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A Girl Among the Anarchists

by Isabel Meredith · English · Gutenberg #7084 · 418,492 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Girl Among the Anarchists

Author: Isabel Meredith


        
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7084]
                Most recently updated: June 12, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS ***




Produced by Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team









A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS

By Isabel Meredith




PREFACE


In spite of the fact that there are certain highly respectable
individualists of a rabid type who prefer to call themselves Anarchists,
it must be owned that it requires some courage to write about Anarchism
even with the sympathy befitting a clinical physician or the scientific
detachment of a pathologist. And yet it is certain that Anarchists are
curiously interesting, and not the less in need of observation from the
fact that apparently none of the social quacks who prescribe seriously
in leading articles has the faintest insight into them as a phenomenon,
a portent, or a disease. This book, if it is read with understanding,
will, I feel assured, do not a little to show how it comes about that
Anarchism is as truly endemic in Western Civilisations as cholera is in
India. Isabel Meredith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing when she
was a more humble member of the staff of the _Tocsin_ than the editor,
occupies, to my knowledge, a very curious and unique position in the
history of English Anarchism. There is nothing whatever in "A Girl among
the Anarchists" which is invented, the whole thing is an experience
told very simply, but I think convincingly. Nevertheless as such a human
document must seem incredible to the ordinary reader, I have no little
pleasure in saying that I know what she has written to be true. I was
myself a contributor to the paper which is here known as the _Tocsin_. I
have handled the press and have discussed details (which did not include
bombs) with the editor. I knew "Kosinski" and still have an admiration
for "Nekrovitch." And even now I do not mind avowing that I am
philosophically as much an Anarchist as the late Dr. H. G. Sutton, who
would no doubt have been astounded to learn that he belonged to the
brotherhood.

Curiously enough I have found most Anarchists of the mildest
dispositions. I have met meek Germans (there are meek Germans still
extant) who even in their wildest Anarchic indignation seemed as little
capable of hurting a living soul as of setting the Elbe on fire. For it
must be understood that the "red wing" of the Anarchists is a very small
section of the body of philosophers known as Anarchists. There is no
doubt that those of the dynamite section are practically insane. They
are "impulsives"; they were outraged and they revolted before birth.
Most of the proletariat take their thrashing lying down. There are
some who cannot do that. It is out of these who are not meek and do not
inherit even standing-room on the earth that such as "Matthieu"
comes. Perhaps it may not be out of place to suggest that a little
investigation might be better than denunciation, which is always wide
of the mark, and that, as Anarchism is created by the social system of
repression, more repression will only create more Anarchism. However, I
am perfectly aware that the next time a wild-eyed philosopher, who ought
to be under restraint in an asylum, throws a bomb, all the newspapers in
Europe will advocate measures for turning all the meeker Anarchists
into outrage-mongers. For of the Anarchists it is certainly true that
repression does not repress. Anarchism is a creed and a philosophy,
but neither as creed nor philosophy does it advocate violence. It only
justifies resistance to violence. So much, I think, will be discovered
in this book even by a leader-writer.

In conclusion I cannot do better than quote from Spinoza's _Tractatus
Politicus:_--

"In order that I might inquire better into the matter of this science
with the same freedom of mind with which we are wont to treat lines
and surfaces in mathematics, I determined not to laugh or weep over the
actions of men but simply to understand them, and to contemplate their
affections and passions such as love, hate, anger, envy, arrogance,
pity, and all other disturbances of soul not as vices of human nature,
but as properties pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm,
thunder pertain to the nature of the atmosphere. For these, though
troublesome, are yet necessary and have certain causes through which
we may come to understand them, and thus by contemplating them in their
truth, gain for our minds as much joy as by the knowledge of things
which are pleasing to the senses."

I think that Isabel Meredith, so far as the outlook of her book extends,
is a disciple of Spinoza. But she can speak for herself.

MORLEY ROBERTS.




CONTENTS


I. A STRANGE CHILDHOOD

II. A GATHERING IN CHISWICK

III. AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING.

IV. A POLICE SCARE

V. TO THE RESCUE

VI. A FOREIGN INVASION

VII. THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_

VIII. THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE

IX. SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES

X. A FLIGHT

XI. A CRISIS

XII. THE _TOCSIN'S_ LAST TOLL.




CHAPTER I

A STRANGE CHILDHOOD


In the small hours of a bitter January morning I sat in my room gazing
into the fire, and thinking over many things. I was alone in the house,
except for the servants, but this circumstance did not affect me. My
childhood and upbringing had been of no ordinary nature, and I was used
to looking after myself and depending on my own resources for amusement
and occupation.

My mother had died when I was yet a small child and, with my elder
sister and brother, I had grown up under our father's eye. He was a
chemist and a man of advanced ideas on most things. He had never sent us
to school, preferring to watch in person over our education, procuring
for us private tuition in many subjects, and himself instructing us
in physical science and history, his two favourite studies. We rapidly
gained knowledge under his system and were decidedly precocious
children, but we had none of the ordinary school society and routine.
Our childhood was by no means dull or mopish, for there were three of
us and we got on very well together, but we mixed hardly at all with
children of our own age, our interests were not theirs, and their
boisterous ways were somewhat repellent to us.

Our father was a great believer in liberty, and, strange to say, he
put his ideas into practice in his own household. He was a devoted and
enthusiastic student, and for days, nay, weeks together, we would see
but little of him. He had fitted himself up a small laboratory at the
top of our house on which he spent all his available money, and here
he passed nearly all the time he could dispose of over and beyond that
necessary for the preparation and delivery of his scientific lectures.
As we grew out of childhood he made no difference in his mode of life.
He gave us full liberty to follow our various bents, assisting us with
his advice when requested, ever ready to provide the money necessary
for any special studies or books; taking an interest in our readings and
intellectual pursuits. The idea of providing us with suitable society,
of launching us out into the world, of troubling to see that we
conformed to the ordinary conventions of society, never occurred to him.
Occasionally some old friend of his would drop in, or some young admirer
who had followed his scientific work in the press would write asking
permission to call and consult him on some point. They were always
received with cordiality, and my father would take much trouble to be
of any assistance he could to them. We children used generally to
be present on such occasions, and frequently would join in the
conversation, and thus we got to know various people, among whom
foreigners and various types of cranks were fairly in evidence.

We lived in a large old-fashioned house in Fitzroy Square where our
father had settled down somewhere in the seventies soon after his
marriage to a South American Spaniard, whom he had met during a
scientific research expedition in Brazil. She was a girl of seventeen,
his junior by some twenty years. During his journeys into the interior
of Brazil he had fallen seriously ill with malarial fever, and had been
most kindly taken in and nursed by a coffee-planter and his family.
Here he had met his future wife who was acting as governess. She was of
Spanish descent, and combined the passionate enthusiasm of a Southerner
with the independence and self-reliance which life in a new and only
partially civilised country breeds. She was an orphan and penniless, but
our father fell in love with her, attracted doubtless by her beauty and
vivaciousness in such striking contrast with his bookish way of life,
and he married her and brought her home to London. He truly loved her
and was a good husband in all essential respects, but the uncongenial
climate and monotonous life told on her health, and she died three years
after my birth, much mourned by her husband, who plunged all the more
deeply into scientific research, his only other thought being a care for
our education. He had lived on in the same old house which grew somewhat
dingier and shabbier each year, whilst the neighbourhood fell from its
pristine respectability to become the resort of foreigners of somewhat
doubtful character, of Bohemian artists and musicians.

As I sat gazing into the fire many pictures of those old days rose
before me. I saw our large drawing-room with its old-fashioned
furniture, handsome, often beautiful, but ill-kept; its sombre hangings
and fine pictures. I recalled a typical scene there with a large fire
burning cheerily in the big grate, relieving the gloom of a late winter
afternoon with the bright flickering of its flames. Ensconced in a
roomy arm-chair, our father is seated by the fire in a skullcap and list
slippers, with his favourite cat perched on his knee. Opposite him sit
two ladies, the elder of whom--a quaint, nice-looking old lady, dressed
neatly in black, but whose innate eccentricity succeeded in imparting
something odd to the simplest and quietest of attires--is leaning
eagerly forward, pouring forth a long tale of woe into my father's
sympathetic ear. She is denouncing the London roughs, landlords, and
police, who, apparently, are all in league to ruin her and turn her
cats astray upon an unkind world. The brutality of the English poor, who
consider their duty towards the feline race fully performed when they
have fed them, and who pay no more attention to their morals and higher
feelings than if they were stocks and stones, arouses her ire; sympathy
is what she needs, sympathy to help her to face the world and continue
her crusade against cruelty. She says all this in a scattered and
disconnected style, jumping from one point to another, turning
occasionally to her friend for support or confirmation. This friend is
a meek, subdued-looking person of uncertain age, somewhat washed-out
and bedraggled in appearance. Her attire is nondescript, and seems to
consist of oddments bought solely because they were cheap and bearing
no relation whatever one to the other. Mrs. Smuts, growing more and more
absorbed in the course of her harangue on the great cat question, states
that she believes in marrying cats young in life and looking strictly
after their morals; and as she appeals to Miss Meggs whilst voicing this
sentiment, the latter timidly interjects, "But do you think, my dear
Maria, that cats can maintain themselves chaste on a meat diet? I never
give mine anything more exciting than cold potatoes and rice pudding,
and I find that they thrive on it, Mr. Meredith!"

At this point we children, stifling our laughter, rush headlong from the
room, to vent our mirth in safety in the kitchen.

Another frequent visitor whom my imagination summoned from the grave
in which he had lain now for several years past, was a tall, thin,
delicate-looking man of some thirty years of age. He was by birth a
Frenchman, but had lived mostly in England, his parents having come
over as political exiles from the tyranny of Louis Napoleon, afterwards
settling permanently in this country. He was an engineer by profession,
but a poet at heart, and all his spare time and thought he devoted to
tackling the problem of aerial navigation. His day was spent earning a
scanty living in a shipbuilding yard, but his evenings and nights were
passed in constructing a model of a flying-machine. He would bring his
drawings round to our father for discussion and advice; and although he
never attained success, he was always hopeful, trusting that some one
of the ever fresh improvements and additions which his fertile brain
was always busy conceiving would solve the difficulty which had hitherto
beset him. His sallow face with its large dreamy eyes and his spare
figure, clad in an old bluish suit, rusty with age and threadbare with
brushing, stand out clear in my memory. There was also an old professor,
a chemist like my father, who often assisted him in his experiments.
He was somewhat formidable in appearance, wearing gold spectacles, and
helping himself freely to the contents of a snuff-box, but he was one of
the most kind-hearted of men. Children were great favourites with him,
and his affection was returned with interest as soon as the shyness
consequent on his somewhat gruff manner was overcome. He used to enjoy
drawing us out, and would laugh heartily at our somewhat old-fashioned
remarks and observations, at which we used to grow very indignant, for
we were decidedly touchy when our dignity was at stake. He had nicknamed
me Charlotte Corday, for, after a course of Greek and Roman history,
studied in Plutarch and Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," I had plunged
into the French Revolution, glorying in its heroisms and audacity, and
it had become a favourite amusement with all three of us to enact scenes
drawn from its history, and to recite aloud, with great emphasis if
little art, revolutionary poetry. The old professor loved to tease me
by abusing my favourite heroes; and when he had at last roused me to
a vigorous assertion of revolutionary sentiments, he would turn to my
father and say, "There's a little spitfire for you; you will have to
keep a look-out or she will be making bombs soon and blowing us all up,"
at which my father would smile complacently.

Our father was very charitable. He did not like to be bothered or
disturbed, but he would willingly give a little assistance when asked,
and the result was that our door was always besieged by beggars
of various nationalities, Spaniards and Italians forming the chief
contingent. Generally they confined themselves to sending in notes,
which used to be returned with a shilling or half-crown as the case
might be, but sometimes one would insist on a personal interview. I
remember one wild-looking Hungarian, whose flowing locks were crowned
by a sort of horse's sun-bonnet, who used to rush round on one of those
obsolete bicycles, consisting of an enormously high wheel on the top
of which he was perched, and a tiny little back one. He was generally
pursued by a crowd of hooting boys, advising him to "get 'is 'air cut,"
and inquiring, "Where did you get that 'at?" He used to insist on seeing
my father; but the help he solicited was not for himself but for various
political refugees in whom he was interested. One day the professor
happened to meet this wild-looking creature at our door, and inquired
of my father who that maniac might be. "Oh, he is a Hungarian refugee;
a good fellow, I believe. I have noticed something rather odd in his
appearance, but I do not consider him mad," replied his friend.

Amid such surroundings we grew up. My elder sister, Caroline, had a
notable musical gift, and even as a small child had a fine voice, which
developed into a rich contralto. Our father, always anxious to do his
duty by us, gave her a first-rate musical education, sending her abroad
to study under famous Continental teachers, and at eighteen she made
her first appearance in public, exciting much attention by the powerful
dramatic qualities of her voice. It was evident that her right course
was to go in for operatic singing, and this she did. She continued on
the most affectionate terms with her family, but naturally her pursuit
took her into quite another path of life, and we saw less and less of
her as time went on. This threw my brother and myself more together.
There was only a year's difference between us, and we studied together,
walked, talked, played, and read together--in fact, were inseparable.
Raymond was no ordinary boy. In character and in manners he was very
like my father. His favourite study was physical science in its various
branches; mine, history and sociological subjects. He saw things from
the scientific standpoint, I from the poetical and artistic; but we were
both by nature enthusiastic and dreamers, and sympathised heartily with
each other's views. His ambition was to become a famous explorer;
mine, to die on a scaffold or a barricade, shouting Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity.

Our father took a great pride in Raymond, and carefully supervised his
studies. He passed various brilliant examinations, and at eighteen,
having decided to go in for medicine, was already walking a hospital.
Shortly after this our father died suddenly. He was at work as usual in
his laboratory when he was seized by a paralytic stroke, and in three
days he was dead.

This blow quite stunned us for a time. Our father was everything to us;
and the possibility of his death we had never contemplated. Though, as
I have explained, he had always left us free to follow our own devices,
still he was the centre round which our family life circled; we were
passionately attached to him, and now that he was gone we felt at a loss
indeed. We had no relatives living of our father's; our mother's
family we had never known, and they were too distant to be practically
available. Our father's friends were not such as to be of much help to
us. Cat enthusiasts and scientific dreamers are all very well in their
way, but they almost always take far more than they give in the mart of
friendship. The old professor had preceded my father to his grave.

Our father left us comfortably off. The house was our own, and property
yielding a comfortable income was divided equally between us. Our home
seemed desolate indeed without our father, and very gloomily did the
first months of his absence pass; but in time hope and youth reasserted
themselves and we gradually settled down to much our old way of
life. Caroline obtained several engagements and was still studying
enthusiastically. Raymond passed most of his time at the hospital, where
he had rooms, though he frequently came home; I was the only one who had
not a definite occupation. I read a great deal and wrote a little also,
chiefly studies on historical subjects which interested me, but I had
printed nothing. In fact I had never been in the way of the literary
world, and did not know how to set about it. Time used often to hang
rather heavily on my hands in the big house where I was generally alone.
I was the housekeeper, but such cares did not take up much of my time.
The result of so much solitude and lack of occupation was that I became
restless and dissatisfied. Mere reading without any definite object did
not and could not suffice me; to write when there seemed no prospect of
ever being read, and keenly alive as I was to my own deficiencies, did
not attract me; friends I might say I had none, for the few people my
father knew were interested in him and not in us children, and ceased to
frequent our house after his death. Caroline's musical friends did not
appeal to me, so that the whole interest of my life was centred round
my brother. When he came home we used always to be together, and
conversation never flagged. Never having been to school he had none of
the schoolboy's patronising contempt for a sister. We had always been
chums and companions, and so we continued, but whereas, as children,
it was I, with my more passionate and enterprising nature, who took
the lead, now it was he who, mixing with the outer world, provided the
stimulus of new ideas and fresh activities for which I craved. Brought
suddenly face to face, after the studious seclusion of home, with the
hard facts of life as seen in a London hospital, he had begun to take
a deep interest in social questions. The frightful havoc of life and
happiness necessitated by the economic conditions of nineteenth-century
society, impressed him deeply, and he felt that any doctor who looked
upon his profession as other than a mere means to make money must tackle
such problems. Following up this line of thought he became interested
in economics and labour questions. His views were the result of no mere
surface impression, but the logical outcome of thought and study, and he
arrived at socialism by mental processes of his own, uninfluenced by
the ordinary channels of propaganda. I shared his interests and read
on parallel lines. We had no friends in Socialist circles, no personal
interest of any kind balanced our judgment. The whole trend of our
education had been to make independent thinkers of us. What we saw in
the whole problem was a question of justice, and for this we were ready
and anxious to work. A new interest was thus brought into our lives,
which, in my case, soon became all-absorbing. I was always begging my
brother to bring me home fresh books. The driest volumes of political
economy, the most indigestible of philosophical treatises, nothing came
amiss. From these I passed on to more modern works. Raymond had made
friends with a student who was a professed socialist and through him he
came into possession of a number of pamphlets and papers, all of which
I devoured eagerly, and some of which made a lasting impression on my
mind. Krapotkin's "Appeal to the Young" was of this number. I remember
in my enthusiasm reading it aloud to my sister Caroline, who, however,
took scant interest in such matters, and who tried, but in vain, to put
a damper on my enthusiasm.

I was always fond of scribbling, and the outcome of all this reading was
that I, too, flew to pen and paper. I used to read my papers to Raymond
on those rare occasions when I fancied I had not done so much amiss.
They would provide the material for an evening's conversation, then I
would toss them aside and think no more about them. One day, however,
Raymond brought his Socialist friend home with him. It seems they
had talked about me and my all-absorbing interest in social subjects.
Hughes, my brother's friend, had been surprised to hear from Raymond
that I knew no socialists in the flesh, and that all my hero-worship was
laid before the altar of mental abstractions, of my own creation for the
most part.

Great was my excitement when Raymond told me that I might expect him and
his friend, of whom I had heard so much, to turn up together one Sunday
evening. So great was my ignorance of the world, so wild my enthusiasm,
that I imagined every socialist as a hero, willing to throw away
his life at a moment's notice on behalf of the "Cause." I had had no
experience of the petty internal strifes, of the jealousies and human
frailties which a closer knowledge of all political parties reveals. I
remember how ashamed I felt of the quite unostentatious comfort of
our home, how anxious I was to dissemble the presence of servants, how
necessary I thought it to dress myself in my oldest and least becoming
clothes for the occasion, and how indignant I felt when Caroline, who
was going off to sing at a concert that evening, said, on coming in to
wish me good-bye, "Why, surely, Isabel, you're not going to receive that
gentleman looking such a fright as this?" As if a Socialist could care
for dress! How I felt he would despise me for all the outward signs
which proved that I was living on the results of "unearned increment"
(_vide_ Karl Marx) and that I was a mere social parasite!

When at last the longed-for, yet dreaded moment came, I was surprised,
relieved, and I must add somewhat disappointed, at seeing a young man
looking much like any other gentleman, except that he wore a red tie,
and that his clothes were of a looser and easier fit than is usual.
"What a jolly place you have!" he exclaimed after my brother had
introduced us and he had given a look round. I felt considerably
relieved, as I had quite expected him to scowl disapproval, and my
brother, after saying, "Yes, it is a nice old house; we are very fond of
it," suggested that we should adjourn to supper.

During this repast I took an animated part in the conversation, which
turned on recent books and plays. At last reference was made to a book,
"The Ethics of Egoism," which had excited much attention. It was a
work advocating the most rabid individualism, denying the Socialist
standpoint of the right to live, and saying that the best safeguard for
the development and amelioration of the race lay in that relentless law
of nature which sent the mentally and morally weak to the wall. I
had read the book with interest, and had even written a rather long
criticism of it, of which I felt distinctly proud. In the course of the
discussion to which this book gave rise among us, my brother mentioned
that I had written something on it, and Hughes begged me to read my
performance. Though I felt somewhat diffident, I acceded, after some
persuasion, to his request, and was elated beyond measure at earning his
good opinion of my effort.

"By George, that's about the best criticism I've read of the work. Where
do you intend publishing it, Miss Meredith?"

"Oh, I had never thought of publishing it," I replied; "I have never
published anything."

"But we cannot afford to lose such good stuff," he insisted. "Come,
Raymond, now, don't you think your sister ought to get that into print?"

"I think you should publish it, Isabel, if you could," he replied.

"Could! Why any of our papers would be only too delighted to have it.
Let me take it down to the _Democrat_," he said, mentioning the name of
a paper which Raymond often brought home with him.

"Oh, if you really think it worth while, I shall be only too pleased," I
replied.

Thus was effected my first introduction to the actual Socialist
party. My article was printed and I was asked for others. I made the
acquaintance of the editor, who, I must confess, spite of my enthusiasm,
soon struck me as a rather weak-kneed and altogether unadmirable
character. He thought it necessary to get himself up to look like an
artist, though he had not the soul of a counter-jumper, and the result
was long hair, a velvet coat, a red tie, bumptious bearing, and an
altogether scatter-brained and fly-away manner. In figure he was long
and willowy, and reminded me irresistibly of an unhealthy cellar-grown
potato plant. My circle of acquaintances rapidly enlarged, and soon,
instead of having too much time on my hands for reading and study, I
had too little. At one of the Sunday evening lectures of the Democratic
Club, at which I had become a regular attendant, I made the acquaintance
of Nekrovitch, the famous Nihilist, and his wife. I took to him
instinctively, drawn by the utter absence of sham or "side" which
characterised the man. I had never understood why Socialism need imply
the arraying of oneself in a green curtain or a terra-cotta rug, or
the cultivation of flowing locks, blue shirts, and a peculiar cut of
clothes: and the complete absence of all such outward "trade marks"
pleased me in the Russian. He invited me to his house, and I soon became
a constant visitor. In the little Chiswick house I met a class of people
who stimulated me intellectually, and once more aroused my rather waning
enthusiasm for the "Cause." The habit of taking nothing for granted, of
boldly inquiring into the origin of all accepted precepts of morality,
of intellectual speculation unbiassed by prejudice and untrammelled by
all those petty personal and party questions and interests which I had
seen occupy so much time and thought at the Democratic Club, permeated
the intellectual atmosphere. Quite a new side of the problem--that of
its moral bearings and abstract rights as opposed to the merely material
right to daily bread which had first appealed to my sense of justice and
humanity--now opened before me. The right to complete liberty of action,
the conviction that morality is relative and personal and can never
be imposed from without, that men are not responsible, or only very
partially so, for their surroundings, by which their actions are
determined, and that consequently no man has a right to judge his
fellow; such and similar doctrines which I heard frequently upheld,
impressed me deeply. I was morally convinced of their truth, and
consequently more than half an Anarchist. The bold thought and lofty
ideal which made of each man a law unto himself, answerable for his own
actions only to his own conscience, acting righteously towards others as
the result of his feeling of solidarity and not because of any external
compulsion, captivated my mind.

The Anarchists who frequented Nekrovitch's house were men of bold and
original thought, the intellectual part of the movement, and I was never
tired of listening to their arguments. Meantime the more I saw of the
Social Democrats the less I felt satisfied with them. A wider experience
would have told me that all political parties, irrespective of opinion,
are subject to much the same criticism, and that Socialist ideas are
no protection against human weaknesses; but extreme youth is not
compromising where its ideals are concerned, and I expected and insisted
on a certain approach to perfection in my heroes. True, Nekrovitch made
me hesitate some time before taking the final step. His attitude in such
discussions was one of sound common sense, and he never ceased reminding
his Anarchist friends, though all in vain, that we must live in our own
times, and that it is no use trying to forestall human evolution by some
thousand years.

At home I had become more and more my own mistress. I was now full
eighteen years of age, and had always been accustomed to think and
act for myself. Caroline, with whom I was on most affectionate terms,
despite our frequent differences on politics, had accepted an engagement
as _prima donna_ with a travelling opera company which was to visit the
United States and the principal cities of South America; her engagement
was to last two years, and she had left just three weeks before the
opening of my first chapter.

Raymond slept at home, but as the date of his final examination drew
near he was more and more occupied, and frequently whole weeks passed
in which I only caught a glimpse of him. He knew and sympathised with
my new line of thought; he had accompanied me more than once to the
Nekrovitchs', whom he liked much, but he had no longer the time
to devote much thought to such matters. Of money I always had a
considerable command; ever since our father's death I had kept house,
and now that Caroline was away I had full control of the household
purse.

Turning over all these thoughts in my mind as I sat toasting my feet
before the fire, I felt more and more inclined to throw in my lot with
the Anarchists. At the same time I felt that if I did take this step it
must be as a worker and in no half-hearted spirit. The small hours of
the morning were rapidly slipping by as I turned at last into bed to
dream of Anarchist meetings, melting into a confused jumble with the
rights of cats and the claims of the proletariat.



CHAPTER II

A GATHERING IN CHISWICK


As my first actual acquaintance with Anarchists was effected in
Nekrovitch's house, it will not be out of place for me to give a slight
sketch of the gatherings held there and of my host himself.

An interminably dreary journey by tram and rail, omnibus and foot, the
latter end of which lay along a monotonous suburban road, brought you
to the humble dwelling of the famous Nihilist. Here from time to time
on Sunday evenings it was my wont to put in an appearance towards ten
or eleven, for the journey was deceptively long from Fitzroy Square,
and Nekrovitch, like most Russians, was himself of so unpunctual and
irregular a nature, that he seemed to foster the like habits in all his
friends. The nominal hour for these social gatherings to commence was
eight, but not till past nine did the guests begin to assemble, and
till midnight and later they would come dribbling in. Only one
conscientiously punctual German was ever known to arrive at the
appointed hour, but the only reward of the Teuton's mistaken zeal was to
wait for hours in solitary state in an unwarmed, unlighted room till his
host and fellow-guests saw fit to assemble.

The meeting-room, or parlour, or drawing-room in Nekrovitch's house was
by no means a palatial apartment. Small and even stuffy to the notions
of a hygienic Englishman, and very bare, scanty in furniture, and yet
poorer in decoration, this room bore evidence to its owners' contempt
for such impedimenta, and their entire freedom from slavery to household
gods. It was evidently the home of people used to pitching their tent
often, and to whom a feeling of settled security was unknown. But its
occupants usually made up for any deficiencies in their surroundings.

The company was always of a very mixed cosmopolitan character--Russian
Nihilists and exiles, English Liberals who sympathised with the Russian
constitutional movement, Socialists and Fabians, Anarchists of all
nationalities, journalists and literary men whose political views were
immaterial, the pseudo-Bohemian who professes interest in the "queer
side of life," all manner of faddists, rising and impecunious musicians
and artists--all were made welcome, and all were irresistibly attracted
towards the great Russian Nihilist.

The most notable figure in this assembly, and he certainly would
have been in most assemblies, was Nekrovitch himself. Nekrovitch was
essentially a great man; one of those men whom to know was to admire and
to love; a man of strong intellect, and of the strong personal magnetism
which is so frequently an adjunct of genius. Physically he was a huge
powerful man, so massive and striking in appearance that he suggested
comparison rather with some fact of nature--a rock, a vigorous forest
tree--than with another man. He was one of those rare men who, like
mountains in a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their
environments, whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He
stood out from among his guests the centre of conversation, of feeling,
and of interest. He was almost invariably engaged in eager conversation,
pitched in a loud tone of voice, broken at intervals when he listened
to the other disputants, while puffing the cigarettes which he was
constantly rolling, and looking intently out of his deep-set penetrating
eyes.

Nekrovitch's wife, a Russian like himself, had been a student of
medicine at the Russian University until, along with her husband, she
had been compelled to take flight from the attentions of the Russian
police. She was a curly-headed brunette, with bright hazel eyes and a
vivacious manner; a very intelligent and highly "simpatica" woman, as
the Italians would put it.

Round Nekrovitch there always clustered an eager crowd of admirers and
intimates, discussing, disputing, listening, arguing. They were mostly
foreigners, of the shaggy though not unwashed persuasion, but two
English faces especially attracted notice. One belonged to a young
woman, still on the right side of thirty, dressed without exaggeration
in the aesthetic style, with a small but singularly intellectual head
and an argumentative manner, whom I knew as Miss Cooper. The other was
a man of some thirty-seven years, with auburn hair, which displayed a
distinct tendency to develop into a flowing mane; tall, slim, and lithe
of limb, with a splendid set of teeth, which showed under his bushy
moustache whenever his frank, benevolent smile parted his lips. He was
somewhat taciturn, but evidently tenacious; a glance at his spacious
forehead and finely-shaped head revealed a man of mind, and the
friendly, fearless glance of his eyes betokened a lovable nature,
though, as he listened to his opponents or answered in his low
distinct voice, there was an intensity and fixedness in their depth not
incompatible with the fanatic.

This Dr. Armitage was one of the most noticeable figures in the English
Anarchist movement, and it was with him that I first discussed Anarchist
principles as opposed to those of legal Socialism. Nekrovitch and others
often joined in the discussion, and very animated we all grew in the
course of debate. Nekrovitch smiled sympathetically at my whole-hearted
and ingenuous enthusiasm. He never made any attempt to scoff at it or to
discourage me, though he vainly attempted to persuade me that Anarchism
was too distant and unpractical an ideal, and that my energies and
enthusiasm might be more advantageously expended in other directions.
"Anyway," he once said to me, "it is very agreeable to a Russian to see
young people interested in politics and political ideals. It reminds him
of his own country."

Among the other Anarchists who frequented Nekrovitch's house was the
Anarchist and scientist, Count Voratin, a man who had sacrificed wealth
and high position and family ties for his principles with less fuss
than another rich man would make in giving a donation to an hospital. He
seemed always absolutely oblivious of his own great qualities, as simple
and kindly in manners as a _moujik_ but with a certain innate dignity
and courtliness of demeanour which lifted him above most of those with
whom he came in contact. I nourished an almost passionate admiration
for Voratin as a thinker and a man, and his writings had gone far
to influence me in my Anarchist leanings. Never shall I forget the
excitement I felt when first I met him at Nekrovitch's house. I
reverenced him as only a youthful disciple can reverence a great leader.

From Armitage and Nekrovitch I heard much from time to time of another
Russian Anarchist, Ivan Kosinski, a man actively engaged in the
Anarchist propaganda all over Europe. He was much admired by them for
his absolute unswerving devotion to his ideas. A student and a man of
means, he had never hesitated between his interests and his convictions.
He had come into collision with the Russian authorities by refusing to
perform military service. In prison he would not recognise the right
of judges and jailers, and had consequently spent most of his time in
a strait waistcoat and a dark cell. His forte was silence and dogged
unyielding obstinacy. On escaping from Russian prisons he had gone to
America: he had starved and tramped, but he had never accepted any
sort of help. How he lived was a mystery to all. He was known to be
an ascetic and a woman-hater, and had been seen at one time selling
fly-papers in the streets of New York. In revolutionary circles he was
looked up to as an original thinker, and it was rumoured that he played
a leading part in most of the revolutionary movements of recent years.
He was also engaged on a life of Bakounine which was to be the standard
work on the famous revolutionist, for which purpose he was always
reading and travelling in search of material.

And at last one evening Nekrovitch announced that Kosinski was expected.
I had heard so much about this man that I spent my whole evening in a
state of suppressed excitement at the news. For many months past I had
sympathised with the Anarchist principles, but I had taken no particular
steps towards joining the party or exerting myself on its behalf. I was
waiting for some special stimulus to action. Half unconsciously I found
myself wondering whether Kosinski would prove this.

I had passed a pleasant evening in the little Chiswick house between
the usual political and ethical discussions and the usual interesting or
entertaining company. I had assisted at a long discussion between Miss
Cooper and Dr. Armitage, which, commencing on the question of Socialism,
had gradually deviated into one on food and dress reform, a matter upon
which that lady held very strong views. I had felt a little irritated at
the conversation, for I entertained scant sympathy for what I regarded
as hygienic fads; and the emphasis with which the lady averred that she
touched neither flesh nor alcohol, and felt that by this abstinence she
was not "besotting her brain nor befouling her soul," amused me much.
Dr. Armitage, to my surprise, expressed some sympathy with her views,
and treated the question with what I considered undue importance. This
discussion was brought at last to a termination by Miss Cooper breaking
off for a meal (she always ate at regular intervals), and retiring into
a corner to consume monkey-nuts out of a hanging pocket or pouch which
she carried with her.

The evening advanced, and I began to despair of Kosinski's ever
arriving. Every time there was a knock at the door, I wondered whether
it was the much-expected Anarchist, but I was repeatedly disappointed.
Once it was the musical infant prodigy of the season whose talents had
taken London by storm, another time it was a Nihilist, yet another a
wild-looking Czech poet. One loud rat-tat made me feel certain that
Kosinski had arrived, but I was again disillusioned, as an aesthetic,
fascinating little lady made her entry, dragging triumphantly in tow
a reluctant, unengaging and green-haired husband. Nekrovitch gave me a
significant glance. "So sorry to be so late," the little lady began in
a high-pitched voice, "but I had to attend a meeting of our society
for the distribution of sanitary dust-bins; and Humphry got quite
disagreeable waiting for me outside, although he was well wrapped up in
comforters and mits. My dear Anna (this to Madame Nekrovitch), _do_
tell him that he is most absurd and egoistic, and that it is his duty to
think less of personal comfort and more of humanity."

At this last word the injured Humphry, who had approached the fire, and
was attempting to thaw his nose and toes, gave utterance to a suppressed
groan; but a cup of steaming tea and some appetising buttered toast
diverted his spouse's thoughts, and she was soon deep in a confidential
chat with Anna.

At last, long after eleven, appeared the new-comer of whom I had heard
so much. I must confess that my preconceived notions (one always has
a preconceived notion of the appearance of a person one has heard much
spoken of) fell to the ground. I had imagined him dark and audacious,
and I saw before me a tall, big, well-built man, with a slight stoop
in his shoulders, fair of skin, with a blonde beard and moustache,
lank long hair, a finely-cut, firm-set mouth, and blue dreamy eyes,
altogether a somewhat Christ-like face. He was clad in a thick, heavy,
old-fashioned blue overcoat with a velvet collar, which he refused
to remove, baggy nondescript trousers, and uncouth-looking boots.
He saluted his host and hostess in an undemonstrative style, bowed
awkwardly to the other guests, and settled down to crouch over the fire,
and look unostentatiously miserable.

From the first moment Kosinski interested me. His manners were not
engaging; towards women especially he was decidedly hostile. But
the marked indifference to opinion which his bearing indicated, his
sincerity, his unmistakable moral courage, perhaps his evident aversion
to my sex, all had for me a certain fascination.

I felt attracted towards the man, and was pleased that a discussion on
Anarchism with Armitage at last afforded me an opportunity of exchanging
a few words with him--even though on his side the conversation was not
altogether flattering to myself. It happened in this way.

Nekrovitch, Armitage, and myself had, according to our wont, been
discussing the great Anarchist question. For the hundredth time the
Russian had endeavoured to persuade us of the truth and the reason of
his point of view.

"So long as men are men," he maintained, "there must be some sort of
government, some fixed recognised law--organisation, if you will, to
control them."

"All governments are equally bad," answered the doctor. "All law is
coercion, and coercion is immoral. Immoral conditions breed immoral
people. In a free and enlightened society there would be no room for
coercive law. Crime will disappear when healthy and natural conditions
prevail."

And Nekrovitch, perceiving for the hundredth time that his arguments
were vain, and that Armitage was not to be moved, had left us to
ourselves and gone across to his other guests. Doctor Armitage, always
eager for converts, turned his undivided attention to me.

"I hope yet to be able to claim you for a comrade," he said: "you are
intelligent and open-minded, and cannot fail to see the futility of
attempting to tinker up our worn-out society. You must see that our
Socialist friends have only seized on half-truths, and they stop short
where true reform should begin."

"I can quite see your point of view," I replied; "in fact I am more than
half a convert already. But I should like to know what I can do. I
have been interested now in these problems for a year or two, and must
confess that the electioneering and drawing-room politics of Fabians and
Social Democrats are not much to my taste; in fact I may say that I
am sick of them. A few men like our friend Nekrovitch, who ennoble any
opinions they may hold, are of course exceptions, but I cannot blind
myself to the fact that ambition, wire-pulling, and faddism play a
prominent part in the general proceedings. On the other hand you seem
to me to sin in the opposite direction. No organisation, no definite
programme, no specific object!--what practical good could any one like
myself do in such a party?"

The doctor smiled a quiet smile of triumph as he proceeded to overthrow
my objections: "Why, the very strength of our party lies in the
fact that it has not what you are pleased to call an organisation.
Organisations are only a means for intriguers and rogues to climb to
power on the shoulders of their fellow-men; and at best only serve
to trammel initiative and enterprise. With us every individual enjoys
complete liberty of action. This of course does not mean to say that
several individuals may not unite to attain some common object, as is
shown by our groups which are scattered all over the globe. But each
group is autonomous, and within the group each individual is his own
law. Such an arrangement, besides being right in principle, offers
great practical advantages in our war against society, and renders it
impossible for governments to stamp us out. Again, as to our lack of
programme, if a clear grasp of principle and of the ultimate aim to be
attained is meant, it is wrong to say we have no programme, but, if you
mean a set of rules and formulas, why, what are they after all but a
means of sterilising ideas? Men and their surroundings are unceasingly
undergoing modification and change, and one of the chief defects of all
governments and parties hitherto has been that men have had to
adapt themselves to their programmes, instead of their programmes to
themselves. We make no statement as to specific object: each comrade has
his own, and goes for it without considering it necessary to proclaim
the fact to the whole world. Now you ask me how you could help this
movement or what you could do, and I have no hesitation in saying, much.
Every revolution requires revolutionists, we need propagandists, we need
workers, we need brains and money, and you have both."

"So you think that one ought to place one's property at the service of
the Cause, and that thus one is doing more good than by helping in the
ordinary way?"

"Why, of course, the revolutionist aims at eradicating the causes of
poverty and vice, whereas benevolence, by making it just possible for
people to put up with their circumstances, only strengthens the chains
which hold mankind in slavery."

We had unconsciously raised our voices in the heat of discussion, and
Kosinski, who had caught our last observations, broke in unexpectedly.
It was the first time he had opened his mouth to any purpose, and he
went straight to the point: "It is you bourgeois Socialists, with your
talk of helping us, and your anxiety about using your property 'to
the best advantage,' who are the ruin of every movement," he said,
addressing me in an uncompromising spirit. "What is wanted to accomplish
any great change is enthusiasm, whole-hearted labour, and where that is,
no thought is taken as to whether everything is being used to the best
advantage. If you are prepared to enter the movement in this spirit,
without any backward notion that you are conferring a favour upon any
one--for indeed the contrary is the case--well and good: your work will
be willingly accepted for what it is worth, and your money, if you have
any, will be made good use of; but if not, you had better side with your
own class and enjoy your privileges so long as the workers put up with
you."

These outspoken remarks were followed by a momentary silence. Mrs.
Trevillian looked dismayed; Miss Cooper evidently concluded that
Kosinski must have dined on steak; Dr. Armitage agreed, but seemed to
consider that more amenity of language might be compatible with the
situation. Nekrovitch laughed heartily, enjoying this psychological
sidelight, and I, who ought to have felt crushed, was perhaps the only
one who thoroughly endorsed the sentiment expressed, finding therein
the solution of many moral difficulties which had beset me. Kosinksi was
right. I felt one must go the whole length or altogether refrain from
dabbling in such matters. And as to property I again knew that he was
right; it was what I had all along instinctively felt. Private property
was, after all, but the outcome of theft, and there can be no virtue in
restoring what we have come by unrighteously.

Small things are often the turning-point in a career; and, looking back,
I clearly see that that evening's discussion played no small part in
determining my future conduct. I was already disposed towards Anarchist
doctrines, and my disposition was more inclined towards action of any
order than towards mere speculation. I was the first to speak. "Kosinski
is quite right; I am the first to recognise it. Only I think it a little
unfair to assume me to be a mere bourgeois, attempting to play the part
of lady patroness to the revolution. I am sure none who know me can
accuse me of such an attitude."

Kosinski grumbled out a reply: "Well, of course I may be mistaken; but
I have seen so many movements ruined by women that I am rather
distrustful; they are so rarely prepared to forgo what they consider the
privileges of the sex--which is but another phrase for bossing every one
and everything and expecting much in return for nothing; but of course
there may be exceptions. Perhaps you are one."

Nekrovitch laughed aloud: "Bravo, bravo, you are always true to
yourself, Kosinski. I have always known you as a confirmed misogynist,
and I see you still resist all temptations to reform. You carry
boorishness to the verge of heroism."

The hours had slipped by rapidly, and Mrs. Trevillian took the hint
which her spouse had long tried to give by shuffling restlessly in his
seat and casting side glances at the clock which pointed to half-past
one. She rose to go. "We really must be leaving--it is quite late, and
Humphry is never fit for anything unless he gets at least six hours'
sleep. Good-bye; thanks for such a pleasant evening," and she bustled
out, followed by her husband. I rose to follow her example and, turning
a deaf ear to Nekrovitch, who remarked, "Oh, Isabel, do stay on; it is
not yet late, and as you have lost your last train it is no use being
in a hurry," I shook hands with my friends, including Kosinski, who had
once more subsided into a corner, and left, accompanied by Dr. Armitage,
who offered to walk home with me.

We walked rapidly on through the keen night air. I felt excited and
resolute with the feeling that a new phase of existence was opening
before me. Dr. Armitage at last spoke. "I hope, Isabel"--it was usual in
this circle to eschew surnames, and most of my friends and acquaintances
called me Isabel in preference to Miss Meredith--"I hope, Isabel, that
you will come to our meetings. I should like you to know some of our
comrades; there are many very interesting men, quite original thinkers,
some of them. And I think human beings so often throw light on matters
which one otherwise fails to grasp."

"I should much like to," I replied, "if you can tell me how and when;
for I suppose one requires some sort of introduction even to Anarchist
circles."

"Oh, that is easy enough," he replied. "I have often mentioned your
name, and the comrades will be very glad to see you; we make no sort of
mystery about our meetings. There will be a meeting at the office of
our paper, the _Bomb_, next Saturday. Do come. The business on hand will
perhaps not interest you much, but it will be an opportunity for meeting
some of our men, and I shall be there."

"Oh, I shall be so glad to come!" I exclaimed. "What will you be
discussing?"

"Well, to tell the truth, it is a somewhat unpleasant matter," replied
the doctor with some hesitation in his voice. "There have been some
strange reports circulating about the Myers case, and we are anxious
to get at the truth of the business. It may strike you as a rather
unsuitable introduction, but come nevertheless. The movement is always
in need of new blood and fresh energies to keep it from narrowing its
sphere of activity, and it is well that you should know us as we are."

"Very well, I will come if you will give me the direction."

"Let us say nine o'clock at the office of the _Bomb_ in Slater's Mews,
---- Street; you will find me there."

"Agreed," I replied, and conversation dropped as we walked rapidly
along. I was much occupied with my own thoughts and Dr. Armitage was
noted for his long periods of silence. At last we reached my doorstep. I
fumbled for my latch-key, found it, and wished my friend good-night. We
shook hands and parted.



CHAPTER III

AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING


Before describing the strange committee or group-meeting about to be
dealt with, it is necessary to say a few words concerning the mysterious
affair which gave rise to it.

On the 17th of December 189- the posters of the evening papers had
announced in striking characters:--

"DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST: ATTEMPTED OUTRAGE IN A LONDON PARK."

That same afternoon a loud explosion had aroused the inhabitants of a
quiet suburban district, and on reaching the corner of ---- Park whence
the report emanated, the police had found, amid a motley debris of
trees, bushes, and railings, the charred and shattered remains of a man.
These, at the inquest, proved to have belonged to Augustin Myers, an
obscure little French Anarchist, but despite the usual lengthy and
unsatisfactory routine of police inquiries, searches, and arrests,
practically nothing could be ascertained concerning him or the
circumstances attending his death. All that was certain was that the
deceased man had in his possession an explosive machine, evidently
destined for some deadly work, and that, while traversing the park, it
had exploded, thus putting an end both to its owner and his projects.

Various conflicting theories were mooted as to the motive which prompted
the conduct of the deceased Anarchist, but no confirmation could be
obtained to any of these. Some held that Myers was traversing London on
his way to some inconspicuous country railway station, whence to take
train for the Continent where a wider and more propitious field for
Anarchist outrage lay before him. Others opined that he had contemplated
committing an outrage in the immediate vicinity of the spot which
witnessed his own death; and others, again, that, having manufactured
his infernal machine for some nefarious purpose either at home or
abroad, he was suddenly seized either with fear or remorse, and had
journeyed to this unobserved spot in order to bury it. The papers hinted
at accomplices and talked about the usual "widespread conspiracy"; the
police opened wide their eyes, but saw very little. The whole matter, in
short, remained, and must always remain, a mystery to the public.

Behind the scenes, however, the Anarchists talked of a very different
order of "conspiracy." The funeral rites of the poor little Augustin
were performed with as much ceremony and sympathy as an indignant London
mob would allow, and he was followed to his grave by a goodly _cortège_
of "comrades," red and black flags and revolutionary song. Among the
chief mourners was the deceased man's brother Jacob, who wept copiously
into the open grave and sung his "Carmagnole" with inimitable zeal. It
was this brother whose conduct had given rise to suspicion among his
companions, and "spies" and "police plots" were in every one's mouth.
The office of the _Bomb_, as being the centre of English anarchy, had
been selected as the scene for an inquiry _en group_ into the matter.

Thus on a wet and chilling January evening--one of those evenings when
London, and more especially squalid London, is at the height of its
unattractiveness--I set out towards my first Anarchist "group-meeting."
And certainly the spirit which moved me from within must have been
strong that the flesh quailed not at the foul scenery amid which my
destination lay.

Half-way down one of the busiest, grimiest, and most depressing streets
in the W.C. district stands a squalid public-house, the type of many
hundreds and thousands of similar dens in the metropolis. The "Myrtle
Grove Tavern," pastoral as the name sounds, was not precisely the abode
of peace and goodwill. From four A.M., when the first of her _habitués_
began to muster round the yet unopened doors, till half-past twelve
P.M., when the last of them was expelled by the sturdy "chucker-out,"
the atmosphere was dense with the foul breath and still fouler language
of drunken and besotted men and women. Every phase of the lower order of
British drinker and drunkard was represented here. The coarse oaths of
the men, mingled with the shriller voices of their female companions,
and the eternal "'e saids" and "she saids" of the latter's complaints
and disputes were interrupted by the plaintive wailings of the puny,
gin-nourished infants at their breasts. Here, too, sat the taciturn man,
clay pipe in mouth, on his accustomed bench day after day, year in year
out, gazing with stony and blear-eyed indifference on all that went
on around him; deaf, dumb, and unseeing; only spitting deliberately
at intervals, and with apparently no other vocation in life than the
consumption of fermented liquor.

The side-door for "jugs and bottles" gave on to a dirty and odoriferous
mews, down which my destination lay. The unbridled enthusiasm of
eighteen years can do much to harden or deaden the nervous system,
but certainly it required all my fortitude to withstand the sickening
combination of beer and damp horsy hay which greeted my nostrils.
Neither could the cabmen and stablemen, hanging round the public-house
doors and the mews generally, be calculated to increase one's democratic
aspirations, but I walked resolutely on, and turning to my left,
dexterously avoiding an unsavoury heap of horse manure, straw, and other
offal, I clambered up a break-neck ladder, at the top of which loomed
the office of the _Bomb_.

The door was furtively opened in response to my kick by a lean,
hungry-looking little man of very circumspect appearance. He cast me
a surly and suspicious glance, accompanied by a not very encouraging
snarl, but on my mentioning Dr. Armitage he opened the door a few inches
wider and I passed in.

It took me some seconds before I could accustom my eyes to the fetid
atmosphere of this den, which was laden with the smoke of divers
specimens of the worst shag and cheapest tobacco in the metropolis. But
various objects, human and inanimate, became gradually more distinct,
and I found myself in a long, ill-lighted wooden shed, where type and
dust and unwashed human beings had left their mark, and where soap and
sanitation were unknown. Past the type racks and cases, which occupied
the first half of this apartment, were grouped benches, stools,
packing-cases, and a few maimed and deformed chairs for the
accommodation of the assembly. Then came a hand printing-press, on which
were spread the remains of some comrade's repast: the vertebral column
of a bloater and an empty condensed-milk can, among other relics. The
floor, from one extremity to the other of the "office," was littered
with heaps of unsold revolutionary literature, the approximate date
of which could be gauged by the thickness of dust in which it was
smothered. On the walls and from beams and rafters hung foils and
boxing-gloves; artistic posters and cartoons, the relics of a great
artist who had founded the _Bomb_, and the effigies of divers comrades
to whom a pathway to a better world had been opened through the
hangman's drop. But what most riveted my attention was an indistinct
animate _something_ enveloped in a red flag, rolled up in a heap on
the frouziest and most forbidding old sofa it had ever been my lot to
behold. That this _something_ was animate could be gathered from the
occasional twitchings of the red bundle, and from the dark mop of black
greasy hair which emerged from one end. But to what section of the
animal kingdom _it_ belonged I was quite at a loss to decide.
Other stray objects which I noted about this apartment were an
ostentatious-looking old revolver of obsolete make, and some chemical
bottles, which, however, contained no substance more dangerous than
Epsom salts.

The human occupants were not less noticeable than the inanimate, and
some of them are deserving of our attention.

The man Myers, round whom the interest of the meeting was principally
centred this evening, was to all appearances a mean enough type of the
East End sartorial Jew. His physiognomy was not that of a fool, but
indicated rather that low order of intelligence, cunning and intriguing,
which goes to make a good swindler. The low forehead, wide awake, shifty
little eyes, the nose of his forefathers, and insolent lock of black
hair plastered low on his brow--all these characteristics may frequently
be met with in the dock of the "Old Bailey" when some case of petty
swindling is being tried.

Next Myers I noticed Dr. Armitage, who stood out in striking contrast
from the rest of his companions. The smile with which he welcomed me was
eloquent of the satisfaction with which he noted this my first entrance
into an Anarchist circle.

The short bench on which he sat was shared by a man in corduroys of
the navvy type, a large honest-looking fellow whose views of the Social
question appeared to be limited to a not very definite idea of the
injustice of third-class railway travelling and the payment of rent, and
he expressed his opinions on these knotty problems with more freedom
and warmth of language than was perhaps altogether warranted by the
occasion.

Gracefully poised on one leg against an adjoining type-rack leaned a
tall youth with fair curling hair, a weak tremulous mouth, and an almost
girlish physiognomy. This youth had been drummed out of the army, the
discipline of which he had found too severe, for feigning illness,
since when he had passed his time between the bosom of his family, the
workhouse, and the Anarchist party. He paid very little attention to the
proceedings of the meeting, but discoursed eloquently, in a low voice,
of the brutality of his parents who refused to keep him any longer
unless he made some attempt to find employment. I remember wondering,
_en passant_, why this fair-haired, weak-kneed youth had ever entered
the Anarchist party; but the explanation, had I but known, was close at
hand.

This explanation was a square-built, sturdy-looking man of some forty
years. His appearance was the reverse of engaging, but by no means
lacking in intelligence. He was ill-satisfied and annoyed with the
universe, and habitually defied it from the stronghold of a double
bed. Thither he had retired after the death of his father, an old
market-porter, who had been crushed by the fall of a basket of potatoes.
The son saw in this tragic circumstance the outcome and the reward of
labour, swore a solemn oath never to do a stroke of work again, threw
up his job, and from that day became a confirmed loafer in the Anarchist
party. Some months previously, while propagandising in the workhouse,
he found the youth there, and learned from his own lips how, being
disinclined to become a burden on his poor old parents after his exit
from the army, he had seen no other alternative but to become a pauper,
and make the best he could of the opportunities afforded him by the
poor-rates. From the workhouse he was dragged triumphantly forth by
his new friend, and became an easy convert to anarchic and communistic
principles.

The only feminine element in this assembly was a fair, earnest-looking
Russian girl, whose slight knowledge of English did not allow her to
follow the proceedings very accurately. She was an almost pathetic
figure in her naïve enthusiasm, and evidently regarded her present
companions as seriously as those she had left behind her in Russia, and
seemed to imagine they played as dangerous a rôle, and ran the same risk
as they did.

There were several others present among whom the loafer type was perhaps
in the ascendant. But there were also many of the more intelligent
artisan class, discontented with their lot; labourers and dockers who
had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather
of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever
but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator,
and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race.
O'Flynn, the printer of the _Bomb_, was a cantankerous Irishman with a
taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew
frightfully muddled and confused. He had a rather mad look in his eye
and a disputatious manner.

When at last inquiry was made whether all companions expected were
present, the red flag began to quiver and writhe most noticeably and
finally to unfurl, and there emerged from its depths the dirtiest and
most slovenly man I had ever seen, and the frouziest and most repulsive
of dogs. This man, if man I may call him, was bony and ill-built, and
appeared to consist largely of hands and feet. His arms were abnormally
long and his chest narrow and hollow, and altogether he seemed to hang
together by a mere fluke. His ill-assorted limbs were surmounted by a
sallow, yellowish face, large repulsive lips, and a shapeless nose, and
to him belonged the long, black greasy hair which I had already noted
amid the folds of the red banner. Large gristly ears emerged from his
uncombed mop of hair, and the only redeeming feature about the abject
creature was his large, brown, dog-like eyes. He crept forward, grinding
his teeth and rubbing his bony hands, and subsided into a waste-paper
basket which was the only available seat left unoccupied.

And now at last, after much talking and shifting about, and not before a
young German hairdresser had been stationed with one eye glued to a hole
in the outer wall of the shed, in order to make sure that no detective
was listening outside, the proceedings commenced.

Banter, the little man who had opened the door to me, rose to his feet,
cleared his throat, and said "_Com_rades" in a stentorian voice. Then
followed a long and rambling statement which he read out, from amid
the grammatical inaccuracies and continual digressions of which I was
enabled to gather that he had noticed of late something very peculiar
about the conduct of Jacob Myers, who had appeared to exercise undue
influence and power over his brother Augustin; that, moreover, Jacob
had been seen by a third party drinking a glass of rum in the "Nag and
Beetle" in company with a well-known detective, and that, in final and
conclusive proof of some very fishy transactions on his part, three
undeniable half-crowns had been distinctly observed in his overcoat
pocket the previous week. "And how should he come by these by honest
means?" indignantly inquired Banter. "He says he's out of work, and he's
not got the courage to steal!"

"'Ear, 'ear! Why pay rent to robber landlords?" the navvy, Armitage's
neighbour, ejaculated at this juncture, after which irrelevant inquiry
he spat defiance at Society.

Then followed the speeches for the prosecution, if the use of such a
word may be permitted in connection with an Anarchist transaction. The
chief accusations made against Myers were his violent blood-and-thunder
speeches which he had in no wise carried out in action, but which he
had delivered under the eyes and in the hearing of the police who had
listened and seen it all with quite commendable Christian forbearance.
Besides this several sensational articles had appeared in the daily
press in connection with Augustin's death, exaggerating the importance
of the affair and hinting at dark plots; of which articles he was
suspected of being the author. Jacob was in fact accused of having egged
on his unfortunate brother to his doom in order that he might turn a
little money out of the transaction between newspaper reports and police
fees. It apparently mattered little to this modern Shylock whence came
his pound of flesh or what blood ran or congealed in its veins.

Through all these statements and questions Myers sat in stolid and
insolent silence--occasionally whistling snatches of some music-hall
air. At last when reference was made to some chemicals which he was
alleged to have procured and handed on to his brother, he roused up from
his affected indifference and appealed to Armitage for assistance. "Dr.
Armitage knows," he exclaimed indignantly, "that I only procured the
sulphuric acid from him for domestic purposes."

My eyes were riveted on the doctor's face, and only to one who knew him
well could the expression be at all decipherable. To me it distinctly
denoted disappointment--that humiliating sense of disappointment
and disillusion which must invariably come upon a man of strong and
fanatical convictions when brought into contact with the meanness and
cowardice of his fellows.

Dr. Armitage was a fanatic and an idealist, and two convictions were
paramount in his mind at this time: the necessity and the justice of the
"propaganda by force" doctrine preached by the more advanced Anarchists,
and the absolute good faith and devotion to principle of the men
with whom he was associated. A man of the Myers type was quite
incomprehensible to him. Not for a single instant had Armitage hesitated
to throw open the doors of his Harley Street establishment to the
Anarchists: to him the cause was everything, and interests, prudence,
prospects, all had to give way before it. And here was this man who had
professed the same principles as himself, with whom he had discoursed
freely on the necessity of force, who had openly advocated dynamite
in his presence--this man who had spoken of the revolution and the
regeneration of Society with the same warmth as himself--talking of
"domestic purposes," and ready to recant all that he had preached and
said. And what lay behind this reticence and these denials? Treachery of
the basest kind, and the most sordid, abominable calculations which it
was possible to conceive.

These thoughts I read in the doctor's face, and turning my eyes from
him to the abject Jacob I could only wonder at the naïve sincerity of
Armitage, which could ever have laid him open to such illusions and
disillusions.

After some seconds' hesitation Armitage replied: "I do not desire or
intend to go into any details here concerning my past conversations
or relations with Jacob Myers, neither do I consider myself in any way
bound to discuss here the motives which prompted, or which I thought
prompted his actions, and the requests he made of me. As Anarchists
we have not the right to judge him, and all we can do is to refuse
to associate ourselves any further with him, which I, for one, shall
henceforth do. The knowledge of his own abominable meanness should be
punishment enough for Myers."

The doctor's words were received with very general approval.

"Armitage is perfectly right," said Carter. "We Anarchists cannot
pretend to judge our fellows, but we can form our own opinions and act
accordingly. Myers' conduct proves him to be no better than a spy; we of
the _Bomb_ can have no further relations with him."

"Damn about judging and not judging," exclaimed a sturdy-looking docker.
"All I know is that if Myers does not quickly clear out of the _Bomb_
I'll kick him out. He ought to be shot. I don't pretend to understand
none of these nice distinctions. I call a spade a spade, and if...."

"'Ear,'ear! Down with ..." commenced Elliot again, and Jacob opened his
mouth to speak, but he was saved from any further need of self-defence
or explanation, for at this moment the door of the office was broken
rudely open and there entered like a hurricane a veritable fury in
female form--a whirlwind, a tornado, a ravening wolf into a fold of
lambs. This formidable apparition, which proved to be none other than
the wife of the suspected Myers, amid a volley of abuse and oaths
delivered in the choicest Billingsgate, pounced down on her ill-used
husband, denounced Anarchy and the Anarchists--their morals, their
creeds, their hellish machinations; she called on Jehovah to chastise,
nay, utterly to destroy them, and soundly rated her consort for ever
having associated with such scoundrels. And thus this formidable
preacher of dynamite and disaster was borne off in mingled triumph and
disgrace by his indignant spouse.



CHAPTER IV

A POLICE SCARE


I left the office of the _Bomb_ towards 1 A.M., undecided whether
to weep or to laugh at what I had witnessed there. This, my first
introduction into an English Anarchist circle had certainly not been
very encouraging, but I was too deeply persuaded of the truth and
justice of the Anarchist doctrines to be deterred by such a beginning,
and I did not for one instant waver from my resolve to enter and take
part in the "movement." That some insincere and dishonest men and some
fools should also play their part in it I from the first recognised
as inevitable, but I could not see that this affected the Anarchist
principles or rendered it less necessary for those believing in them
to advocate and spread them. Dr. Armitage accompanied me part of my way
home and we talked the matter over _en route_. "Why trouble ourselves,"
he exclaimed, "about a few unprincipled men in such a wide, such a
universal movement? Our objects and ideals are too far above such
considerations to allow us to be influenced by them. Men like Myers are
but the outcome of unnatural and vitiated conditions; they are produced
by the very society which it is our object to abolish--as all manner
of disease is produced by vitiated air. With better conditions such men
will disappear; nay, the very possibility of their existence will be
gone."

"But in the meantime," I rejoined, "they are surely damaging our Cause,
and scenes like the one we have just witnessed would, if known to the
public, bring our party into ridicule and discredit."

"The Cause is too great and too high to be influenced by such men or
such scenes," answered the doctor with conviction. "Moreover it is our
duty to bring fresh blood and life into the party, so that no place will
be left to renegades of the Myers type."

And in face of Armitage's unswerving faith and optimism my moment of
disgust and perplexity passed, and I felt more than ever determined to
bring my quota of time and strength to the propagation of the Anarchist
ideals. "I have only seen a very limited and narrow circle," I said
to myself; "the field is wide, and I only know one obscure and unclean
corner of it. I cannot judge from this night's experience."

As far as the squalor of the men and their surroundings was concerned,
although it was at first something of a shock to me, I did not allow
myself to be disconcerted on its account. I had no desire or ambition to
be a mere dilettante Socialist, and as dirt and squalor had to be faced,
well, I was ready to face them. A famous Russian writer has described
a strange phase through which the Russian youth passed not many years
since, the "V. Narod" ("To the People!") movement, when young men
and girls by the thousands, some belonging to the highest classes
in society, fled from their families, tore themselves free from all
domestic and conventional yokes, persuaded that it was their duty to
serve the cause of the masses, and that in no way could they better
accomplish this object than by settling in the people's midst, living
their life, taking part in their work. I was passing through a similar
phase of mental evolution.

I felt a strong desire to free myself from all the ideas, customs, and
prejudices which usually influence my class, to throw myself into the
life and the work of the masses. Thus it was that I worked hard to learn
how to compose and print, that I might be of use to the Cause in the
most practical manner of all--the actual production of its literature.
Thus it was also that I resolutely hardened myself against any
instinctive sentiments of repulsion which the unclean and squalid
surroundings of the people might raise in me. I remember reading an
article by Tolstoi which appeared in the English press, dealing with
the conditions of the Russian _moujik_, in which he clearly and
uncompromisingly stated that in order to tackle the social problem, it
is necessary to tackle dirt and vermin with it. If you desire to reach
your _moujik_ you must reach him _à travers_ his dirt and his parasites:
if you are disinclined to face these, then leave your _moujik_ alone. It
was in fact a case of "take me, take my squalor." I determined to take
both.

Dr. Armitage left me at the corner of Oxford Circus, but before I had
taken many steps farther, I heard him suddenly turn round, and in an
instant he had come up with me again.

"By the way, Isabel," he exclaimed, "I was quite forgetting to mention
something I had done, to which I trust you will not object. You know
how full up my place is just now with hard-up comrades. Well I took the
liberty to send on to you a young Scotchman, I forget his name, who
has just tramped up from the North; a most interesting fellow, rather
taciturn, but with doubtless a good deal in him. He had nowhere to pass
the night, poor chap, and no money, so I told him that if he waited on
your doorstep some time after midnight you would be certain to give him
a night's lodgings when you returned. Did I do right?" and the doctor's
kindly face beamed with the look of a man who expected approbation.

"Ye--es," I gasped out, somewhat taken aback, "quite right, of course;"
for I felt that any hesitation would be feeble, a mere relic of
bourgeois prejudice.

And, sure enough, on reaching my domicile, I found installed on the
doorstep a most uncouth and villainous-looking tramp. Taciturn he
certainly was, for he scarcely opened his mouth to say "Good-evening,"
and indeed during the three days of his residence with me he hardly
ever articulated a sound. As I was getting out my latch-key the local
policeman chanced to pass: "That fellow has been hanging about for the
last hours, miss," he said to me. "Shall I remove him for you?"

"Certainly not," I replied firmly, and opening the door, I requested
my unknown comrade to enter. I can still see in my mind's eye that
constable's face. It looked unutterable things.

After conducting the tramp to the pantry, and letting him loose on a
cold pigeon-pie and other viands, and finally installing him on the
study sofa, I retired to my own apartment, well prepared to enjoy a good
night's rest.

This was destined, however, to be of short duration. Towards 6.30 I was
roused from sleep by a loud rat-tat at the front door and, the servants
not being up at such an hour, and suspecting that this early visit
was in some way connected with the Anarchists, I hastily slipped on a
wrapper and ran downstairs.

On opening the door I found one of the members of the previous night's
meeting, the taciturn hero of the potato tragedy.

"It's rather early to disturb you," he began, "but I came to let you
know that last night, after you had all gone, Comrades Banter and
O'Flynn were arrested."

"Arrested!" I exclaimed, as yet unused to such incidents; "why, what on
earth are they charged with?"

"Well," answered Carter, "the charge is not yet very clear, but so
far as we can understand, it is in some way connected with the Myers
business. They are charged with manufacturing explosives, or something
of the sort. The fact is, the police and Jacob Myers are at the bottom
of the whole matter, and Banter, O'Flynn, and Augustin have all played
into their hands."

"Come in here," I interrupted, leading the way to the dining-room. "Let
us sit down and talk the matter over together;" and we entered, Carter
casting a distinctly disapprobatory glance at the "bourgeois luxury" of
this apartment.

As soon as we were seated my companion returned to the question of the
moment. "I fear," he said, "that it is rather a serious affair for the
comrades. That Myers is a police emissary there can no longer be any
reasonable doubt, and the death of his brother is clear proof that he
has not been wasting his time lately. And it is only too likely that
the same hand which provided Augustin with explosives may have placed
similar material in the possession of Banter and O'Flynn."

"How abominable!" I exclaimed indignantly.

"Yes, but Anarchists should not be stupid enough to take any one into
their confidence in such matters," returned Carter. "It is merely
encouraging _mouchards_ and police plots. However, the question now
is--What can be done to help the comrades out of the mess?"

"I am willing to do my best," I answered; "only tell me how I can be of
use."

"You can be of great use, if you care to be," answered Carter. "A
barrister must be procured to defend them, witnesses must be found,
money procured (and here he cast a side-glance at my plate), and some
one ought to interview the comrades in Holloway, and take some food to
the poor fellows."

"I am quite willing to do my best in all these matters," I answered
enthusiastically.

Carter stayed some little while longer instructing me in the various
things I was to do, and then left me, retiring presumably to his double
bed again, for I saw no more of him till long after the trial was over.
He had handed the work over to me, and doubtless felt that so far as he
was personally concerned his responsibilities were at an end.

As soon as the morning papers arrived I scanned them eagerly and from
them learned further particulars of the arrest. A widespread conspiracy
was suspected, the object of which was to blow up the West End of
London, and leaders were devoted to the denunciation of the Anarchists
and their infamous teachings. Explosives, it was alleged, had been found
in the possession of the arrested men, "evidently destined to carry
into effect the deadly work which was only stopped by the hand of God in
Queen's Park three weeks ago."

Having disposed of a hasty breakfast, I left the house, and my morning
was spent in places which were new and strange to me--Holloway Jail,
the Old Jewry, and the Middle Temple. Holloway Prison was my first
destination, for before any other steps could be taken it was necessary
to ascertain what views the prisoners themselves held as to the course
to be adopted in their defence.

I awaited my turn in the prison waiting-room along with a motley crowd
of other visitors--burglars' and forgers' wives, pickpockets' mates, and
the mother of a notorious murderer among others. Their language was not
very choice when addressing the jailers, but sympathetic enough when
talking among themselves and inquiring of one another, "What's your man
up for?" or, "How did your mate get copped?" I felt painfully conscious
of the tameness of my reply: "It's a friend: incitement to murder." How
far more respectable murder itself would have sounded in the midst of
such superior crime!

One burglar's spouse confided to me that her husband had been "at it
for years, but this was the first time he'd been copped:" which latter
incident she seemed to consider an unpardonable infringement of the
privileges and rights of citizenship. She was a bright buxom little
woman and had evidently flourished on his plunder.

In striking contrast to the burglar's wife, I noticed the daughter of a
would-be suicide, a tall, beautiful girl, who formed a pathetic
contrast to her surroundings. Her unfortunate father--an unsuccessful
musician--had succumbed in the struggle for an honest life, and the
cares of a large family had driven him to desperation. As I gazed at the
poor girl with her tear-swollen eyes and noted her extreme thinness
and the shabbiness of her well-worn clothes, and as, from her, my eyes
turned to the cheerful burglar's wife, I meditated on the superiority of
virtue over dishonesty--especially in the reward accorded to it.

At last, having stated my name, the name of my prisoner, the
relationship or lack of relationship between us, and declared my
non-connection with the case, and having received a tin number in
return for this information, I was ushered through various passages and
apartments into a kind of dark cage, separated by a narrow passage from
a still darker one, in the depths of which I perceived my Anarchist,
O'Flynn, as soon as my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. I had
several questions to ask him during the few minutes at our disposal,
and conversation was anything but easy; for on all sides of me other
prisoners and their relatives were talking, weeping, arguing, disputing,
and shouting one another down with all their might and lungs.

Two things struck me in Holloway Prison on this my first visit to such
a place. Firstly, the outward cleanliness, and I might almost say
pleasantness, of the place; and secondly, the illogical nature of the
law which treats the unconvicted men, who in its eyes are consequently
innocent, like convicted criminals. Nothing could be more uncomfortable
and unattractive than the conditions under which the detained men are
allowed to see their relatives; no privacy of any sort is allowed them,
the time allotted is of the briefest, and only one visitor a day is
permitted to pass. The censorship over books allowed is very strict and
hopelessly stupid, and altogether everything is made as uncomfortable as
possible for those under detention.

Later in the course of my Anarchist career I had occasion to visit
Newgate on a similar errand, and was struck by the same incongruity in
the system. The external impression made by Newgate was very different,
however.

There is no suggestion of pleasantness about Newgate. It strikes you
indeed as the threshold of the gallows, and is calculated to arouse
qualms in the most strenuous upholder of capital punishment. A constant
sense of gloom is settled like a pall over the whole building, blacker
even than the soot and grime which encrust it. Inside, the dreary
atmosphere is ominous of the constant vicinity of the hangman's drop,
doors seem for ever to be swinging heavily and locking, keys and chains
clanking, and over all the uncompromising flagstaff looms like an
embodied threat.

After my many dreary wanderings round London, the clambering in and
out of omnibuses and other vehicles, and prison interviews, I found the
old-world tranquillity of the Temple quite a relief.

Here began a new order of search. I had to find a barrister, and that
without delay. But how, whom, and in what court or lane did the right
man dwell? During one brief moment indeed my thoughts turned towards our
family solicitor as a possible counsellor in this matter, but only to be
promptly diverted into other channels. That worthy gentleman's feelings
would certainly not have withstood so rude a shock. I could picture him,
in my mind's eye, slowly removing his gold pince-nez and looking at me
in blank but indulgent surprise, as at one who had suddenly taken leave
of her senses. No, this would never do. Barristers by the score must
surely reside in the labyrinths of the Temple, and I determined to seek
one first hand.

And thus it was that, after some little hesitation, I finally ascended
the stairs of a house in Fig Tree Court in the hope that J. B.
Armstrong, Esq., selected at random, might answer my purpose.

The clerk who opened the door looked politely surprised at my appearance
and inquired my business, into which I promptly plunged headfirst. His
eyebrows gradually ascended higher and higher into the regions of his
hair, and his face grew stern and sad as I proceeded. "Allow me to
inquire," he interrupted, "the name of the solicitor who is instructing
the case."

"I have not got a solicitor," I replied, somewhat taken aback.

Then he re-opened the door. "I feel confident, madam, that Mr. Armstrong
would not care to undertake such a case. Good morning."

I retired from this gentleman's presence neither bent nor broken, though
slightly disappointed. "So it is usual to engage a solicitor first," I
reflected, "and to communicate through him with the barrister, is it?
Well, a solicitor can't be afforded here and we must do without him."
The Anarchist in me revolted at such red-tapeism. "Well, here's for
another plunge," I said to myself; "let us try a B this time. C.
Bardolph sounds promising." And I ascended another staircase and knocked
at another inhospitable door.

Mr. Bardolph I saw in person, a very pompous gentleman with manners the
reverse of polite. He could scarcely contain his outraged feelings when
it came to the question of the solicitor. "I can have no connection
with such a case," he said firmly, and I again retired, feeling quite
disreputable.

My next defeat occurred in the chambers of Mr. Anthony C. Frazer. No
sooner did my eyes fall on that gentleman than I regretted my entry, and
the utter hopelessness of my mission was borne in upon my mind, for I
was beginning to realise the difficulties of the situation and to scent
failure in the very air. Mr. Frazer requested me to be seated and eyed
me curiously, as though I were some queer zoological specimen recently
escaped from captivity, and listened with an incredulous smile to my
narrative. He did not even wait for the missing solicitor. "This is
scarcely in my line, madam," he said, rising. "You have certainly made
some mistake." And he left his clerk to accompany me to the door.

I descended the stairs from this gentleman's chambers feeling distinctly
crestfallen and tired, and at my wits' ends as to where next to go,
when, turning the corner into another court, I became aware of rapid
footsteps in my pursuit, and next moment I was overtaken by the youth
who had ushered me out from the scene of my last defeat.

"I think, miss," he began, "that I can direct you to a--er--barrister
who would just do for your business. On no account say that I
recommended you to him, or you will get me into trouble. But you try
Mr. Curtis in Brick Court. He undertakes the defence of burglars
and swindlers and all sorts of people, and you'll find him cheap and
satisfactory."

I thanked the youth, and although this did not strike me as altogether
the most promising introduction, I thought it best to try my luck
in this new direction, and, having at length discovered the house, I
ascended the three rickety flights of stairs which led to Mr. Curtis's
apartment and entered.

This Curtis was a small, wizened old man, of obsolete cut, but
with remarkably up-to-date manners, and a pair of keen little eyes,
penetrating as Röntgen rays. His hair was weedy, and his clothes snuffy
and ill-fitting; but spite of this there was something uncommonly
brisk and wide awake about the little man, and a certain business-like
directness in his manner which impressed me favourably. I felt hopeful
at once.

One of the first remarks he addressed to me--for we primarily discussed
the financial aspect of his services--struck me by reason of its
uncompromising common sense. "Five guineas down and another three next
Tuesday, miss, and I make no inquiry where the money comes from," he
said, "not so long as it is the current coin of the realm and paid
punctually. Without this, however, I cannot undertake or proceed with
the case."

On my immediately producing the required sum he requested me to be
seated, and sitting down opposite me himself, he asked me for full
particulars of the case. These I gave him to the best of my ability and
he took notes.

The question of witnesses he tackled with the same uncompromising lack
of veneer which had characterised his remarks on the money question.
"Witnesses to character and so forth must be found," he said, "the
more authentic and reputable the better, but at all costs they must be
procured. Whom can you suggest?"

I confessed that I could for the moment think of nobody.

"You will think of somebody," he replied persuasively, "you _must_
remember somebody," and there was that in his voice which did not brook
or encourage contradiction, "some one in a respectable position, of
course," he continued, "a man pursuing one of the liberal professions,
or a business man of means. Plenty of doctors and professional men
among your people, are there not? The evidence of such a man would
carry weight. The court's belief in a witness's veracity is, generally
speaking, proportionate to his means. Doubtless you will be able to
think of a desirable man ... who knows the prisoners," he added, rapidly
turning over his notes, and speaking in such a manner as to convey to
me the idea that the exact extent of the witness's knowledge of the
prisoners was not of any very great consequence, so long as he was
prepared to swear to their respectability, and that his banking account
and general appearance were satisfactory.

"I will look round and let you know the result to-morrow," I answered.

"Good," replied Curtis, "two witnesses at least, and men of position and
education at all costs. Good afternoon."

I had enough to do during the remainder of the day in finding those
witnesses, but found they were at last, though not without a tremendous
effort on my part and some considerable degree of ingenuity. When
attired in some of my brother Raymond's discarded clothes, and
produced for Curtis's inspection the following day, they really made
a respectable couple, and I felt proud of them--one a physician of
superior accomplishments and aristocratic appearance, the other a
master-tailor, of prosperous if not very _distingué_ presence. I
likewise discovered a cabman who had been present in Hyde Park at an
allegedly incriminating speech made by Banter; and on jogging his memory
with a little whisky he distinctly recalled several points valuable to
the defence.

Up till the very day of the trial my time was kept well occupied with
such errands. Indeed, remarkable as the fact may appear, practically the
whole labour of preparing the defence devolved upon me.

It was neither an easy nor a very encouraging task. The greater number
of the English Anarchists mysteriously disappeared at this approach of
danger. Mindful of the truth of the axiom that discretion is the better
part of valour, A thought it well to suddenly recollect his duties
towards his family; B discovered that he had a capacious stomach, which
required feeding; C, that the Anarchist policy was in discord with his
own true principles. At such a moment, therefore, and surrounded, or
rather unsurrounded by such men, the task in front of me was not easy,
and in the actual state of public opinion it was not very hopeful
either.

Public feeling was against the Anarchists. So long as violence and
outrage had been reserved entirely for the benefit of foreign climes,
the British public had regarded the Anarchists with tolerance and
equanimity. But the mysterious death of Myers had alarmed and disquieted
it, and heavy sentences were generally invoked against the prisoners.

That the whole conspiracy was a got-up affair between Jacob Myers and
the police was evident. Neither Banter nor O'Flynn was a dangerous
man; a little loud and exaggerated talk was the utmost extent of their
harmfulness. Neither of them was any better capable of making a bomb
than of constructing a flying-machine, and they were less capable of
throwing it than of flying. But political detectives would have a slow
time of it in this country unless they occasionally made a vigorous
effort on their own behalf, and an unscrupulous and impecunious man like
Myers proved a valuable tool to help such gentlemen along, and fools of
the Banter type suitable victims.

And thus it was that these two men now found themselves in the dock with
twelve serious-minded tradesmen sitting in solemn conclave to consider
their crimes.

The trial itself was a ridiculous farce. Jacob Myers, who would have
been the one witness of any importance, was not subpoenaed; he had in
fact discreetly quitted the country under his wife's escort. The police,
with imperturbable gravity, brought ginger-beer bottles into court which
had been found in O'Flynn's apartment, and which, they averred, could be
converted into very formidable weapons of offence. Many gaseous speeches
made by the prisoners, or attributed to them, were solemnly brought up
against them, and a shudder ran through the court at the mention of such
phrases as "wholesale assassination" and "war to the death."

The evidence, however, sufficed to impress the jury with the extreme
gravity of the case and to alarm the public, and the prisoners were
found guilty.

I well recollect the last day of the trial, which I attended
throughout in more or less remote regions of the Old Bailey, recruiting
recalcitrant witnesses, sending food in to the defendants, &c. Two other
cases were being tried at the same time, one of which was a particularly
revolting murder, for which three persons were on trial. The prisoners'
relatives were waiting below in a state of painful excitement. "Guilty
or not guilty," was on all their lips, "release or penal servitude, life
or death, which was it to be?" Friends were constantly running in and
out of the court giving the women news of the progress of the trials.
"It is looking black for the prisoners!" "There is more hope!" "There is
no hope!" and finally "guilty" in all the cases was reported. The wife
of a horrible German murderer who had strangled his employer's wife,
while a female accomplice played the piano to divert her children's
attention from her cries, swooned away at the news. O'Flynn's old mother
went into hysterics and became quite uncontrollable in her grief when,
a few minutes later the news, "Five years' penal servitude," was brought
down.



CHAPTER V

TO THE RESCUE


The first weeks of my experience in the Anarchist camp had flown by with
astounding rapidity. The chapter of my experiences had opened with the
expulsion of an alleged spy and _agent provocateur_, and had closed with
a sentence of penal servitude passed on two of my new-found comrades.
Between these two terminal events I seemed to have lived ages, and so I
had, if, as I hold, experience counts for more than mere years. Holloway
and Newgate, Slater's Mews and the Middle Temple, barristers and
solicitors, judges and juries and detectives; appointments in queer
places to meet queer people--all this had passed before me with the
rapidity of a landscape viewed from the window of an express train; and
now that the chapter had closed, I found that it was but the preface to
the real business I had set my shoulder to.

The morning after the conclusion of the trial I met Armitage by
appointment, and together we wended our way towards Slater's Mews. The
doctor was preoccupied, and for some minutes we proceeded in silence;
the problem of what to do with the _Bomb_ was evidently weighing on
his mind. At last he spoke: "It is our duty," he said, "to see that
the movement be not unduly crippled by the loss of these two men. Poor
fellows, they are doing their duty by the Cause, and we must not shirk
ours. The _Bomb_ must be kept going at all costs; we can ill afford to
lose two workers just now, but the loss of the paper would be a yet more
severe blow to our movement. How thankful I am that you are with us!
It is always so. The governments think to crush us by imprisoning or
murdering our comrades, and for one whom they take from us ten come to
the fore. I am sure you must agree with me as to the paper."

"I quite agree with you in the main," I replied, "but I fear that the
_Bomb_ itself is past hope. It strikes me it had got into somewhat
bad hands, and I fear it would be useless to try to set it on its feet
again. It is hardly fair to a paper to give it a Jacob Myers for editor.
Really it seems to me to have died a natural death. The entire staff
has disappeared--Myers, the editor; Banter, the publisher; O'Flynn, the
printer--who remains? where are the others? It seems to me they have all
vanished and left no trace behind."

"Oh, that is hardly the case, I think," said the doctor in a tone
of deprecation. "I went up to the office last night and found Short
sleeping on the premises."

"Short? Is not he the man whom I first saw wrapped in the red flag of
glory?"

"Yes, that is the man; perhaps his appearance is somewhat
disadvantageous, but he is constant to the Cause, anyhow."

"Well, I should not have thought him much of a staff to lean on; still,
appearances are often deceptive. But, anyhow, do you not think it would
be advisable to start a new paper, rather than to attempt to galvanise a
corpse?"

"The idea would not be a bad one; in fact I think you are right, quite
right," returned Armitage. "It is not wise to put new wine into old
skins. Anyhow, here we are, I dare say other comrades have mustered in
the office who will have something to say in the matter."

We had now reached our destination, and passing the curious scrutiny of
several cabmen and scavengers assembled at the entrance of the mews, we
prepared to ascend the break-neck ladder leading to the office. I had
but put my foot on the first step when I heard the loud yelping of a dog
followed by a string of oaths, and the office door opened, emitting a
tall brawny man in shirt-sleeves with a very red face and close-cropped
hair, who appeared holding out at arm's length a pair of tongs which
gripped some repulsive-looking fronts and collars. On seeing me, he
exclaimed, "Take care," and proceeded to drop the objects on a heap of
rubbish below. We were both somewhat surprised at this apparition, but
realised without difficulty that the office was still in the possession
of the police. They were, in fact, contrary to the doctor's expectation,
the sole occupants of the place. The comrades had not seen fit so far to
muster round the paper. To say there was none, however, is an injustice,
for there on the sofa, still huddled in the red flag, lay Short,
apparently little affected by what had taken place since I last saw him.
He had been aroused from his slumbers by the yelping of his dog, whose
tail had been trodden on by one of the detectives, and he had raised
himself on his elbow, and was looking round, uttering curses volubly.
He nodded slightly on seeing us enter, but did not change his position.
There he lay, quite heroic in his immovable sloth; of all the many
fighters he alone remained staunch at his post; and that because he was
positively too lazy to move away from it.

Dr. Armitage on entering had gone up to one of the three detectives and
spoken to him, and the man now turned to me.

"We are just having a final look round before leaving, miss," he
remarked. "It is not at all pleasant work, I assure you, to be put in to
search such a filthy place. Look there," he exclaimed, pointing at the
recumbent Short with his outstretched tongs. "I shall have to burn every
rag I have on when it is over, and I'd advise you to be careful," and he
resumed his occupation, which consisted in raking out some old papers,
while his two companions, having contrived to resume an official
appearance, prepared to leave.

The police once gone Dr. Armitage and I found ourselves in sole
possession of the office and the lethargic Short. It was no sinecure, to
be sure. Heaps of "pie," some due to the police and some to Banter, who
previous to his arrest had put his foot through several "forms" which it
was inadvisable to let fall into the hands of the police, encumbered the
floor. Everything was intensely chaotic and intensely dirty, from the
type cases and the other scanty belongings to the dormant compositor.
Armitage understood nothing of printing and I very little, and there we
stood in the midst of a disorganised printing-office whence all had fled
save only the unsavoury youth on the couch. I looked at Armitage and
Armitage looked at me, and such was the helpless dismay depicted in our
faces that we both broke into a laugh.

"Well," I said at last, "what shall we do? Suggest something. We cannot
stay on here."

"The only thing I can think of," he rejoined after a pause, "is that
I should go around and look up some of the comrades at their addresses
whilst you remain here and get Short to help you put up the type, &c.,
as best you can, so that we may remove it all elsewhere. Here certainly
nothing can be done and we must start our new paper amidst new
surroundings."

"So you are thinking of starting a new paper?"

We looked round, surprised at this interruption, for Short had
apparently returned to his slumbers, but we now saw that he had emerged
from the banner and was standing behind us, fully dressed (I discovered
later on that he had discarded dressing and undressing as frivolous
waste of time), a queer uncouth figure with his long touzled black hair
and sallow, unhealthy face. He had a short clay pipe firmly set between
his teeth, and his large lips were parted in a smile. He held his head
slightly on one side, and his whole attitude was somewhat deprecatory
and cringing.

"Well," said the doctor, "Isabel and I think that would be the best
plan. You see the _Bomb_ seems thoroughly disorganised, and we think
it would be easier and better to start afresh. I was just saying that I
would go round and hunt up some of the comrades and get their views on
the subject."

"Oh," rejoined Short, "you can save yourself that trouble. One half of
them will accuse you of being a police spy, the others will be ill or
occupied--in short, will have some excuse for not seeing you. They
are all frightened out of their lives. Since the arrest of Banter and
O'Flynn I have not seen one of them near the place, though I have been
here all the time."

This remark confirmed what we both half suspected; and as Short, who by
right of possession seemed authorised to speak on behalf of the _Bomb_,
seemed willingly to fall in with our idea of starting a new paper,
taking it for granted--which I was not exactly prepared for--that he
would install himself in the new premises as compositor, we decided to
take practical steps towards the move. Short informed us that six weeks'
rent was owing, and that the landlord threatened a distraint if his
claims were not immediately satisfied; and in spite of the advice,
"Don't pay rent to robber landlords," which stared us in the face,
inscribed in bright red letters on the wall, I and Armitage between us
sacrificed the requisite sum to the Cause.

Whilst we were discussing these matters the dog warned us by a prolonged
bark that some one was approaching, and the new-comer soon appeared. He
greeted Short, who introduced him to us as Comrade M'Dermott. He shot a
scrutinising glance at us from his keen grey eyes and proceeded to shake
hands with friendly warmth.

He was a very small man, certainly not more than five feet high, thin
and wiry, with grey hair and moustache, but otherwise clean-shaven. His
features were unusually expressive and mobile from his somewhat scornful
mouth to his deep-set, observant eyes, and clearly denoted the absence
of the stolid Saxon strain in his blood. His accent too, though not that
of an educated man, was quite free from the hateful Cockney twang. His
dress was spare as his figure, but though well worn there was something
spruce and trim about his whole demeanour which indicated that he was
not totally indifferent to the impression he created on others. He
looked round the "office," took a comprehensive glance at Short, who was
occupying the only available stool and smoking hard with a meditative
air, and then walked over to me, and addressing me in an undertone, with
the same ease as if he had known me all my life, he said, with a twinkle
in his eye, jerking his head in the direction of Short, "There's a
rotten product of a decaying society, eh?" This remark was so unexpected
and yet so forcibly true, that I laughed assent.

"So you're the only ones up here," he continued. "I expected as much
when I heard of the raid on the office. I was up in the North doing a
little bit of peddling round the country, when I read the news, and
I thought I'd come to London to see what was up. What do you think of
doing with the paper anyway? It seems a pity the old _Bomb_ should die.
It would mean the loss of the only revolutionary organ in England."

"Oh, it must not die," I replied, "or at least if it cannot be kept up,
another paper must take its place. Comrade Armitage agrees with me in
thinking that that would be the best plan. You see this place looks
altogether hopeless."

Armitage, who had been engaged in looking over some papers, now joined
us and the conversation became general.

"Well, how did you get on up North?" inquired Short, who seemed to wake
up to a sense of actuality. "How did you hit it off with young Jackson?
Did you find him of much use?"

"Use!" retorted M'Dermott with an infinite depth of scorn in his voice.
"A fat lot of use he was. If it was a matter of putting away the grub,
I can tell you he worked for two, but as to anything else, he made me
carry his pack as well as my own, on the pretext that he had sprained
his ankle, and his only contribution to the firm was a frousy old
scrubbing-brush which he sneaked from a poor woman whilst I was selling
her a ha'p'orth of pins. He seemed to think he'd done something mighty
grand--'expropriation' he called it; pah, those are your English
revolutionists!" and he snorted violently.

Short gave vent to an unpleasing laugh. He always seemed to take
pleasure at any proof of meanness or cowardice given by his fellows.
Armitage looked pained. "Such things make us long for the Revolution,"
he said. "This rotten society which breeds such people must be swept
away. We must neglect no means to that end, and our press is one. So now
let's set to work to move the plant and start a new paper, as we seem
all agreed to that plan. Who'll go and look for a suitable workshop?"

Short volunteered, but M'Dermott scouted the idea, declaring that the
mere sight of him would be enough to frighten any landlord, and this we
all, including Short, felt inclined to agree with. At last we decided
to fall in with M'Dermott's suggestion that he and I should sally forth
together. "You see, my dear," he said with almost paternal benevolence,
"you will be taken for my grand-daughter and we shall soften the heart
of the most obdurate landlord."

The field of our researches was limited by a few vital considerations.
The rent must not be high. For the present anyhow, the expenses of
the paper would have to be defrayed by Armitage and myself. Short had
proposed himself as printer and compositor, on the tacit understanding
of free board and lodging, and the right to make use of the plant
for his own purposes; I was willing to give my time to the material
production of the paper, and to contribute to its maintenance to the
best of my ability; and Armitage's time and means were being daily more
and more absorbed by the propaganda, to the detriment of his practice;
but he was not of those who can palter with their conscience. The
individual initiative inculcated by Anarchist principles implied
individual sacrifices. Another consideration which limited our choice
was that the office must be fairly central, and not too far from my
home, as, spite of my enthusiasm for Anarchy, I could not wholly neglect
household duties. We talked over these points as we walked along, and
M'Dermott suggested Lisson Grove, where a recent epidemic of smallpox
had been raging, as likely to be a fairly cheap neighbourhood, but after
tramping about and getting thoroughly weary, we had to acknowledge that
there was nothing for us in that quarter. We were both hungry and tired,
and M'Dermott suggested a retreat to a neighbouring Lockhart's. Seated
before a more than doubtful cup of tea, in a grimy room, where texts
stared at us from the walls, we discussed the situation, and decided
to inquire about a workshop which we saw advertised, and which seemed
promising. Our destination led us out of the slummy wilderness into
which we had strayed, into cleaner and more wholesome quarters, and at
last we stopped before some quite imposing-looking premises. "We seem
destined to consort with the cabbing trade," I remarked; "the
last office was over a mews, this place seems to belong to a
carriage-builder." There was, however, no other connection between the
unsavoury mews and the aristocratic carriage-yard, whose proprietor,
resplendent in side-whiskers and a shiny chimney-pot hat, advanced
to meet us, a condescending smile diffusing his smug countenance. I
explained to him our object, and he showed us over the shop, which
consisted in a large loft, well lighted and fairly suitable, at the back
of the premises.

In answer to Mr. White's inquiries, I informed him that I needed it as a
printing-office, for a small business I had, and he quite beamed on me,
evidently considering me a deserving young person, and expressed the
opinion that he had no doubt I should get on in that neighbourhood.

M'Dermott, who was greatly enjoying the fun of the situation, here
broke in: "Yes, sir, my grand-daughter deserves success, sir; she's a
hardworking girl, is my poor Emily," and here he feigned to wipe away a
tear, whilst casting a most mischievous side-glance at me.

"Dear, dear, very affecting, I'm sure," muttered the prosperous
carriage-builder.

Everything was soon satisfactorily settled. I gave him my name and
address, and that of my brother's Socialist friend as a reference, and
we agreed that I should move in on the following Monday morning.

Great was the amusement at Slater's Mews at the account of our
adventures, given with a few enlargements by M'Dermott. He had an
artist's soul, and would never consent to destroy the effect of a tale
by slavish subservience to facts.

"Well, I fear he will find he has taken in wolves in sheep's clothing,"
Armitage remarked; "anyhow, I am thankful that matter is settled and
that we can get to work without further delay. I met Kosinski, and he
has promised to give us a hand with the move. I shall not be able to be
here all the time as I have to attend an operation on Monday, but I will
put in an hour or two's work in the morning. I suppose I can get in if
I come here at five on Monday morning?" he said turning to Short who was
"dissing pie," his inseparable clay pipe still firmly set between his
yellow and decayed teeth.

"Oh, yes. I shan't be up, but you can get in," the latter surlily
remarked. He was evidently no devotee of early hours.

On Monday a hard day's work awaited me. At Slater's Mews I found the
poor doctor, who had already been there some two hours, packing up
the literature, tying up forms, and occasionally turning to Short for
instruction or advice.

The latter, seated on a packing-case, was regaling himself on a bloater
and cheesecakes, having disposed of which he took up a flute and played
some snatches of music-hall melodies. He seemed quite unconcerned at
what took place around him, contenting himself with answering Armitage's
questions. Soon after I arrived on the scene Kosinski appeared. It was
the first time I had seen him since the memorable evening at Chiswick,
and I felt a little nervous in his presence, overcome by a half-guilty
fear lest he should think I was merely dallying, not working in true
earnest. I was conscious of my own sincerity of purpose, yet feared his
mental verdict on my actions, for I now realised that his uncompromising
words and scathing denunciation of dilettanteism had had much to do with
my recent conduct; more than all Armitage's enthusiastic propagandising,
much as I liked, and, indeed, admired the latter. Kosinski shook hands
with Armitage and Short. The latter had stepped forward and assumed an
air of unwonted activity, having pulled off his coat and rolled up his
shirt sleeves, and there he stood hammering up a form and whistling
"It ain't all Lavender"--very appropriate verses, considering the
surroundings. The Russian merely recognised my presence with a slight
bow, not discourteous, but characterised by none of the doctor's
encouraging benevolence; I, however, felt more honoured than snubbed,
and worked away with a will.

"Well, I must be going," said Armitage; "it is nearly ten, and at
half-past eleven I have an appointment at a patient's house. You will
stay, won't you, Kosinski, and help our comrades to move the plant?"

"I will do what I can," replied the Russian. "I do not understand
printing, but I will wheel the barrow, and do anything I may be told."

"That's right. Well, good luck to you, comrades. I will try and get
round about five. I suppose you will then be at the new place?"

"Oh, yes," I replied, "you will be in time to help us get things
ship-shape."

"Well, good-bye, Isabel; good-bye, comrades," and he was off.

For some time we all worked with a will. Kosinski was set to stowing
away the literature in packing-cases. Short "locked up" forms and
"dissed" pie, and I busied myself over various jobs. M'Dermott had
come round, and he stood at my elbow discussing the propaganda and
the situation generally. He was much rejoiced at the turn matters
were taking on the Continent, and deplored the lukewarmness of English
Anarchists. "You cannot have a revolution without revolutionists," was a
favourite phrase of his, and he was at no trouble to conceal his opinion
of most of the comrades. I was as yet too new to the movement and too
enthusiastic to endorse all his expressions, but the little man was
congenial to me; his Irish wit made him good company, and there was an
air of independent self-reliance about him that appealed to me.

"That Kosinski's a good fellow," he continued. "He knows what Revolution
means. Not but what there is good material in England too, but it is
_raw_ material, ignorant and apathetic, hoodwinked and bamboozled by the
political humbugs."

"Have you known Kosinski long?" I inquired, interrupting him, for I saw
he was fairly started on a long tirade.

"Oh, some seven years," he replied. "He was over here in '87 at the time
of the unemployed riots; he and I were at the bottom of a lot of that
movement, and we should have had all London in revolt had it not been
for the palaver and soft-soap of the official labour-leaders. After that
he went to America, and has only been back in England some six months."

Our preparations were now well advanced, and M'Dermott and I set out to
procure a barrow whereon to transport our belongings.

I had expected on my return to find everything in readiness. Short had
spoken as if he would work wonders, and I had hoped that within an hour
we should be off. What was my surprise, then, to find that during the
half-hour of my absence a change had come o'er the scene. Instead of
the noise of the mallet locking up forms, the melodious notes of a flute
greeted my ear as I approached the office, and I must confess that my
heart sank, though I was not yet prepared for the truth. On entering
I found things just as I had left them, not a whit more advanced, but
Short was again seated, and opposite him lounged the weak-kneed youth
whom I had noted on the occasion of my first group-meeting, Simpkins by
name, as I had since found out; between them stood the small hand-press
which Short had promised to take to pieces for removal, on the "bed" of
which now stood three bottles of ginger-beer, a parcel of repulsive and
indigestible-looking pastry, and a packet of tobacco. My look of dismay
and surprise was answered by Short, who explained that his friend had
come up, bringing with him the wherewithal for this carouse; which
statement Simpkins supplemented by the information that he had been
occupied that week in "planting" an aunt and possessing himself of his
share of the good lady's property.

"My married sister got in first, but father waited his opportunity, and
whilst they went out to 'ave a 'alf-pint at the pub round the corner, he
got in. They thought themselves mighty clever, for they had locked the
door and taken the key, but father got in by the scullery window
which they had forgotten to latch, and when they came back they found
themselves sold. The guv'nor's a sharp one, 'e is, but I was fly too; 'e
always keeps me short, grumbles 'cause I won't let myself be exploited
by the capitalists; but I did 'im this time. I 'ad a good old-fashioned
nose round whilst the guv'nor left me in charge whilst 'e went for a
drink, and I found ten bob the old girl 'ad 'idden away in a broken
teapot, so I just pocketed 'em. We planted 'er the day before yesterday;
she was insured for twelve quid, an' everything was done 'ansome.
Yesterday I felt awful bad, but to-day I thought I'd come an' see 'ow
the paiper was getting on."

"Well, you see we're moving," I said. "If you care to give us a hand
you'll be welcome. Come, Short, the barrow's here; let's get the things
down."

"Oh, I'm going to have a half-day off," was his cool reply; "I'm tired.
Armitage woke me up at five this morning, and I couldn't get any sleep
after he came, he made such a damned noise."

"But surely you're going to help us get this move over; to-morrow you
can sleep all day if you like."

"You can do as you like; I'm not going to move," was his only reply,
and he calmly filled his pipe and puffed luxuriously. Simpkins giggled
feebly; he evidently was wavering as to his proper course, but Short's
calm insolence won the day.

I confess that at the moment I was blind to the humour of the situation.
I fancy people with a keen sense of humour are rarely enthusiasts;
certainly when I began to see the ludicrous side of much of what I had
taken to be the hard earnest of life, my revolutionary ardour cooled.
My indignation was ready to boil over; I could have wept or stamped with
annoyance. "Oh, but you _must_ help!" I exclaimed. "You promised. How
are we ever to do anything if you go on like this?"

Short merely puffed at his pipe complacently.

For the first time since his arrival Kosinski spoke. I had almost
forgotten his presence; he was working quietly, getting things ready,
and now he stepped forward.

"The comrade is right," he said; "he does not want to work; leave him
alone; we can do very well without him. Let us get off at once. There is
enough ready to make a first load, anyhow."

The calm indifference of Kosinski seemed to take some of the starch out
of Short, who looked more than foolish as he sat over his ginger-beer,
trying to feign interest in the flagging conversation with Simpkins. I
was relieved at the turn matters had taken, which threw the ridicule on
the other side, and before long we were ready, little M'Dermott having
made himself very useful, running actively up and down the ladder laden
with parcels. We must have looked a queer procession as we set off. The
long stooping figure of Kosinksi, wrapped in his inseparable dark-blue
overcoat, his fair hair showing from under his billycock hat, pushing
the barrow, heavily laden with type-cases and iron forms, packets of
literature and reams of printing paper; I in my shabby black dress and
sailor hat, bearing the furled-up banner, and M'Dermott following on
behind, carrying with gingerly care a locked-up form of type, the work
of poor Armitage, which was in imminent danger of falling to pieces in
the middle of the street. We found that quite a crowd of loafers of both
sexes, the habitués of the "Myrtle Grove Tavern," had assembled outside
to witness our departure, and, as I never missed an opportunity to
spread the light, I distributed among them some hand-bills entitled
"What is Anarchy?" regardless of their decidedly hostile attitude. The
London loafer has little wit or imagination, and their comments did
not rise above the stale inquiry as to where we kept our bombs, and the
equally original advice bestowed upon Kosinksi to get 'is 'air cut. A
half-hour's walk brought us to our destination, but our Odyssey was not
so soon to end. The man who accompanied the carriage-builder when he
showed us over the shop was waiting at the entrance to the yard, and,
recognising me, he asked me to step into the office. He had a rather
scared appearance, but I did not notice this particularly at the moment,
and supposing that Mr. White wanted to give me the keys I told my
friends I should be back in a minute. The carriage-builder was awaiting
me in the little office where he usually received his fashionable
clients. He was still the self-same consequential figure, resplendent
in broadcloth and fine linen, but the benevolent smile had vanished from
his unctuous features, and he looked nervous and ill at ease.

"I am sorry to say, Miss Meredith," he began, "that I find I am unable
to let you the shop. I much regret having caused you inconvenience, but
it is quite impossible."

This was a staggerer for me. Everything had been settled. What could
have happened?

"What on earth does this mean?" I exclaimed. "Why, Saturday evening you
called at my house and told me you were satisfied with the references,
and that I could move in to-day."

The poor man looked quite scared at my indignation.

"I am very sorry, I assure you, but I cannot let you the shop," was all
he replied.

"But surely you will give me some explanation of this extraordinary
behaviour. I am not to be trifled with in this way, and if you will not
answer me I will get some of my friends to speak to you."

This last threat seemed quite to overcome him. He looked despairingly at
me, and then determined to throw himself on my mercy.

"Well, you see, the fact is I did not quite understand the nature of
your business--that is to say, I thought it was a printing business just
like any other."

Light dawned upon me. The police had evidently been at work here. I
was too new to the revolutionary movement to have foreseen all the
difficulties which beset the path of the propagandist.

"And since Saturday night you have come to the conclusion that it is
an _un_usual printing office?" I inquired somewhat derisively. I
could still see in my mind's eye the benevolent smile and patronising
condescension with which he had beamed on M'Dermott and me on the
occasion of our first meeting.

"You are a sensible person, Miss Meredith," he said, with an almost
appealing accent, "and you will, I am sure, agree with me that it
would be impossible for me to have revolutionary papers printed on my
premises. It would not be fair to my clients; it would interfere with my
business success. Of course every one has a right to their opinions, but
I had no idea that you were connected with any such party. In fact I
had gone out of town, and intended staying away two or three days when
yesterday afternoon I received this telegram," and he handed me the
document. It was from Scotland Yard, and warned him to return at once as
the police had something of importance to communicate.

"Of course I came back," continued the tremulous White. "At first I
thought it must be all a mistake, but I was shown a copy of the _Bomb_,
and told that that was what you intended printing. Now you must agree
that this is not a suitable place for such an office."

"I cannot see," I replied with some warmth, "that it can make any
difference to you what I print. I pay you your rent, and we are quits.
Of course if you refuse to give me the keys of the shop I cannot
force myself in, but I have reason to think that you will regret your
extraordinary conduct."

"Is that a threat?" inquired White, growing visibly paler, and glancing
nervously towards the door.

"No, it is only the expression of a personal opinion," I replied. At
this moment the door opened, and M'Dermott appeared.

"Well, are you coming with the keys? We are getting tired of waiting,"
he inquired.

"This man," said I, pointing with scorn at the abject carriage-builder,
"now refuses to let me the shop on the ground that he disapproves of
revolutionary literature."

M'Dermott gave a low whistle, "Oh, that's how the wind blows, is it?"
he remarked; "I thought I saw some 'narks' hanging round. So this is the
turn your benevolent interest in my grand-daughter has taken? Well,
come along, Isabel, we have no time to waste, and I am sure this good
gentleman will not feel comfortable till we are off the premises. He is
afraid we might waste some dynamite on him, I do believe."

At the word dynamite White seized a bell-pull and rang it violently,
and we could not help laughing heartily, as we left the office, at
his evident terror. Whilst crossing the yard we saw two well-known
detectives lurking on the premises. White had evidently thought it
necessary to take precautions against possible outrage.

We found Kosinski patiently waiting. He did not seem much surprised at
our news, and in answer to my inquiry as to what on earth we were to do,
he suggested that we should take the barrow back to Slater's Mews, and
then resume our search for a shop. This advice was so obvious and tame
that it almost surprised me coming from him, still there was nothing for
it, and back we went, looking somewhat more bedraggled (it had now come
on to rain) and decidedly crestfallen. We found Short as we had left
him, but I was still too indignant at his conduct to deign to answer
his inquiries. I was tired and worried, and could almost have wept with
annoyance. Kosinski at last came to the rescue. When he had brought the
last parcel up the stairs and deposited it on the floor he came up to
me.

"If you like we might go and look at a workshop I have heard of and
which might suit. Some German comrades rented it for some time; I
believe they used it as a club-room, but I dare say it would answer your
purpose, and I believe it is still unoccupied."

Of course I readily assented; it was indeed a relief to hear of some
definite proposal, and together we set off. Little M'Dermott, who
evidently did not much relish Short's company, armed himself with
leaflets and set off on a propagandising expedition, and Kosinski and I
wended our way in search of the office. At last we stopped in front of a
little green-grocer's shop in a side street off the Hampstead Road. "The
place I mean is behind here," explained Kosinski; "the woman in the shop
lets it; we will go in and speak with her."

Kosinski stepped inside and addressed a voluminous lady who emerged from
the back shop.

"Oh, good day, Mr. Cusins," she exclaimed, a broad smile overspreading
her face; "what can I do for you?"

Kosinksi explained our errand, and the good lady preceded us up a narrow
yard which led to the workshop in question. She turned out to be as
loquacious as she was bulky, a fair specimen of the good-natured cockney
gossip, evidently fond of the convivial glass, not over-choice in
her language, the creature of her surroundings, which were not of the
sweetest, but withal warm-hearted and sympathetic, with that inner
hatred of the police common to all who belong to the coster class, and
able to stand up for her rights, if necessary, both with her tongue and
her fists. She showed us over a damp, ill-lighted basement shop, in
a corner of which was a ladder leading to a large, light shop, which
seemed well suited to our purpose, meanwhile expatiating on its
excellencies. I was satisfied with it, and would have settled everything
in a few minutes, but Mrs. Wattles was not to be done out of her jaw.

"I'm sure you'll like this place, my dear, and I'm glad to let it to
you, for I've known your 'usband some time. I used to see 'im come when
those others Germans was 'ere, and----"

"Kosinski is not my husband," I interrupted. "I'm not married."

"Oh, I see, my dear; just keeping company, that's all. Well, I don't
blame yer; of course, 'e is a furriner; but I'm not one to say as
furriners ain't no class. I was in love with an I-talian organ-grinder
myself, when I was a girl, and I might 'ave married 'im for all I know,
ef 'e 'adn't got run in for knifin' a slop what was always a aggravatin'
'im, poor chap. And I don't say but what I shouldn't be as well off as
what I am now, for Wattles, 'e ain't much class."

I ventured some sympathetic interjection and tried to get away, but her
eye was fixed on me and I could not escape.

"It was a long time before I forgot 'im, and when my girl was born I
called 'er Ave Maria, which was a name I used to 'ear 'im say, and a
very pretty one too, though Wattles does say it's a 'eathen-sounding
name for the girl. I was just like you in those days, my dear," she
said, surveying my slim figure with a critical eye. "No one thought I
should make old bones, I was that thin and white, and nothin' seemed to
do me no good; I took physic enough to kill a 'orse, and as for heggs
an' such like I eat 'undreds. But, lor', they just went through me like
jollop. It was an old neighbour of ours as cured me; she said, says she,
'What you want, Liza, is stimilant; stout 'ud soon set you right.'
An' sure enough it did. I took 'er advice, an' I've never 'ad a day's
illness since, though Wattles's been mighty troublesome at times, and
would 'av driven me to my grave long ago if it 'adn't been for stout.
You should take it, miss; you'd soon be as like me, and as 'arty too.
Two glasses at dinner and two at supper is my allowance, and if I chance
to miss it, why I jest seems to fall all of a 'eap like, an' I 'ears my
in'ards a gnawin' and a gnawin' and a cryin' out for stout."

I felt quite overcome at this charming picture of my future self, if
only I followed Mrs. Wattles's advice. I expressed my intention of
thinking the matter over, and, after shaking hands, paying a deposit
on the rent--which she informed me she should expend in drinking my
health--and settling to move in on the morrow, I made good my escape.

Cheered and elated by our success, I returned with Kosinksi to the
office of the _Bomb_. He was naturally very nervous and reticent with
women, but the events of this long day had broken down some of the
barriers between us, and I found it less difficult to talk to him as we
trudged on our way.

"I hope you will help us with the new paper," I said. "I feel really
very unfit for the responsibility of such a task, but Armitage thinks
I shall manage all right, and I do not wish to be a mere amateur, and
shirk the hard work entailed by our propaganda. You see, I remember your
words that night at Chiswick. I hope you do not still think that I am
merely playing."

He positively blushed at my words, and stammered out: "Oh no, I do not
in the least doubt your sincerity. I am sure you do your best, only I
have seen so much harm done by women that I am always on my guard when
they propose to share in our work. But you are not a woman: you are a
Comrade, and I shall take much interest in your paper."

We met Armitage coming up Red Lion Street. He greeted us with a look
of relief. "Where on earth have you been?" he exclaimed; "I went to the
address you gave me, but when I inquired for you the fellow looked as
scared as if he had seen a ghost, and said he knew nothing about you,
that I must have made a mistake; and when I insisted and showed him the
address you had written, seemed to lose his head, and rang a bell and
called for help as if I were going to murder him. I thought he must
be mad or drunk, and so turned on my heel and came away. In the yard I
recognised some of our friends the detectives, and I felt quite anxious
about you. At Slater's Mews the door is locked; there is no light, and
nobody answered when I knocked. I am quite relieved to see you. I was
beginning to fear you had all got run in."

"Well, you see we are still alive and in fighting form. As you say the
_Bomb_ has closed, I suppose Short has gone off to the music-hall with
Simpkins, as he hinted at doing. Anyhow, come home with me; you too,
Kosinksi, if you don't mind; there is a lot to say, and many things
to settle, and we can settle everything better there than here in the
street."

My proposal was agreed to, and we all three repaired to Fitzroy Square,
where over a cup of tea we settled the last details of the move,
including the name of our new paper, which was to be known as the
_Tocsin_.



CHAPTER VI

A FOREIGN INVASION


Thus was the question of the new paper and its quarters settled. The
shop, as I had hoped, did well enough for our purposes. True, the
district in which it lay was neither salubrious nor beautiful, and the
constant and inevitable encounters with loquacious Mrs. Wattles and
her satellites something of a trial; but we were absorbed in our work,
absorbed in our enthusiasms, utterly engrossed in the thought of the
coming revolution which by our efforts we were speeding on.

During the first months, besides writing and editing the _Tocsin_, I
was very busily employed in learning how to set type, and print, and the
various arts connected with printing--and as I grew more proficient at
the work my share of it grew in proportion.

The original staff of the _Tocsin_ consisted of Armitage, Kosinksi, and
myself, with Short occupying the well-nigh honorary post of printer,
aided by occasional assistance or hindrance from his hangers-on. But our
staff gradually increased in number if not in efficiency; old M'Dermott
was a frequent and not unwelcome visitor, and as time went on he
gradually settled down into an inmate of the office, helping where he
could with the work, stirring up lagging enthusiasms, doing odd cobbling
jobs whenever he had the chance, and varying the proceedings with
occasional outbursts of Shakespearian recitation. These recitations were
remarkable performances, and made up in vigour for what they perhaps
lacked in elegance and _finesse_. Carter would at times put in an
appearance, mostly with a view to leaning up against a type-rack or
other suitable article of furniture, and there between one puff and
another at his pipe would grumble at the constitution of the universe
and the impertinent exactions of landlords. Another Englishman who in
the earlier days frequented the _Tocsin_ was a tall, thoughtful man
named Wainwright, belonging to the working-classes, who by the force of
his own intelligence and will had escaped from the brutishness of the
lowest depths of society in which he had been born.

Thus with little real outside assistance we worked through the spring
and early summer months. Besides bringing out our paper we printed
various booklets and pamphlets, organised Anarchist meetings, and during
some six weeks housed a French Anarchist paper and its staff, all of
whom had fled precipitately from Paris in consequence of a trial.

The lively French staff caused a considerable revolution in Lysander
Grove, which during several weeks rang with Parisian argot and Parisian
fun. Many of these Frenchmen were a queer lot. They seemed the very
reincarnation of Murger's Bohemians, and evidently took all the
discomforts and privations of their situation as a first-class joke.
Kosinksi detested them most cordially, though, spite of himself, he was
a tremendous favourite in their ranks, and the unwilling victim of the
most affectionate demonstrations on their part: and when, with a shrug
of his shoulders and uncompromising gait, he turned his back on his
admirers, they would turn round to me, exclaiming fondly--

_"Comme il est drole, le pauvre diable!"_

They could not understand his wrath, and were obstinately charmed at his
least charming traits. When he was singularly disagreeable towards them,
they summed him up cheerfully in two words, _Quel original!_ They soon
learned, however, not to take liberties with Kosinski, for when one
sprightly little man of their number, who affected pretty things in the
way of cravats and garters, presumed to dance him round the office, the
Russian, for once almost beside himself, seized his persecutor by the
shoulders and dropped him over the balustrade below, amid the cheers of
all present.

He appeared, however, to be their natural prey, and his quaint habit of
stumbling innocently into all manner of blunders was a perpetual fount
of amusement to the humour-loving Gauls. His timidity with women, too,
was a perennial joy, and innumerable adventures in which he figured as
hero were set afloat.

One little escapade of Kosinski's came somehow to the knowledge of the
French Comrades, and he suffered accordingly. Although careless and
shaggy enough in appearance in all conscience, Kosinski happened to be
fastidiously clean about his person. I doubt whether he was ever without
a certain small manicure set in his pocket, and an old joke among his
Russian friends was that he had failed to put in an appearance on
some important occasion--the rescue of a Nihilist from prison, I
believe--because he had forgotten his tooth-brush. This was of course a
libel and gross exaggeration, but his extreme personal cleanliness was
none the less a fact. Now when he first reached London he had scarcely
left the station, besooted and begrimed after his long journey, when his
eye was arrested by the appearance of a horse-trough. "Most opportune!"
mused Kosinski, "how public-spirited and hygienic this London County
Council really is!" and straightway divesting himself of his hat and
collar and similar encumbrances, and spreading out on the rim of the
trough his faithful manicure set and a few primitive toilette requisites
secreted about his person, he commenced his ablutions, sublimely
unconscious of the attention and surprise he was attracting. Before
long, however, a riotously amused crowd collected round, and the Russian
had finally to be removed under police escort, while attempting to
explain to the indignant officer of the law that he had merely taken
the horse-trough as a convenient form of public bath for encouraging
cleanliness among the submerged tenth.

With the departure of the _Ça-Ira_ the office resumed once more, during
a brief interval, the even tenor of its ways. Kosinski who, in a
spirit of self-preservation, had practically effaced himself during its
sojourn, made himself once more apparent, bringing with him a peculiar
Swede--a man argumentative to the verge of cantankerousness--who for
hours and days together would argue on obscure questions of metaphysics.
He had argued himself out of employment, out of his country, almost out
of the society and the tolerance of his fellows. Life altogether was one
long argument to this man, no act or word, however insignificant, could
he be induced to pass over without discussing and dissecting, proving or
disproving it. Free-love was his particular hobby, though this, too, he
regarded from a metaphysical rather than a practical point of view. Like
everything else in his life it was a matter for reason and argument, not
for emotion; and he and Kosinski would frequently dispute the question
warmly.

One day, not long before Christmas, and after I had been nearly a year
in the movement, when all London was lost in a heavy fog and the air
seemed solid as a brick wall, there landed at the _Tocsin_ a small batch
of three Italians fresh from their native country. It was the year of
the coercion laws in Italy, of the "domicilio coatto" (forced domicile),
and the Anarchists and Socialists were fleeing in large numbers from the
clutches of the law.

None of these Southerners had ever been in England before, and having
heard grim tales of the lack of sunshine and light in London, they took
this fog to be the normal condition of the atmosphere. Stumbling into
the lighted office from the blind stifling darkness outside, the
leader of the party, a remarkably tall handsome man well known to me by
reputation and correspondence, gave vent to a tremendous sigh of relief
and exclaimed in his native tongue:

"Thank Heaven, friends, we have overcome the greatest danger of all and
we are here at last, and still alive!"

They then advanced towards me and Avvocato Guglielmo Gnecco held out his
hand. "You are Isabel Meredith?" he said in a sonorous voice, and I gave
an affirmative nod. "I am very glad to meet you at last, Comrade," and
we all shook hands. "So this is London! I had heard grim enough tales of
your climate, but never had I conceived anything like this. It is truly
terrible! But how do you live here? How do you get through your work?...
How do you find your way about the streets? Why, we've been wandering
about the streets ever since eleven o'clock this morning, walking round
and round ourselves, stumbling over kerb-stones, appealing to policemen
and passers-by, getting half run over by carts and omnibuses and cabs.
Giannoli here sees badly enough at all times, but to-day he has only
escaped by the skin of his teeth from the most horrid series of deaths.
Is it not so, Giacomo?" Giannoli, who had been engaged in enthusiastic
greetings with Kosinski, who was evidently an old friend, looked up at
this.

"Oh, I've had too much of London already," he exclaimed fervently. "We
must leave here for some other country to-night or to-morrow at the
latest. We should be better off in prison in Italy than at liberty here.
You see, Comrade," he said, turning to me with a smile, "we Anarchists
all belong to one nationality, so I have no fear of wounding your
patriotic sentiments."

"But London is not always like this, I assure you," I began.

"Oh, make no attempt to palliate it," Gnecco interrupted. "I have heard
English people before now defending your climate. But I see now only too
well that my compatriots were right in calling it impossible, and saying
that you never saw the sun here," and all attempts to argue them out of
this conviction proved futile.

The avvocato, as above mentioned, was an exceptionally good-looking man.
Fully six feet two inches in height, erect and slim without being in
the least weedy, he carried his head with an air of pride and
self-confidence, and was altogether a very fine figure of a man. His
features were regular and well cut, his abundant hair and complexion
dark, and his eyes bright with the vivacity of the perennial youth of
the enthusiast. The delicacy of his features, the easy grace of his
walk, and the freedom and confidence of his manners, all suggested
his semi-aristocratic origin and upbringing. He was evidently a man of
romantic tastes and inclinations, governed by sentiment rather than by
reason; a lover of adventure, who had found in Anarchism an outlet for
his activities. His eloquence had made him a considerable reputation all
over Italy as an advocate, but the comparative monotony of the life of
a prosperous barrister was distasteful to him, and he had willingly
sacrificed his prospects in order to throw in his lot with the
revolutionary party.

Giannoli, in his way, was an equally interesting figure. Between Gnecco
and himself it was evident that there existed the warmest bonds of
fraternal affection--a sentiment whose fount, as I discovered later,
lay in a mutual attachment for a certain Milanese lady, who on her side
fully reciprocated their joint affection. Both these Italians were warm
exponents of the doctrine of free-love, and, unlike their more theoretic
Northern confréres, they carried their theories into practice with
considerable gusto. Many Anarchists of Teutonic and Scandinavian race
evidently regarded free-love as an unpleasant duty rather than as a
natural and agreeable condition of life--the chaff which had to be
swallowed along with the wheat of the Anarchist doctrines. I remember
the distress of one poor old Norwegian professor on the occasion of
his deserting his wife for a younger and, to him, far less attractive
woman--a young French studentess of medicine who practised her
emancipated theories in a very wholesale fashion.

"I felt that as an Anarchist it would have been almost wrong to repel
her advances," the distressed old gentleman confided to me. "Moreover,
it was ten years that I had lived with Rosalie, uninterruptedly....
_Cela devenait tout-à-fait scandaleux, Mademoiselle_.... I no longer
dared show myself among my comrades."

I felt quite sorry for the poor old fellow, a humble slave to
duty, which he performed with evident disgust, but the most heroic
determination.

Giannoli, when seen apart from Gnecco, was a tall man. But at the time
of his arrival in London he was already falling a victim to ill-health;
there was a bent, tired look about his figure, and his features
were drawn and thin. A glance at him sufficed to reveal a nervous,
highly-strung temperament; his movements were jerky, and altogether,
about his entire person, there was a noticeable lack of repose. He
was about thirty-five years of age, though he gave the impression of
a rather older man. The fact that he was very short-sighted gave a
peculiar look to his face, which was kindly enough in expression; his
features were pronounced, with a prominent nose and full, well-cut mouth
hidden by a heavy moustache. There was a look of considerable strength
about the man, and fanatical determination strangely blended with
diffidence--a vigorous nature battling against the inroads of some
mortal disease.

The third member of the trio was a shortish, thickset man of
extraordinary vigour. He somehow put me in mind of a strongly-built,
one-storey, stone blockhouse, and looked impregnable in every direction;
evidently a man of firm character, buoyed up by vigorous physique. He
was a man rather of character than of intellect, of great moral strength
rather than of intellectual brilliancy--a fighter and an idealist, not
a theoriser. I knew him very well by renown, for he was of European
fame in the Anarchist party, and the _bête noire_ of the international
police. Enrico Bonafede was a man born out of his time--long after it
and long before--whose tremendous energy was wasted in the too strait
limits of modern civilised society. In a heroic age he would undoubtedly
have made a hero; in nineteenth-century Europe his life was wasted and
his sacrifices useless. These men, born out of their generation, are
tragic figures; they have in them the power and the will to scale the
heights of Mount Olympus and to stem the ocean, while they are forced to
spend their life climbing mole-hills and stumbling into puddles.

Such, briefly, were the three men who suddenly emerged from the fog into
the office of the _Tocsin_, and who formed the vanguard of our foreign
invasion. All three were at once sympathetic to me, and I viewed their
advent with pleasure. We celebrated it by an unusually lavish banquet
of fried fish and potatoes, for they were wretchedly cold and hungry
and exhausted after a long journey and almost equally long fast, for of
course they all arrived in a perfectly penniless condition.

Seated round a blazing fire in M'Dermott's _eleutheromania_ stove (the
old fellow had a passion for sonorous words which he did not always
apply quite appositely) the Italians related the adventures of their
journey and discussed future projects. As the fog grew denser with the
advance of evening, and it became evident that lodging-searching was
quite out of the question for the time being, it was agreed that we
should all spend the night in the office, where heaps of old papers
and sacking made up into not altogether despicable couches. Moreover,
publication date was approaching, and at such times we were in the habit
of getting later and later in the office, the necessity for Short's
assistance rendering it impossible to get the work done in an
expeditious and business-like way.

We worked on far into the night, the Italians helping us as best they
could with the printing, one or other occasionally breaking off for a
brief respite of slumber. We talked much of the actual conditions in
Italy, and of the situation of the Anarchist party there; of how to keep
the revolutionary standard afloat and the Anarchist ideas circulating,
despite coercion laws and the imprisonment and banishment of its most
prominent advocates. Kosinksi joined enthusiastically in the discussion,
and the hours passed rapidly and very agreeably. I succeeded at length
in dissuading Giannoli and Gnecco from their original intention of
precipitate flight, partly by repeatedly assuring them that the state of
the atmosphere was not normal and would mend, partly by bringing their
minds to bear on the knotty question of finance.

The three Italians settled in London; Gnecco and Bonafede locating
themselves in the Italian quarter amid most squalid surroundings; while
for Giannoli I found a suitable lodging in the shape of a garret in the
Wattles's house which overlooked the courtyard of the _Tocsin_. They
were frequently in the office, much to the indignation of Short, who
could not see what good all "those ---- Foreigners did loafing about."
Short, in fact, viewed with the utmost suspicion any new-comers at the
_Tocsin_.

"These foreigners are such a d----d lazy lot," he would say; "I hate
them!" and there was all the righteous indignation in his tones of the
hard-worked proletariat whose feelings are harrowed by the spectacle of
unrighteous ease. Short had a habit of making himself offensive to every
one, but for some mysterious reason no one ever took him to task over
it. It was impossible to take Short seriously, or to treat him as you
would any other human being. When he was insolent people shrugged
their shoulders and laughed, when he told lies they did not deign
to investigate the truth, and thus in a despised and unostentatious
way--for he was not ambitious of _réclame_--he was able to do as much
mischief and set as many falsehoods afloat as a viciously-inclined
person with much time on his hands well can. His physical and mental
inferiority was his stock-in-trade, and he relied on it as a safeguard
against reprisals.

After a prolonged period of fog the real severity of the winter set in
towards the end of January. One February morning, after all manner
of mishaps and discomfort, and several falls along the slippery icy
pavement, I arrived at the office of the _Tocsin_. The first thing that
struck my eye on approaching was the unusual appearance of the Wattles's
greengrocery shop. The shutters were closed, the doors still unopened.
"What has happened?" I inquired of a crony standing outside the
neighbouring pub. "Surely no one is dead?"

"Lor' bless yer, no, lydy," answered the old lady, quite unperturbed,
"yesterday was the hanniversary of old Wattles's wedding-day, and
they've been keepin' it up as usual. That's all."

I was about to pass on without further comment when my attention was
again arrested by the sound of blows and scuffling inside the shop,
mingled with loud oaths in the familiar voice of my landlady, and hoarse
protests and entreaties in a masculine voice.

"But surely," I urged, turning once more to my previous informant,
"there is something wrong. What is all that noise?" as cries of "Murder!
murder!" greeted my ear.

"Why, I only just told you, my dear," she responded, still quite
unmoved, "they've been celebratin' their silver weddin' or somethin' of
the sort. It's the same every year. They both gets roarin' drunk, and
then Mrs. Wattles closes the shop next mornin' so as to give 'im a jolly
good 'idin'. You see, these hanniversaries make 'er think of all she's
'ad to put up with since she married, and that makes things a bit rough
on poor old Jim."

Perceiving my sympathy to be wasted I proceeded, and on entering the
office of the _Tocsin_ I found that here, too, something unusual was
going on.

A perfect Babel of voices from the room above greeted my ear, while
the printing-room was bedecked with a most unsightly litter of tattered
garments of nondescript shape and purpose laid out to dry. I was not
surprised at this, however, as I had long grown used to unannounced
invasions. Unexpected persons would arrive at the office, of whom nobody
perhaps knew anything; they would stroll in, seat themselves round the
fire, enter into discussion, and, if hungry, occasionally partake of
the _plat du jour_. The most rudimentary notions of Anarchist etiquette
forbade any of us from inquiring the name, address, or intentions
of such intruders. They were allowed to stay on or to disappear as
inexplicitly as they came. They were known, if by any name at all, as
Jack or Jim, Giovanni or Jacques, and this was allowed to suffice. Every
Anarchist learns in time to spot a detective at first sight, and we
relied on this instinct as a safeguard against spies.

But on reaching the composing-room on this particular morning an
extraordinary sight presented itself. Accustomed as I was to the
unaccustomed, I was scarcely prepared for the wild confusion of the
scene. What at first sight appeared to be a surging mass of unwashed and
unkempt humanity filled it with their persons, their voices, and their
gestures. No number of Englishmen, however considerable, could have
created such a din. All present were speaking simultaneously at the top
of their voices; greetings and embraces mingled with tales of adventure
and woe. The first object which I managed to distinguish was the figure
of Giannoli struggling feebly in the embrace of a tall brawny, one-eyed
man with thick curling black hair, who appeared to be in a state of
demi-déshabille. By degrees a few other familiar figures became one by
one discernible to me as I stood mute and unobserved at the head of the
stairs. Bonafede and Gnecco were there; they, too, surrounded by the
invading mob, exchanging greetings and experiences. Old M'Dermott,
standing up against his stove, was striking a most impressive attitude,
for the old fellow had to live up to the reputation he had established
among foreigners of being the greatest orator in the English
revolutionary party. Two cloddish-looking _contadini_ stood gazing
at him, rapt in awe. Kosinksi stood little apart from the rest, not a
little bewildered by the enthusiastic reception which had been accorded
him by old friends. In one corner, too, I recognised my old friend
Short, fully dressed, as usual, in his frowsy clothes, as though
eternally awaiting the call-to-arms, the long-delayed bugles of the
social revolution; there he lay, much as when I first set eyes on him,
wrapped up in old banners and rugs, blinking his eyes and muttering
curses at the hubbub which had thus rudely interrupted his slumbers.

The others were quite new to me. They were evidently all of them
Italians--some ten or twelve in number--though at the first glance,
scattered as they were pell-mell among the printing plant of the
overcrowded work-room, they gave an impression of much greater number.
They appeared mostly to belong to the working-classes. Their clothes,
or what remained of them, were woefully tattered--and they were few and
rudimentary indeed, for most of what had been spared by the hazards
of travel were drying down below. Their hair was uncut, and beards
of several days' growth ornamented their cheeks. Their hats were of
incredible size and shape and all the colours of the rainbow seemed to
be reproduced in them. Littered around on divers objects of furniture,
they suggested to me a strange growth of fungi.

My advent, as soon as it was perceived amid the confusion and noise
of the scene, created something of a sensation, for by now my name
had become well known in the International Anarchist party. "Isabel
Meredith" was exclaimed in all manner of new and strange intonations,
and a host of hands were extended towards me from all directions.

At last Gnecco managed to make his voice heard above the din of his
compatriots. "All these comrades," he explained in Italian, "have
escaped like ourselves from the savage reaction which actually holds
Italy in its sway. They arrived this morning after a fearful journey
which lack of money compelled them to make mostly on foot."

Before he could get any further an outburst of song interrupted his
words as the whole band broke into an Anarchist war-whoop. This over,
my attention was arrested by the groans of a dark young man of
extraordinarily alert physiognomy who had shed his boots and was gazing
dolefully at his wounded feet. "What would I not give," he exclaimed,
"to be back in prison in Lugano! Oh for the rest and comfort of those
good old times!" He was utterly worn out, poor fellow, nipped up with
the cold, and seemed on the verge of tears.

"Well," exclaimed M'Dermott at last, "propaganda implies propagandists,
and propagandists entail bellies! All these fellows seem pretty well
starving. What would they say to a little grub?"

On my interpreting the old fellow's suggestion he and it were received
with universal acclaim. Bonafede produced from the innermost depths of
his pockets a huge quantity of macaroni which was put on to boil, and
several bottles of wine; one of the new arrivals, a sober-looking young
fellow with a remarkably long nose, contributed an enormous lobster
which he had acquired _en route_, while Kosinski volunteered to fetch
bread and other provender. A Homeric repast ensued, for all these
Anarchists had cultivated the digestions of camels; they prepared for
inevitable fasts by laying in tremendous stores when chance and good
fortune permitted. While they were eating a noticeable silence fell on
the scene, and I had leisure to observe the immigrants more in detail.

Beppe, the tall, one-eyed man, already referred to, seemed to be the
life and spirit of the band. He was a rollicking good-natured fellow,
an unpolished _homme du peuple_, but not inadmirable in his qualities of
courage and cheerfulness--the kind of man who would have cracked a
joke on his death-bed and sung lustily _en route_ to the gallows. He
possessed, too, a heroic appetite, and as he made away with enormous
heaps of macaroni his spirits rose higher and higher and his voice rose
with them.

The long-nosed youth was something of an enigma. From the scraps of
conversation which, during the repast, fell principally on the subject
of food, or the lack of food, during the tramp, I gathered that they had
relied principally on his skill and daring in the matter of foraging
to keep themselves from actually dying of hunger on their journey. Yet
there was about him such a prudent and circumspect air that he might
well have hesitated to pick up a pin that "wasn't his'n." He was
evidently of an acquisitive turn, however, for over his shoulder
was slung a bag which appeared to contain a collection of the most
heterogeneous and unserviceable rubbish conceivable. "_Eh!... possono
servire!_" ... was all he would volunteer on the subject when I once
chaffed him on the subject of his findings. "They may serve yet!..."

Somehow this youth struck me at once as a man who had made a mistake.
At home as he appeared to be among his comrades, there was yet something
about him which suggested that he was out of his proper sphere in the
midst of the Anarchists, that he was _desorienté_. He was cut out for an
industrious working-man, one that would rise and thrive in his business
by hard work and thrift; he was destined by nature to rear a large
family and to shine in the ranks of excellent family men. He was moulded
for the threshold, poor boy, neither for the revolutionary camp nor for
the scaffold, and it was thwarted domestic instinct which led him to
steal. There was good nature in his face and weakness; it was the
face of a youth easily led, easily influenced for good or bad. As a
revolutioniser of his species he was predestined to failure, for years
would certainly show him the error of his ways. Old age seemed to be his
proper state, and youth in him was altogether a blunder and a mistake.
I found myself vainly speculating what on earth could have led him among
the Anarchists.

The others comprised a silent young artisan who was evidently
desperately in earnest with his ideas, a red-haired, red-bearded Tuscan
of clever and astute aspect, a singularly alert and excitable-looking
young man of asymmetrical features, who looked half fanatic, half
criminal, and others of the labouring and peasant class. One other of
their number arrested my attention, a stupid, sleepy young man, who
seemed quite unaffected by the many vicissitudes of his journey. His
features were undefined and his complexion undefinable, very greasy
and suggestive of an unwholesome fungus. He was better dressed than his
companions, and from this fact, combined with his intonation, I gathered
that he belonged to the leisured classes. There was something highly
repellent about his smooth yellow face, his greasiness and limp, fat
figure. M'Dermott christened him the "Buttered muffin."

Dinner over, the one-eyed baker, Beppe, proceeded to give us their news,
and to recount the vicissitudes of their travels. Gnecco and Giannoli
were anxious for news of comrades left behind in Italy. So-and-so was in
prison, another had remained behind in Switzerland, a third had turned
his coat, and was enjoying ill-gotten ease and home, others were either
dead or lost to sight.

The present party, who were mostly Northern Italians, had left Italy
shortly after Giannoli and Gnecco, and had since spent several weeks
in Italian Switzerland, whence at last they had been expelled in
consequence of the circulation of an Anarchist manifesto. Beppe gave
a glowing account of their stay in Lugano, and consequent flight to
London. "You know," he said, "that I reached Lugano with two hundred
francs in my pocket in company with all these comrades who hadn't got
five francs among them. It is not every one who could have housed them
all, but I did. I could not hire a Palazzo or a barrack for them, but
we managed very comfortably in one large room. There were fourteen of
us besides la Antonietta. There was only one bed, but what a size! We
managed well enough by sleeping in two relays. However, even in two
relays it took some organisation to get us all in. It was a fine double
bed, you know, evidently intended for three or four ... even for five
it was suitable enough, but when it came to seven!... there was not much
room for exercise, I can tell you.... But with four at the top and three
at the bottom, we managed, and Antonietta slept on a rug in a cupboard.
We did our best to make her comfortable by sacrificing half our clothes
to keep her warm, but we might have saved ourselves the trouble, for she
deserted us for the first bourgeois who came along. She was not a true
comrade, but I will tell you all about her later on.

"We had some trouble with the landlord, a thick-headed bourgeois who got
some stupid idea into his head about overcrowding. I have no patience
with these bourgeois prejudices. One day he came round to complain about
our numbers, and at not receiving his rent. But we were prepared for
him. We assembled in full force, and sang the _Marseillaise_ and the
_Inno dei Lavoratori_, and danced the _Carmagnole_. I took out my eye
and looked very threatening--one glance at us was enough for the old
fellow. He made the sign of the cross and fled before we had time to
tear him to pieces.

"Well, my two hundred francs was a very large sum, and not paying the
rent was economical, but it dwindled, and I had to look round again for
ways and means to feed us all. The money came to an end at last and
then the real struggle began. Old Castellani, the landlord, kept a large
stock of sacks of potatoes in a cellar, and every day he used to go in
and take a few out for his own use, and then lock the cellar up again,
mean old brute! But once again I was one too many for him. I collected
large quantities of stones in the day-time, and then at night with a
skeleton key I had acquired--it came out of Meneghino's bag which
we always jeered at--I let myself in and from the farthest sacks I
abstracted potatoes and refilled them with stones. I calculated that at
the slow rate he used them he would not notice his loss till March. What
a scene there will be then, _Misericordia_! During the last fortnight of
our stay we lived almost entirely on my potatoes. I don't know how the
devil they would all have got on without me. It is true that a waitress
at the Panetteria Viennese fell in love with Meneghino, and used to pass
him on stale bread; but then you all know his appetite! He ate it
nearly all himself on the way home. One day I sent Bonatelli out
to reconnoitre. He returned with _one mushroom_!" It would be quite
impossible to convey an idea of the intense contempt contained in
these last words. It was a most eloquent denunciation of impotence and
irresolution.

"All the same we had a grand time in Lugano. And the week I and
Migliassi spent in prison was a great treat. Why, they treated us like
popes, I can tell you--as much food as you like, and the best quality
at that; no work, a comfortable cell, and a bed all to yourself! And the
bread! I never tasted anything like it in my life: they sent to Como for
it all. Lugano bread was not good enough. Ah, Swiss prisons are a grand
institution, and I hope to spend a happy old age in such a place yet.

"Then came Bonafede's manifesto, and that scoundrel Costanzi betrayed
us all to the police. Then the real trouble began. We had not ten
francs among the lot of us, and we twelve had orders to clear out of the
country within forty-eight hours! Once again they were all at a loss but
for me!" and here he tapped his forehead in token of deference to his
superior wits. "I had noticed the fat letters Morì received from home
the first day of every month, and how jolly quiet he kept about them.
I also noticed that he used to disappear for a day or two after their
receipt, and return very sleepy and replete, with but scant appetite for
dry bread and potatoes."

At this point Morì, the greasy Neapolitan youth, blinked his eyes and
laughed foolishly. He seemed neither ashamed of himself nor indignant at
his companions, merely sluggishly amused.

"Well," continued Meneghino, "that letter was just due, and I
intercepted it. It contained one hundred and eighty francs; would you
believe me? and that went some way to get us over here. Altogether we
managed to collect sufficient money to carry us to the Belgian frontier,
and for our passage across from Ostend. But that tramp across Belgium,
_dio boia_!"

Here a clamour of voices interrupted Beppe, as each one of the
travellers chimed in with a separate account of the horrors of that
ghastly tramp across country in mid-winter.

For many years Europe had not experienced such an inclement season.
Everywhere the cold counted innumerable victims. Along the country
highways and byways people dropped down frozen to death, and the paths
were strewn with the carcasses of dead birds and other animals who had
succumbed to the inclemency of the elements. All the great rivers
were frozen over, and traffic had to be suspended along them. Unwonted
numbers of starving sea-gulls and other sea-birds flocked to London in
search of human charity, for the very fishes could not withstand the
cold, and the inhospitable ocean afforded food no longer to its winged
hosts. All Europe was under snow; the railways were blocked in many
places, and ordinary work had to be suspended in the great cities;
business was at a stand-still.

Neither the temperaments nor the clothes of these Italians had been
equal to the exigencies of their march in the cruel Northern winter. As
they tramped, a dismal, silent band across Belgium, the snow was several
feet deep under foot, and on all sides it stretched hopelessly to the
horizon, falling mercilessly the while. Their light clothing was ill
adapted to the rigours of the season; boots gave out, food was scanty
or non-existent, and they had to rely entirely on the fickle chances of
fortune to keep body and soul together. By night, when chance allowed,
they had crept unobserved into barns and stables, and, lying close up
against the dormant cattle, they had striven to restore animation to
their frozen limbs by means of the beasts' warm breath. Once an
old farm-woman had found them, and, taking pity on their woebegone
condition, had regaled the whole party on hot milk and bread; and this
was now looked back on as a gala day, for not every day had afforded
such fare. At times in the course of their weary tramp the Anarchists
had made an effort to keep up their flagging spirits by means of song,
revolutionary and erotic, but such attempts had usually fallen flat,
and the little band of exiles had relapsed into gloomy silence as they
tramped on noiselessly through the snow. One of their number had quite
broken down on the road and they had been compelled to leave him behind.
"Lucky fellow, that Morelli," exclaimed Meneghino, "enjoying good broth
in a hospital while we were still trudging on through that infernal
snow!"

"And Antonietta?" inquired Giannoli, when the relation of these
adventures had terminated. "You have not yet told us her end, nor how
she incurred your displeasure."

"Oh, Antonietta!" exclaimed Beppe. "I was forgetting. You who believed
her to be such a sincere comrade will scarcely credit her baseness. She
ran away with a horrible bourgeois; she was lured away from the Cause by
a bicycle! Yes, Antonietta weighed a bicycle in the scales against the
Social Revolution, and found the Social Revolution wanting! So much for
the idealism of women! Never speak to me of them again. The last we
saw of her she was cycling away in a pair of breeches with a disgusting
banker. She laughed and waved her hand to us mockingly, and before we
had time to utter a word she was gone. I never shall believe in a woman
again!"

His indignation choked him at this point, and only the expression of his
mouth and eye told of the depth of scorn and disgust which he felt for
the young lady who had thus unblushingly cycled away from the Social
Revolution.



CHAPTER VII

THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_


To the ordinary citizen whose walk in life lies along the beaten track
there is a suggestion of Bohemianism about the office of any literary or
propagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most imaginative among them
in their wildest moments have ever conceived any region so far removed
from the conventions of civilised society, so arbitrary in its hours and
customs, so cosmopolitan and so utterly irrational as the office of the
_Tocsin_.

In other chapters I attempt to describe the most noticeable among the
genuine Anarchists who belonged to it, but I wish here to convey some
faint idea of the strange medley of outside cranks and _déclassés_ whose
resort it in time became. There appeared to be a magnetic attraction
about the place to tramps, _désoeuvrés_ cranks, argumentative people
with time on their hands, and even downright lunatics. Foreigners of all
tongues assembled in the office--Russians, Italians, French, Spaniards,
Dutch, Swedes, and before very long they practically swamped the English
element. The Anarchist and revolutionary party has always been more
serious on the Continent than in England, and what genuine Anarchists
there are here are mostly foreigners.

Trades and industries of the most heterogeneous kinds were carried on
at the _Tocsin_ by unemployed persons who could find no other refuge for
their tools nor outlet for their energies. In one corner old M'Dermott
settled down with his lasts and leather, and there industriously
hammered away at his boots, alternating his work with occasional
outbursts of Shakespearian recitation. In winter the old fellow was
positively snowed up in the office, where he crouched shivering over the
fire until the advent of spring revived him. On the first warm sunny
day he suddenly flung down his tools, and rushing out into the courtyard
amazed and terrified Mrs. Wattles and her colleagues by shouting at the
top of his voice, "Let me shout, let me shout, Richard's himself again!"
"'E gave me such a turn, Miss, with 'is carryin's on that I got the
spasims again, an' I don't know what ever I shall do if I can't find
the price of a 'alf-quartern o' gin." And I took the hint, for Mrs.
Wattles's alliance was no despicable possession among the savages of
Lysander Grove.

A shed was erected in the corner of the composing-room, which served by
night as a dormitory for numbers of otherwise roofless waifs, and here
during the daytime a young Belgian and his wife set up a small factory
of monkeys up sticks, which when completed they proceeded to sell in the
streets. In another corner two Italians settled down to manufacture a
remarkable new kind of artificial flower with which they traded when
opportunity permitted. Small plaster-casts of Queen Victoria and Marat
were also manufactured here. When the influx of starving Italians
necessitated it, a kind of soup-kitchen was inaugurated over which Beppe
presided, and very busy he was kept too, manufacturing _minestras_
and _polenta_, a welcome innovation to me, I may mention, after a long
régime of small and nauseous tarts, bread and jam, and cheese. In
short, the headquarters of the _Tocsin_, besides being a printing and
publishing office, rapidly became a factory, a debating club, a school,
a hospital, a mad-house, a soup-kitchen and a sort of Rowton House, all
in one.

When I look back on the scene now, and recall all the noise and hubbub,
the singing, the discussions and disputes, the readings, the hammerings
on this side, the hangings on that, the feeding, and M'Dermott's
Shakespearian recitations, I find it very difficult to realise the
amount of hard work which I and the other few serious and earnest
comrades got through.

The chief impediment to the progress of the work, however, was Short,
the compositor. On close acquaintance with this creature, I found that
he did not belie my first impression of him as the laziest and most
slovenly of men; and I soon realised the two dominant characteristics
which had made of him a Socialist--envy and sloth. So deeply was he
imbued with envy that he was quite unable to rest so long as anyone else
was better off than himself; and although he did not care one jot
for "humanity" of which he prated so freely, and was incapable of
regenerating a flea, he found in a certain section of the Socialist and
Anarchist party that degree of dissatisfaction and covetousness which
appealed to his degraded soul. Besides which the movement afforded him
grand opportunities for living in sloth and sponging on other people.

Short was not without his humorous side, however, when only you were in
the right mood to appreciate it. His envy of the superiority which he
noted in others was only equalled by his intense contempt for himself.

I can still picture the poor brute lying with his dog in a corner of
the office amid a heap of rubbish, unwashed, unkempt (he never divested
himself of his clothes), and verminous in the extreme. There he would
blow discordant notes on a mouth-organ, or smoke his rank old pipe, eat
jam tarts, and scowl his wrath and envy on the world. If he could get
hold of some unoccupied person to whom he could retail all the latest
bits of Anarchist scandal, or from whom he could ferret out some little
private secrets, he was contented enough, or, leaning out of the
office window he would deliver a short autobiographical sketch to the
interested denizens of the surrounding courts. A small bill, posted
outside the office door, announced that Short was prepared to undertake
extraneous jobs of printing on his own account; and this was responsible
for many of the queer customers who found their way to the office of the
_Tocsin_.

One of the queerest of all the queer oddities who haunted it was a small
man of hunted aspect, known to every one as the "Bleeding Lamb." He had
acquired this peculiar name from the title of a booklet which he had
written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, a sort
of interpretation of the Apocalypse, wherein was foretold a rapid
termination of the universe. The printing of the "Bleeding Lamb" was
undertaken by Short, whose dilatoriness in executing his work doubtless
prolonged by a few years the existence of the terrestrial globe.

There was all the fervour of a prophet in the eye of the "Bleeding
Lamb," but inspiration ceased here, and even what there was of inspired
and prophetic in his eye was overcast by a certain diffident and
deprecating look. He was the victim, poor man, of a twofold persecution
in which heaven and earth joined hands to torment him--the archangel
Michael and the Metropolitan police being the arch offenders.

One of the first things that struck you about the Bleeding Lamb was the
helpless look of his feet. They were for ever shuffling and stumbling,
getting in the way, and tripping up himself and others. His hands too
had a flabby and inefficient expression, and his knees were set at a
wrong angle. His stature was insignificant, his colouring vague; longish
hair and beard of a colourless grey matched the grey of his prophetic
and persecuted eye.

He would enter the office furtively, and cast a rapid glance round as
though he almost expected to find the archangel Michael or an inspector
of the Metropolitan police lurking in a corner, and it would take
him some few seconds before he could muster up sufficient courage to
inquire, as was his invariable custom, whether anyone had been round to
ask after him. On being assured that no one had called for that
purpose he appeared relieved, and gradually, as he became more and more
reassured, he would warm to his subject of the coming cataclysm, and
launch out into prophecy. "Ah," he exclaimed to me one day after a long
discourse on the universal destruction at hand, "won't Queen Victoria
just shiver in her shoes when she receives the revised edition of the
'Bleeding Lamb.' Little does she dream at this moment of what is in
store for her." I recollect also that Nelson was in some way connected
with his prophecies and his perplexities, but in what particular
connection is not quite clear to my mind. The sympathy which he
apparently felt for the Anarchists was, I suppose, due to the fact that
they too were engaged--on a somewhat smaller scale it is true--on a
policy of destruction, and also to their avowed antagonism to the law
and the police, whether metropolitan or otherwise.

The Bleeding Lamb had a formidable rival in the field of prophecy in
the person of another strange frequenter of our office--a demure-looking
gentleman named Atkinson who professed to be the reincarnation of
Christ, and who preached the millennium. He was a less depressed-looking
person than the Bleeding Lamb--whom he treated with undisguised
contempt--and affected a tall hat and Wellington boots. The Lamb, on his
side, denounced the Messiah as a fraud, and went so far as to suggest
that he had only taken to prophecy when the alteration in the fashion of
ladies' pockets compelled him to abandon his original profession. "That
Lamb is not quite right in the upper storey," whispered Atkinson to
me one day; "he may even become dangerous, poor creature!" Shortly
afterwards I was taken aside by the gentleman in question who warned me
to keep my purse in safety as "that Messiah is no better than a common
thief."

The approach of either of these prophets was invariably the signal for a
stampede on Short's part, who, never having completed his work, dreaded
encountering the mournful scrutiny and reproachful bleating of the Lamb
no less than the sad, stern rebukes and potential Wellington boots of
the Messiah. Into no single item of the day's programme did he put
so much zest as into the grand dive he would make into any available
hiding-place, and he would lie for hours flat on his stomach under
M'Dermott's bed sooner than "face the music."

One day the perspiring Lamb entered the office red in the face and
considerably out of breath, rapidly followed by a lugubrious individual,
talking volubly in an argumentative monotone. This person seemed to be
very indignant about something.

"Marcus Aurelius was a just ruler and a philosopher," he was saying,
"and he saw the necessity for suppressing the Christian factions. He was
among the severest persecutors of the early Christians.--What does that
argue, you fool?"

"Nothing against my contention with regard to the seven-headed beast in
the Apocalypse," replied the Bleeding Lamb with a defiant snort.

"The seven-headed beast has nothing to do with the case," retorted his
interlocutor, putting all the warmth into his monotonous drawl of which
he appeared capable. "The seven-headed beast can't alter history, and
my case is conclusively proved in the course of this little work, to
the production of which I have devoted the best years of my life.
The seven-headed beast indeed! Pshaw for your seven-headed beast, you
dunder-headed dreamer!"

Whilst I gazed on dumbfounded at this little scene, making futile
efforts to grasp the vexed point under discussion, the strange
new-comer, whom the Lamb addressed as Gresham, deposited on the floor
a huge and shapeless brown-paper parcel, under whose weight he was
staggering, and sitting down by its side he carefully untied the string,
and dragged triumphantly forth tome after tome of carefully-written
MSS., which he proceeded to read out without further preamble.

"'Atheism _v._ Christianity,'" he drawled, commencing at the title,
"'being a short treatise on the Persecutions of the Early Christians,
the object of which is to prove that they were persecuted by the just
emperors and protected by the unjust; that, consequently, they were
wrong; that Christianity is wrong, and the Deity a palpable fraud;
by Tobias Jonathan Gresham,'--and let the seven-headed beast in the
Apocalypse put that in his pipe and smoke it!" casting a defiant glance
at the Bleeding Lamb.

As this concluding remark was made in the same monotone as the foregoing
sentence, I was at some loss to determine whether or not it formed part
of the title of that momentous work.

The Bleeding Lamb here cast me a knowing glance, which said as plainly
as words that his unfortunate acquaintance was mad, but that it was as
well to humour him, and so he magnanimously sat down on a stool facing
his rival, while the latter proceeded to read out his book, which was
destined soon to mount up the long list of Short's sins of typographical
omissions. This was but the herald of a long series of readings from
the "short treatise," which were carried on at intervals for some weeks.
Minute after minute and hour after hour Gresham drawled on from one
tedious reiteration to another, never raising his voice nor altering
its key, till a sense of dizziness overcame his audience, and his voice
became as the singing in one's ears which accompanies high fever or
heralds a faint. Indeed I have never suffered from fever or faintness
since that date without my sensations recalling Gresham's dreary,
argumentative drawl; then gradually his voice would grow fainter and
somewhat spasmodic, until at length it gave way to snores, as the weary
Lamb and the atheist Lion, like the kid and the leopard of Isaiah, sank
down together in a confused heap on the floor, and there slept out a
miniature fulfilment of the word of the prophet.

Then there was a Polish count who found his way to the _Tocsin_--a most
deplorable aristocratic débris, who might have stepped straight out of
the pages of Dostoievsky. I never set eyes on a more depressed-looking
mortal than Count Voblinsky. He looked as though he bore on his bent
shoulders the weight of all the ill-spent lives in Christendom. He was
a damp, unwholesome-looking man, whose appearance suggested long
confinement in a cellar. He was pale and hollow-eyed, and almost mouldy;
altogether a most cadaverous-looking person. He was always attired, even
at eleven A.M., in an old dress suit, green and threadbare with age, and
a furry tall hat, into which garments he seemed to have grown and taken
root. But despite the decay of his person and his attire, there was a
certain degree of aristocratic refinement about Voblinsky's features,
last ghastly traces of his ancient nobility. He vaguely recalled to my
mind a long-ago Continental trip of my childhood, and an unfortunate
elephant in the Marseilles Jardin des Plantes who, from long inactivity
in the corner of his cage, had become overgrown with moss. There was the
same incongruous touch of erstwhile nobility, the same decay, the same
earthy smell. By what shady and circuitous paths had the unfortunate
count reached this unhappy pass? Perhaps his wife was responsible;
for if ever woman was calculated not to lead her mate on to higher and
better things it was the Countess Voblinska. The countess was worse
than slovenly: she was downright dirty. Her tumbled, frowsy hair, with
patches of golden dye in it, was surmounted by an appalling hat of
incongruous dimensions and shape, trimmed with what appeared to be
archaeological relics, thick in dust. To approach it brought on a
perfect paroxysm of sneezing. Her clothes, which were very greasy and
never brushed, hung together by strings, tatters, and safety-pins. Her
hands and face were begrimed with several coats of dirt, and a top coat
of _poudre de riz_. No ordinary imagination dared speculate on what lay
hidden beneath those tattered rags she wore. She gesticulated much,
and discoursed on the subject of some lecture she was to give, in the
intervals of volleying forth abuse and swearing in Parisian argot at
her long-suffering husband, who received it all with most ludicrous
courtesy. Often a strong smell of gin mingled with the eloquent flow of
the countess's language.

On the whole, however, the Anarchists and their queer associates might
be regarded as a fairly temperate set. One of the most potent causes of
drink is the monotony of the existences led by most people, the hopeless
dreariness of their confined, narrow lives, the total lack of interest
and excitement. This is not the case in revolutionary circles, where not
only are there plenty of ideas afloat to occupy men's minds and distract
them from the narrow circle of their dreary domestic lives, but where
also the modern craving for excitement, factitious or otherwise, finds
plenty of nourishment.

The office of the _Tocsin_, however, did not lack the occasional
presence of the habitual drunkard. There was one queer fellow who
frequently put in a dissipated appearance for the purpose of complaining
of the ill-usage to which his wife's tongue subjected him. He looked
forward to the Social Revolution as the only escape from this thraldom,
and certainly no man ever made more strenuous, albeit ill-directed
efforts, on its behalf.

Then there was a bibulous Welshman who at times would startle the
unwashed denizens of the neighbouring slums by appearing in a tall
hat and irreproachable shirt front. He was a doctor by profession, who
succeeded in maintaining a certain reputation in polite circles, but an
alcoholic soaker by inclination, one of those men who somehow contrive
to keep ahead of ruin by sleeping out periods of financial distress in
friends' houses.

Our proof-reader was a benevolent old gentleman of obsolete customs, who
in an age of open-air cures still wore a mouth and nose respirator.
He was such an eminently respectable person that I never could quite
understand why he associated himself with anything so disreputable as
the _Tocsin_. I always half suspected that he came there principally
on my account, chivalrously determined that I should not be surrounded
_solely_ by scum. But besides this motive he had some pretensions
to being a man of advanced views, and was a purchaser of "advanced"
literature. The introduction of this into the precincts of his home was
a great trial to his better half, who had no kind of sympathy with such
leanings. New-fangled ideas of any description were tabooed by her,
and all preachers and holders of such she unconditionally consigned to
hell-fires. Her husband she regarded as a brand to be snatched from the
burning, and she and a few select female relatives worked hard to snatch
him. But although new-fangled ideas on social organisation and political
economy were bad enough, one thing alone was beyond all human endurance
to the mind of Mrs. Crawley, and that one thing was free-love.

One day Mr. Crawley brought home "The Woman Who Did," and neglected to
conceal it. It was found by his wife lying on the dining-room sofa.

"My fingers itched to seize and burn the impudent huzzy, lying there as
unconcerned as though she had been the 'Private Meditations and Prayers
of the Rev. Bagge,'" Mrs. Crawley confided to her Aunt Elizabeth, "but
it was a six-shilling book, and I knew how Crawley valued it, and for
the life of me I did not dare touch it."

It was a sore trial indeed to Mrs. Crawley to live under the same roof
with such a person, but she dared not so far outrage the feelings of
one whom she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, as to execute the
offending lady. She long meditated some revenge, some outlet for her
outraged feelings; it was long in coming, but come it did at last. The
"Man Who Didn't" followed in the footsteps of his irregular mate, and
in a fourpenny-halfpenny edition. This was more than the worthy matron
could stand, and either he or she herself must leave the house. She
summoned Aunt Elizabeth, a lady of irreproachable moral standard, the
whites of whose eyes had a habit of turning up spasmodically, and the
corners of whose mouth down, and to her she unburdened her feelings.

"My dear Eliza," she said, "I have too long tolerated 'The Woman Who
Did,' but when it comes to the 'Man Who Didn't,' that--er--well, that
disgusting 'Man Who Didn't'--and how am I to know that he didn't, the
brazen creature!--it is time I asserted my authority. I cannot and I
will not stand him."

The offending and irresolute gentleman was then seized upon with a
pair of tongs, carried in solemn procession to the remotest room in the
house, and burnt. The sanctity of matrimony had reasserted its rights.

A young bank clerk who accompanied Crawley to the office was a type of
what I might call the conscientiously unprincipled man. It being wrong
to steal, he made a point of annexing small objects. Cleanliness is next
to godliness, and he devoted himself heroically to dirt; it was not at
all his natural tendency, and the more disagreeable he found it the more
strenuous was he in its pursuit. Being by nature punctual, he made it an
absolute point of honour never to keep an appointment; and, as a lover
of domestic peace, he was for ever working his way into scrapes and
rows. He was a comical object, with his limp yellow hair brushed
ferociously on end, and his mild yellow eyes scowling defiance at
mankind.

When the Cuban revolution broke out a wave of sympathy for the oppressed
islanders passed over the whole civilised world, and nowhere did this
find a warmer echo than in the Anarchist party and the _Tocsin_ group.
Many Anarchists were in favour of going out to the assistance of the
insurgents. Opinion was divided on the question. Some said: "It is our
duty to remain in Europe to carry on the work of Anarchist propaganda
here. The Cuban revolution is a race struggle, and no concern of ours."
Others said: "We Anarchists are internationalists, and in whatsoever
part of the world there is revolt against oppression, and wherever the
revolutionary forces are at work, there is our opportunity to step in
and direct those forces into the proper course, towards Anarchism."
These Anarchists saw in the uprising of this small and comparatively
insignificant race against the Spanish throne the possible dawn of a
wider, vaster struggle, in which the whole world would join hands to lay
low thrones, altars, and judgment seats.

A small band of Italian comrades, led by an adventurous Sicilian, got
up a subscription for the purpose, and left the office of the _Tocsin_,
amid great revolutionary enthusiasm, to journey to the assistance of the
insurgent island. Only one of their number ever returned alive to
Europe to tell of the horrors and hardships of the fierce struggle there
endured, of the cruelty of the Spaniards, and the uselessness of the
fight from the Anarchist point of view.

The Cuban fever was very catching, and after the departure of this first
band there was a regular epidemic of departure at the _Tocsin_. Carter
and Simpkins turned up at the office one afternoon very much in earnest
about it all and persuaded that a little British grit was what was
needed in Cuba, "to keep things humming." Simpkins recalled his old
army days and the valour he had several times displayed when under the
influence of liquor. He waved an old belt appertaining to those times,
and would, I believe, have sung something about the Union Jack and the
beer of old England, had not his friend recalled him to a better sense
of his duty as an Anarchist and Internationalist. It appeared that
Carter had come into a small sum of money consequent on the death of an
uncle, with which he was bent on paying their passage out to Cuba. "What
is an Anarchist to do in this wretched country?" he asked. "I am tired
of lying in bed waiting for the revolution. It's too slow coming."
"Yah!" muttered Short under his breath to me, "the springs are out of
order, and he finds it hard. That's about how much he cares for the
revolution."

After Carter and Simpkins had taken their leave of the staff of the
_Tocsin_ I watched a very moving scene from the window, when they bade
good Mrs. Wattles farewell. The good lady was very deeply affected, and
with tears in her eyes she begged them to think again before betaking
themselves to "them furrin' parts" where she had heard "the drink was
something awful and not fit for a Christian stomach." She was only half
reassured when told that rum came from somewhere in that direction.

But Carter and Simpkins never reached Cuba. Some few minutes' walk from
the office of the _Tocsin_, at the corner

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