CHAPTER XIX.

TRANSFORMATION

“You must make yourself over again,” Ernest wrote to me. “You must

cease to be. You must become another woman—and not merely in the

clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make

yourself over again so that even I would not know you—your voice, your

gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.”

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for hours in burying

forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman whom I

may call my other self. It was only by long practice that such results

could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intonation I practised

almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed,

automatic. It was this automatic assumption of a rôle that was

considered imperative. One must become so adept as to deceive oneself.

It was like learning a new language, say the French. At first speech in

French is self-conscious, a matter of the will. The student thinks in

English and then transmutes into French, or reads in French but

transmutes into English before he can understand. Then later, becoming

firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads, writes, and _thinks_ in

French, without any recourse to English at all.

And so with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise until

our assumed roles became real; until to be our original selves would

require a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course, at first,

much was mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art, and we

had much to discover. But the work was going on everywhere; masters in

the art were developing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being

accumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that was passed on, a

part of the curriculum, as it were, of the school of Revolution.[1]

[1] Disguise did become a veritable art during that period. The

revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their refuges. They

scorned accessories, such as wigs and beards, false eyebrows, and such

aids of the theatrical actors. The game of revolution was a game of

life and death, and mere accessories were traps. Disguise had to be

fundamental, intrinsic, part and parcel of one’s being, second nature.

The Red Virgin is reported to have been one of the most adept in the

art, to which must be ascribed her long and successful career.

It was at this time that my father disappeared. His letters, which had

come to me regularly, ceased. He no longer appeared at our Pell Street

quarters. Our comrades sought him everywhere. Through our secret

service we ransacked every prison in the land. But he was lost as

completely as if the earth had swallowed him up, and to this day no

clew to his end has been discovered.[2]

[2] Disappearance was one of the horrors of the time. As a motif, in

song and story, it constantly crops up. It was an inevitable

concomitant of the subterranean warfare that raged through those three

centuries. This phenomenon was almost as common in the oligarch class

and the labor castes, as it was in the ranks of the revolutionists.

Without warning, without trace, men and women, and even children,

disappeared and were seen no more, their end shrouded in mystery.

Six lonely months I spent in the refuge, but they were not idle months.

Our organization went on apace, and there were mountains of work always

waiting to be done. Ernest and his fellow-leaders, from their prisons,

decided what should be done; and it remained for us on the outside to

do it. There was the organization of the mouth-to-mouth propaganda; the

organization, with all its ramifications, of our spy system; the

establishment of our secret printing-presses; and the establishment of

our underground railways, which meant the knitting together of all our

myriads of places of refuge, and the formation of new refuges where

links were missing in the chains we ran over all the land.

So I say, the work was never done. At the end of six months my

loneliness was broken by the arrival of two comrades. They were young

girls, brave souls and passionate lovers of liberty: Lora Peterson, who

disappeared in 1922, and Kate Bierce, who later married Du Bois,[3] and

who is still with us with eyes lifted to to-morrow’s sun, that heralds

in the new age.

[3] Du Bois, the present librarian of Ardis, is a lineal descendant of

this revolutionary pair.

The two girls arrived in a flurry of excitement, danger, and sudden

death. In the crew of the fishing boat that conveyed them across San

Pablo Bay was a spy. A creature of the Iron Heel, he had successfully

masqueraded as a revolutionist and penetrated deep into the secrets of

our organization. Without doubt he was on my trail, for we had long

since learned that my disappearance had been cause of deep concern to

the secret service of the Oligarchy. Luckily, as the outcome proved, he

had not divulged his discoveries to any one. He had evidently delayed

reporting, preferring to wait until he had brought things to a

successful conclusion by discovering my hiding-place and capturing me.

His information died with him. Under some pretext, after the girls had

landed at Petaluma Creek and taken to the horses, he managed to get

away from the boat.

Part way up Sonoma Mountain, John Carlson let the girls go on, leading

his horse, while he went back on foot. His suspicions had been aroused.

He captured the spy, and as to what then happened, Carlson gave us a

fair idea.

“I fixed him,” was Carlson’s unimaginative way of describing the

affair. “I fixed him,” he repeated, while a sombre light burnt in his

eyes, and his huge, toil-distorted hands opened and closed eloquently.

“He made no noise. I hid him, and tonight I will go back and bury him

deep.”

During that period I used to marvel at my own metamorphosis. At times

it seemed impossible, either that I had ever lived a placid, peaceful

life in a college town, or else that I had become a revolutionist

inured to scenes of violence and death. One or the other could not be.

One was real, the other was a dream, but which was which? Was this

present life of a revolutionist, hiding in a hole, a nightmare? or was

I a revolutionist who had somewhere, somehow, dreamed that in some

former existence I have lived in Berkeley and never known of life more

violent than teas and dances, debating societies, and lecture rooms?

But then I suppose this was a common experience of all of us who had

rallied under the red banner of the brotherhood of man.

I often remembered figures from that other life, and, curiously enough,

they appeared and disappeared, now and again, in my new life. There was

Bishop Morehouse. In vain we searched for him after our organization

had developed. He had been transferred from asylum to asylum. We traced

him from the state hospital for the insane at Napa to the one in

Stockton, and from there to the one in the Santa Clara Valley called

Agnews, and there the trail ceased. There was no record of his death.

In some way he must have escaped. Little did I dream of the awful

manner in which I was to see him once again—the fleeting glimpse of him

in the whirlwind carnage of the Chicago Commune.

Jackson, who had lost his arm in the Sierra Mills and who had been the

cause of my own conversion into a revolutionist, I never saw again; but

we all knew what he did before he died. He never joined the

revolutionists. Embittered by his fate, brooding over his wrongs, he

became an anarchist—not a philosophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad

with hate and lust for revenge. And well he revenged himself. Evading

the guards, in the nighttime while all were asleep, he blew the

Pertonwaithe palace into atoms. Not a soul escaped, not even the

guards. And in prison, while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself

under his blankets.

Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford achieved quite different fates from

that of Jackson. They have been faithful to their salt, and they have

been correspondingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they

dwell at peace with the world. Both are apologists for the Oligarchy.

Both have grown very fat. “Dr. Hammerfield,” as Ernest once said, “has

succeeded in modifying his metaphysics so as to give God’s sanction to

the Iron Heel, and also to include much worship of beauty and to reduce

to an invisible wraith the gaseous vertebrate described by Haeckel—the

difference between Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford being that the

latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little more gaseous and a

little less vertebrate.”

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills whom I encountered

while investigating the case of Jackson, was a surprise to all of us.

In 1918 I was present at a meeting of the ’Frisco Reds. Of all our

Fighting Groups this one was the most formidable, ferocious, and

merciless. It was really not a part of our organization. Its members

were fanatics, madmen. We dared not encourage such a spirit. On the

other hand, though they did not belong to us, we remained on friendly

terms with them. It was a matter of vital importance that brought me

there that night. I, alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only

person unmasked. After the business that brought me there was

transacted, I was led away by one of them. In a dark passage this guide

struck a match, and, holding it close to his face, slipped back his

mask. For a moment I gazed upon the passion-wrought features of Peter

Donnelly. Then the match went out.

“I just wanted you to know it was me,” he said in the darkness. “D’you

remember Dallas, the superintendent?”

I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-faced superintendent of the

Sierra Mills.

“Well, I got him first,” Donnelly said with pride. “’Twas after that I

joined the Reds.”

“But how comes it that you are here?” I queried. “Your wife and

children?”

“Dead,” he answered. “That’s why. No,” he went on hastily, “’tis not

revenge for them. They died easily in their beds—sickness, you see, one

time and another. They tied my arms while they lived. And now that

they’re gone, ’tis revenge for my blasted manhood I’m after. I was once

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman. But to-night I’m Number 27 of the

’Frisco Reds. Come on now, and I’ll get you out of this.”

More I heard of him afterward. In his own way he had told the truth

when he said all were dead. But one lived, Timothy, and him his father

considered dead because he had taken service with the Iron Heel in the

Mercenaries.[4] A member of the ’Frisco Reds pledged himself to twelve

annual executions. The penalty for failure was death. A member who

failed to complete his number committed suicide. These executions were

not haphazard. This group of madmen met frequently and passed wholesale

judgments upon offending members and servitors of the Oligarchy. The

executions were afterward apportioned by lot.

[4] In addition to the labor castes, there arose another caste, the

military. A standing army of professional soldiers was created,

officered by members of the Oligarchy and known as the Mercenaries.

This institution took the place of the militia, which had proved

impracticable under the new regime. Outside the regular secret service

of the Iron Heel, there was further established a secret service of

the Mercenaries, this latter forming a connecting link between the

police and the military.

In fact, the business that brought me there the night of my visit was

such a trial. One of our own comrades, who for years had successfully

maintained himself in a clerical position in the local bureau of the

secret service of the Iron Heel, had fallen under the ban of the

’Frisco Reds and was being tried. Of course he was not present, and of

course his judges did not know that he was one of our men. My mission

had been to testify to his identity and loyalty. It may be wondered how

we came to know of the affair at all. The explanation is simple. One of

our secret agents was a member of the ’Frisco Reds. It was necessary

for us to keep an eye on friend as well as foe, and this group of

madmen was not too unimportant to escape our surveillance.

But to return to Peter Donnelly and his son. All went well with

Donnelly until, in the following year, he found among the sheaf of

executions that fell to him the name of Timothy Donnelly. Then it was

that that clannishness, which was his to so extraordinary a degree,

asserted itself. To save his son, he betrayed his comrades. In this he

was partially blocked, but a dozen of the ’Frisco Reds were executed,

and the group was well-nigh destroyed. In retaliation, the survivors

meted out to Donnelly the death he had earned by his treason.

Nor did Timothy Donnelly long survive. The ’Frisco Reds pledged

themselves to his execution. Every effort was made by the Oligarchy to

save him. He was transferred from one part of the country to another.

Three of the Reds lost their lives in vain efforts to get him. The

Group was composed only of men. In the end they fell back on a woman,

one of our comrades, and none other than Anna Roylston. Our Inner

Circle forbade her, but she had ever a will of her own and disdained

discipline. Furthermore, she was a genius and lovable, and we could

never discipline her anyway. She is in a class by herself and not

amenable to the ordinary standards of the revolutionists.

Despite our refusal to grant permission to do the deed, she went on

with it. Now Anna Roylston was a fascinating woman. All she had to do

was to beckon a man to her. She broke the hearts of scores of our young

comrades, and scores of others she captured, and by their heart-strings

led into our organization. Yet she steadfastly refused to marry. She

dearly loved children, but she held that a child of her own would claim

her from the Cause, and that it was the Cause to which her life was

devoted.

It was an easy task for Anna Roylston to win Timothy Donnelly. Her

conscience did not trouble her, for at that very time occurred the

_Nashville Massacre_, when the Mercenaries, Donnelly in command,

literally murdered eight hundred weavers of that city. But she did not

kill Donnelly. She turned him over, a prisoner, to the ’Frisco Reds.

This happened only last year, and now she had been renamed. The

revolutionists everywhere are calling her the “Red Virgin.”[5]

[5] It was not until the Second Revolt was crushed, that the ’Frisco

Reds flourished again. And for two generations the Group flourished.

Then an agent of the Iron Heel managed to become a member, penetrated

all its secrets, and brought about its total annihilation. This

occurred in 2002 A.D. The members were executed one at a time, at

intervals of three weeks, and their bodies exposed in the labor-ghetto

of San Francisco.

Colonel Ingram and Colonel Van Gilbert are two more familiar figures

that I was later to encounter. Colonel Ingram rose high in the

Oligarchy and became Minister to Germany. He was cordially detested by

the proletariat of both countries. It was in Berlin that I met him,

where, as an accredited international spy of the Iron Heel, I was

received by him and afforded much assistance. Incidentally, I may state

that in my dual rôle I managed a few important things for the

Revolution.

Colonel Van Gilbert became known as “Snarling” Van Gilbert. His

important part was played in drafting the new code after the Chicago

Commune. But before that, as trial judge, he had earned sentence of

death by his fiendish malignancy. I was one of those that tried him and

passed sentence upon him. Anna Roylston carried out the execution.

Still another figure arises out of the old life—Jackson’s lawyer. Least

of all would I have expected again to meet this man, Joseph Hurd. It

was a strange meeting. Late at night, two years after the Chicago

Commune, Ernest and I arrived together at the Benton Harbor refuge.

This was in Michigan, across the lake from Chicago. We arrived just at

the conclusion of the trial of a spy. Sentence of death had been

passed, and he was being led away. Such was the scene as we came upon

it. The next moment the wretched man had wrenched free from his captors

and flung himself at my feet, his arms clutching me about the knees in

a vicelike grip as he prayed in a frenzy for mercy. As he turned his

agonized face up to me, I recognized him as Joseph Hurd. Of all the

terrible things I have witnessed, never have I been so unnerved as by

this frantic creature’s pleading for life. He was mad for life. It was

pitiable. He refused to let go of me, despite the hands of a dozen

comrades. And when at last he was dragged shrieking away, I sank down

fainting upon the floor. It is far easier to see brave men die than to

hear a coward beg for life.[6]

[6] The Benton Harbor refuge was a catacomb, the entrance of which was

cunningly contrived by way of a well. It has been maintained in a fair

state of preservation, and the curious visitor may to-day tread its

labyrinths to the assembly hall, where, without doubt, occurred the

scene described by Avis Everhard. Farther on are the cells where the

prisoners were confined, and the death chamber where the executions

took place. Beyond is the cemetery—long, winding galleries hewn out of

the solid rock, with recesses on either hand, wherein, tier above

tier, lie the revolutionists just as they were laid away by their

comrades long years agone.