this news. He had expected to be charged, if at all, with something vague and difficult to refute—conspiracy or consorting with known criminals or some such. But this? He chuckled.
“Possession of explosives,” he said carelessly. “Well, that’s easy, Morley. I’ve never possessed an explosive of any sort in my entire life.”
“Not at all ‘easy,’ sir,” Morley said with a darkly sarcastic emphasis, “when they have the evidence. The evidence, sir, which I have seen with my own eyes.” He looked down, pursuing something on his sleeve, a flea, probably. “Ah!” he cried, catching it. He held up his fingers, pinching hard. “Ah-ha!” he cried again, triumphantly. “Got you, you little fiend!”
“Evidence?” Adam asked, frowning. “They can have no evidence, unless—” He stopped. The police could have no evidence unless they had themselves manufactured and planted it, something to which they had been known to resort, although they were rarely called to account for the deception. His heart sank down into his boots. “What is this evidence, Morley?”
Morley paused, fixing him with a long and penetrating stare. Into the silence intruded the sound of a woman’s heartbroken weeping—a visitor, she must be, since women were confined in another part of the prison. Somewhere a chain clanked, and a rusty hinge squeaked. To Adam, they seemed the sounds of doom.
Morley cleared his throat and, giving each word a sternly judicial weight, said, “The evidence, sir, as you know very well, is the ginger-beer bottle containing nitric acid—according to the chemist’s report—which was found in your rooms, and which I myself have seen.”
“Know very well!” Adam exclaimed angrily, half-rising from his seat. “Know very well, you say? I know nothing of the kind. An explosive bottle may have been found in my rooms, but I did not put it there!”
Morley pulled his mouth down. “Nothing short of a miracle,” he said in a funereal voice. “That,
sir, is what it will take to gain you your freedom. Therefore, I counsel you to pray for a—”
“It was put there by the police, I tell you!” Adam cried hoarsely. “And I depend on you, Morley, to find me a barrister who will prove that I am innocent of this trumped-up charge.”
“Depend on me, sir?” Morley’s expression became even more ominously funereal, and he once more dropped his voice to a whisper. “I will certainly do my utmost on your behalf, since the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has employed my firm to assist in your case. But you must not expect miracles, not at all. In fact, I should say that the chances for your acquittal, under the present circumstances, are virtually—”
“By God, you will do your utmost!” Adam shouted, now on his feet and pushing his face against the wire barricade. “I am innocent, Morley. You know it, and you’ll prove it, or I’ll—”
A guard emerged out of the darkness behind him. “Here,” he said severely. “We can’t ’ave this.” He seized Adam by the collar of his prison shirt and yanked him backward. “This interview is done. Back to yer cell wi’ ye.”
Morley straightened his lapels, as if he had been physically assaulted. “I will do my utmost,” he said, speaking with gravely offended dignity. “In the meantime, sir, I most heartily counsel you to pray. You should depend not upon the power of earthly men, who must all certainly fall short of perfection, but upon the mercy of the Almighty. You must—” The rest, thankfully, was lost in the clanging of the cage door and the vituperative mutterings of the guard as he roughly escorted Adam down the passageway and back to the prison block.
