No More Learning

Whoever has
intelligently observed the tramp, or visited the ablebodied ward of a
workhouse, will admit that our social failures are not all drunkards and
weaklings. Some of them are men who do not fit the class they were born
into. Precisely the same qualities that make the educated gentleman an
artist may make an uneducated manual laborer an ablebodied pauper. There
are men who fall helplessly into the workhouse because they are good
far nothing; but there are also men who are there because they are
strongminded enough to disregard the social convention (obviously not a
disinterested one on the part of the ratepayer) which bids a man live
by heavy and badly paid drudgery when he has the alternative of walking
into the workhouse, announcing himself as a destitute person, and
legally compelling the Guardians to feed, clothe and house him better
than he could feed, clothe and house himself without great exertion.
When a man who is born a poet refuses a stool in a stockbroker's office,
and starves in a garret, spunging on a poor landlady or on his friends
and relatives rather than work against his grain; or when a lady,
because she is a lady, will face any extremity of parasitic dependence
rather than take a situation as cook or parlormaid, we make large
allowances for them. To such allowances the ablebodied pauper and his
nomadic variant the tramp are equally entitled.

Further, the imaginative man, if his life is to be tolerable to him,
must have leisure to tell himself stories, and a position which lends
itself to imaginative decoration. The ranks of unskilled labor offer no
such positions. We misuse our laborers horribly; and when a man refuses
to be misused, we have no right to say that he is refusing honest work.
Let us be frank in this matter before we go on with our play; so that we
may enjoy it without hypocrisy. If we were reasoning, farsighted people,
four fifths of us would go straight to the Guardians for relief,
and knock the whole social system to pieces with most beneficial
reconstructive results. The reason we do got do this is because we work
like bees or ants, by instinct or habit, not reasoning about the matter
at all. Therefore when a man comes along who can and does reason, and
who, applying the Kantian test to his conduct, can truly say to us, If
everybody did as I do, the world would be compelled to reform itself
industrially, and abolish slavery and squalor, which exist only because
everybody does as you do, let us honor that man and seriously
consider the advisability of following his example. Such a man is the
able-bodied, able-minded pauper. Were he a gentleman doing his best to
get a pension or a sinecure instead of sweeping a crossing, nobody would
blame him; for deciding that so long as the alternative lies between
living mainly at the expense of the community and allowing the community
to live mainly at his, it would be folly to accept what is to him
personally the greater of the two evils.

We may therefore contemplate the tramps of the Sierra without prejudice,
admitting cheerfully that our objects--briefly, to be gentlemen of
fortune--are much the same as theirs, and the difference in our position
and methods merely accidental. One or two of them, perhaps, it would be
wiser to kill without malice in a friendly and frank manner; for there
are bipeds, just as there are quadrupeds, who are too dangerous to be
left unchained and unmuzzled; and these cannot fairly expect to have
other men's lives wasted in the work of watching them. But as society
has not the courage to kill them, and, when it catches them, simply
wreaks on them some superstitious expiatory rites of torture and
degradation, and than lets them loose with heightened qualifications for
mischief; it is just as well that they are at large in the Sierra,
and in the hands of a chief who looks as if he might possibly, on
provocation, order them to be shot.

This chief, seated in the centre of the group on a squared block of
stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking cockatoo
nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned moustache, and a
Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps because
the scenery admits of a larger swagger than Piccadilly, perhaps because
of a certain sentimentality in the man which gives him that touch of
grace which alone can excuse deliberate picturesqueness. His eyes and
mouth are by no means rascally; he has a fine voice and a ready wit; and
whether he is really the strongest man in the party, or not, he looks
it. He is certainly, the best fed, the best dressed, and the best
trained. The fact that he speaks English is not unexpected in spite of
the Spanish landscape; for with the exception of one man who might be
guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink and one unmistakable Frenchman,
they are all cockney or American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and
sombreros, they mostly wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard
hemispherical hats, and dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after
their leader, whose broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band,
and voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English as
possible. None of them are armed; and the ungloved ones keep their hands
in their pockets because it is their national belief that it must be
dangerously cold in the open air with the night coming on. (It is as
warm an evening as any reasonable man could desire).

Except the bullfighting inebriate there is only one person in the
company who looks more than, say, thirty-three. He is a small man with
reddish whiskers, weak eyes, and the anxious look of a small tradesman
in difficulties. He wears the only tall hat visible: it shines in the
sunset with the sticky glow of some sixpenny patent hat reviver, often
applied and constantly tending to produce a worse state of the original
surface than the ruin it was applied to remedy. He has a collar and cuff
of celluloid; and his brown Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar,
is still presentable. He is pre-eminently the respectable man of the
party, and is certainly over forty, possibly over fifty. He is the
corner man on the leader's right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on
his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who
are both English, one is argumentative, solemn, and obstinate; the other
rowdy and mischievous.

The chief, with a magnificent fling of the end of his cloak across his
left shoulder, rises to address them. The applause which greets him
shows that he is a favorite orator.

THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make
to this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing the
question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most personal courage?
We have gone into the principles of Anarchism and Social-Democracy at
great length. The cause of Anarchy has been ably represented by our one
Anarchist, who doesn't know what Anarchism means [laughter]--

THE ANARCHIST. [rising] A point of order, Mendoza--

MENDOZA. [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took half
an hour. Besides, Anarchists don't believe in order.

THE ANARCHIST. [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the
respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and cuffs] That
is a vulgar error. I can prove--

MENDOZA. Order, order.

THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.

The Anarchist is suppressed.

MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among us. They
are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us three distinct
and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.

THE MAJORITY. [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [smarting under oppression] You ain't no
Christian. You're a Sheeny, you are.

MENDOZA. [with crushing magnanimity] My friend; I am an exception to
all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and, when the
Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its historic soil
of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to volunteer [sympathetic
applause--hear, hear, etc. ]. But I am not a slave to any superstition.
I have swallowed all the formulas, even that of Socialism; though, in a
sense, once a Socialist, always a Socialist.

THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!

MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man--even the ordinary
brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man [Hear, hear! ]--is
not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our
business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our
business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest
spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy?
No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution
of wealth.

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.

MENDOZA. [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to be
squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that disfigure the
sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept that wealth. We restore
it to circulation among the class that produced it and that chiefly
needs it--the working class. We do this at the risk of our lives
and liberties, by the exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance,
foresight, and abstinence--especially abstinence. I myself have eaten
nothing but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [Stubbornly] No more ain't we.

MENDOZA. [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [unmoved] Why should you?

THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from
each according to his means.

THE FRENCHMAN. [shaking his fist at the anarchist] Fumiste!

MENDOZA. [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.

THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo, Mendoza!

MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen, and
strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the field.

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [derisively] Shikespear.

A whistle comes from the goatherd on the hill. He springs up and points
excitedly forward along the road to the north.

THE GOATHERD. Automobile! Automobile! [He rushes down the hill and joins
the rest, who all scramble to their feet].

MENDOZA. [in ringing tones] To arms! Who has the gun?

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [handing a rifle to Mendoza] Here.

MENDOZA. Have the nails been strewn in the road?

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Two ahnces of em.

MENDOZA. Good! [To the Frenchman] With me, Duval. If the nails fail,
puncture their tires with a bullet. [He gives the rifle to Duval, who
follows him up the hill. Mendoza produces an opera glass. The others
hurry across to the road and disappear to the north].

MENDOZA. [on the hill, using his glass] Two only, a capitalist and his
chauffeur. They look English.

DUVAL. Angliche! Aoh yess. Cochons! [Handling the rifle] Faut tire,
n'est-ce-pas?

MENDOZA. No: the nails have gone home. Their tire is down: they stop.

DUVAL. [shouting to the others] Fondez sur eux, nom de Dieu!

MENDOZA. [rebuking his excitement] Du calme, Duval: keep your hair on.
They take it quietly. Let us descend and receive them.

Mendoza descends, passing behind the fire and coming forward, whilst
Tanner and Straker, in their motoring goggles, leather coats, and caps,
are led in from the road by brigands.

TANNER. Is this the gentleman you describe as your boss? Does he speak
English?

THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Course he does. Y'don't suppowz we
Hinglishmen lets ahrselves be bossed by a bloomin Spenniard, do you?

MENDOZA. [with dignity] Allow me to introduce myself: Mendoza, President
of the League of the Sierra! [Posing loftily] I am a brigand: I live by
robbing the rich.

TANNER. [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake
hands.

THE ENGLISH SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!

General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands. The
Brigands drop into their former places.

STRAKER. Ere! where do I come in?

TANNER. [introducing] My friend and chauffeur.

THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [suspiciously] Well, which is he? friend or
show-foor? It makes all the difference you know.

MENDOZA. [explaining] We should expect ransom for a friend. A
professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a
trifling percentage of his princpal's ransom if he will honor us by
accepting it.

STRAKER. I see. Just to encourage me to come this way again. Well, I'll
think about it.

DUVAL. [impulsively rushing across to Straker] Mon frere! [He embraces
him rapturously and kisses him on both cheeks].

STRAKER. [disgusted] Ere, git out: don't be silly. Who are you, pray?

DUVAL. Duval: Social-Democrat.

STRAKER. Oh, you're a Social-Democrat, are you?

THE ANARCHIST. He means that he has sold out to the parliamentary
humbugs and the bourgeoisie. Compromise! that is his faith.

DUVAL. [furiously] I understand what he say. He say Bourgeois. He say
Compromise. Jamais de la vie!
Miserable menteur--

STRAKER. See here, Captain Mendoza, ow much o this sort o thing do you
put up with here? Are we avin a pleasure trip in the mountains, or are
we at a Socialist meetin?

THE MAJORITY. Hear, hear! Shut up. Chuck it. Sit down, etc. etc. [The
Social-Democrats and the Anarchist are hurtled into the background.
Straker, after superintending this proceeding with satisfaction, places
himself on Mendoza's left, Tanner being on his right].

MENDOZA. Can we offer you anything? Broiled rabbit and prickly pears--

TANNER. Thank you: we have dined.

MENDOZA. [to his followers] Gentlemen: business is over for the day. Go
as you please until morning.

The Brigands disperse into groups lazily. Some go into the cave. Others
sit down or lie down to sleep in the open. A few produce a pack of cards
and move off towards the road; for it is now starlight; and they know
that motor cars have lamps which can be turned to account for lighting a
card party.

STRAKER. [calling after them] Don't none of you go fooling with that
car, d'ye hear?

MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we captured cured
us of that.

STRAKER. [interested] What did it do?

MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not know how
to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the police station.
Since then we never touch one without sending for the chauffeur. Shall
we chat at our ease?

TANNER. By all means.

Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire. Mendoza
delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right to sit on
the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the ground like
his guests, and using the stone only as a support for his back.

MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until
to-morrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours. However, if
you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at once, I am at your
service.

TANNER. To-morrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay anything in
reason.

MENDOZA. [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You are a
remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves as miserably
poor.

TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people don't own motor cars.

MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.

TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.

STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Don't tell me
you can't do us a bit better than that if you like.

MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese and bread can be procured for ready
money.

STRAKER. [graciously] Now you're talking.

TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?

MENDOZA. [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no, no:
nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern views as to
the justice of the existing distribution of wealth: otherwise we should
lose our self-respect. But nothing that you could take exception to,
except two or three faddists.

TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable. In
fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.

STRAKER. [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.

MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air of the
century.

STRAKER. Socialism must be looking up a bit if your chaps are taking to
it.

MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to philosophers
and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there
are too few of them. Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading
among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.

TANNER. But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary citizens?

MENDOZA. Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal
professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for
ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it. We are dregs
and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.

STRAKER. Take care! some o the dregs'll hear you.

MENDOZA. It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and likes
to hear the others called dregs.

TANNER. Come! you are a wit. [Mendoza inclines his head, flattered]. May
one ask you a blunt question?

MENDOZA. As blunt as you please.

TANNER. How does it pay a man of your talent to shepherd such a flock as
this on broiled rabbit and prickly pears? I have seen men less gifted,
and I'll swear less honest, supping at the Savoy on foie gras and
champagne.

MENDOZA. Pooh! they have all had their turn at the broiled rabbit, just
as I shall have my turn at the Savoy. Indeed, I have had a turn there
already--as waiter.

TANNER. A waiter! You astonish me!

MENDOZA. [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a waiter.
Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden intensity] Shall I tell
you the story of my life?

STRAKER. [apprehensively] If it ain't too long, old chap--

TANNER. [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry: you have
no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me extremely, President.
Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.

MENDOZA. The woman I loved--

STRAKER. Oh, this is a love story, is it? Right you are. Go on: I was
only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.

MENDOZA. Myself! I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is why
I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her. She had, I
pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I ever saw. She
had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her
highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable,
capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.

STRAKER. A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin. Er name
was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasn't it?

MENDOZA. No, sir: she was not an earl's daughter. Photography,
reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with the
appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can honestly
say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries, clothes, titles, and
all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she was a woman of the people,
a worker: otherwise--let me reciprocate your bluntness--I should have
scorned her.

TANNER. Very properly. And did she respond to your love?

MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did? She objected to marry a Jew.

TANNER. On religious grounds?

MENDOZA. No: she was a freethinker. She said that every Jew considers in
his heart that English people are dirty in their habits.

TANNER. [surprised] Dirty!

MENDOZA. It showed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for it
is undoubtedly true. Our elaborate sanitary code makes us unduly
contemptuous of the Gentile.

TANNER. Did you ever hear that, Henry?

STRAKER. I've heard my sister say so. She was cook in a Jewish family
once.

MENDOZA. I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the impression
it made on her mind. I could have got round any other objection; but
no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as to her person. My
entreaties were in vain: she always retorted that she wasn't good enough
for me, and recommended me to marry an accursed barmaid named Rebecca
Lazarus, whom I loathed. I talked of suicide: she offered me a packet
of beetle poison to do it with. I hinted at murder: she went into
hysterics; and as I am a living man I went to America so that she might
sleep without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat.
In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by the
police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea of holding up
motors cars--in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to a desperate and
disappointed man. He gave me some valuable introductions to capitalists
of the right sort. I formed a syndicate; and the present enterprise is
the result. I became leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his
brains and imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give
everything I possess to be an Englishman. I am like a boy: I cut her
name on the trees and her initials on the sod. When I am alone I lie
down and tear my wretched hair and cry Louisa--

STRAKER. [startled] Louisa!

MENDOZA. It is her name--Louisa--Louisa Straker--

TANNER. Straker!

STRAKER. [scrambling up on his knees most indignantly] Look here: Louisa
Straker is my sister, see? Wot do you mean by gassin about her like
this? Wot she got to do with you?

MENDOZA. A dramatic coincidence! You are Enry, her favorite brother!

STRAKER. Oo are you callin Enry? What call have you to take a liberty
with my name or with hers? For two pins I'd punch your fat ed, so I
would.

MENDOZA. [with grandiose calm] If I let you do it, will you promise to
brag of it afterwards to her? She will be reminded of her Mendoza: that
is all I desire.

TANNER. This is genuine devotion, Henry. You should respect it.

STRAKER. [fiercely] Funk, more likely.

MENDOZA. [springing to his feet] Funk! Young man: I come of a famous
family of fighters; and as your sister well knows, you would have as
much chance against me as a perambulator against your motor car.

STRAKER. [secretly daunted, but rising from his knees with an air of
reckless pugnacity] I ain't afraid of you.