ANNA OF ANN

My place at lunch was by the side of the Mater. I soon guessed that she was the wife of the patriarchal old man with whom I had been conversing. She had a delicious air of comfortable embonpoint, a clear skin, pink cheeks, and massive white hair. She was already seated when Ariston took me to her table, and, moving the empty chair a little to help me to my seat, she said, smiling:

"You are to sit here; I am dreadfully anxious to talk to you; where on earth have you come from now?"

I sat down by her, and answered:

"I wish you could explain it to me."

She looked me in the face and said: "You look just like the rest of us, except, that only our priests shave"; I looked in the direction of Chairo inquiringly. "Oh, yes, Chairo shaves, and a few others who want to be peculiar; but all of us simple folk——"

She chuckled a little, and then, bending near me, whispered in my ear: "I have been looking at your trousers!"

I made a deprecating gesture and smiled; she joined me, but in a laugh so brimming over with merriment and so contagious that very soon all the table had joined but without knowing why. When the Mater had finished laughing and the others with her, Ariston said:

"Well, Mater, now that you've finished laughing, perhaps you will tell us what it's all about?"

"Indeed, I won't," answered she; and there was almost a wink in her innocent old eye as she turned to me and said: "It is a secret—isn't it?—a secret between us two," and she patted my hand as if I had been her son.

I promised her with exaggerated solemnity never to reveal it, and she patted my hand again and added:

"I see you'll become one of us—one of the Tyringham Colony; we always come together at every harvest time—as indeed do all the other colonies—only we think our colony is just a little bit nicer than every other."

"And so does every other," said Ariston, "think itself better than the rest."

"And so all are happy," answered the Mater convincingly. "But have you met your neighbor, Anna of Ann?"

I turned to my right, and saw that Lydia was not the only beautiful woman at Tyringham. Anna of Ann was of a different type. Her features were delicate; the eye was not remarkable; indeed, her glance was veiled and almost disappointing; her nose was ordinary; her skin clear but colorless; it was assuredly in her mouth, and perhaps in her low forehead and clustering hair, that her beauty resided; and as she spoke there were little movements of the lips that were bewitching:

"No, I have not been haymaking with Ariston's group and so we have not spoken," she said. "But I saw you this morning after breakfast, and"—she added archly—"I stared at you with all the others; we were dreadfully rude! But then, there was some excuse for us, wasn't there?"

"Every excuse," I answered reassuringly. "But tell me, what do you do when you are not haymaking?"

"What do you mean; work or play?"

"What do you work at, and what do you play at?"

"My work generally consists in attending at the public store; I sell in the hosiery department at New York."

"And what do you play at?"

"Sculpture."

"She's a great sculptor," volunteered Cleon, nodding at her from the other side of the table.

"No, I am not," deprecated Anna; "I am not recognized."

I looked at the Mater inquiringly.

"By 'recognized,'" said the Mater, "she means the state hasn't recognized her; that is to say, she has to do her work at the store or wherever else she is assigned during the regular three hours a day. When the state recognizes her—as it is sure to do one of these days—she will be allowed to devote all her time to sculpture."

"I don't believe the state will ever recognize her," said Ariston; "she is a great deal too good. That Sixth is a fool!"

"Sixth is head of the fine arts department," explained the Mater. "His full name is Sprague Sixth; six generations ago we had a great artist called Sprague, who was for twenty years our secretary of the fine arts, and one of his sons has borne his name ever since, until it has become a tradition in Massachusetts that we must have a Sprague at the head of our fine arts. This man Sprague Sixth, whom we call Sixth for short, doesn't believe anybody can be good at art unless he has studied in the state school. Now Anna did not show any talent until her school days were over and she had been assigned to work in the store."

"And now there is no chance for her," said Ariston ironically.

"What do you mean," exclaimed Cleon, taking Ariston seriously, "she can be a great artist, without being recognized?"

"I am not sure I want to be recognized," said Anna. "If I were recognized I should have to spend half my day in doing dull things for the state to please Sixth; whereas, now one half of the day is spent in doing mechanical work at the store; the other half I have fresh for my own work. I am going to ask to be assigned to a factory; for factory work is still more mechanical than that of the store, and I can then be more free to think of my own work."

All this was very strange and illuminating. A sculptor asking to do factory work!

"But won't factory work be very hard and brutalizing?" I asked.

Anna looked at me, puzzled, and Ariston came to her rescue.

"I don't think," he said, "Anna appreciates your point of view. In your day all factory work was done purely to make money; the factories were uncomfortable places, and workmen had to work eight and ten hours a day. Now that most of us have to do some factory work during the year, inventiveness has set to work to make the factory comfortable, and as we all of us have to work for the state and we no longer have to pay the cost of competition, three or four hours a day are all that are necessary to furnish the whole community with the necessaries and comforts of life."

"And so I can give the rest of the day to sculpture," said Anna.

"Without any anxiety as to whether her sculpture will pay or not," added Ariston.

"She just has to please herself," said the Mater comfortably.

"I am dreaming!" said I.

"No, you're not," said the Mater; and she pinched me till I started.

Everybody found this very funny—and so I took it as good-naturedly as I could. But I made up my mind to have a little revenge, so I asked the Mater quite loud as soon as they had finished laughing:

"Tell me, is Lydia the only Demetrian here?"

All looked shocked except Cleon, who laughed louder than ever, but Anna looked at him severely and said:

"Cleon, I'm surprised."

I noticed, too, a smile curl Ariston's lip. The Mater put a warning finger to her mouth and shook her head reproachfully.

"You see," I said, with no small satisfaction at the confusion I had caused, "I am new to all these things; I have to distinguish fact from fancy; the sacred from the profane."

"Of course," said Ariston, "although we have our domestic life in the cities, apart, every family having its own separate home, even there we jostle against one another a great deal more than you used in your time; and here at the colony we are like one large family; we have, therefore, to respect one another's opinions, and I might add—prejudices." He bowed here at the Mater as though in deference to her cult of Demeter. "We wouldn't be happy otherwise; and we have learned that after all, the highest religion is the highest happiness. And so each of us respects the religion of the other; in our heart of hearts we doubtless tax one another with superstition, but we never admit it. Every cult, therefore, is tolerated and receives the outward respect of all."

I could not help wondering whether this was true. Chairo clearly regarded the cult of Demeter as dangerous and bad; how long then would he tolerate it? Ariston divined my thought, for he added:

"Of course, I assume that the cult involves no danger to the state; or to individual liberty."

But the brows of the women darkened and I felt we were on dangerous ground, so I asked:

"And what are you going to do this afternoon?"

"We are going on with our haymaking."

"But I thought you worked only three or four hours a day?"

"Yes, that is all we owe the state; but we often ask to work all day for a season in order to have the whole day to ourselves later. And as harvesting must be done within a given space of time, it suits our economy as well as our inclination to work all day at this season and have October to ourselves. Most of us go hunting all of October, and in November we meet again at the Eleusinian festival."

"Hunting?" I asked; "but where do you hunt?"

"Almost wherever we want, though, of course, this has to be arranged. Since your time the state has replanted forests on all the high ground least suited to agriculture, and game is carefully preserved there during the whole year except October; which is our open season. Some hunting is done, too, in November and December to suit the convenience of those who have to work in October; but it is mostly done in October."

Lunch was by this time over and we adjourned to the veranda for coffee and a cigar. There we were joined by Chairo and others, and gradually I began to get some notion of the working of their Collectivist State. But as their explanations left me in considerable bewilderment, and it was only when I saw the system in actual operation that I understood it, I shall not attempt to give an account of our conversations, but rather describe the events that followed, not only for the interest of the events themselves, but for the light they threw on the problems which still remain unsolved for our race.

Lydia's good-natured reproach at my idleness kindled in me a desire to remove the occasion of it, so I set myself to learn to mow, and in a very few days my muscles accustomed themselves to the work. I soon picked up a part in their favorite refrains and was able to join in their music as well as their occupations. My ardor for Lydia cooled when I felt its hopelessness; and I confess to an admiration for Chairo which justified her love for him. Neither of them attempted to disguise their desire to be alone with each other, and yet they never moved far from the rest of us. Obviously, Lydia had not decided between Chairo and Demeter.

The Pater told me that she need not decide for another year, though it was likely that she would do so at the Eleusinian festival in November. This festival, corresponding to our Thanksgiving Day, was held in honor of Demeter and Persephone, the genii of fruitfulness, whether of the earth or of men; and it was generally on some such occasion that vows were taken or missions renounced.