



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team










PHILISTIA

BY

GRANT ALLEN





CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

      I. CHILDREN OF LIGHT
     II. THE COASTS OF THE GENTILES
    III. MAGDALEN QUAD
     IV. A LITTLE MUSIC
      V. ASKELON VILLA, GATH
     VI. DOWN THE RIVER
    VII. GHOSTLY COUNSEL
   VIII. IN THE CAMP OF THE PHILISTINES
     IX. THE WOMEN OF THE LAND
      X. THE DAUGHTERS OF CANAAN
     XI. CULTURE AND CULTURE
    XII. THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY
   XIII. YE MOUNTAINS OF GILBOA
    XIV. WHAT DO THESE HEBREWS HERE
     XV. EVIL TIDINGS
    XVI. FLAT REBELLION
   XVII. COME YE OUT AND BE YE SEPARATE!
  XVIII. A QUIET WEDDING
    XIX. INTO THE FIRE
     XX. LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND THE DRAMA
    XXI. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE
   XXII. THE PHILISTINES TRIUMPH
  XXIII. THE STREETS OF ASKELON
   XXIV. THE CLOUDS BEGIN TO BREAK
    XXV. HARD PRESSED
   XXVI. IRRECLAIMABLE
  XXVII. RONALD COMES OF AGE
 XXVIII. TELL IT NOT IN GATH
   XXIX. A MAN AND A MAID
    XXX. THE ENVIRONMENT FINALLY TRIUMPHS
   XXXI. DE PROFUNDIS
  XXXII. PRECONTRACT OF MARRIAGE
 XXXIII. A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
  XXXIV. HOPE
   XXXV. THE TIDE TURNS
  XXXVI. OUT OF THE HAND OF THE PHILISTINES
 XXXVII. LAND AT LAST: BUT WHAT LAND?




CHAPTER I.

CHILDREN OF LIGHT.


It was Sunday evening, and on Sundays Max Schurz, the chief of the
London Socialists, always held his weekly receptions. That night
his cosmopolitan refugee friends were all at liberty; his French
disciples could pour in from the little lanes and courts in Soho,
where, since the  Commune, they had plied their peaceful trades as
engravers, picture-framers, artists'-colourmen, models, pointers,
and so forth--for most of them were hangers-on in one way or another
of the artistic world; his German adherents could stroll round,
pipe in mouth, from their printing-houses, their ham-and-beef shops,
or their naturalists' chambers, where they stuffed birds or set up
exotic butterflies in little cabinets--for most of them were more
or less literary or scientific in their pursuits; and his few English
sympathisers,  chiefly dissatisfied philosophical Radicals of the
upper classes, could drop in casually for a chat and a smoke, on
their way home from the churches to which they had been dutifully
escorting their un-emancipated wives and sisters. Max Schurz kept
open house for all on Sunday evenings, and there was not a drawing-room
in London better filled than his with the very advanced and not
undistinguished set who alone had the much-prized entree of his
exclusive salon.

The salon itself did not form any component part of Max Schurz's
own private residence in any way. The great Socialist, the man whose
mandates shook the thrones of Russia and Austria, whose movements
spread terror in Paris and Berlin, whose dictates were even obeyed
in Kerry and in Chicago, occupied for his own use two small rooms
at the top of a shabby composite tenement in a doubtful district
of Marylebone. The little parlour where he carried on his trade of
a microscope-lens grinder would not have sufficed to hold one-tenth
of the eager half-washed crowd that pressed itself enthusiastically
upon him every Sunday. But a large room on the ground floor of the
tenement, opening towards the main street, was used during the
week by one of his French refugee friends as a dancing-saloon;
and in this room on every Sunday evening the uncrowned king of the
proletariate  Socialists was permitted to hold his royal levees.
Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions
classes domiciled in London used to make its way; and there men
calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which
would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand
stiffly on end, had it only known the rank political heresies that
were quietly hatching in its unconscious midst.

While Max Schurz's hall was rapidly filling with the polyglot crowd
of democratic solidarists, Ernest Le Breton and his brother were
waiting in the chilly little drawing-room at Epsilon Terrace,
Bayswater, for the expected arrival of Harry Oswald. Ernest had
promised to introduce Oswald to Max Schurz's reception; and it
was now past eight o'clock, getting rather a late hour for those
simple-minded, early-rising Communists. 'I'm afraid, Herbert,'
said Ernest to his brother, 'he forgets that Max is a working-man
who has to be at his trade again punctually by seven o'clock
to-morrow. He thinks he's going out to a regular society At Home,
where ten o'clock's considered just the beginning of the evening. Max
won't at all like his turning up so late; it smells of non-productivity.'

'If Herr Schurz wants to convert the world,' Herbert answered
chillily, rolling himself a tiny cigarette, 'he must convince the
unproductive as well as the proletariate before he can set things
fairly on the roll for better arrangement.  The proletariate's
all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to
hold the key of the situation. One convert like you or me is worth
a thousand ignorant East-end labourers, with nothing but their
hands and their votes to count upon.'

'But you are not a convert, Herbert.'

'I didn't say I was. I'm a critic. There's no necessity to throw
oneself open-armed into the embrace of either party. The wise man
can wait and watch the progress of the game, backing the winner
for the time being at all the critical moments, and hedging if
necessary when the chances turn momentarily against the favourite.
There's a ring at the bell: that's Oswald; let's go down to the
door to meet him.'

Ernest ran down the stairs rapidly, as was his wont; Herbert
followed in a more leisurely fashion, still rolling the cigarette
between his delicate finger and thumb.  'Goodness gracious, Oswald!'
Ernest exclaimed as his friend stepped in, 'why, you've actually
come in evening dress!  A white tie and all! What on earth will
Max say? He'll be perfectly scandalised at such a shocking and
unprecedented  outrage. This will never do; you must dissemble
somehow or other.'

Oswald laughed. 'I had no idea,' he said, 'Herr Schurz was such
a truculent sans-culotte as that comes to. As it was an evening
reception I thought, of course, one ought to turn up in evening
clothes.'

'Evening clothes! My dear fellow, how on earth do you suppose a
set of poor Leicester Square outlaws are going to get themselves
correctly set up in black broadcloth coats and trousers? They might
wash their white ties  themselves, to be sure; they mostly do their
own washing, I believe, in their own basins.' ('And not much at
that either,' put in Herbert, parenthetically.) 'But as to evening
clothes, why, they'd as soon think of arraying themselves for dinner
in full court dress as of putting on an obscurantist swallow-tail.
It's the badge of a class, a distinct aristocratic outrage; we must
alter it at once, I assure you, Oswald.'

'At any rate,' said Oswald laughing, 'I've had the pleasure of finding
myself accused for the first time in the course of my existence of
being aristocratic. It's quite worth while going to Max Schurz's
once in one's life, if it were only for the sake of that single
new sensation.'

'Well, my dear fellow, we must rectify you, anyhow, before you go.
Let me see; luckily you've got your dust-coat on, and you needn't
take that off; it'll do splendidly to hide your coat and waistcoat.
I'll lend you a blue tie, which will at once transform your upper
man entirely. But you show the cloven hoof below; the trousers
will surely betray you. They're absolutely inadmissible under any
circumstances whatsoever, as the Court Circular says, and you must
positively wear a  pair of Herbert's instead of them. Run
upstairs quickly, there's a good fellow, and get rid of the mark
of the Beast as fast as you can.'

Oswald did as he was told without demur, and in about a minute more
presented himself again, with the mark of the Beast certainly most
effectually obliterated, at least so far as outer appearance went.
His blue tie, light dust-coat, and borrowed grey trousers, made up
an ensemble much more like an omnibus conductor out for a holiday
than a gentleman  of the period in correct evening dress. 'Now
mind,' Ernest said seriously, as he opened the door, 'whatever you
do, Oswald, if you stew to death for it--and Schurz's rooms are
often very close and hot, I can assure you--don't for heaven's sake
go and unbutton your dust-coat. If you do they'll see at once you're
a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I shouldn't be at all surprised
if they were to turn and rend you. At least, I'm sure Max would be
very much annoyed with me for unsocially introducing a plutocratic
traitor into the bosom of the fold.'

They walked along briskly in the direction of Marylebone,  and
stopped at last at a dull, yellow-washed house, which bore on
its door a very dingy brass plate, inscribed in red letters, 'M.
et Mdlle. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without
ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,'
he said, turning to Harry Oswald by way of a last warning, with his
hand on the inner door-handle, 'coute que coute, my dear fellow,
don't on any account open your dust-coat. No anti-social opinions;
and please bear in mind that Max is, in his own way, a potentate.'

The big hall, badly lighted by a few contribution candles (for the
whole colony subscribed to the best of its ability for the support
of the weekly entertainment), was all alive with eager figures and
the mingled busy hum of earnest conversation.  A few chairs ranged
round the wall were mostly occupied by Mdlle. Tirard and the other
ladies of the Socialist party; but the mass of the guests were
men, and they were almost all smoking, in utter indifference to the
scanty presence of the fair sex. Not that they were  intentionally
rude or boorish; that they never were; except where an emperor or an
aristocrat is concerned, there is no being on earth more courteous,
kindly, and considerate for the feelings of others than your
exiled Socialist. He has suffered much himself in his own time, and
so miseris  succurrere discit. Emperors he mentally classes with
cobras, tarantulas, and scorpions, as outside the pale of humanitarian
sympathies altogether; but, with this slight political exception,
he is the broadest and tenderest and most catholic in his feelings
of all living breathing creatures. However, the ladies of his party
have all been brought up from their  childhood onward in a mingled
atmosphere of smoke and  democracy; so that he no more thinks
of abstaining from tobacco in their presence than he thinks of
commiserating the poor fish for being so dreadfully wet, or the
unfortunate mole for his unpleasantly slimy diet of live earthworms.

'Herr Schurz,' said Ernest, singling out the great leader in the
gloom immediately, 'I've brought my brother Herbert here, whom
you know already, to see you, as well as another Oxford friend of
mind, Mr. Harry Oswald, Fellow and Lecturer  of Oriel. He's almost
one of us at heart, I'm happy to say, and at any rate I'm sure
you'll be glad to make his acquaintance.'

The little spare wizened-up grey man, in the threadbare brown velveteen
jacket, who stood in the middle of the hall, caught Ernest's hand
warmly, and held it for a moment fettered in his iron grip. There
was an honesty in that grip and in those hazy blue-spectacled eyes
that nobody could for a second misunderstand. If an emperor had
been introduced to Max Schurz he might have felt a little abashed
one minute at the old Socialist's royal disdain, but he could not
have failed to say to himself as he looked at him from head to
foot, 'Here, at least, is a true man.' So Harry Oswald felt, as
the spare grey thinker took his hand in his, and grasped it firmly
with a kindly pressure, but less friendly than that with which he
had greeted his known admirer, Ernest Le Breton. As for Herbert, he
merely bowed to him politely from a little distance; and Herbert,
who had picked up at once with a Polish exile in a corner, returned
the bow frigidly without coming up to the host himself at all for
a moment's welcome.

'I'm always pleased to meet friends of the cause from Oxford,'
Herr Schurz said, in almost perfect English. 'We want recruits most
of all among the thinking classes. If we are ever to make headway
against the banded monopolies--against the place-holders, the
land-grabbers, the labour-taxers, the robbers of the poor--we must
first secure the perfect undivided confidence of the brain-workers,
the thinkers, and the writers. At present everything is against us;
we are but a little leaven, trying vainly in our helpless fashion
to leaven the whole lump. The capitalist journals carry off all
the writing talent in the world; they are timid, as capital must
always be; they tremble for their tens of thousands a year, and
their vast circulations among the  propertied classes. We cannot
get at the heart of the people, save by the Archimedean lever of
the thinking world. For that reason, my dear Le Breton, I am always
glad to muster here your Oxford neophytes.'

'And yet, Herr Schurz,' said Ernest gently, 'you know we must not
after all despair. Look at the history of your own people! When
the cause of Jehovah seemed most hopeless, there were still seven
thousand left in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. We are
gaining strength every day, while they are losing it.'

'Ah yes, my friend. I know that too,' the old man answered, with a
solemn shake of the head; 'but the wheels move slowly, they move
slowly--very surely, but oh, so slowly. You are young, friend
Ernest, and I am growing old. You look forward to the future with
hope; I look back to the past with regret: so many years gone, so
little, so very little done. It will come, it will come as surely
as the next glacial period, but I shall not live to see it. I stand
like Moses on Pisgah; I see the promised land before me; I look
down upon the equally allotted vineyards, and the glebe flowing
with milk and honey in the distance; but I shall not lead you into
it; I shall not even lead you against the Canaanites; another than
I must lead you in. But I am an old man, Mr. Oswald, an old man
now, and I am talking all about myself--an anti-social trick we have
inherited from our fathers. What is your friend's special line at
Oxford, did you say, Ernest?'

'Oswald is a mathematician, sir,' said Ernest, 'perhaps the greatest
mathematician among the younger men in the whole University.'

'Ah! that is well. We want exact science. We want clear and definite
thinking. Biologists and physicists and mathematicians, those are
our best recruits, you may depend upon it. We need logic, not mere
gas. Our French friends and our Irish friends--I have nothing in
the world to say against them; they are useful men, ardent men,
full of fire, full of enthusiasm, ready to do and dare anything--but
they lack ballast. You can't take the kingdom of heaven by storm.
The social revolution is not to be accomplished by violence, it is
not even to be carried by the most vivid  eloquence; the victory
will be in the end to the clearest brain and the subtlest intellect.
The orthodox political economists are clever sophists; they mask
and confuse the truth very speciously; we must have keen eyes and
sharp noses to spy out and scent out their tortuous fallacies. I'm
glad you're a mathematician, Mr. Oswald. And so you have thought
on social problems?'

'I have read "Gold and the Proletariate,"' Oswald answered modestly,
'and I learned much from it, and thought more. I won't say you have
quite converted me, Herr Schurz, but you have given me plenty of
food for future reflection.'

'That is well, said the old man, passing one skinny brown hand
gently up and down over the other. 'That is well.  There's no hurry.
Don't make up your mind too fast. Don't jump at conclusions. It's
intellectual dishonesty to do that.  Wait till you have convinced
yourself. Spell out your  problems slowly; they are not easy ones;
try to see how the present complex system works; try to probe
its inequalities and injustices; try to compare it with the ideal
commonwealth:  and you'll find the light in the