A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS

By Isabel Meredith

PREFACE

In spite of the fact that there are certain highly respectableindividualists of a rabid type who prefer to call themselves Anarchists, it must be owned that it requires some courage to write about Anarchismeven with the sympathy befitting a clinical physician or the scientificdetachment of a pathologist. And yet it is certain that Anarchists arecuriously interesting, and not the less in need of observation from thefact that apparently none of the social quacks who prescribe seriously inleading articles has the faintest insight into them as a phenomenon, aportent, 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 Anarchismis as truly endemic in Western Civilisations as cholera is in India. Isabel Meredith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing when she was a morehumble member of the staff of the _Tocsin_ than the editor, occupies, to my knowledge, a very curious and unique position in the history ofEnglish Anarchism. There is nothing whatever in "A Girl among theAnarchists" which is invented, the whole thing is an experience told verysimply, but I think convincingly. Nevertheless as such a human documentmust seem incredible to the ordinary reader, I have no little pleasure insaying that I know what she has written to be true. I was myself acontributor to the paper which is here known as the _Tocsin_. I havehandled 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 philosophicallyas much an Anarchist as the late Dr. H. G. Sutton, who would no doubt havebeen astounded to learn that he belonged to the brotherhood. 

Curiously enough I have found most Anarchists of the mildestdispositions. I have met meek Germans (there are meek Germans stillextant) who even in their wildest Anarchic indignation seemed as littlecapable of hurting a living soul as of setting the Elbe on fire. For itmust be understood that the "red wing" of the Anarchists is a very smallsection of the body of philosophers known as Anarchists. There is no doubtthat those of the dynamite section are practically insane. They are"impulsives"; they were outraged and they revolted before birth. Most ofthe proletariat take their thrashing lying down. There are some who cannotdo that. It is out of these who are not meek and do not inherit evenstanding-room on the earth that such as "Matthieu" comes. Perhaps it maynot be out of place to suggest that a little investigation might be betterthan denunciation, which is always wide of the mark, and that, asAnarchism is created by the social system of repression, more repressionwill only create more Anarchism. However, I am perfectly aware that thenext time a wild-eyed philosopher, who ought to be under restraint in anasylum, throws a bomb, all the newspapers in Europe will advocate measuresfor turning all the meeker Anarchists into outrage-mongers. For of theAnarchists it is certainly true that repression does not repress. Anarchism is a creed and a philosophy, but neither as creed nor philosophydoes it advocate violence. It only justifies resistance to violence. Somuch, I think, will be discovered in this book even by a leader-writer. 

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

"In order that I might inquire better into the matter of this sciencewith the same freedom of mind with which we are wont to treat lines andsurfaces in mathematics, I determined not to laugh or weep over theactions of men but simply to understand them, and to contemplate theiraffections and passions such as love, hate, anger, envy, arrogance, pity, and all other disturbances of soul not as vices of human nature, but asproperties pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm, thunderpertain to the nature of the atmosphere. For these, though troublesome, are yet necessary and have certain causes through which we may come tounderstand them, and thus by contemplating them in their truth, gain forour minds as much joy as by the knowledge of things which are pleasing tothe 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 gazinginto the fire, and thinking over many things. I was alone in the house, except for the servants, but this circumstance did not affect me. Mychildhood and upbringing had been of no ordinary nature, and I was used tolooking after myself and depending on my own resources for amusement andoccupation. 

My mother had died when I was yet a small child and, with my elder sisterand brother, I had grown up under our father's eye. He was a chemist and aman of advanced ideas on most things. He had never sent us to school, preferring to watch in person over our education, procuring for us privatetuition in many subjects, and himself instructing us in physical scienceand history, his two favourite studies. We rapidly gained knowledge underhis system and were decidedly precocious children, but we had none of theordinary school society and routine. Our childhood was by no means dull ormopish, for there were three of us and we got on very well together, butwe mixed hardly at all with children of our own age, our interests werenot theirs, and their boisterous ways were somewhat repellent to us. 

Our father was a great believer in liberty, and, strange to say, he puthis ideas into practice in his own household. He was a devoted andenthusiastic student, and for days, nay, weeks together, we would see butlittle of him. He had fitted himself up a small laboratory at the top ofour house on which he spent all his available money, and here he passednearly all the time he could dispose of over and beyond that necessary forthe preparation and delivery of his scientific lectures. As we grew out ofchildhood he made no difference in his mode of life. He gave us fullliberty to follow our various bents, assisting us with his advice whenrequested, ever ready to provide the money necessary for any specialstudies or books; taking an interest in our readings and intellectualpursuits. The idea of providing us with suitable society, of launching usout into the world, of troubling to see that we conformed to the ordinaryconventions of society, never occurred to him. Occasionally some oldfriend of his would drop in, or some young admirer who had followed hisscientific work in the press would write asking permission to call andconsult him on some point. They were always received with cordiality, andmy father would take much trouble to be of any assistance he could tothem. We children used generally to be present on such occasions, andfrequently would join in the conversation, and thus we got to know variouspeople, among whom foreigners and various types of cranks were fairly inevidence. 

We lived in a large old-fashioned house in Fitzroy Square where ourfather had settled down somewhere in the seventies soon after his marriageto a South American Spaniard, whom he had met during a scientific researchexpedition in Brazil. She was a girl of seventeen, his junior by sometwenty years. During his journeys into the interior of Brazil he hadfallen seriously ill with malarial fever, and had been most kindly takenin and nursed by a coffee-planter and his family. Here he had met hisfuture wife who was acting as governess. She was of Spanish descent, andcombined the passionate enthusiasm of a Southerner with the independenceand self-reliance which life in a new and only partially civilised countrybreeds. She was an orphan and penniless, but our father fell in love withher, attracted doubtless by her beauty and vivaciousness in such strikingcontrast with his bookish way of life, and he married her and brought herhome to London. He truly loved her and was a good husband in all essentialrespects, but the uncongenial climate and monotonous life told on herhealth, and she died three years after my birth, much mourned by herhusband, who plunged all the more deeply into scientific research, hisonly other thought being a care for our education. He had lived on in thesame old house which grew somewhat dingier and shabbier each year, whilstthe neighbourhood fell from its pristine respectability to become theresort of foreigners of somewhat doubtful character, of Bohemian artistsand musicians. 

As I sat gazing into the fire many pictures of those old days rose beforeme. I saw our large drawing-room with its old-fashioned furniture, handsome, often beautiful, but ill-kept; its sombre hangings and finepictures. I recalled a typical scene there with a large fire burningcheerily in the big grate, relieving the gloom of a late winter afternoonwith 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 hisfavourite cat perched on his knee. Opposite him sit two ladies, the elderof whom--a quaint, nice-looking old lady, dressed neatly in black, butwhose innate eccentricity succeeded in imparting something odd to thesimplest and quietest of attires--is leaning eagerly forward, pouringforth a long tale of woe into my father's sympathetic ear. She isdenouncing the London roughs, landlords, and police, who, apparently, areall 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 thefeline race fully performed when they have fed them, and who pay no moreattention to their morals and higher feelings than if they were stocks andstones, arouses her ire; sympathy is what she needs, sympathy to help herto face the world and continue her crusade against cruelty. She says allthis in a scattered and disconnected style, jumping from one point toanother, turning occasionally to her friend for support or confirmation. This friend is a meek, subdued-looking person of uncertain age, somewhatwashed-out and bedraggled in appearance. Her attire is nondescript, andseems to consist of oddments bought solely because they were cheap andbearing no relation whatever one to the other. Mrs. Smuts, growing moreand more absorbed in the course of her harangue on the great cat question, states that she believes in marrying cats young in life and lookingstrictly after their morals; and as she appeals to Miss Meggs whilstvoicing this sentiment, the latter timidly interjects, "But do you think, my dear Maria, that cats can maintain themselves chaste on a meat diet? Inever give mine anything more exciting than cold potatoes and ricepudding, and I find that they thrive on it, Mr. Meredith!"

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

Another frequent visitor whom my imagination summoned from the grave inwhich 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 aFrenchman, but had lived mostly in England, his parents having come overas political exiles from the tyranny of Louis Napoleon, afterwardssettling permanently in this country. He was an engineer by profession, but a poet at heart, and all his spare time and thought he devoted totackling the problem of aerial navigation. His day was spent earning ascanty living in a shipbuilding yard, but his evenings and nights werepassed in constructing a model of a flying-machine. He would bring hisdrawings round to our father for discussion and advice; and although henever attained success, he was always hopeful, trusting that some one ofthe ever fresh improvements and additions which his fertile brain wasalways busy conceiving would solve the difficulty which had hitherto besethim. His sallow face with its large dreamy eyes and his spare figure, cladin an old bluish suit, rusty with age and threadbare with brushing, standout clear in my memory. There was also an old professor, a chemist like myfather, who often assisted him in his experiments. He was somewhatformidable in appearance, wearing gold spectacles, and helping himselffreely to the contents of a snuff-box, but he was one of the mostkind-hearted of men. Children were great favourites with him, and hisaffection was returned with interest as soon as the shyness consequent onhis somewhat gruff manner was overcome. He used to enjoy drawing us out, and would laugh heartily at our somewhat old-fashioned remarks andobservations, at which we used to grow very indignant, for we weredecidedly touchy when our dignity was at stake. He had nicknamed meCharlotte Corday, for, after a course of Greek and Roman history, studiedin Plutarch and Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar, " I had plunged into theFrench Revolution, glorying in its heroisms and audacity, and it hadbecome a favourite amusement with all three of us to enact scenes drawnfrom its history, and to recite aloud, with great emphasis if little art, revolutionary poetry. The old professor loved to tease me by abusing myfavourite heroes; and when he had at last roused me to a vigorousassertion 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 orshe will be making bombs soon and blowing us all up, " at which my fatherwould smile complacently. 

Our father was very charitable. He did not like to be bothered ordisturbed, but he would willingly give a little assistance when asked, andthe result was that our door was always besieged by beggars of variousnationalities, Spaniards and Italians forming the chief contingent. Generally they confined themselves to sending in notes, which used to bereturned with a shilling or half-crown as the case might be, but sometimesone would insist on a personal interview. I remember one wild-lookingHungarian, whose flowing locks were crowned by a sort of horse'ssun-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 hootingboys, advising him to "get 'is 'air cut, " and inquiring, "Where did youget that 'at?" He used to insist on seeing my father; but the help hesolicited was not for himself but for various political refugees in whomhe was interested. One day the professor happened to meet thiswild-looking creature at our door, and inquired of my father who thatmaniac 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 notconsider him mad, " replied his friend. 

Amid such surroundings we grew up. My elder sister, Caroline, had anotable musical gift, and even as a small child had a fine voice, whichdeveloped into a rich contralto. Our father, always anxious to do his dutyby us, gave her a first-rate musical education, sending her abroad tostudy under famous Continental teachers, and at eighteen she made herfirst appearance in public, exciting much attention by the powerfuldramatic qualities of her voice. It was evident that her right course wasto go in for operatic singing, and this she did. She continued on the mostaffectionate terms with her family, but naturally her pursuit took herinto quite another path of life, and we saw less and less of her as timewent on. This threw my brother and myself more together. There was only ayear's difference between us, and we studied together, walked, talked, played, and read together--in fact, were inseparable. Raymond was noordinary boy. In character and in manners he was very like my father. Hisfavourite study was physical science in its various branches; mine, history and sociological subjects. He saw things from the scientificstandpoint, I from the poetical and artistic; but we were both by natureenthusiastic and dreamers, and sympathised heartily with each other'sviews. His ambition was to become a famous explorer; mine, to die on ascaffold or a barricade, shouting Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. 

Our father took a great pride in Raymond, and carefully supervised hisstudies. He passed various brilliant examinations, and at eighteen, havingdecided to go in for medicine, was already walking a hospital. Shortlyafter this our father died suddenly. He was at work as usual in hislaboratory when he was seized by a paralytic stroke, and in three days hewas 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 Ihave explained, he had always left us free to follow our own devices, still he was the centre round which our family life circled; we werepassionately attached to him, and now that he was gone we felt at a lossindeed. We had no relatives living of our father's; our mother's family wehad 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. Catenthusiasts and scientific dreamers are all very well in their way, butthey 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 propertyyielding a comfortable income was divided equally between us. Our homeseemed desolate indeed without our father, and very gloomily did the firstmonths of his absence pass; but in time hope and youth reassertedthemselves and we gradually settled down to much our old way of life. Caroline obtained several engagements and was still studyingenthusiastically. Raymond passed most of his time at the hospital, wherehe had rooms, though he frequently came home; I was the only one who hadnot a definite occupation. I read a great deal and wrote a little also, chiefly studies on historical subjects which interested me, but I hadprinted nothing. In fact I had never been in the way of the literaryworld, and did not know how to set about it. Time used often to hangrather heavily on my hands in the big house where I was generally alone. Iwas the housekeeper, but such cares did not take up much of my time. Theresult of so much solitude and lack of occupation was that I becamerestless and dissatisfied. Mere reading without any definite object didnot and could not suffice me; to write when there seemed no prospect ofever being read, and keenly alive as I was to my own deficiencies, did notattract me; friends I might say I had none, for the few people my fatherknew were interested in him and not in us children, and ceased to frequentour house after his death. Caroline's musical friends did not appeal tome, 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 neverflagged. Never having been to school he had none of the schoolboy'spatronising contempt for a sister. We had always been chums andcompanions, and so we continued, but whereas, as children, it was I, withmy more passionate and enterprising nature, who took the lead, now it washe who, mixing with the outer world, provided the stimulus of new ideasand fresh activities for which I craved. Brought suddenly face to face, after the studious seclusion of home, with the hard facts of life as seenin a London hospital, he had begun to take a deep interest in socialquestions. The frightful havoc of life and happiness necessitated by theeconomic conditions of nineteenth-century society, impressed him deeply, and he felt that any doctor who looked upon his profession as other than amere means to make money must tackle such problems. Following up this lineof thought he became interested in economics and labour questions. Hisviews were the result of no mere surface impression, but the logicaloutcome of thought and study, and he arrived at socialism by mentalprocesses of his own, uninfluenced by the ordinary channels of propaganda. I shared his interests and read on parallel lines. We had no friends inSocialist circles, no personal interest of any kind balanced our judgment. The whole trend of our education had been to make independent thinkers ofus. What we saw in the whole problem was a question of justice, and forthis we were ready and anxious to work. A new interest was thus broughtinto our lives, which, in my case, soon became all-absorbing. I was alwaysbegging my brother to bring me home fresh books. The driest volumes ofpolitical economy, the most indigestible of philosophical treatises, nothing came amiss. From these I passed on to more modern works. Raymondhad made friends with a student who was a professed socialist and throughhim he came into possession of a number of pamphlets and papers, all ofwhich I devoured eagerly, and some of which made a lasting impression onmy mind. Krapotkin's "Appeal to the Young" was of this number. I rememberin 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 adamper on my enthusiasm. 

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

Great was my excitement when Raymond told me that I might expect him andhis friend, of whom I had heard so much, to turn up together one Sundayevening. 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 lifeat a moment's notice on behalf of the "Cause. " I had had no experience ofthe petty internal strifes, of the jealousies and human frailties which acloser knowledge of all political parties reveals. I remember how ashamedI felt of the quite unostentatious comfort of our home, how anxious I wasto dissemble the presence of servants, how necessary I thought it to dressmyself in my oldest and least becoming clothes for the occasion, and howindignant I felt when Caroline, who was going off to sing at a concertthat evening, said, on coming in to wish me good-bye, "Why, surely, Isabel, you're not going to receive that gentleman looking such a frightas this?" As if a Socialist could care for dress! How I felt he woulddespise me for all the outward signs which proved that I was living on theresults of "unearned increment" (_vide_ Karl Marx) and that I was amere 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 manlooking much like any other gentleman, except that he wore a red tie, andthat his clothes were of a looser and easier fit than is usual. "What ajolly place you have!" he exclaimed after my brother had introduced us andhe had given a look round. I felt considerably relieved, as I had quiteexpected him to scowl disapproval, and my brother, after saying, "Yes, itis a nice old house; we are very fond of it, " suggested that we shouldadjourn to supper. 

During this repast I took an animated part in the conversation, whichturned 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 workadvocating the most rabid individualism, denying the Socialist standpointof the right to live, and saying that the best safeguard for thedevelopment and amelioration of the race lay in that relentless law ofnature which sent the mentally and morally weak to the wall. I had readthe book with interest, and had even written a rather long criticism ofit, of which I felt distinctly proud. In the course of the discussion towhich this book gave rise among us, my brother mentioned that I hadwritten something on it, and Hughes begged me to read my performance. Though I felt somewhat diffident, I acceded, after some persuasion, to hisrequest, and was elated beyond measure at earning his good opinion of myeffort. 

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

"Oh, I had never thought of publishing it, " I replied; "I have neverpublished 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. Letme take it down to the _Democrat_, " he said, mentioning the name of apaper which Raymond often brought home with him. 

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

Thus was effected my first introduction to the actual Socialist party. Myarticle was printed and I was asked for others. I made the acquaintance ofthe editor, who, I must confess, spite of my enthusiasm, soon struck me asa rather weak-kneed and altogether unadmirable character. He thought itnecessary to get himself up to look like an artist, though he had not thesoul of a counter-jumper, and the result was long hair, a velvet coat, ared tie, bumptious bearing, and an altogether scatter-brained and fly-awaymanner. In figure he was long and willowy, and reminded me irresistibly ofan unhealthy cellar-grown potato plant. My circle of acquaintances rapidlyenlarged, and soon, instead of having too much time on my hands forreading and study, I had too little. At one of the Sunday evening lecturesof the Democratic Club, at which I had become a regular attendant, I madethe acquaintance of Nekrovitch, the famous Nihilist, and his wife. I tookto him instinctively, drawn by the utter absence of sham or "side" whichcharacterised the man. I had never understood why Socialism need imply thearraying of oneself in a green curtain or a terra-cotta rug, or thecultivation of flowing locks, blue shirts, and a peculiar cut of clothes:and the complete absence of all such outward "trade marks" pleased me inthe Russian. He invited me to his house, and I soon became a constantvisitor. In the little Chiswick house I met a class of people whostimulated me intellectually, and once more aroused my rather waningenthusiasm for the "Cause. " The habit of taking nothing for granted, ofboldly inquiring into the origin of all accepted precepts of morality, ofintellectual speculation unbiassed by prejudice and untrammelled by allthose petty personal and party questions and interests which I had seenoccupy so much time and thought at the Democratic Club, permeated theintellectual atmosphere. Quite a new side of the problem--that of itsmoral bearings and abstract rights as opposed to the merely material rightto daily bread which had first appealed to my sense of justice andhumanity--now opened before me. The right to complete liberty of action, the conviction that morality is relative and personal and can never beimposed from without, that men are not responsible, or only very partiallyso, for their surroundings, by which their actions are determined, andthat consequently no man has a right to judge his fellow; such and similardoctrines which I heard frequently upheld, impressed me deeply. I wasmorally convinced of their truth, and consequently more than half anAnarchist. The bold thought and lofty ideal which made of each man a lawunto himself, answerable for his own actions only to his own conscience, acting righteously towards others as the result of his feeling ofsolidarity and not because of any external compulsion, captivated my mind. 

The Anarchists who frequented Nekrovitch's house were men of bold andoriginal thought, the intellectual part of the movement, and I was nevertired of listening to their arguments. Meantime the more I saw of theSocial Democrats the less I felt satisfied with them. A wider experiencewould have told me that all political parties, irrespective of opinion, are subject to much the same criticism, and that Socialist ideas are noprotection against human weaknesses; but extreme youth is not compromisingwhere its ideals are concerned, and I expected and insisted on a certainapproach to perfection in my heroes. True, Nekrovitch made me hesitatesome time before taking the final step. His attitude in such discussionswas one of sound common sense, and he never ceased reminding his Anarchistfriends, though all in vain, that we must live in our own times, and thatit 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 fulleighteen years of age, and had always been accustomed to think and act formyself. Caroline, with whom I was on most affectionate terms, despite ourfrequent differences on politics, had accepted an engagement as _primadonna_ with a travelling opera company which was to visit the UnitedStates and the principal cities of South America; her engagement was tolast two years, and she had left just three weeks before the opening of myfirst chapter. 

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

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

CHAPTER II

A GATHERING IN CHISWICK

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

An interminably dreary journey by tram and rail, omnibus and foot, thelatter end of which lay along a monotonous suburban road, brought you tothe humble dwelling of the famous Nihilist. Here from time to time onSunday evenings it was my wont to put in an appearance towards ten oreleven, for the journey was deceptively long from Fitzroy Square, andNekrovitch, like most Russians, was himself of so unpunctual and irregulara nature, that he seemed to foster the like habits in all his friends. Thenominal hour for these social gatherings to commence was eight, but nottill past nine did the guests begin to assemble, and till midnight andlater they would come dribbling in. Only one conscientiously punctualGerman was ever known to arrive at the appointed hour, but the only rewardof the Teuton's mistaken zeal was to wait for hours in solitary state inan unwarmed, unlighted room till his host and fellow-guests saw fit toassemble. 

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

The company was always of a very mixed cosmopolitan character--RussianNihilists and exiles, English Liberals who sympathised with the Russianconstitutional movement, Socialists and Fabians, Anarchists of allnationalities, journalists and literary men whose political views wereimmaterial, the pseudo-Bohemian who professes interest in the "queer sideof life, " all manner of faddists, rising and impecunious musicians andartists--all were made welcome, and all were irresistibly attractedtowards the great Russian Nihilist. 

The most notable figure in this assembly, and he certainly would havebeen in most assemblies, was Nekrovitch himself. Nekrovitch wasessentially a great man; one of those men whom to know was to admire andto love; a man of strong intellect, and of the strong personal magnetismwhich is so frequently an adjunct of genius. Physically he was a hugepowerful man, so massive and striking in appearance that he suggestedcomparison 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 mountainsin a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their environments, whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He stood out from amonghis guests the centre of conversation, of feeling, and of interest. He wasalmost invariably engaged in eager conversation, pitched in a loud tone ofvoice, broken at intervals when he listened to the other disputants, whilepuffing the cigarettes which he was constantly rolling, and lookingintently out of his deep-set penetrating eyes. 

Nekrovitch's wife, a Russian like himself, had been a student of medicineat the Russian University until, along with her husband, she had beencompelled to take flight from the attentions of the Russian police. Shewas a curly-headed brunette, with bright hazel eyes and a vivaciousmanner; a very intelligent and highly "simpatica" woman, as the Italianswould put it. 

Round Nekrovitch there always clustered an eager crowd of admirers andintimates, discussing, disputing, listening, arguing. They were mostlyforeigners, of the shaggy though not unwashed persuasion, but two Englishfaces especially attracted notice. One belonged to a young woman, still onthe right side of thirty, dressed without exaggeration in the aestheticstyle, with a small but singularly intellectual head and an argumentativemanner, whom I knew as Miss Cooper. The other was a man of somethirty-seven years, with auburn hair, which displayed a distinct tendencyto develop into a flowing mane; tall, slim, and lithe of limb, with asplendid set of teeth, which showed under his bushy moustache whenever hisfrank, benevolent smile parted his lips. He was somewhat taciturn, butevidently tenacious; a glance at his spacious forehead and finely-shapedhead revealed a man of mind, and the friendly, fearless glance of his eyesbetokened a lovable nature, though, as he listened to his opponents oranswered in his low distinct voice, there was an intensity and fixednessin their depth not incompatible with the fanatic. 

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

Among the other Anarchists who frequented Nekrovitch's house was theAnarchist and scientist, Count Voratin, a man who had sacrificed wealthand high position and family ties for his principles with less fuss thananother rich man would make in giving a donation to an hospital. He seemedalways absolutely oblivious of his own great qualities, as simple andkindly in manners as a _moujik_ but with a certain innate dignity andcourtliness of demeanour which lifted him above most of those with whom hecame in contact. I nourished an almost passionate admiration for Voratinas a thinker and a man, and his writings had gone far to influence me inmy Anarchist leanings. Never shall I forget the excitement I felt whenfirst I met him at Nekrovitch's house. I reverenced him as only a youthfuldisciple can reverence a great leader. 

From Armitage and Nekrovitch I heard much from time to time of anotherRussian Anarchist, Ivan Kosinski, a man actively engaged in the Anarchistpropaganda all over Europe. He was much admired by them for his absoluteunswerving devotion to his ideas. A student and a man of means, he hadnever hesitated between his interests and his convictions. He had comeinto collision with the Russian authorities by refusing to performmilitary service. In prison he would not recognise the right of judges andjailers, and had consequently spent most of his time in a strait waistcoatand a dark cell. His forte was silence and dogged unyielding obstinacy. Onescaping from Russian prisons he had gone to America: he had starved andtramped, but he had never accepted any sort of help. How he lived was amystery to all. He was known to be an ascetic and a woman-hater, and hadbeen seen at one time selling fly-papers in the streets of New York. Inrevolutionary circles he was looked up to as an original thinker, and itwas rumoured that he played a leading part in most of the revolutionarymovements of recent years. He was also engaged on a life of Bakouninewhich was to be the standard work on the famous revolutionist, for whichpurpose 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 astate of suppressed excitement at the news. For many months past I hadsympathised with the Anarchist principles, but I had taken no particularsteps towards joining the party or exerting myself on its behalf. I waswaiting for some special stimulus to action. Half unconsciously I foundmyself wondering whether Kosinski would prove this. 

I had passed a pleasant evening in the little Chiswick house between theusual political and ethical discussions and the usual interesting orentertaining company. I had assisted at a long discussion between MissCooper and Dr. Armitage, which, commencing on the question of Socialism, had gradually deviated into one on food and dress reform, a matter uponwhich that lady held very strong views. I had felt a little irritated atthe conversation, for I entertained scant sympathy for what I regarded ashygienic fads; and the emphasis with which the lady averred that shetouched neither flesh nor alcohol, and felt that by this abstinence shewas not "besotting her brain nor befouling her soul, " amused me much. Dr. Armitage, to my surprise, expressed some sympathy with her views, andtreated the question with what I considered undue importance. Thisdiscussion was brought at last to a termination by Miss Cooper breakingoff for a meal (she always ate at regular intervals), and retiring into acorner to consume monkey-nuts out of a hanging pocket or pouch which shecarried 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 themuch-expected Anarchist, but I was repeatedly disappointed. Once it wasthe musical infant prodigy of the season whose talents had taken London bystorm, another time it was a Nihilist, yet another a wild-looking Czechpoet. One loud rat-tat made me feel certain that Kosinski had arrived, butI was again disillusioned, as an aesthetic, fascinating little lady madeher entry, dragging triumphantly in tow a reluctant, unengaging andgreen-haired husband. Nekrovitch gave me a significant glance. "So sorryto be so late, " the little lady began in a high-pitched voice, "but I hadto attend a meeting of our society for the distribution of sanitarydust-bins; and Humphry got quite disagreeable waiting for me outside, although he was well wrapped up in comforters and mits. My dear Anna (thisto Madame Nekrovitch), _do_ tell him that he is most absurd andegoistic, and that it is his duty to think less of personal comfort andmore of humanity. "

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

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

From the first moment Kosinski interested me. His manners were notengaging; towards women especially he was decidedly hostile. But themarked 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 onAnarchism with Armitage at last afforded me an opportunity of exchanging afew words with him--even though on his side the conversation was notaltogether flattering to myself. It happened in this way. 

Nekrovitch, Armitage, and myself had, according to our wont, beendiscussing the great Anarchist question. For the hundredth time theRussian had endeavoured to persuade us of the truth and the reason of hispoint of view. 

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

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

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

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

"I can quite see your point of view, " I replied; "in fact I am more thanhalf a convert already. But I should like to know what I can do. I havebeen interested now in these problems for a year or two, and must confessthat the electioneering and drawing-room politics of Fabians and SocialDemocrats are not much to my taste; in fact I may say that I am sick ofthem. A few men like our friend Nekrovitch, who ennoble any opinions theymay hold, are of course exceptions, but I cannot blind myself to the factthat ambition, wire-pulling, and faddism play a prominent part in thegeneral proceedings. On the other hand you seem to me to sin in theopposite direction. No organisation, no definite programme, no specificobject!--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 overthrowmy objections: "Why, the very strength of our party lies in the fact thatit has not what you are pleased to call an organisation. Organisations areonly a means for intriguers and rogues to climb to power on the shouldersof their fellow-men; and at best only serve to trammel initiative andenterprise. With us every individual enjoys complete liberty of action. This of course does not mean to say that several individuals may not uniteto attain some common object, as is shown by our groups which arescattered all over the globe. But each group is autonomous, and within thegroup each individual is his own law. Such an arrangement, besides beingright in principle, offers great practical advantages in our war againstsociety, 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 theultimate aim to be attained is meant, it is wrong to say we have noprogramme, but, if you mean a set of rules and formulas, why, what arethey after all but a means of sterilising ideas? Men and theirsurroundings are unceasingly undergoing modification and change, and oneof the chief defects of all governments and parties hitherto has been thatmen have had to adapt themselves to their programmes, instead of theirprogrammes to themselves. We make no statement as to specific object: eachcomrade has his own, and goes for it without considering it necessary toproclaim the fact to the whole world. Now you ask me how you could helpthis movement or what you could do, and I have no hesitation in saying, much. Every revolution requires revolutionists, we need propagandists, weneed workers, we need brains and money, and you have both. "

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

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

We had unconsciously raised our voices in the heat of discussion, andKosinski, who had caught our last observations, broke in unexpectedly. Itwas the first time he had opened his mouth to any purpose, and he wentstraight to the point: "It is you bourgeois Socialists, with your talk ofhelping us, and your anxiety about using your property 'to the bestadvantage, ' who are the ruin of every movement, " he said, addressing me inan uncompromising spirit. "What is wanted to accomplish any great changeis enthusiasm, whole-hearted labour, and where that is, no thought istaken as to whether everything is being used to the best advantage. If youare prepared to enter the movement in this spirit, without any backwardnotion that you are conferring a favour upon any one--for indeed thecontrary is the case--well and good: your work will be willingly acceptedfor what it is worth, and your money, if you have any, will be made gooduse of; but if not, you had better side with your own class and enjoy yourprivileges 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 Kosinskimust have dined on steak; Dr. Armitage agreed, but seemed to consider thatmore 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 thoroughlyendorsed the sentiment expressed, finding therein the solution of manymoral difficulties which had beset me. Kosinksi was right. I felt one mustgo 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 allalong instinctively felt. Private property was, after all, but the outcomeof theft, and there can be no virtue in restoring what we have come byunrighteously. 

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 indetermining my future conduct. I was already disposed towards Anarchistdoctrines, and my disposition was more inclined towards action of anyorder than towards mere speculation. I was the first to speak. "Kosinskiis quite right; I am the first to recognise it. Only I think it a littleunfair to assume me to be a mere bourgeois, attempting to play the part oflady patroness to the revolution. I am sure none who know me can accuse meof such an attitude. "

Kosinski grumbled out a reply: "Well, of course I may be mistaken; but Ihave seen so many movements ruined by women that I am rather distrustful;they are so rarely prepared to forgo what they consider the privileges ofthe sex--which is but another phrase for bossing every one and everythingand expecting much in return for nothing; but of course there may beexceptions. 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 youstill resist all temptations to reform. You carry boorishness to the vergeof heroism. "

The hours had slipped by rapidly, and Mrs. Trevillian took the hint whichher spouse had long tried to give by shuffling restlessly in his seat andcasting side glances at the clock which pointed to half-past one. She roseto go. "We really must be leaving--it is quite late, and Humphry is neverfit for anything unless he gets at least six hours' sleep. Good-bye;thanks for such a pleasant evening, " and she bustled out, followed by herhusband. I rose to follow her example and, turning a deaf ear toNekrovitch, who remarked, "Oh, Isabel, do stay on; it is not yet late, andas you have lost your last train it is no use being in a hurry, " I shookhands with my friends, including Kosinski, who had once more subsided intoa corner, and left, accompanied by Dr. Armitage, who offered to walk homewith me. 

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

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

"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 mysteryabout our meetings. There will be a meeting at the office of our paper, the _Bomb_, next Saturday. Do come. The business on hand will perhapsnot interest you much, but it will be an opportunity for meeting some ofour men, and I shall be there. "

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

"Well, to tell the truth, it is a somewhat unpleasant matter, " repliedthe doctor with some hesitation in his voice. "There have been somestrange reports circulating about the Myers case, and we are anxious toget at the truth of the business. It may strike you as a rather unsuitableintroduction, but come nevertheless. The movement is always in need of newblood 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'sMews, ---- 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 forhis long periods of silence. At last we reached my doorstep. I fumbled formy latch-key, found it, and wished my friend good-night. We shook handsand parted. 

CHAPTER III

AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING

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

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

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

That same afternoon a loud explosion had aroused the inhabitants of aquiet suburban district, and on reaching the corner of ---- Park whencethe 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 obscurelittle French Anarchist, but despite the usual lengthy and unsatisfactoryroutine of police inquiries, searches, and arrests, practically nothingcould be ascertained concerning him or the circumstances attending hisdeath. All that was certain was that the deceased man had in hispossession an explosive machine, evidently destined for some deadly work, and that, while traversing the park, it had exploded, thus putting an endboth to its owner and his projects. 

Various conflicting theories were mooted as to the motive which promptedthe conduct of the deceased Anarchist, but no confirmation could beobtained to any of these. Some held that Myers was traversing London onhis way to some inconspicuous country railway station, whence to taketrain for the Continent where a wider and more propitious field forAnarchist outrage lay before him. Others opined that he had contemplatedcommitting an outrage in the immediate vicinity of the spot whichwitnessed his own death; and others, again, that, having manufactured hisinfernal machine for some nefarious purpose either at home or abroad, hewas suddenly seized either with fear or remorse, and had journeyed to thisunobserved spot in order to bury it. The papers hinted at accomplices andtalked about the usual "widespread conspiracy"; the police opened widetheir eyes, but saw very little. The whole matter, in short, remained, andmust always remain, a mystery to the public. 

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

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

Half-way down one of the busiest, grimiest, and most depressing streetsin the W. C. District stands a squalid public-house, the type of manyhundreds and thousands of similar dens in the metropolis. The "MyrtleGrove Tavern, " pastoral as the name sounds, was not precisely the abode ofpeace 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, " theatmosphere was dense with the foul breath and still fouler language ofdrunken and besotted men and women. Every phase of the lower order ofBritish drinker and drunkard was represented here. The coarse oaths of themen, mingled with the shriller voices of their female companions, and theeternal "'e saids" and "she saids" of the latter's complaints and disputeswere interrupted by the plaintive wailings of the puny, gin-nourishedinfants at their breasts. Here, too, sat the taciturn man, clay pipe inmouth, on his accustomed bench day after day, year in year out, gazingwith stony and blear-eyed indifference on all that went on around him;deaf, dumb, and unseeing; only spitting deliberately at intervals, andwith apparently no other vocation in life than the consumption offermented liquor. 

The side-door for "jugs and bottles" gave on to a dirty and odoriferousmews, down which my destination lay. The unbridled enthusiasm of eighteenyears can do much to harden or deaden the nervous system, but certainly itrequired all my fortitude to withstand the sickening combination of beerand damp horsy hay which greeted my nostrils. Neither could the cabmen andstablemen, hanging round the public-house doors and the mews generally, becalculated to increase one's democratic aspirations, but I walkedresolutely on, and turning to my left, dexterously avoiding an unsavouryheap of horse manure, straw, and other offal, I clambered up a break-neckladder, 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 asurly and suspicious glance, accompanied by a not very encouraging snarl, but on my mentioning Dr. Armitage he opened the door a few inches widerand I passed in. 

It took me some seconds before I could accustom my eyes to the fetidatmosphere of this den, which was laden with the smoke of divers specimensof the worst shag and cheapest tobacco in the metropolis. But variousobjects, human and inanimate, became gradually more distinct, and I foundmyself in a long, ill-lighted wooden shed, where type and dust andunwashed human beings had left their mark, and where soap and sanitationwere unknown. Past the type racks and cases, which occupied the first halfof this apartment, were grouped benches, stools, packing-cases, and a fewmaimed and deformed chairs for the accommodation of the assembly. Thencame a hand printing-press, on which were spread the remains of somecomrade's repast: the vertebral column of a bloater and an emptycondensed-milk can, among other relics. The floor, from one extremity tothe other of the "office, " was littered with heaps of unsold revolutionaryliterature, the approximate date of which could be gauged by the thicknessof dust in which it was smothered. On the walls and from beams and raftershung foils and boxing-gloves; artistic posters and cartoons, the relics ofa great artist who had founded the _Bomb_, and the effigies of diverscomrades to whom a pathway to a better world had been opened through thehangman's drop. But what most riveted my attention was an indistinctanimate _something_ enveloped in a red flag, rolled up in a heap onthe frouziest and most forbidding old sofa it had ever been my lot tobehold. That this _something_ was animate could be gathered from theoccasional twitchings of the red bundle, and from the dark mop of blackgreasy hair which emerged from one end. But to what section of the animalkingdom _it_ belonged I was quite at a loss to decide. Other strayobjects which I noted about this apartment were an ostentatious-lookingold 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 someof them are deserving of our attention. 

The man Myers, round whom the interest of the meeting was principallycentred this evening, was to all appearances a mean enough type of theEast End sartorial Jew. His physiognomy was not that of a fool, butindicated rather that low order of intelligence, cunning and intriguing, which goes to make a good swindler. The low forehead, wide awake, shiftylittle eyes, the nose of his forefathers, and insolent lock of black hairplastered low on his brow--all these characteristics may frequently be metwith in the dock of the "Old Bailey" when some case of petty swindling isbeing tried. 

Next Myers I noticed Dr. Armitage, who stood out in striking contrastfrom the rest of his companions. The smile with which he welcomed me waseloquent of the satisfaction with which he noted this my first entranceinto an Anarchist circle. 

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

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

This explanation was a square-built, sturdy-looking man of some fortyyears. His appearance was the reverse of engaging, but by no means lackingin intelligence. He was ill-satisfied and annoyed with the universe, andhabitually defied it from the stronghold of a double bed. Thither he hadretired after the death of his father, an old market-porter, who had beencrushed by the fall of a basket of potatoes. The son saw in this tragiccircumstance the outcome and the reward of labour, swore a solemn oathnever to do a stroke of work again, threw up his job, and from that daybecame a confirmed loafer in the Anarchist party. Some months previously, while propagandising in the workhouse, he found the youth there, andlearned from his own lips how, being disinclined to become a burden on hispoor old parents after his exit from the army, he had seen no otheralternative but to become a pauper, and make the best he could of theopportunities afforded him by the poor-rates. From the workhouse he wasdragged triumphantly forth by his new friend, and became an easy convertto anarchic and communistic principles. 

The only feminine element in this assembly was a fair, earnest-lookingRussian girl, whose slight knowledge of English did not allow her tofollow the proceedings very accurately. She was an almost pathetic figurein her naïve enthusiasm, and evidently regarded her present companions asseriously as those she had left behind her in Russia, and seemed toimagine 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 perhapsin the ascendant. But there were also many of the more intelligent artisanclass, discontented with their lot; labourers and dockers who had trampedup after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the SocialDemocratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sobertanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or twofishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race. O'Flynn, the printerof the _Bomb_, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste fordiscoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew frightfullymuddled and confused. He had a rather mad look in his eye and adisputatious manner. 

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

And now at last, after much talking and shifting about, and not before ayoung German hairdresser had been stationed with one eye glued to a holein the outer wall of the shed, in order to make sure that no detective waslistening 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. Thenfollowed a long and rambling statement which he read out, from amid thegrammatical inaccuracies and continual digressions of which I was enabledto gather that he had noticed of late something very peculiar about theconduct of Jacob Myers, who had appeared to exercise undue influence andpower over his brother Augustin; that, moreover, Jacob had been seen by athird party drinking a glass of rum in the "Nag and Beetle" in companywith a well-known detective, and that, in final and conclusive proof ofsome very fishy transactions on his part, three undeniable half-crowns hadbeen distinctly observed in his overcoat pocket the previous week. "Andhow 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'sneighbour, ejaculated at this juncture, after which irrelevant inquiry hespat defiance at Society. 

Then followed the speeches for the prosecution, if the use of such a wordmay be permitted in connection with an Anarchist transaction. The chiefaccusations made against Myers were his violent blood-and-thunder speecheswhich he had in no wise carried out in action, but which he had deliveredunder the eyes and in the hearing of the police who had listened and seenit all with quite commendable Christian forbearance. Besides this severalsensational articles had appeared in the daily press in connection withAugustin's death, exaggerating the importance of the affair and hinting atdark plots; of which articles he was suspected of being the author. Jacobwas in fact accused of having egged on his unfortunate brother to his doomin order that he might turn a little money out of the transaction betweennewspaper reports and police fees. It apparently mattered little to thismodern Shylock whence came his pound of flesh or what blood ran orcongealed in its veins. 

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

My eyes were riveted on the doctor's face, and only to one who knew himwell could the expression be at all decipherable. To me it distinctlydenoted disappointment--that humiliating sense of disappointment anddisillusion which must invariably come upon a man of strong and fanaticalconvictions when brought into contact with the meanness and cowardice ofhis fellows. 

Dr. Armitage was a fanatic and an idealist, and two convictions wereparamount 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 whomhe was associated. A man of the Myers type was quite incomprehensible tohim. Not for a single instant had Armitage hesitated to throw open thedoors of his Harley Street establishment to the Anarchists: to him thecause was everything, and interests, prudence, prospects, all had to giveway before it. And here was this man who had professed the same principlesas himself, with whom he had discoursed freely on the necessity of force, who had openly advocated dynamite in his presence--this man who had spokenof the revolution and the regeneration of Society with the same warmth ashimself--talking of "domestic purposes, " and ready to recant all that hehad preached and said. And what lay behind this reticence and thesedenials? Treachery of the basest kind, and the most sordid, abominablecalculations which it was possible to conceive. 

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

After some seconds' hesitation Armitage replied: "I do not desire orintend to go into any details here concerning my past conversations orrelations with Jacob Myers, neither do I consider myself in any way boundto discuss here the motives which prompted, or which I thought promptedhis actions, and the requests he made of me. As Anarchists we have not theright to judge him, and all we can do is to refuse to associate ourselvesany further with him, which I, for one, shall henceforth do. The knowledgeof 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 pretendto judge our fellows, but we can form our own opinions and actaccordingly. Myers' conduct proves him to be no better than a spy; we ofthe _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 noneof these nice distinctions. I call a spade a spade, and if.... "

"'Ear, 'ear! Down with ... " commenced Elliot again, and Jacob opened hismouth to speak, but he was saved from any further need of self-defence orexplanation, for at this moment the door of the office was broken rudelyopen and there entered like a hurricane a veritable fury in female form--awhirlwind, a tornado, a ravening wolf into a fold of lambs. Thisformidable apparition, which proved to be none other than the wife of thesuspected Myers, amid a volley of abuse and oaths delivered in thechoicest Billingsgate, pounced down on her ill-used husband, denouncedAnarchy and the Anarchists--their morals, their creeds, their hellishmachinations; she called on Jehovah to chastise, nay, utterly to destroythem, and soundly rated her consort for ever having associated with suchscoundrels. And thus this formidable preacher of dynamite and disaster wasborne 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 toweep or to laugh at what I had witnessed there. This, my firstintroduction into an English Anarchist circle had certainly not been veryencouraging, but I was too deeply persuaded of the truth and justice ofthe Anarchist doctrines to be deterred by such a beginning, and I did notfor one instant waver from my resolve to enter and take part in the"movement. " That some insincere and dishonest men and some fools shouldalso play their part in it I from the first recognised as inevitable, butI could not see that this affected the Anarchist principles or rendered itless necessary for those believing in them to advocate and spread them. Dr. Armitage accompanied me part of my way home and we talked the matterover _en route_. "Why trouble ourselves, " he exclaimed, "about a fewunprincipled men in such a wide, such a universal movement? Our objectsand ideals are too far above such considerations to allow us to beinfluenced by them. Men like Myers are but the outcome of unnatural andvitiated conditions; they are produced by the very society which it is ourobject to abolish--as all manner of disease is produced by vitiated air. With better conditions such men will disappear; nay, the very possibilityof 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 thepublic, bring our party into ridicule and discredit. "

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

And in face of Armitage's unswerving faith and optimism my moment ofdisgust and perplexity passed, and I felt more than ever determined tobring my quota of time and strength to the propagation of the Anarchistideals. "I have only seen a very limited and narrow circle, " I said tomyself; "the field is wide, and I only know one obscure and unclean cornerof 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 allowmyself to be disconcerted on its account. I had no desire or ambition tobe 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 astrange phase through which the Russian youth passed not many years since, the "V. Narod" ("To the People!") movement, when young men and girls bythe thousands, some belonging to the highest classes in society, fled fromtheir families, tore themselves free from all domestic and conventionalyokes, 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 bysettling in the people's midst, living their life, taking part in theirwork. I was passing through a similar phase of mental evolution. 

I felt a strong desire to free myself from all the ideas, customs, andprejudices which usually influence my class, to throw myself into the lifeand the work of the masses. Thus it was that I worked hard to learn how tocompose and print, that I might be of use to the Cause in the mostpractical manner of all--the actual production of its literature. Thus itwas also that I resolutely hardened myself against any instinctivesentiments of repulsion which the unclean and squalid surroundings of thepeople might raise in me. I remember reading an article by Tolstoi whichappeared in the English press, dealing with the conditions of the Russian_moujik_, in which he clearly and uncompromisingly stated that inorder to tackle the social problem, it is necessary to tackle dirt andvermin with it. If you desire to reach your _moujik_ you must reachhim _à travers_ his dirt and his parasites: if you are disinclined toface 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 hadtaken many steps farther, I heard him suddenly turn round, and in aninstant he had come up with me again. 

"By the way, Isabel, " he exclaimed, "I was quite forgetting to mentionsomething I had done, to which I trust you will not object. You know howfull up my place is just now with hard-up comrades. Well I took theliberty to send on to you a young Scotchman, I forget his name, who hasjust tramped up from the North; a most interesting fellow, rathertaciturn, but with doubtless a good deal in him. He had nowhere to passthe night, poor chap, and no money, so I told him that if he waited onyour doorstep some time after midnight you would be certain to give him anight's lodgings when you returned. Did I do right?" and the doctor'skindly 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 bourgeoisprejudice. 

And, sure enough, on reaching my domicile, I found installed on thedoorstep a most uncouth and villainous-looking tramp. Taciturn hecertainly was, for he scarcely opened his mouth to say "Good-evening, " andindeed during the three days of his residence with me he hardly everarticulated a sound. As I was getting out my latch-key the local policemanchanced 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 myunknown comrade to enter. I can still see in my mind's eye thatconstable's face. It looked unutterable things. 

After conducting the tramp to the pantry, and letting him loose on a coldpigeon-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 wasroused from sleep by a loud rat-tat at the front door and, the servantsnot being up at such an hour, and suspecting that this early visit was insome way connected with the Anarchists, I hastily slipped on a wrapper andran downstairs. 

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

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

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

"Well, " answered Carter, "the charge is not yet very clear, but so far aswe 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 wholematter, and Banter, O'Flynn, and Augustin have all played into theirhands. "

"Come in here, " I interrupted, leading the way to the dining-room. "Letus sit down and talk the matter over together;" and we entered, Cartercasting a distinctly disapprobatory glance at the "bourgeois luxury" ofthis apartment. 

As soon as we were seated my companion returned to the question of themoment. "I fear, " he said, "that it is rather a serious affair for thecomrades. That Myers is a police emissary there can no longer be anyreasonable doubt, and the death of his brother is clear proof that he hasnot been wasting his time lately. And it is only too likely that the samehand which provided Augustin with explosives may have placed similarmaterial 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 intotheir confidence in such matters, " returned Carter. "It is merelyencouraging _mouchards_ and police plots. However, the question nowis--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 ofuse. "

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

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

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

As soon as the morning papers arrived I scanned them eagerly and fromthem learned further particulars of the arrest. A widespread conspiracywas 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 theirinfamous teachings. Explosives, it was alleged, had been found in thepossession of the arrested men, "evidently destined to carry into effectthe deadly work which was only stopped by the hand of God in Queen's Parkthree weeks ago. "

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

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

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

In striking contrast to the burglar's wife, I noticed the daughter of awould-be suicide, a tall, beautiful girl, who formed a pathetic contrastto her surroundings. Her unfortunate father--an unsuccessful musician--hadsuccumbed in the struggle for an honest life, and the cares of a largefamily had driven him to desperation. As I gazed at the poor girl with hertear-swollen eyes and noted her extreme thinness and the shabbiness of herwell-worn clothes, and as, from her, my eyes turned to the cheerfulburglar'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 relationshipor lack of relationship between us, and declared my non-connection withthe case, and having received a tin number in return for this information, I was ushered through various passages and apartments into a kind of darkcage, separated by a narrow passage from a still darker one, in the depthsof which I perceived my Anarchist, O'Flynn, as soon as my eyes had grownaccustomed to the darkness. I had several questions to ask him during thefew minutes at our disposal, and conversation was anything but easy; foron all sides of me other prisoners and their relatives were talking, weeping, arguing, disputing, and shouting one another down with all theirmight and lungs. 

Two things struck me in Holloway Prison on this my first visit to such aplace. Firstly, the outward cleanliness, and I might almost saypleasantness, of the place; and secondly, the illogical nature of the lawwhich treats the unconvicted men, who in its eyes are consequentlyinnocent, like convicted criminals. Nothing could be more uncomfortableand unattractive than the conditions under which the detained men areallowed 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 ispermitted to pass. The censorship over books allowed is very strict andhopelessly stupid, and altogether everything is made as uncomfortable aspossible for those under detention. 

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

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

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

Here began a new order of search. I had to find a barrister, and thatwithout delay. But how, whom, and in what court or lane did the right mandwell? During one brief moment indeed my thoughts turned towards ourfamily solicitor as a possible counsellor in this matter, but only to bepromptly diverted into other channels. That worthy gentleman's feelingswould 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 inblank but indulgent surprise, as at one who had suddenly taken leave ofher senses. No, this would never do. Barristers by the score must surelyreside in the labyrinths of the Temple, and I determined to seek one firsthand. 

And thus it was that, after some little hesitation, I finally ascendedthe 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 appearanceand inquired my business, into which I promptly plunged headfirst. Hiseyebrows gradually ascended higher and higher into the regions of hishair, and his face grew stern and sad as I proceeded. "Allow me toinquire, " he interrupted, "the name of the solicitor who is instructingthe case. "

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

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

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

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

My next defeat occurred in the chambers of Mr. Anthony C. Frazer. Nosooner did my eyes fall on that gentleman than I regretted my entry, andthe utter hopelessness of my mission was borne in upon my mind, for I wasbeginning to realise the difficulties of the situation and to scentfailure in the very air. Mr. Frazer requested me to be seated and eyed mecuriously, as though I were some queer zoological specimen recentlyescaped from captivity, and listened with an incredulous smile to mynarrative. He did not even wait for the missing solicitor. "This isscarcely in my line, madam, " he said, rising. "You have certainly madesome mistake. " And he left his clerk to accompany me to the door. 

I descended the stairs from this gentleman's chambers feeling distinctlycrestfallen 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 footstepsin my pursuit, and next moment I was overtaken by the youth who hadushered me out from the scene of my last defeat. 

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

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

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

One of the first remarks he addressed to me--for we primarily discussedthe financial aspect of his services--struck me by reason of itsuncompromising common sense. "Five guineas down and another three nextTuesday, 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 beseated, and sitting down opposite me himself, he asked me for fullparticulars of the case. These I gave him to the best of my ability and hetook notes. 

The question of witnesses he tackled with the same uncompromising lack ofveneer which had characterised his remarks on the money question. "Witnesses to character and so forth must be found, " he said, "the moreauthentic and reputable the better, but at all costs they must beprocured. 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 orencourage contradiction, "some one in a respectable position, of course, "he continued, "a man pursuing one of the liberal professions, or abusiness man of means. Plenty of doctors and professional men among yourpeople, are there not? The evidence of such a man would carry weight. Thecourt's belief in a witness's veracity is, generally speaking, proportionate to his means. Doubtless you will be able to think of adesirable man ... Who knows the prisoners, " he added, rapidly turning overhis notes, and speaking in such a manner as to convey to me the idea thatthe exact extent of the witness's knowledge of the prisoners was not ofany very great consequence, so long as he was prepared to swear to theirrespectability, and that his banking account and general appearance weresatisfactory. 

"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 andeducation at all costs. Good afternoon. "

I had enough to do during the remainder of the day in finding thosewitnesses, but found they were at last, though not without a tremendouseffort on my part and some considerable degree of ingenuity. When attiredin some of my brother Raymond's discarded clothes, and produced forCurtis's inspection the following day, they really made a respectablecouple, and I felt proud of them--one a physician of superioraccomplishments and aristocratic appearance, the other a master-tailor, ofprosperous if not very _distingué_ presence. I likewise discovered acabman who had been present in Hyde Park at an allegedly incriminatingspeech made by Banter; and on jogging his memory with a little whisky hedistinctly recalled several points valuable to the defence. 

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

It was neither an easy nor a very encouraging task. The greater number ofthe English Anarchists mysteriously disappeared at this approach ofdanger. Mindful of the truth of the axiom that discretion is the betterpart of valour, A thought it well to suddenly recollect his duties towardshis family; B discovered that he had a capacious stomach, which requiredfeeding; C, that the Anarchist policy was in discord with his own trueprinciples. At such a moment, therefore, and surrounded, or ratherunsurrounded by such men, the task in front of me was not easy, and in theactual state of public opinion it was not very hopeful either. 

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

That the whole conspiracy was a got-up affair between Jacob Myers and thepolice was evident. Neither Banter nor O'Flynn was a dangerous man; alittle loud and exaggerated talk was the utmost extent of theirharmfulness. Neither of them was any better capable of making a bomb thanof constructing a flying-machine, and they were less capable of throwingit than of flying. But political detectives would have a slow time of itin this country unless they occasionally made a vigorous effort on theirown behalf, and an unscrupulous and impecunious man like Myers proved avaluable tool to help such gentlemen along, and fools of the Banter typesuitable victims. 

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

The trial itself was a ridiculous farce. Jacob Myers, who would have beenthe one witness of any importance, was not subpoenaed; he had in factdiscreetly quitted the country under his wife's escort. The police, withimperturbable gravity, brought ginger-beer bottles into court which hadbeen found in O'Flynn's apartment, and which, they averred, could beconverted into very formidable weapons of offence. Many gaseous speechesmade by the prisoners, or attributed to them, were solemnly brought upagainst them, and a shudder ran through the court at the mention of suchphrases as "wholesale assassination" and "war to the death. "

The evidence, however, sufficed to impress the jury with the extremegravity of the case and to alarm the public, and the prisoners were foundguilty. 

I well recollect the last day of the trial, which I attended throughoutin more or less remote regions of the Old Bailey, recruiting recalcitrantwitnesses, sending food in to the defendants, &c. Two other cases werebeing tried at the same time, one of which was a particularly revoltingmurder, for which three persons were on trial. The prisoners' relativeswere waiting below in a state of painful excitement. "Guilty or notguilty, " was on all their lips, "release or penal servitude, life ordeath, which was it to be?" Friends were constantly running in and out ofthe court giving the women news of the progress of the trials. "It islooking black for the prisoners!" "There is more hope!" "There is nohope!" and finally "guilty" in all the cases was reported. The wife of ahorrible German murderer who had strangled his employer's wife, while afemale accomplice played the piano to divert her children's attention fromher cries, swooned away at the news. O'Flynn's old mother went intohysterics and became quite uncontrollable in her grief when, a few minuteslater 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 withastounding rapidity. The chapter of my experiences had opened with theexpulsion of an alleged spy and _agent provocateur_, and had closedwith 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 Ihad, if, as I hold, experience counts for more than mere years. Hollowayand Newgate, Slater's Mews and the Middle Temple, barristers andsolicitors, judges and juries and detectives; appointments in queer placesto meet queer people--all this had passed before me with the rapidity of alandscape viewed from the window of an express train; and now that thechapter had closed, I found that it was but the preface to the realbusiness I had set my shoulder to. 

The morning after the conclusion of the trial I met Armitage byappointment, and together we wended our way towards Slater's Mews. Thedoctor was preoccupied, and for some minutes we proceeded in silence; theproblem of what to do with the _Bomb_ was evidently weighing on hismind. At last he spoke: "It is our duty, " he said, "to see that themovement be not unduly crippled by the loss of these two men. Poorfellows, they are doing their duty by the Cause, and we must not shirkours. The _Bomb_ must be kept going at all costs; we can ill affordto lose two workers just now, but the loss of the paper would be a yetmore 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 ormurdering our comrades, and for one whom they take from us ten come to thefore. 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 somewhatbad hands, and I fear it would be useless to try to set it on its feetagain. 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 hasdisappeared--Myers, the editor; Banter, the publisher; O'Flynn, theprinter--who remains? where are the others? It seems to me they have allvanished and left no trace behind. "

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

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

"Yes, that is the man; perhaps his appearance is somewhatdisadvantageous, 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 beadvisable to start a new paper, rather than to attempt to galvanise acorpse?"

"The idea would not be a bad one; in fact I think you are right, quiteright, " 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 officewho will have something to say in the matter. "

We had now reached our destination, and passing the curious scrutiny ofseveral cabmen and scavengers assembled at the entrance of the mews, weprepared to ascend the break-neck ladder leading to the office. I had butput my foot on the first step when I heard the loud yelping of a dogfollowed by a string of oaths, and the office door opened, emitting a tallbrawny 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 grippedsome 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 withoutdifficulty that the office was still in the possession of the police. Theywere, in fact, contrary to the doctor's expectation, the sole occupants ofthe 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 bywhat had taken place since I last saw him. He had been aroused from hisslumbers by the yelping of his dog, whose tail had been trodden on by oneof the detectives, and he had raised himself on his elbow, and was lookinground, uttering curses volubly. He nodded slightly on seeing us enter, butdid not change his position. There he lay, quite heroic in his immovablesloth; of all the many fighters he alone remained staunch at his post; andthat because he was positively too lazy to move away from it. 

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

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

The police once gone Dr. Armitage and I found ourselves in solepossession of the office and the lethargic Short. It was no sinecure, tobe sure. Heaps of "pie, " some due to the police and some to Banter, whoprevious to his arrest had put his foot through several "forms" which itwas inadvisable to let fall into the hands of the police, encumbered thefloor. Everything was intensely chaotic and intensely dirty, from the typecases and the other scanty belongings to the dormant compositor. Armitageunderstood nothing of printing and I very little, and there we stood inthe midst of a disorganised printing-office whence all had fled save onlythe unsavoury youth on the couch. I looked at Armitage and Armitage lookedat me, and such was the helpless dismay depicted in our faces that we bothbroke into a laugh. 

"Well, " I said at last, "what shall we do? Suggest something. We cannotstay on here. "

"The only thing I can think of, " he rejoined after a pause, "is that Ishould go around and look up some of the comrades at their addresseswhilst you remain here and get Short to help you put up the type, &c. , asbest you can, so that we may remove it all elsewhere. Here certainlynothing can be done and we must start our new paper amidst newsurroundings. "

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

We looked round, surprised at this interruption, for Short had apparentlyreturned to his slumbers, but we now saw that he had emerged from thebanner and was standing behind us, fully dressed (I discovered later onthat 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, andhis large lips were parted in a smile. He held his head slightly on oneside, 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 itwould be easier and better to start afresh. I was just saying that I wouldgo round and hunt up some of the comrades and get their views on thesubject. "

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

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

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

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

"So you're the only ones up here, " he continued. "I expected as much whenI heard of the raid on the office. I was up in the North doing a littlebit of peddling round the country, when I read the news, and I thought I'dcome to London to see what was up. What do you think of doing with thepaper anyway? It seems a pity the old _Bomb_ should die. It wouldmean 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 inthinking that that would be the best plan. You see this place looksaltogether hopeless. "

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

"Well, how did you get on up North?" inquired Short, who seemed to wakeup 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, Ican tell you he worked for two, but as to anything else, he made me carryhis 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-brushwhich he sneaked from a poor woman whilst I was selling her a ha'p'orth ofpins. He seemed to think he'd done something mighty grand--'expropriation'he called it; pah, those are your English revolutionists!" and he snortedviolently. 

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

Short volunteered, but M'Dermott scouted the idea, declaring that themere sight of him would be enough to frighten any landlord, and this weall, including Short, felt inclined to agree with. At last we decided tofall in with M'Dermott's suggestion that he and I should sally forthtogether. "You see, my dear, " he said with almost paternal benevolence, "you will be taken for my grand-daughter and we shall soften the heart ofthe 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 thepaper would have to be defrayed by Armitage and myself. Short had proposedhimself as printer and compositor, on the tacit understanding of freeboard and lodging, and the right to make use of the plant for his ownpurposes; I was willing to give my time to the material production of thepaper, and to contribute to its maintenance to the best of my ability; andArmitage's time and means were being daily more and more absorbed by thepropaganda, to the detriment of his practice; but he was not of those whocan palter with their conscience. The individual initiative inculcated byAnarchist principles implied individual sacrifices. Another considerationwhich limited our choice was that the office must be fairly central, andnot too far from my home, as, spite of my enthusiasm for Anarchy, I couldnot wholly neglect household duties. We talked over these points as wewalked along, and M'Dermott suggested Lisson Grove, where a recentepidemic of smallpox had been raging, as likely to be a fairly cheapneighbourhood, but after tramping about and getting thoroughly weary, wehad to acknowledge that there was nothing for us in that quarter. We wereboth hungry and tired, and M'Dermott suggested a retreat to a neighbouringLockhart's. Seated before a more than doubtful cup of tea, in a grimyroom, where texts stared at us from the walls, we discussed the situation, and decided to inquire about a workshop which we saw advertised, and whichseemed promising. Our destination led us out of the slummy wilderness intowhich we had strayed, into cleaner and more wholesome quarters, and atlast we stopped before some quite imposing-looking premises. "We seemdestined to consort with the cabbing trade, " I remarked; "the last officewas over a mews, this place seems to belong to a carriage-builder. " Therewas, however, no other connection between the unsavoury mews and thearistocratic carriage-yard, whose proprietor, resplendent in side-whiskersand a shiny chimney-pot hat, advanced to meet us, a condescending smilediffusing his smug countenance. I explained to him our object, and heshowed us over the shop, which consisted in a large loft, well lighted andfairly suitable, at the back of the premises. 

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

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

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

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

Great was the amusement at Slater's Mews at the account of ouradventures, given with a few enlargements by M'Dermott. He had an artist'ssoul, and would never consent to destroy the effect of a tale by slavishsubservience 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 thatwe can get to work without further delay. I met Kosinski, and he haspromised to give us a hand with the move. I shall not be able to be hereall the time as I have to attend an operation on Monday, but I will put inan hour or two's work in the morning. I suppose I can get in if I comehere at five on Monday morning?" he said turning to Short who was "dissingpie, " his inseparable clay pipe still firmly set between his yellow anddecayed teeth. 

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

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

The latter, seated on a packing-case, was regaling himself on a bloaterand cheesecakes, having disposed of which he took up a flute and playedsome snatches of music-hall melodies. He seemed quite unconcerned at whattook place around him, contenting himself with answering Armitage'squestions. Soon after I arrived on the scene Kosinski appeared. It was thefirst time I had seen him since the memorable evening at Chiswick, and Ifelt a little nervous in his presence, overcome by a half-guilty fear lesthe should think I was merely dallying, not working in true earnest. I wasconscious of my own sincerity of purpose, yet feared his mental verdict onmy actions, for I now realised that his uncompromising words and scathingdenunciation 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 andShort. The latter had stepped forward and assumed an air of unwontedactivity, having pulled off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, andthere he stood hammering up a form and whistling "It ain't all Lavender"--very appropriate verses, considering the surroundings. The Russianmerely recognised my presence with a slight bow, not discourteous, butcharacterised 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 athalf-past eleven I have an appointment at a patient's house. You willstay, won't you, Kosinski, and help our comrades to move the plant?"

"I will do what I can, " replied the Russian. "I do not understandprinting, 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 roundabout five. I suppose you will then be at the new place?"

"Oh, yes, " I replied, "you will be in time to help us get thingsship-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 awaythe literature in packing-cases. Short "locked up" forms and "dissed" pie, and I busied myself over various jobs. M'Dermott had come round, and hestood at my elbow discussing the propaganda and the situation generally. He was much rejoiced at the turn matters were taking on the Continent, anddeplored the lukewarmness of English Anarchists. "You cannot have arevolution without revolutionists, " was a favourite phrase of his, and hewas at no trouble to conceal his opinion of most of the comrades. I was asyet too new to the movement and too enthusiastic to endorse all hisexpressions, but the little man was congenial to me; his Irish wit madehim good company, and there was an air of independent self-reliance abouthim that appealed to me. 

"That Kosinski's a good fellow, " he continued. "He knows what Revolutionmeans. Not but what there is good material in England too, but it is_raw_ material, ignorant and apathetic, hoodwinked and bamboozled bythe political humbugs. "

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

"Oh, some seven years, " he replied. "He was over here in '87 at the timeof the unemployed riots; he and I were at the bottom of a lot of thatmovement, and we should have had all London in revolt had it not been forthe palaver and soft-soap of the official labour-leaders. After that hewent 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 toprocure a barrow whereon to transport our belongings. 

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

"My married sister got in first, but father waited his opportunity, andwhilst they went out to 'ave a 'alf-pint at the pub round the corner, hegot in. They thought themselves mighty clever, for they had locked thedoor and taken the key, but father got in by the scullery window whichthey had forgotten to latch, and when they came back they found themselvessold. The guv'nor's a sharp one, 'e is, but I was fly too; 'e always keepsme short, grumbles 'cause I won't let myself be exploited by thecapitalists; but I did 'im this time. I 'ad a good old-fashioned noseround whilst the guv'nor left me in charge whilst 'e went for a drink, andI found ten bob the old girl 'ad 'idden away in a broken teapot, so I justpocketed 'em. We planted 'er the day before yesterday; she was insured fortwelve 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 handyou'll be welcome. Come, Short, the barrow's here; let's get the thingsdown. "

"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 sleepafter he came, he made such a damned noise. "

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

"You can do as you like; I'm not going to move, " was his only reply, andhe calmly filled his pipe and puffed luxuriously. Simpkins giggled feebly;he evidently was wavering as to his proper course, but Short's calminsolence 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 hadtaken to be the hard earnest of life, my revolutionary ardour cooled. Myindignation was ready to boil over; I could have wept or stamped withannoyance. "Oh, but you _must_ help!" I exclaimed. "You promised. Howare 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 almostforgotten his presence; he was working quietly, getting things ready, andnow he stepped forward. 

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

The calm indifference of Kosinski seemed to take some of the starch outof Short, who looked more than foolish as he sat over his ginger-beer, trying to feign interest in the flagging conversation with Simpkins. I wasrelieved at the turn matters had taken, which threw the ridicule on theother side, and before long we were ready, little M'Dermott having madehimself very useful, running actively up and down the ladder laden withparcels. We must have looked a queer procession as we set off. The longstooping figure of Kosinksi, wrapped in his inseparable dark-blueovercoat, his fair hair showing from under his billycock hat, pushing thebarrow, heavily laden with type-cases and iron forms, packets ofliterature and reams of printing paper; I in my shabby black dress andsailor hat, bearing the furled-up banner, and M'Dermott following onbehind, carrying with gingerly care a locked-up form of type, the work ofpoor Armitage, which was in imminent danger of falling to pieces in themiddle of the street. We found that quite a crowd of loafers of bothsexes, the habitués of the "Myrtle Grove Tavern, " had assembled outside towitness our departure, and, as I never missed an opportunity to spread thelight, I distributed among them some hand-bills entitled "What isAnarchy?" regardless of their decidedly hostile attitude. The Londonloafer has little wit or imagination, and their comments did not riseabove the stale inquiry as to where we kept our bombs, and the equallyoriginal advice bestowed upon Kosinksi to get 'is 'air cut. A half-hour'swalk brought us to our destination, but our Odyssey was not so soon toend. The man who accompanied the carriage-builder when he showed us overthe shop was waiting at the entrance to the yard, and, recognising me, heasked me to step into the office. He had a rather scared appearance, but Idid 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 aminute. The carriage-builder was awaiting me in the little office where heusually received his fashionable clients. He was still the self-sameconsequential figure, resplendent in broadcloth and fine linen, but thebenevolent smile had vanished from his unctuous features, and he lookednervous and ill at ease. 

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

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

"What on earth does this mean?" I exclaimed. "Why, Saturday evening youcalled at my house and told me you were satisfied with the references, andthat 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 allhe replied. 

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

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

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

Light dawned upon me. The police had evidently been at work here. I wastoo new to the revolutionary movement to have foreseen all thedifficulties 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 couldstill see in my mind's eye the benevolent smile and patronisingcondescension with which he had beamed on M'Dermott and me on the occasionof our first meeting. 

"You are a sensible person, Miss Meredith, " he said, with an almostappealing accent, "and you will, I am sure, agree with me that it would beimpossible for me to have revolutionary papers printed on my premises. Itwould not be fair to my clients; it would interfere with my businesssuccess. Of course every one has a right to their opinions, but I had noidea that you were connected with any such party. In fact I had gone outof town, and intended staying away two or three days when yesterdayafternoon I received this telegram, " and he handed me the document. It wasfrom Scotland Yard, and warned him to return at once as the police hadsomething of importance to communicate. 

"Of course I came back, " continued the tremulous White. "At first Ithought 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 youmust agree that this is not a suitable place for such an office. "

"I cannot see, " I replied with some warmth, "that it can make anydifference to you what I print. I pay you your rent, and we are quits. Ofcourse if you refuse to give me the keys of the shop I cannot force myselfin, but I have reason to think that you will regret your extraordinaryconduct. "

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

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

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

"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 ofrevolutionary literature. "

M'Dermott gave a low whistle, "Oh, that's how the wind blows, is it?" heremarked; "I thought I saw some 'narks' hanging round. So this is the turnyour 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 willnot feel comfortable till we are off the premises. He is afraid we mightwaste some dynamite on him, I do believe. "

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

We found Kosinski patiently waiting. He did not seem much surprised atour 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, andthen resume our search for a shop. This advice was so obvious and tamethat it almost surprised me coming from him, still there was nothing forit, and back we went, looking somewhat more bedraggled (it had now come onto rain) and decidedly crestfallen. We found Short as we had left him, butI 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 parcelup 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 whichmight suit. Some German comrades rented it for some time; I believe theyused it as a club-room, but I dare say it would answer your purpose, and Ibelieve it is still unoccupied. "

Of course I readily assented; it was indeed a relief to hear of somedefinite proposal, and together we set off. Little M'Dermott, whoevidently did not much relish Short's company, armed himself with leafletsand set off on a propagandising expedition, and Kosinski and I wended ourway in search of the office. At last we stopped in front of a littlegreen-grocer's shop in a side street off the Hampstead Road. "The place Imean 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 fromthe back shop. 

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

Kosinksi explained our errand, and the good lady preceded us up a narrowyard which led to the workshop in question. She turned out to be asloquacious as she was bulky, a fair specimen of the good-natured cockneygossip, evidently fond of the convivial glass, not over-choice in herlanguage, the creature of her surroundings, which were not of thesweetest, but withal warm-hearted and sympathetic, with that inner hatredof the police common to all who belong to the coster class, and able tostand 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 whichwas a ladder leading to a large, light shop, which seemed well suited toour purpose, meanwhile expatiating on its excellencies. I was satisfiedwith 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 thoseothers 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'tblame yer; of course, 'e is a furriner; but I'm not one to say asfurriners ain't no class. I was in love with an I-talian organ-grindermyself, 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 Iam now, for Wattles, 'e ain't much class. "

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

"It was a long time before I forgot 'im, and when my girl was born Icalled 'er Ave Maria, which was a name I used to 'ear 'im say, and a verypretty one too, though Wattles does say it's a 'eathen-sounding name forthe girl. I was just like you in those days, my dear, " she said, surveyingmy slim figure with a critical eye. "No one thought I should make oldbones, I was that thin and white, and nothin' seemed to do me no good; Itook 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 oldneighbour 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. Itook 'er advice, an' I've never 'ad a day's illness since, thoughWattles's been mighty troublesome at times, and would 'av driven me to mygrave 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 twoat supper is my allowance, and if I chance to miss it, why I jest seems tofall 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 onlyI followed Mrs. Wattles's advice. I expressed my intention of thinking thematter over, and, after shaking hands, paying a deposit on the rent--whichshe informed me she should expend in drinking my health--and settling tomove in on the morrow, I made good my escape. 

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

"I hope you will help us with the new paper, " I said. "I feel really veryunfit for the responsibility of such a task, but Armitage thinks I shallmanage all right, and I do not wish to be a mere amateur, and shirk thehard work entailed by our propaganda. You see, I remember your words thatnight 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 inthe least doubt your sincerity. I am sure you do your best, only I haveseen so much harm done by women that I am always on my guard when theypropose 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 ofrelief. "Where on earth have you been?" he exclaimed; "I went to theaddress you gave me, but when I inquired for you the fellow looked asscared as if he had seen a ghost, and said he knew nothing about you, thatI must have made a mistake; and when I insisted and showed him the addressyou had written, seemed to lose his head, and rang a bell and called forhelp 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 ofour friends the detectives, and I felt quite anxious about you. AtSlater's Mews the door is locked; there is no light, and nobody answeredwhen I knocked. I am quite relieved to see you. I was beginning to fearyou 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-hallwith 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 tosettle, 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, includingthe 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. Theshop, as I had hoped, did well enough for our purposes. True, the districtin which it lay was neither salubrious nor beautiful, and the constant andinevitable encounters with loquacious Mrs. Wattles and her satellitessomething of a trial; but we were absorbed in our work, absorbed in ourenthusiasms, utterly engrossed in the thought of the coming revolutionwhich by our efforts we were speeding on. 

During the first months, besides writing and editing the _Tocsin_, Iwas very busily employed in learning how to set type, and print, and thevarious arts connected with printing--and as I grew more proficient at thework 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 ourstaff gradually increased in number if not in efficiency; old M'Dermottwas a frequent and not unwelcome visitor, and as time went on he graduallysettled down into an inmate of the office, helping where he could with thework, stirring up lagging enthusiasms, doing odd cobbling jobs whenever hehad the chance, and varying the proceedings with occasional outbursts ofShakespearian 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 aview to leaning up against a type-rack or other suitable article offurniture, and there between one puff and another at his pipe wouldgrumble at the constitution of the universe and the impertinent exactionsof landlords. Another Englishman who in the earlier days frequented the_Tocsin_ was a tall, thoughtful man named Wainwright, belonging tothe working-classes, who by the force of his own intelligence and will hadescaped from the brutishness of the lowest depths of society in which hehad been born. 

Thus with little real outside assistance we worked through the spring andearly summer months. Besides bringing out our paper we printed variousbooklets and pamphlets, organised Anarchist meetings, and during some sixweeks housed a French Anarchist paper and its staff, all of whom had fledprecipitately from Paris in consequence of a trial. 

The lively French staff caused a considerable revolution in LysanderGrove, which during several weeks rang with Parisian argot and Parisianfun. Many of these Frenchmen were a queer lot. They seemed the veryreincarnation of Murger's Bohemians, and evidently took all thediscomforts and privations of their situation as a first-class joke. Kosinksi detested them most cordially, though, spite of himself, he was atremendous favourite in their ranks, and the unwilling victim of the mostaffectionate demonstrations on their part: and when, with a shrug of hisshoulders 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 hisleast charming traits. When he was singularly disagreeable towards them, they summed him up cheerfully in two words, _Quel original!_ Theysoon learned, however, not to take liberties with Kosinski, for when onesprightly little man of their number, who affected pretty things in theway of cravats and garters, presumed to dance him round the office, theRussian, for once almost beside himself, seized his persecutor by theshoulders and dropped him over the balustrade below, amid the cheers ofall present. 

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

One little escapade of Kosinski's came somehow to the knowledge of theFrench Comrades, and he suffered accordingly. Although careless and shaggyenough in appearance in all conscience, Kosinski happened to befastidiously clean about his person. I doubt whether he was ever without acertain small manicure set in his pocket, and an old joke among hisRussian friends was that he had failed to put in an appearance on someimportant occasion--the rescue of a Nihilist from prison, I believe--because he had forgotten his tooth-brush. This was of course a libel andgross exaggeration, but his extreme personal cleanliness was none the lessa 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 bythe appearance of a horse-trough. "Most opportune!" mused Kosinski, "howpublic-spirited and hygienic this London County Council really is!" andstraightway divesting himself of his hat and collar and similarencumbrances, and spreading out on the rim of the trough his faithfulmanicure set and a few primitive toilette requisites secreted about hisperson, he commenced his ablutions, sublimely unconscious of the attentionand surprise he was attracting. Before long, however, a riotously amusedcrowd collected round, and the Russian had finally to be removed underpolice escort, while attempting to explain to the indignant officer of thelaw that he had merely taken the horse-trough as a convenient form ofpublic 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 aspirit of self-preservation, had practically effaced himself during itssojourn, made himself once more apparent, bringing with him a peculiarSwede--a man argumentative to the verge of cantankerousness--who for hoursand days together would argue on obscure questions of metaphysics. He hadargued himself out of employment, out of his country, almost out of thesociety and the tolerance of his fellows. Life altogether was one longargument to this man, no act or word, however insignificant, could he beinduced to pass over without discussing and dissecting, proving ordisproving it. Free-love was his particular hobby, though this, too, heregarded from a metaphysical rather than a practical point of view. Likeeverything else in his life it was a matter for reason and argument, notfor emotion; and he and Kosinski would frequently dispute the questionwarmly. 

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

None of these Southerners had ever been in England before, and havingheard grim tales of the lack of sunshine and light in London, they tookthis fog to be the normal condition of the atmosphere. Stumbling into thelighted office from the blind stifling darkness outside, the leader of theparty, a remarkably tall handsome man well known to me by reputation andcorrespondence, gave vent to a tremendous sigh of relief and exclaimed inhis native tongue:

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

They then advanced towards me and Avvocato Guglielmo Gnecco held out hishand. "You are Isabel Meredith?" he said in a sonorous voice, and I gavean affirmative nod. "I am very glad to meet you at last, Comrade, " and weall shook hands. "So this is London! I had heard grim enough tales of yourclimate, but never had I conceived anything like this. It is trulyterrible! 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 wanderingabout the streets ever since eleven o'clock this morning, walking roundand round ourselves, stumbling over kerb-stones, appealing to policemenand 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 onlyescaped by the skin of his teeth from the most horrid series of deaths. Isit not so, Giacomo?" Giannoli, who had been engaged in enthusiasticgreetings with Kosinski, who was evidently an old friend, looked up atthis. 

"Oh, I've had too much of London already, " he exclaimed fervently. "Wemust leave here for some other country to-night or to-morrow at thelatest. 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 allbelong to one nationality, so I have no fear of wounding your patrioticsentiments. "

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

"Oh, make no attempt to palliate it, " Gnecco interrupted. "I have heardEnglish people before now defending your climate. But I see now only toowell that my compatriots were right in calling it impossible, and sayingthat you never saw the sun here, " and all attempts to argue them out ofthis 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 theleast 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 regularand well cut, his abundant hair and complexion dark, and his eyes brightwith the vivacity of the perennial youth of the enthusiast. The delicacyof his features, the easy grace of his walk, and the freedom andconfidence of his manners, all suggested his semi-aristocratic origin andupbringing. He was evidently a man of romantic tastes and inclinations, governed by sentiment rather than by reason; a lover of adventure, who hadfound in Anarchism an outlet for his activities. His eloquence had madehim a considerable reputation all over Italy as an advocate, but thecomparative monotony of the life of a prosperous barrister was distastefulto him, and he had willingly sacrificed his prospects in order to throw inhis lot with the revolutionary party. 

Giannoli, in his way, was an equally interesting figure. Between Gneccoand himself it was evident that there existed the warmest bonds offraternal affection--a sentiment whose fount, as I discovered later, layin a mutual attachment for a certain Milanese lady, who on her side fullyreciprocated their joint affection. Both these Italians were warmexponents of the doctrine of free-love, and, unlike their more theoreticNorthern confréres, they carried their theories into practice withconsiderable gusto. Many Anarchists of Teutonic and Scandinavian raceevidently regarded free-love as an unpleasant duty rather than as anatural and agreeable condition of life--the chaff which had to beswallowed along with the wheat of the Anarchist doctrines. I remember thedistress of one poor old Norwegian professor on the occasion of hisdeserting his wife for a younger and, to him, far less attractive woman--ayoung French studentess of medicine who practised her emancipated theoriesin a very wholesale fashion. 

"I felt that as an Anarchist it would have been almost wrong to repel heradvances, " the distressed old gentleman confided to me. "Moreover, it wasten years that I had lived with Rosalie, uninterruptedly.... _Celadevenait tout-à-fait scandaleux, Mademoiselle_.... I no longer daredshow myself among my comrades. "

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

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

The third member of the trio was a shortish, thickset man ofextraordinary 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 wasa man rather of character than of intellect, of great moral strengthrather than of intellectual brilliancy--a fighter and an idealist, not atheoriser. I knew him very well by renown, for he was of European fame inthe Anarchist party, and the _bête noire_ of the internationalpolice. Enrico Bonafede was a man born out of his time--long after it andlong before--whose tremendous energy was wasted in the too strait limitsof modern civilised society. In a heroic age he would undoubtedly havemade a hero; in nineteenth-century Europe his life was wasted and hissacrifices useless. These men, born out of their generation, are tragicfigures; they have in them the power and the will to scale the heights ofMount Olympus and to stem the ocean, while they are forced to spend theirlife climbing mole-hills and stumbling into puddles. 

Such, briefly, were the three men who suddenly emerged from the fog intothe office of the _Tocsin_, and who formed the vanguard of ourforeign invasion. All three were at once sympathetic to me, and I viewedtheir advent with pleasure. We celebrated it by an unusually lavishbanquet of fried fish and potatoes, for they were wretchedly cold andhungry 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 alwaysapply quite appositely) the Italians related the adventures of theirjourney and discussed future projects. As the fog grew denser with theadvance of evening, and it became evident that lodging-searching was quiteout of the question for the time being, it was agreed that we should allspend the night in the office, where heaps of old papers and sacking madeup into not altogether despicable couches. Moreover, publication date wasapproaching, and at such times we were in the habit of getting later andlater in the office, the necessity for Short's assistance rendering itimpossible 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 theycould with the printing, one or other occasionally breaking off for abrief respite of slumber. We talked much of the actual conditions inItaly, and of the situation of the Anarchist party there; of how to keepthe revolutionary standard afloat and the Anarchist ideas circulating, despite coercion laws and the imprisonment and banishment of its mostprominent advocates. Kosinksi joined enthusiastically in the discussion, and the hours passed rapidly and very agreeably. I succeeded at length indissuading Giannoli and Gnecco from their original intention ofprecipitate flight, partly by repeatedly assuring them that the state ofthe atmosphere was not normal and would mend, partly by bringing theirminds to bear on the knotty question of finance. 

The three Italians settled in London; Gnecco and Bonafede locatingthemselves in the Italian quarter amid most squalid surroundings; whilefor Giannoli I found a suitable lodging in the shape of a garret in theWattles's house which overlooked the courtyard of the _Tocsin_. Theywere frequently in the office, much to the indignation of Short, who couldnot see what good all "those ---- Foreigners did loafing about. " Short, infact, viewed with the utmost suspicion any new-comers at the _Tocsin_. 

"These foreigners are such a d----d lazy lot, " he would say; "I hatethem!" and there was all the righteous indignation in his tones of thehard-worked proletariat whose feelings are harrowed by the spectacle ofunrighteous ease. Short had a habit of making himself offensive to everyone, 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 wouldany other human being. When he was insolent people shrugged theirshoulders and laughed, when he told lies they did not deign to investigatethe truth, and thus in a despised and unostentatious way--for he was notambitious of _réclame_--he was able to do as much mischief and set asmany falsehoods afloat as a viciously-inclined person with much time onhis hands well can. His physical and mental inferiority was hisstock-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 intowards the end of January. One February morning, after all manner ofmishaps and discomfort, and several falls along the slippery icy pavement, I arrived at the office of the _Tocsin_. The first thing that struckmy eye on approaching was the unusual appearance of the Wattles'sgreengrocery shop. The shutters were closed, the doors still unopened. "What has happened?" I inquired of a crony standing outside theneighbouring 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'vebeen keepin' it up as usual. That's all. "

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

"But surely, " I urged, turning once more to my previous informant, "thereis 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 toput up with since she married, and that makes things a bit rough on poorold Jim. "

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

A perfect Babel of voices from the room above greeted my ear, while theprinting-room was bedecked with a most unsightly litter of tatteredgarments of nondescript shape and purpose laid out to dry. I was notsurprised at this, however, as I had long grown used to unannouncedinvasions. Unexpected persons would arrive at the office, of whom nobodyperhaps knew anything; they would stroll in, seat themselves round thefire, enter into discussion, and, if hungry, occasionally partake of the_plat du jour_. The most rudimentary notions of Anarchist etiquetteforbade any of us from inquiring the name, address, or intentions of suchintruders. They were allowed to stay on or to disappear as inexplicitly asthey came. They were known, if by any name at all, as Jack or Jim, Giovanni or Jacques, and this was allowed to suffice. Every Anarchistlearns in time to spot a detective at first sight, and we relied on thisinstinct as a safeguard against spies. 

But on reaching the composing-room on this particular morning anextraordinary sight presented itself. Accustomed as I was to theunaccustomed, I was scarcely prepared for the wild confusion of the scene. What at first sight appeared to be a surging mass of unwashed and unkempthumanity filled it with their persons, their voices, and their gestures. No number of Englishmen, however considerable, could have created such adin. All present were speaking simultaneously at the top of their voices;greetings and embraces mingled with tales of adventure and woe. The firstobject which I managed to distinguish was the figure of Giannolistruggling feebly in the embrace of a tall brawny, one-eyed man with thickcurling black hair, who appeared to be in a state of demi-déshabille. Bydegrees a few other familiar figures became one by one discernible to meas I stood mute and unobserved at the head of the stairs. Bonafede andGnecco were there; they, too, surrounded by the invading mob, exchanginggreetings and experiences. Old M'Dermott, standing up against his stove, was striking a most impressive attitude, for the old fellow had to live upto the reputation he had established among foreigners of being thegreatest orator in the English revolutionary party. Two cloddish-looking_contadini_ stood gazing at him, rapt in awe. Kosinksi stood littleapart from the rest, not a little bewildered by the enthusiastic receptionwhich had been accorded him by old friends. In one corner, too, Irecognised my old friend Short, fully dressed, as usual, in his frowsyclothes, as though eternally awaiting the call-to-arms, the long-delayedbugles of the social revolution; there he lay, much as when I first seteyes on him, wrapped up in old banners and rugs, blinking his eyes andmuttering curses at the hubbub which had thus rudely interrupted hisslumbers. 

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 asthey were pell-mell among the printing plant of the overcrowded work-room, they gave an impression of much greater number. They appeared mostly tobelong to the working-classes. Their clothes, or what remained of them, were woefully tattered--and they were few and rudimentary indeed, for mostof what had been spared by the hazards of travel were drying down below. Their hair was uncut, and beards of several days' growth ornamented theircheeks. Their hats were of incredible size and shape and all the coloursof the rainbow seemed to be reproduced in them. Littered around on diversobjects of furniture, they suggested to me a strange growth of fungi. 

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

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

Before he could get any further an outburst of song interrupted his wordsas the whole band broke into an Anarchist war-whoop. This over, myattention was arrested by the groans of a dark young man ofextraordinarily alert physiognomy who had shed his boots and was gazingdolefully at his wounded feet. "What would I not give, " he exclaimed, "tobe back in prison in Lugano! Oh for the rest and comfort of those good oldtimes!" He was utterly worn out, poor fellow, nipped up with the cold, andseemed on the verge of tears. 

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

On my interpreting the old fellow's suggestion he and it were receivedwith universal acclaim. Bonafede produced from the innermost depths of hispockets a huge quantity of macaroni which was put on to boil, and severalbottles of wine; one of the new arrivals, a sober-looking young fellowwith a remarkably long nose, contributed an enormous lobster which he hadacquired _en route_, while Kosinski volunteered to fetch bread andother provender. A Homeric repast ensued, for all these Anarchists hadcultivated the digestions of camels; they prepared for inevitable fasts bylaying in tremendous stores when chance and good fortune permitted. Whilethey were eating a noticeable silence fell on the scene, and I had leisureto observe the immigrants more in detail. 

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

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

Somehow this youth struck me at once as a man who had made a mistake. Athome as he appeared to be among his comrades, there was yet somethingabout him which suggested that he was out of his proper sphere in themidst of the Anarchists, that he was _desorienté_. He was cut out foran industrious working-man, one that would rise and thrive in his businessby hard work and thrift; he was destined by nature to rear a large familyand to shine in the ranks of excellent family men. He was moulded for thethreshold, poor boy, neither for the revolutionary camp nor for thescaffold, 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 youtheasily led, easily influenced for good or bad. As a revolutioniser of hisspecies he was predestined to failure, for years would certainly show himthe error of his ways. Old age seemed to be his proper state, and youth inhim was altogether a blunder and a mistake. I found myself vainlyspeculating what on earth could have led him among the Anarchists. 

The others comprised a silent young artisan who was evidently desperatelyin earnest with his ideas, a red-haired, red-bearded Tuscan of clever andastute aspect, a singularly alert and excitable-looking young man ofasymmetrical features, who looked half fanatic, half criminal, and othersof the labouring and peasant class. One other of their number arrested myattention, a stupid, sleepy young man, who seemed quite unaffected by themany vicissitudes of his journey. His features were undefined and hiscomplexion undefinable, very greasy and suggestive of an unwholesomefungus. He was better dressed than his companions, and from this fact, combined with his intonation, I gathered that he belonged to the leisuredclasses. There was something highly repellent about his smooth yellowface, 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 wereanxious for news of comrades left behind in Italy. So-and-so was inprison, another had remained behind in Switzerland, a third had turned hiscoat, and was enjoying ill-gotten ease and home, others were either deador lost to sight. 

The present party, who were mostly Northern Italians, had left Italyshortly after Giannoli and Gnecco, and had since spent several weeks inItalian Switzerland, whence at last they had been expelled in consequenceof the circulation of an Anarchist manifesto. Beppe gave a glowing accountof their stay in Lugano, and consequent flight to London. "You know, " hesaid, "that I reached Lugano with two hundred francs in my pocket incompany with all these comrades who hadn't got five francs among them. Itis not every one who could have housed them all, but I did. I could nothire a Palazzo or a barrack for them, but we managed very comfortably inone large room. There were fourteen of us besides la Antonietta. There wasonly one bed, but what a size! We managed well enough by sleeping in tworelays. However, even in two relays it took some organisation to get usall in. It was a fine double bed, you know, evidently intended for threeor four ... Even for five it was suitable enough, but when it came toseven!... There was not much room for exercise, I can tell you.... Butwith four at the top and three at the bottom, we managed, and Antoniettaslept on a rug in a cupboard. We did our best to make her comfortable bysacrificing half our clothes to keep her warm, but we might have savedourselves the trouble, for she deserted us for the first bourgeois whocame along. She was not a true comrade, but I will tell you all about herlater on. 

"We had some trouble with the landlord, a thick-headed bourgeois who gotsome stupid idea into his head about overcrowding. I have no patience withthese bourgeois prejudices. One day he came round to complain about ournumbers, and at not receiving his rent. But we were prepared for him. Weassembled in full force, and sang the _Marseillaise_ and the _Innodei Lavoratori_, and danced the _Carmagnole_. I took out my eyeand looked very threatening--one glance at us was enough for the oldfellow. He made the sign of the cross and fled before we had time to tearhim to pieces. 

"Well, my two hundred francs was a very large sum, and not paying therent was economical, but it dwindled, and I had to look round again forways and means to feed us all. The money came to an end at last and thenthe real struggle began. Old Castellani, the landlord, kept a large stockof sacks of potatoes in a cellar, and every day he used to go in and takea few out for his own use, and then lock the cellar up again, mean oldbrute! But once again I was one too many for him. I collected largequantities of stones in the day-time, and then at night with a skeletonkey I had acquired--it came out of Meneghino's bag which we always jeeredat--I let myself in and from the farthest sacks I abstracted potatoes andrefilled them with stones. I calculated that at the slow rate he used themhe would not notice his loss till March. What a scene there will be then, _Misericordia_! During the last fortnight of our stay we lived almostentirely on my potatoes. I don't know how the devil they would all havegot on without me. It is true that a waitress at the Panetteria Viennesefell in love with Meneghino, and used to pass him on stale bread; but thenyou 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 _onemushroom_!" It would be quite impossible to convey an idea of theintense contempt contained in these last words. It was a most eloquentdenunciation of impotence and irresolution. 

"All the same we had a grand time in Lugano. And the week I and Migliassispent in prison was a great treat. Why, they treated us like popes, I cantell 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 nevertasted anything like it in my life: they sent to Como for it all. Luganobread was not good enough. Ah, Swiss prisons are a grand institution, andI hope to spend a happy old age in such a place yet. 

"Then came Bonafede's manifesto, and that scoundrel Costanzi betrayed usall to the police. Then the real trouble began. We had not ten francsamong the lot of us, and we twelve had orders to clear out of the countrywithin 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 superiorwits. "I had noticed the fat letters Morì received from home the first dayof every month, and how jolly quiet he kept about them. I also noticedthat he used to disappear for a day or two after their receipt, and returnvery sleepy and replete, with but scant appetite for dry bread andpotatoes. "

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

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

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

For many years Europe had not experienced such an inclement season. Everywhere the cold counted innumerable victims. Along the countryhighways and byways people dropped down frozen to death, and the pathswere strewn with the carcasses of dead birds and other animals who hadsuccumbed to the inclemency of the elements. All the great rivers werefrozen over, and traffic had to be suspended along them. Unwonted numbersof starving sea-gulls and other sea-birds flocked to London in search ofhuman charity, for the very fishes could not withstand the cold, and theinhospitable ocean afforded food no longer to its winged hosts. All Europewas under snow; the railways were blocked in many places, and ordinarywork had to be suspended in the great cities; business was at astand-still. 

Neither the temperaments nor the clothes of these Italians had been equalto the exigencies of their march in the cruel Northern winter. As theytramped, a dismal, silent band across Belgium, the snow was several feetdeep under foot, and on all sides it stretched hopelessly to the horizon, falling mercilessly the while. Their light clothing was ill adapted to therigours 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 keepbody and soul together. By night, when chance allowed, they had creptunobserved into barns and stables, and, lying close up against the dormantcattle, they had striven to restore animation to their frozen limbs bymeans of the beasts' warm breath. Once an old farm-woman had found them, and, taking pity on their woebegone condition, had regaled the whole partyon hot milk and bread; and this was now looked back on as a gala day, fornot every day had afforded such fare. At times in the course of theirweary tramp the Anarchists had made an effort to keep up their flaggingspirits by means of song, revolutionary and erotic, but such attempts hadusually fallen flat, and the little band of exiles had relapsed intogloomy silence as they tramped on noiselessly through the snow. One oftheir number had quite broken down on the road and they had been compelledto leave him behind. "Lucky fellow, that Morelli, " exclaimed Meneghino, "enjoying good broth in a hospital while we were still trudging on throughthat infernal snow!"

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

"Oh, Antonietta!" exclaimed Beppe. "I was forgetting. You who believedher to be such a sincere comrade will scarcely credit her baseness. Sheran away with a horrible bourgeois; she was lured away from the Cause by abicycle! Yes, Antonietta weighed a bicycle in the scales against theSocial Revolution, and found the Social Revolution wanting! So much forthe idealism of women! Never speak to me of them again. The last we saw ofher 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 toutter 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 hismouth and eye told of the depth of scorn and disgust which he felt for theyoung lady who had thus unblushingly cycled away from the SocialRevolution. 

CHAPTER VII

THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_

To the ordinary citizen whose walk in life lies along the beaten trackthere is a suggestion of Bohemianism about the office of any literary orpropagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most imaginative among them intheir wildest moments have ever conceived any region so far removed fromthe conventions of civilised society, so arbitrary in its hours andcustoms, so cosmopolitan and so utterly irrational as the office of the_Tocsin_. 

In other chapters I attempt to describe the most noticeable among thegenuine Anarchists who belonged to it, but I wish here to convey somefaint idea of the strange medley of outside cranks and _déclassés_whose resort it in time became. There appeared to be a magnetic attractionabout the place to tramps, _désoeuvrés_ cranks, argumentative peoplewith time on their hands, and even downright lunatics. Foreigners of alltongues assembled in the office--Russians, Italians, French, Spaniards, Dutch, Swedes, and before very long they practically swamped the Englishelement. The Anarchist and revolutionary party has always been moreserious on the Continent than in England, and what genuine Anarchiststhere are here are mostly foreigners. 

Trades and industries of the most heterogeneous kinds were carried on atthe _Tocsin_ by unemployed persons who could find no other refuge fortheir tools nor outlet for their energies. In one corner old M'Dermottsettled down with his lasts and leather, and there industriously hammeredaway at his boots, alternating his work with occasional outbursts ofShakespearian recitation. In winter the old fellow was positively snowedup in the office, where he crouched shivering over the fire until theadvent of spring revived him. On the first warm sunny day he suddenlyflung down his tools, and rushing out into the courtyard amazed andterrified Mrs. Wattles and her colleagues by shouting at the top of hisvoice, "Let me shout, let me shout, Richard's himself again!" "'E gave mesuch 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 alliancewas no despicable possession among the savages of Lysander Grove. 

A shed was erected in the corner of the composing-room, which served bynight as a dormitory for numbers of otherwise roofless waifs, and hereduring the daytime a young Belgian and his wife set up a small factory ofmonkeys up sticks, which when completed they proceeded to sell in thestreets. In another corner two Italians settled down to manufacture aremarkable new kind of artificial flower with which they traded whenopportunity permitted. Small plaster-casts of Queen Victoria and Maratwere also manufactured here. When the influx of starving Italiansnecessitated it, a kind of soup-kitchen was inaugurated over which Beppepresided, and very busy he was kept too, manufacturing _minestras_and _polenta_, a welcome innovation to me, I may mention, after along régime of small and nauseous tarts, bread and jam, and cheese. Inshort, the headquarters of the _Tocsin_, besides being a printing andpublishing office, rapidly became a factory, a debating club, a school, ahospital, a mad-house, a soup-kitchen and a sort of Rowton House, all inone. 

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 onthis side, the hangings on that, the feeding, and M'Dermott'sShakespearian recitations, I find it very difficult to realise the amountof hard work which I and the other few serious and earnest comrades gotthrough. 

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

Short was not without his humorous side, however, when only you were inthe right mood to appreciate it. His envy of the superiority which henoted 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 theoffice amid a heap of rubbish, unwashed, unkempt (he never divestedhimself of his clothes), and verminous in the extreme. There he would blowdiscordant notes on a mouth-organ, or smoke his rank old pipe, eat jamtarts, and scowl his wrath and envy on the world. If he could get hold ofsome unoccupied person to whom he could retail all the latest bits ofAnarchist scandal, or from whom he could ferret out some little privatesecrets, he was contented enough, or, leaning out of the office window hewould deliver a short autobiographical sketch to the interested denizensof the surrounding courts. A small bill, posted outside the office door, announced that Short was prepared to undertake extraneous jobs of printingon his own account; and this was responsible for many of the queercustomers who found their way to the office of the _Tocsin_. 

One of the queerest of all the queer oddities who haunted it was a smallman of hunted aspect, known to every one as the "Bleeding Lamb. " He hadacquired this peculiar name from the title of a booklet which he hadwritten under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, a sort ofinterpretation of the Apocalypse, wherein was foretold a rapid terminationof the universe. The printing of the "Bleeding Lamb" was undertaken byShort, whose dilatoriness in executing his work doubtless prolonged by afew 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 andprophetic in his eye was overcast by a certain diffident and deprecatinglook. He was the victim, poor man, of a twofold persecution in whichheaven and earth joined hands to torment him--the archangel Michael andthe Metropolitan police being the arch offenders. 

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

He would enter the office furtively, and cast a rapid glance round asthough he almost expected to find the archangel Michael or an inspector ofthe Metropolitan police lurking in a corner, and it would take him somefew seconds before he could muster up sufficient courage to inquire, aswas his invariable custom, whether anyone had been round to ask after him. On being assured that no one had called for that purpose he appearedrelieved, and gradually, as he became more and more reassured, he wouldwarm 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 universaldestruction at hand, "won't Queen Victoria just shiver in her shoes whenshe receives the revised edition of the 'Bleeding Lamb. ' Little does shedream at this moment of what is in store for her. " I recollect also thatNelson was in some way connected with his prophecies and his perplexities, but in what particular connection is not quite clear to my mind. Thesympathy which he apparently felt for the Anarchists was, I suppose, dueto the fact that they too were engaged--on a somewhat smaller scale it istrue--on a policy of destruction, and also to their avowed antagonism tothe law and the police, whether metropolitan or otherwise. 

The Bleeding Lamb had a formidable rival in the field of prophecy in theperson of another strange frequenter of our office--a demure-lookinggentleman named Atkinson who professed to be the reincarnation of Christ, and who preached the millennium. He was a less depressed-looking personthan the Bleeding Lamb--whom he treated with undisguised contempt--andaffected a tall hat and Wellington boots. The Lamb, on his side, denouncedthe Messiah as a fraud, and went so far as to suggest that he had onlytaken to prophecy when the alteration in the fashion of ladies' pocketscompelled him to abandon his original profession. "That Lamb is not quiteright in the upper storey, " whispered Atkinson to me one day; "he may evenbecome dangerous, poor creature!" Shortly afterwards I was taken aside bythe 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 astampede on Short's part, who, never having completed his work, dreadedencountering the mournful scrutiny and reproachful bleating of the Lamb noless than the sad, stern rebukes and potential Wellington boots of theMessiah. Into no single item of the day's programme did he put so muchzest 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 bedsooner than "face the music. "

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

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

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

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

Whilst I gazed on dumbfounded at this little scene, making futile effortsto grasp the vexed point under discussion, the strange new-comer, whom theLamb addressed as Gresham, deposited on the floor a huge and shapelessbrown-paper parcel, under whose weight he was staggering, and sitting downby its side he carefully untied the string, and dragged triumphantly forthtome after tome of carefully-written MSS. , which he proceeded to read outwithout further preamble. 

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

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

The Bleeding Lamb here cast me a knowing glance, which said as plainly aswords that his unfortunate acquaintance was mad, but that it was as wellto humour him, and so he magnanimously sat down on a stool facing hisrival, while the latter proceeded to read out his book, which was destinedsoon 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 "shorttreatise, " which were carried on at intervals for some weeks. Minute afterminute and hour after hour Gresham drawled on from one tedious reiterationto another, never raising his voice nor altering its key, till a sense ofdizziness overcame his audience, and his voice became as the singing inone's ears which accompanies high fever or heralds a faint. Indeed I havenever suffered from fever or faintness since that date without mysensations recalling Gresham's dreary, argumentative drawl; then graduallyhis voice would grow fainter and somewhat spasmodic, until at length itgave way to snores, as the weary Lamb and the atheist Lion, like the kidand the leopard of Isaiah, sank down together in a confused heap on thefloor, and there slept out a miniature fulfilment of the word of theprophet. 

Then there was a Polish count who found his way to the _Tocsin_--amost deplorable aristocratic débris, who might have stepped straight outof the pages of Dostoievsky. I never set eyes on a more depressed-lookingmortal than Count Voblinsky. He looked as though he bore on his bentshoulders the weight of all the ill-spent lives in Christendom. He was adamp, unwholesome-looking man, whose appearance suggested long confinementin a cellar. He was pale and hollow-eyed, and almost mouldy; altogether amost cadaverous-looking person. He was always attired, even at elevenA. M. , in an old dress suit, green and threadbare with age, and a furrytall hat, into which garments he seemed to have grown and taken root. Butdespite the decay of his person and his attire, there was a certain degreeof aristocratic refinement about Voblinsky's features, last ghastly tracesof his ancient nobility. He vaguely recalled to my mind a long-agoContinental trip of my childhood, and an unfortunate elephant in theMarseilles Jardin des Plantes who, from long inactivity in the corner ofhis cage, had become overgrown with moss. There was the same incongruoustouch of erstwhile nobility, the same decay, the same earthy smell. Bywhat shady and circuitous paths had the unfortunate count reached thisunhappy pass? Perhaps his wife was responsible; for if ever woman wascalculated not to lead her mate on to higher and better things it was theCountess Voblinska. The countess was worse than slovenly: she wasdownright dirty. Her tumbled, frowsy hair, with patches of golden dye init, was surmounted by an appalling hat of incongruous dimensions andshape, trimmed with what appeared to be archaeological relics, thick indust. To approach it brought on a perfect paroxysm of sneezing. Herclothes, which were very greasy and never brushed, hung together bystrings, tatters, and safety-pins. Her hands and face were begrimed withseveral coats of dirt, and a top coat of _poudre de riz_. No ordinaryimagination dared speculate on what lay hidden beneath those tattered ragsshe wore. She gesticulated much, and discoursed on the subject of somelecture she was to give, in the intervals of volleying forth abuse andswearing in Parisian argot at her long-suffering husband, who received itall with most ludicrous courtesy. Often a strong smell of gin mingled withthe eloquent flow of the countess's language. 

On the whole, however, the Anarchists and their queer associates might beregarded as a fairly temperate set. One of the most potent causes of drinkis the monotony of the existences led by most people, the hopelessdreariness of their confined, narrow lives, the total lack of interest andexcitement. This is not the case in revolutionary circles, where not onlyare there plenty of ideas afloat to occupy men's minds and distract themfrom the narrow circle of their dreary domestic lives, but where also themodern craving for excitement, factitious or otherwise, finds plenty ofnourishment. 

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

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

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

One day Mr. Crawley brought home "The Woman Who Did, " and neglected toconceal 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 asunconcerned as though she had been the 'Private Meditations and Prayers ofthe Rev. Bagge, '" Mrs. Crawley confided to her Aunt Elizabeth, "but it wasa six-shilling book, and I knew how Crawley valued it, and for the life ofme I did not dare touch it. "

It was a sore trial indeed to Mrs. Crawley to live under the same roofwith such a person, but she dared not so far outrage the feelings of onewhom she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, as to execute the offendinglady. She long meditated some revenge, some outlet for her outragedfeelings; it was long in coming, but come it did at last. The "Man WhoDidn't" followed in the footsteps of his irregular mate, and in afourpenny-halfpenny edition. This was more than the worthy matron couldstand, and either he or she herself must leave the house. She summonedAunt Elizabeth, a lady of irreproachable moral standard, the whites ofwhose eyes had a habit of turning up spasmodically, and the corners ofwhose mouth down, and to her she unburdened her feelings. 

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

The offending and irresolute gentleman was then seized upon with a pairof 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 ofwhat I might call the conscientiously unprincipled man. It being wrong tosteal, he made a point of annexing small objects. Cleanliness is next togodliness, and he devoted himself heroically to dirt; it was not at allhis natural tendency, and the more disagreeable he found it the morestrenuous was he in its pursuit. Being by nature punctual, he made it anabsolute point of honour never to keep an appointment; and, as a lover ofdomestic peace, he was for ever working his way into scrapes and rows. Hewas a comical object, with his limp yellow hair brushed ferociously onend, and his mild yellow eyes scowling defiance at mankind. 

When the Cuban revolution broke out a wave of sympathy for the oppressedislanders passed over the whole civilised world, and nowhere did this finda warmer echo than in the Anarchist party and the _Tocsin_ group. Many Anarchists were in favour of going out to the assistance of theinsurgents. Opinion was divided on the question. Some said: "It is ourduty to remain in Europe to carry on the work of Anarchist propagandahere. The Cuban revolution is a race struggle, and no concern of ours. "Others said: "We Anarchists are internationalists, and in whatsoever partof the world there is revolt against oppression, and wherever therevolutionary forces are at work, there is our opportunity to step in anddirect those forces into the proper course, towards Anarchism. " TheseAnarchists saw in the uprising of this small and comparativelyinsignificant race against the Spanish throne the possible dawn of awider, vaster struggle, in which the whole world would join hands to laylow thrones, altars, and judgment seats. 

A small band of Italian comrades, led by an adventurous Sicilian, got upa subscription for the purpose, and left the office of the _Tocsin_, amid great revolutionary enthusiasm, to journey to the assistance of theinsurgent island. Only one of their number ever returned alive to Europeto 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 theAnarchist point of view. 

The Cuban fever was very catching, and after the departure of this firstband there was a regular epidemic of departure at the _Tocsin_. Carter and Simpkins turned up at the office one afternoon very much inearnest about it all and persuaded that a little British grit was what wasneeded in Cuba, "to keep things humming. " Simpkins recalled his old armydays and the valour he had several times displayed when under theinfluence of liquor. He waved an old belt appertaining to those times, andwould, I believe, have sung something about the Union Jack and the beer ofold England, had not his friend recalled him to a better sense of his dutyas an Anarchist and Internationalist. It appeared that Carter had comeinto a small sum of money consequent on the death of an uncle, with whichhe was bent on paying their passage out to Cuba. "What is an Anarchist todo in this wretched country?" he asked. "I am tired of lying in bedwaiting for the revolution. It's too slow coming. " "Yah!" muttered Shortunder his breath to me, "the springs are out of order, and he finds ithard. 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 theybade good Mrs. Wattles farewell. The good lady was very deeply affected, and with tears in her eyes she begged them to think again before betakingthemselves to "them furrin' parts" where she had heard "the drink wassomething awful and not fit for a Christian stomach. " She was only halfreassured when told that rum came from somewhere in that direction. 

But Carter and Simpkins never reached Cuba. Some few minutes' walk fromthe office of the _Tocsin_, at the corner of Lysander Grove, stood aninviting house of call, the "Merry Mariners, " where the valiant warriorsdropped in on their way, to refresh themselves, perhaps in anticipation ofthe dreary prospect which Mrs. Wattles's words had opened before them. When several hours later Short returned from his accustomed evening strollround the neighbourhood, he described with great relish the pitiabletermination of their voyage. He had found Carter just sober enough to carthis incapacitated disciple home on a wheelbarrow, after which he painfullybetook himself to his bed, there to bemoan the tardiness of therevolution, and the broken condition of the spring mattress. 

"And won't his guv'nor just give Simpkins a ragging when he gets home. He'll give him Cuba, " gloated the unsympathetic printer. 

Another relief expedition from the _Tocsin_ met with scarcely morebrilliant success. Beppe and Meneghino set out under the guidance of oldM'Dermott, on tramp to Cardiff, whence they hoped to work their way out tothe insurgent island. They, too, set out full of brave hopes and generousenthusiasm, but with too confident a trust in the beneficence ofProvidence as caterer to their material needs on the journey. Before afortnight had elapsed, they also were back at the office, Beppe bearingthe poor old Irishman on his shoulders in a quite crippled and exhaustedcondition. He had to be put to bed, and remained there several weeks, before he was in a fit state to get about again. They all complainedbitterly of the inhospitality of the country-folk to whom they hadappealed for help, and of the uncourteous reception they had met with inthe Cardiff docks. Poor Meneghino reached London barefooted, his faithfulcanvas bag hanging disconsolately over his shoulder--and all with woefullyvacant stomachs. They formed a comically dismal group as they collapsedinto the office in an exhausted heap. 

 * * * * *

Amid these many strange and dubious, ludicrous or pathetic characters, some few heroic figures appeared. From time to time there came into ourmidst Vera Marcel, the Red Virgin of the barricades, the heroine of theCommune of Paris--a woman of blood and smoke and of infinite merciestowards men and beasts. I can see her still, almost beautiful in herrugged ugliness, her eyes full of the fire of faith and insane fanaticism, her hair dishevelled, her clothes uncared for. I can hear the wonderfulring of her tragic voice as she pleaded the misery of the poor andsuffering, of the oppressed, the outcast, the criminal, the rejected, andas it rose higher and higher to invoke fire and sword and bloodshed inexpiation. Then I seem to hear its magic and inspired ring as herwonderful faith conjured up visions of the future when the whole ofhumanity shall live in peace and brotherhood, and the knife, which in timeof revolution had shed the blood of the oppressors, shall "cut nothingdeadlier than bread. " A strange gaunt figure she was, a woman who hadnever hesitated at shedding blood in the good Cause, nor feared to facedeath for it; but with her friends, and especially with children and dumbanimals, she was as gentle as the gentlest of her sex; and no words candescribe the extreme sweetness of her voice. 

As publication time approached, all-night sittings became necessary, whenall this heterogeneous assembly met together, and amidst Anarchist songand Anarchist enthusiasm forwarded or hindered, each in his degree, thepublication of the _Tocsin_. I can see in my mind's eye themuch-littered, overcrowded office in all the confusion of those nights, with its dark corners hidden in shadow, where slept tired fighters wearyof the fray, and its brightly-lighted patches, under the lamps, where thework of the night was being carried on. Some dozen voices, more or lessmusical, are chanting Anarchist war-songs, and the _Inno di Caserio_and the _Marseillaise_ ring out through the open windows to thedormant or drunken denizens of Lysander Grove. The Reincarnation ispatiently turning the wheel of the printing machine, and rolling outfresh _Tocsins_, thinking, no doubt, of that tocsin which, at nodistant date, shall ring out from a loftier sphere to rouse the deludedinhabitants of this globe to a different millennium from that dreamed ofby Anarchists. But, whatever his thoughts, he grinds away with muchChristian endurance and fortitude. Wainwright, who is tired after a longturn at the wheel, subsequent to a hard day's work in the brick-yard, isrelating to a few interested listeners the strange story of his life, ordiscussing points of Anarchist principle and propaganda. 

Then, somehow, the Bleeding Lamb would find his way in, and looking overat his reincarnated rival at the wheel with undisguised contempt, hewhispers: "I know what sort of a wheel his unhallowed hoof ought to beturning!"

Armitage and Kosinski at such times would be busy folding the papers, both absorbed in their work, happy to think that they were thus advancingthe great Cause. And Short, shivering discontentedly at the cold, orswearing amid much perspiration at the heat, would smoke his pipe and eathis unattractive pastry, whilst crawling into his rugs and banners, untilBeppe, in an outburst of indignation, drags him out by the scruff of theneck and compels him to lock up the forms. 

One night there was a grand banquet, for Beppe had turned in, bearingunder his long cloak a prime conditioned tom-cat, whose disconcerted mewswere rapidly ended by a dexterous twist of the neck, and whose plumpperson was before long stewing in wine and vinegar in the _Tocsin_stockpot, after his liver had been previously fried for the privateconsumption of the ever-hungry Beppe. 

When this succulent repast had been disposed of towards 3 A. M. (all the_Tocsin_ workers had admirable digestions) a brief respite from workensued, during which Beppe sang pieces of Italian opera, accompanied byGnecco on his mandolin, and M'Dermott treated us to brief recitations fromShakespeare. Much stamping and gesticulation accompanied, I remember, thesoliloquy of Hamlet, and our flesh crept at the witches' incantations from"Macbeth. " The old cobbler delighted in Shakespeare and dictionaries, between the perusal of which he spent most of his time. "Like Autolycus inthe 'Winter's Tale, '" he said to me one day, "I am a 'snapper-up ofunconsidered trifles, ' and during the riots of 18--I snapped up asufficient number of these to enable me to set myself up with a smalllibrary, and I did no work during eighteen months, devoting my entire timeto Shakespeare and Johnson's Dictionary. "

Sometimes a phrenologist who had strayed into our midst would follow onwith a brief phrenological séance, and nothing afforded the comrades moresatisfaction than to be informed that their bumps showed undoubtedcriminal propensities. 

Then again the heavy roll of the machine would drown all lesser noiseswith its monotonous grinding, as the most resolute and earnest among usreturned undaunted to the fray, whilst others, less energetic, curled upon the floor in varying uncomfortable attitudes about the office--insidethe dormitory shed and out, propped against posts and type-racks, orstretched on stacks of paper--and slumbered in blissful ignorance of thefuture fortunes of the _Tocsin_. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE

May-Day was at hand, and we had been working all night at the office ofthe _Tocsin_ in order to have the paper ready in time to distributeto the provincial groups. Since Friday morning I had hardly left theoffice at all--merely going home for dinner and returning at once to thefray--and by four o'clock Sunday morning we had rolled off the last of thefive thousand copies of the _Tocsin_, which, along with two thousandleaflets drawn up by myself and Armitage, were ready for distribution. The1st of May fell on the following Wednesday, and we had for once thesatisfaction of knowing that we had taken Time by the forelock. 

Short had retired to his shake-down in the dormitory about midnight, andthe loud creaking of his boots against the boards was the only sign hegave of life. Kosinski, Armitage, and Giannoli, after making up andaddressing the last parcel, had left for their respective abodes; Beppeand Meneghino, having turned the wheel the whole evening, had fallen tosleep exhausted, stretched on a bench in the machine-room; and I, afterhaving partaken of a cup of tea and some hot buttered toast which oldM'Dermott had provided for me, sat nodding and dozing on one side of thefire. The old cobbler had fallen fast asleep on the other side whileporing over a dictionary, noting down sonorous and impressive-soundingwords with which to embellish the oration he intended to deliver onMay-day in Hyde Park. 

About half-past five, just as the first cold rays of the chilly springdawn cast a ghastly blue light on the dormant figures around me, deadeningthe yellow flame of the lamp which was burning itself out, I was rousedfrom my torpor by a light rap at the outside door. In the office all wasquiet, but for the heavy and rhythmic snores of the weary comrades, andwondering who could claim admittance at such an unearthly hour, I rosewith a shiver and opened the door. To my surprise I found myself face toface with Bonafede. 

Since that bitter January day when Bonafede and his companions hademerged from the London fog and made their unexpected entrance on thescene of the _Tocsin_, I had not seen very much of him, though we hadnever quite lost sight of one another, and I frequently heard his newsthrough mutual friends. As I have already stated, Gnecco and Bonafede hadretired to lodgings in the Italian quarter in the unsavoury neighbourhoodof Saffron Hill. They had a little money, but only enough to last for twoor three weeks. Gnecco had a few valuables in the shape of a gold watchand chain, a pearl breast-pin, and a fur-lined coat, and he soon hadrecourse to my friendly help to dispose of these articles to the bestadvantage with a pawnbroker, and on the proceeds, eked out by some smallhelp which he received from his family, he managed to rub along, and heand his mandolin were soon familiar features at the office. But withBonafede the case was different. He was a man of too active andindependent a character to be long idle. He was by profession an engineer, and in Italy, before his career had been interrupted by his politicalactivity, he had held an important post on the Italian railways. But formany years his life had been a stirring one, and he had learned to turnhis hand to whatever offered, and had in turn worked as a dock labourer, asailor before the mast, a gilder employed in church decorations, ahouse-decorator in a lunatic asylum and a cutter-out of military trousersat Marseilles, a warehouse porter and a navvy. Whatever job turned up heaccepted; if it was work at which he had no experience he would look upsome comrade in that line and get from him a few hints, and this, supplemented by reading up particulars in some trade encyclopaedia at apublic library, enabled him to accomplish his task satisfactorily. He hadhardly been in London a fortnight when he looked about him for work, and, nothing better offering, he engaged himself as washer-up at one ofVeglio's many restaurants. After six weeks he was rescued from theuncongenial drudgery of scullion by a comrade, a fellow-Calabrian, whoearned a good living as decorator of West-end cafés, and who took onBonafede to assist him in frescoing a ceiling at the Trocadero, not, however, before the latter had laid the foundations of a _lega diresistenza_ between the Italians employed in restaurant kitchens. Atthe end of a month the ceiling was painted, and Bonafede parted companywith his compatriot, pocketing £10, plus his keep whilst the job lasted. One of his first steps was to visit me at the office of the _Tocsin_and arrange for the printing of an Italian pamphlet and of a booklet ofrevolutionary songs, the production of Gnecco, which were to be smuggledinto Italy for distribution. The cost of paper and carriage of these worksran into the better part of £3. With the remaining cash in his pocket, Bonafede went to look up old friends and comrades in the French andItalian quarters. A's wife was expecting her confinement, B needed anoutfit in order to enter on a job as waiter which he had secured at aclub; C had been out of work for three months and had five small mites tofeed and clothe, and so forth. At the end of this expedition rather lessthan 15s. Remained in his pocket, and once more he sought employment. This time he got taken on by a contractor who asphalted the Londonstreets, a work done entirely by Italians. Here he remained for nearly twomonths, during which time he organised the men into a union and inducedthem to strike for better conditions. The men won their point, andreturned to work on the condition that the agitator who had got up thestrike should be dismissed, and Bonafede left of his own accord, unwillingto cause loss to the men by prolonging the struggle. After a few weeks'enforced idleness, during which he was lost sight of by the comrades, hereappeared one evening at a group meeting held at our office, and informedus that he was taken on as electrician at the Monico. 

Ten days had now passed since I last saw him, and my expression waseloquent of my amazement at his unexpected appearance. 

"You are surprised at my coming at such an unusual hour, Comrade, " hebegan with his strong Calabrian accent; "but you will understand when Itell you that ever since yesterday evening I have been awaiting anopportunity to get round here without being followed by my guardian angelsof Scotland Yard. Gnecco told me that you were passing the night in theoffice, and so I seized on a favourable moment and came. " He stopped, glanced round the room, walked up to the bench on which the two Italianswere sleeping the sleep of the just, and having satisfied himself that noone could overhear us he explained the motive of his visit to me. 

"You doubtless know that Jean Matthieu, suspected of complicity in theP.... Bomb explosions, has been hiding in London for some time past. " Inodded assent: he had even been pointed out to me one evening by Giannoliat a meeting in the East End. 

"Well, since yesterday we have the certainty that the police are on histrack, that they are aware of his whereabouts. It has become absolutelynecessary for him to leave London without further delay--within the nexttwenty-four hours. Everything is arranged. The police will be watching theContinental trains, so he will go for the present to Leicester, and staywith a comrade who has a French wife, and who will pass him off as hiswife's uncle. From there we hope, within a week or so to get him off toAmerica; but all this requires money: the least that we can give him istwenty pounds. I had five by me, left with me to make use of for theCause, a few French comrades have handed me over another seven. But we arestill in need of eight pounds to make up the necessary sum. Could you letus have it?"

The last days of the month always found me at the end of my resources. Ihad but two pounds in my purse. "What a pity, " I exclaimed, "that youcould not let me know yesterday! Today is Sunday; it will be impossiblefor me to get at any money. Raymond is certain only to have a pound or twoon him, if he has as much; the Bank is closed. I have some jewellery by meon which I could easily raise ten or twelve pounds, but the pawn-shops arenot open on Sundays. What am I to do? Can you not wait until tomorrow?"

Bonafede explained that every minute was of consequence: Matthieu mustleave at once or he would inevitably be arrested. We both remained silent, hesitating, for a few minutes. At last he spoke: "Madame Combrisson hasthe money by her, I am sure, but she will never give it. You say, however, you have some jewellery that you would be willing to pledge: perhaps withthat as security she would advance us the money. Anyhow we can but try. "

It was arranged that I should go home for my valuables and repair to thehouse of the Combrissons, where, Bonafede informed me, Matthieu was atthat moment concealed. 

"But do you think he is safe there?" I inquired. 

"Oh yes, perfectly. Jules is a good comrade, and both he and his wifehave every reason to wish to remain on good terms with the Anarchists. They know on which side their bread is buttered. I shall go now and youwill find me at the Combrissons'. "

I knew the French couple well by reputation, though I had never yetcrossed their threshold. Combrisson had come over to England some twelveyears ago; he had been mixed up in the Anarchist propaganda, and had seenfit to expatriate himself; it was rumoured that he had been actively mixedup with a gang of coiners, amongst whom were several Anarchists whothought it good warfare to make the hated bourgeois pay for the propagandaby falsifying the currency. They had not been long in London when theytook a large house in Grafton Street, letting out rooms to comrades. Theyalso kept on the ground floor a small _depôt_ of foreignrevolutionary literature, and received for a consideration thecorrespondence of the refugees. Combrisson, who worked as a carpenter andjoiner, had the reputation of being a good comrade, and always set down tohis wife's account all actions not strictly in accordance with theprinciples of solidarity, such as turning out comrades who did not paytheir rent, refusing small loans and subscriptions, and such like. 

By eight o'clock I was in Grafton Street. As I turned down the cornerwhich leads from the Tottenham Court Road, I became aware that I was beingfollowed. A young man with a sandy moustache, a celestial nose, and fishyblue eyes, got up to look like a counter-jumper on a holiday, whom I hadlong since learned to know as Detective Limpet, was walking a few stepsbehind me on the other side of the road. I stopped at Number 9, mydestination, and I saw Limpet likewise stop outside a public-house whichstood opposite, and exchange a few words with a hulking brute leaningagainst the wall, characterised by a heavy jaw, lowering brows, and astrong Irish brogue, in whom I recognised Detective O'Brien. They bothturned their eyes on me as I stood on the door-step pulling the bellhandle, and I saw a stupid grin overspread the countenance of the Limpet. 

The door was opened by a little maid-of-all-work who seemed doubtful asto whether she should let me in or no, till a head adorned withcurl-papers appeared above the kitchen steps, calling out in a shrillvoice, "Jane, you fool, show the young lady in. "

Next minute I was in the front kitchen, where Madame Combrisson, herhusband, and Bonafede awaited me. 

The house was a good-sized, solidly-built one, originally intended for agentleman's residence, but fallen now on evil days. An odour of friedonions and sawdust pervaded the establishment, for Madame Combrissonboarded three or four of her lodgers, regaling them principally on"_soupe à l'ognon_, " and Combrisson carried on in the back kitchenhis carpentry business at which he kept these same lodgers employed, paying them in kind with food and house-room, and doling out a fewshillings now and again as pocket-money. In this way he succeeded incombining philanthropy and business, and though, after a few months, hisemployees invariably left as soon as they had learned a little of theEnglish language and English prices, still there were always new-comerswilling, nay anxious, to replace them. 

After a few preliminary words of introduction, I produced the jewelleryfor Madame Combrisson's inspection. She was a small wiry woman, with hard, covetous grey eyes, grizzled hair screwed up in a tight knot on the top ofher head, a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and thin blue lips. Hereyes lit up as her hands turned over the little diamond brooch andfinely-chased gold bracelet which I submitted to her inspection. 

"Of course I am not a judge, " she said, "but I should think we couldeasily raise a little money on these. I wish I had it myself, I wouldwillingly give it for the Cause, but, _que voulez vous, mademoiselle_? we are but poor folk; however, I know some one near herewho might perhaps be able to oblige us; I will go and see. "

Bonafede winked at me and I could see that he considered the mattersettled. He and Combrisson left the kitchen and I remained alone withmadame, who proceeded to take her fringe out of the curl-papers, and toexchange her petticoat and red flannel jacket for a somewhat rusty blackdress. Whilst performing her toilette she eyed me carefully. I noticedthat since she had inspected the jewellery she had involuntarily assumed amore respectful tone in addressing me. "I hear from the comrades that youare very active in the Cause, mademoiselle; have you been long in themovement?"

I replied that it was getting on for two years. 

"And your family, are they Anarchists also?"

I explained that my parents were dead and that I was the only one of myfamily who worked in the movement. She seemed surprised at thisinformation, "But you must be rich, " she said: "that jewellery you havebrought is very beautiful; you are young, you could enjoy yourself, mixwith those of your own class; why do you work in a printing-officeinstead?"

"But I am an Anarchist. We must all do what we can to help the Cause, Ido my best; not more, however, than other comrades. "

She seemed by now to have summed me up, though I was evidently stillsomewhat of a mystery to her, and she merely said:--

"Oh, of course we are all Anarchists; we all do our best for the Cause. "

As she was leaving, Bonafede came down and said that Matthieu would liketo see me if I saw fit, and together we mounted to the back attic wherethe dynamitard was concealed. 

Nobody could have guessed on sight that the puny little man before mecould be the dreaded Anarchist for whom the police of Europe had beensearching high and low during the past seven months. Matthieu was a tailorby trade, and his physique bore traces of the sedentary work and of thelong hours passed in close unhealthy rooms. He was slightly hunchbacked, his chest narrow and hollow, his legs bowed; his pale blue eyes with theirswollen red lids had the strained expression of one accustomed to make useof the last rays of daylight before lighting the lamp. His massive jaw andfirm round chin, and high narrow forehead were the only features whichrevealed in him the man of action and the fanatic. Yet this was the manwho, by a series of explosions culminating in the blowing up of a policestation, had spread terror in the ranks of the French bourgeoisie. 

We shook hands, and I told them how I had been followed by DetectiveLimpet and how he and O'Brien were stationed opposite the house. 

"Yes, " said Bonafede, "it is certain that they suspect Matthieu'spresence here; we must try to get rid of them in some way for a shortwhile; set them off on some false scent, so as to enable our comrade toleave the house. "

"If you would only let me do as I wish, " broke in Matthieu, "I would soonbe out of this. I have a good revolver and I am not afraid to use it. Iwould make a rush for it, and ten to one I should get off scot-free; andanyhow better be taken fighting than caught like a rat in a hole. "

We both tried to dissuade him, arguing that there was always time to takesuch a step, and that with a little patience and ingenuity it was almostcertain that a means would be found for his safe escape. 

In a few minutes Madame Combrisson entered the room. She handed me over£10 and a receipt for the pledges, adding that her friend would not beinduced to lend more. I handed the sum over to Bonafede. He had now £22 inhand, so that the financial side of the difficulty was solved. MadameCombrisson, however, had news. A neighbour had informed her that ChiefInspector Deveril had been seen in the street, and that, after givinginstructions to his two subordinates not to move from their post ofobservation, he had left, it was supposed, in order to procure asearch-warrant. This news filled us with alarm. Almost any minute now thepolice might claim entrance to the house, and then Matthieu wouldinevitably be caught. What was to be done? I was told off to look out of afront window from behind a curtain and report on the situation, but onlyto return with the news that Limpet and O'Brien were both leaning airilyon their sticks studying the heavens with imperturbable calm. Matthieu wasgrowing restless. He walked up and down the small room like a caged beast, nervously clutching at the revolver which he kept in his trouser pocket. Madame Combrisson kept bemoaning her fate, saying that it would be theruin of her house if the police entered. Bonafede alone remained calm andcollected. At last he exclaimed, looking at his watch, "It is now pasteleven, in another half-hour the public-houses will open, let us hope thatour friends below may turn in to refresh themselves. In that minuteMatthieu must escape; we must have everything ready; he had better changehis clothes and disguise himself as much as possible. We will leavetogether; we are both armed, and if the worst comes to the worst we willsell our lives dearly. "

"Oh, my poor house, my poor house!" moaned madame, "this business will bethe death of us all. "

Bonafede turned on her savagely. "This is no time for recriminations, " heexclaimed. "Sharpen your wits and see if you cannot find some means ofgetting rid of those spies. You are clever enough when it is a question ofserving your own interests. "

Madame Combrisson seemed electrified by these words. 

"I will try, Comrade, only give me time to think. " Next minute, sheexclaimed, "How would it do to send down two of the comrades to pick aquarrel in the street? They could start a fight, a crowd will assemble, the detectives will go to see what is up, and you and Matthieu can availyourselves of the confusion to escape. "

"Good!" replied Bonafede, "go and see about it at once. I will helpMatthieu to get ready, and you, Isabel, be on the look-out, and let usknow when the right moment has come. "

I stationed myself behind the curtain at the front parlour window. In afew minutes I saw a young German who lodged in the house rush up the areasteps into the street, followed by Combrisson. They were both shouting andgesticulating loudly, and Combrisson seemed to be demanding money whichthe other refused. A few passers-by stopped to listen to the twoforeigners, who danced around, growing ever more noisy; but Limpet andO'Brien stood firm. They looked at the combatants, but seemed to considerthe matter as a joke, and only crossed over to our side of the way whenthey saw a crowd begin to assemble. The quarrel between Combrisson and hislodger began to flag when they saw that their object had failed, and theGerman soon walked off in the direction of Tottenham Court Road. I watchedthe detectives cross over to their former post of observation, and wasjust going to inform the comrades of the negative result of this manoeuvrewhen I saw Inspector Deveril coming down the street. For a second I stoodparalysed with apprehension: all was up with my friends! Next moment I hadclimbed the four flights, and given the dreaded news. 

Matthieu rushed to the attic window. It gave on to a wide gutter whichran along several roofs. "This is my only means of escape. I will get intoone of these other houses by the skylight, and escape at the front doorwhilst they are searching here. "

"And if any one tries to stop you?" I exclaimed. 

"So much the worse for them, " he replied, clutching his revolver. 

He was already outside the window when Bonafede spoke, advising him towait a minute whilst we saw what was going on. As soon as the policeknocked, he could carry out his plan. To be noticed by them on the roofwould be fatal to its success. 

At that moment Combrisson rushed in. "I cannot tell what has happened. Deveril spoke to those two spies and has walked off. The public-house hasopened, Limpet has gone inside, and only O'Brien remains on guard. "

We all three went downstairs to watch proceedings, leaving Matthieu bythe window, ready at a moment's notice to put his desperate project intoexecution. 

Sure enough, all was quiet in the street below; passers-by were hurryinghome to their Sunday dinners, the smell of which pervaded the street andhouse, and O'Brien stood at the door of the opposite pub, leaninggracefully on his stick and gazing at the windows of our house. We stoodwatching for about a quarter of an hour, fully expecting to see the policeappear; the room had gradually filled with the lodgers, all on the _quivive_, and jabbering fluently in foreign tongues. As nobody came andall seemed quiet, Bonafede and I returned upstairs to reassure Matthieu. 

In a few minutes we heard a ring at the door. 

"It is they!" we exclaimed, and Matthieu leapt to the window, whilstBonafede rushed to the door, which burst open, giving admittance to astrange-looking figure. The new-comer had the slight build and nervouscarriage of a Frenchman, but was got up in the most aggressively Britishattire. Clean-shaven, with a short bulldog pipe in the corner of hismouth, a billycock hat set rather jauntily on his head, a short, drab-coloured overcoat of horsy cut, black and white check trousers, red-skin riding gloves, square-toed walking shoes, a light cane, and arose in his buttonhole; you would have taken him at first sight for asporting tipster. Matthieu, who had stopped short at this suddenapparition, and Bonafede, both stood staring in amazement. The new-comerlooked at them with a wicked twinkle in his eye, and burst out into ahearty laugh. 

"Why, it is you, Sylvestre, " the Italian at last said, whilst Matthieujumped down into the room. "But what on earth have you done to yourself? Ishould never have recognised you?"

"Ah! so I look in character, then? If you did not recognise me no wonderthat I was able to take in those gaping clodhoppers, fresh from theirturnip-fields, in the street below. I have news for you. Just listen, " buthere he broke off, for, looking round the room, he had caught sight of me(I had stood speechless in a corner whilst this scene was enacted). "Firstthough, my dear fellow, I must beg you to introduce me to the lady. Theemotions of the moment seem to have made you and Matthieu forget allmanners. "

Bonafede turned smilingly towards me, and introduced us: "ArmandSylvestre, a French comrade; Isabel Meredith, editor of the _Tocsin_"

The Frenchman made me an elegant and profound bow in strange contrastwith his sporting appearance, removing his hat, which he had till thenkept on. 

"But what has happened to you, Sylvestre?" exclaimed Matthieu. "Your hairhas turned purple. "

"Oh, for Heaven's sake don't look at my hair. A most awful fate hasbefallen it. Yesterday I heard from Cotteaux that you intended leavingsoon, so I settled to come down here this morning, and thought it would beas well to disguise myself; one never knows, one can sometimes get such alot of fun out of those heavy-witted, pudding-eating police. So I askedMarie to go into a West End hairdresser's and procure some black hair-dye, as I know my gold locks are well known to our friends below. She asked forsome, explaining that it was for theatricals, and last night I tried it. With what result you see!--and mind I only made up my mind to come outafter washing it some dozen times. Now, with a hat on, it's not verynoticeable, but if you could have seen it last night; it had turned thereal imperial shade of purple! It was a sight for the gods!"

We all laughed heartily at his adventure, the humour of which washeightened by the mock pathos and tragedy with which he narrated it. ButMatthieu, who was straining his ears to catch the slightest sounddownstairs, asked him to proceed with his news. 

"_Oh, mais vous saves, mademoiselle, votre pays est tout-à-faitépatant_, " he began, turning to me. "As I came down the street Inoticed Deveril speaking with those two satellites of his outside the 'Catand Mouse. ' I at once guessed something was up here, and thought I wouldtry and pump them, so I walked into the bar and asked in my best Englishaccent for a whisky and soda, throwing down a half-sovereign to pay forit, and began talking about racing bets with the barman. As I expected, after a few minutes, Limpet entered, asking for a glass of bitter; he soongot interested in our talk. I was giving tips with the air of a Newmarketjockey, and as he had finished his drink I offered to treat him. Hehesitated, saying that he was in a hurry, and I then pumped the whole taleout of him, how he and his comrade were watching this house, where theyhad reason to know that a dangerous French Anarchist was concealed, and soforth and so on. 

"'But, ' I said, 'if this is so, why do you not get a warrant to searchthe house?' And he then explained to me that the inspector had wished soto do, but that the magistrate, spite of his entreaties, had refused tosign the warrant because it was Sunday!! Yes, this is an extraordinarycountry. Society must be saved, but before everything the Sabbath must notbe broken. _C'est delicieux!_ Having gained this information, Ipolitely wished him good day, and walked over to this house. You shouldhave seen the faces of those two men. I expect their mouths are openstill. "

We all stared at each other at this information. This, then, was thesecret of the situation. The English Sunday had saved our comrade!Bonafede went downstairs to summon the Combrissons and relieve theirminds. We had now nearly twenty-four hours before us; it was certain thattill nine o'clock on Monday morning the search-warrant would not besigned. In this interval Matthieu must leave the house, but how?

Sylvestre, who evidently looked upon the whole question as a good joke--_une bonne blague_--suggested that the dynamitard should dress upin his sporting attire; he urged that the detectives had seen him enterand could not be surprised at his leaving, and that this would be the bestsolution of the difficulty. The idea seemed feasible, and it was tried on. Matthieu got into the check trousers and horsy overcoat, but the effectwas too ludicrous, and he was the first to laugh at the figure he cut inthe looking-glass. Something else must be found. Madame Combrisson came tothe rescue. She reminded us of a Jewish comrade, also a tailor by trade, who was not unlike Matthieu, being slightly hunchbacked. Her idea was toget him round, dress him in the fugitive's clothes, let Bonafede call acab in an ostentatious style, into which the false Matthieu was to jumpand drive off; the detectives would probably follow on their bicycles, andthen was our opportunity. Only, how to get this man on to the scenewithout his advent being noticed by them? For if he were seen to enter, the game was up; his exit would not cause surprise. We were still face toface with the same difficulty, and Matthieu once more began to pace theroom like a wild beast in a cage. 

Sylvestre broke the silence. "The only way out of the difficulty is todisguise our man. Dress him up as a woman; he will then enter withoutcausing observation. "

In a few minutes all was settled. I was to leave with the hand-bag inwhich I had brought in the jewellery to be pawned; but this time it was tocontain a dress belonging to Madame Combrisson. With this I was to proceedto the lodging of the Jewish comrade, Yoski, taking care to lose on theway any detective who might be following me. Yoski was to dress himself inthe woman's clothes, and return with me to Grafton Street, care beingtaken that the detectives should notice his entry. He was then to exchangehis female attire for Matthieu's clothes and drive off in a cab, aspreviously arranged, and then Matthieu, in his turn donning the skirt andblouse, was to leave the house on my arm, whilst the police would berushing after a red-herring. Sylvestre turned a somersault to express hisjoy, and, slapping Matthieu on the shoulder, said, "Why, before long, _mon vieux_, you will again be treading the flags of Paris, and, letus hope, frightening the bourgeois out of their wits. "

By two o'clock I was on my way. When I left the house Deveril was talkingwith O'Brien over the way; Limpet had disappeared for the time being. Theinspector at once noticed my presence, and, calling to a corner-boylounging at the public-house door, he spoke to him, pointing me out, andthis "copper's nark" followed doggedly in my steps. Yoski lived in aturning off the Mile-End Road, but anxious to give no inkling as to mydestination, I turned in the opposite direction, and after a lengthy_détour_ stopped at my own door. I stayed indoors nearly an hour, hoping that my attendant's patience would give out, but he showed no signsof moving, time was precious, and I decided to set out once more. Thistime I walked down the Euston Road to the beginning of Marylebone Road, where I jumped on to a bus going towards Maida Vale. The youth didlikewise, and at the beginning of the Kilburn High Street I descended, making my way up that dreary road. I began to despair of ridding myself ofmy pursuer. I was miles out of my way, the hours were passing, and hestill dogged my steps. I trudged along, weary and worried, weighed downwith the responsibility of my position. Suddenly my eyes caught sight of asolitary hansom coming slowly towards me, I hurried forward, the youth wassome paces behind me on the other side of the road, and before he had timeto realise what I was up to I had boarded that hansom and shouted to thecabman, "Five shillings, if you set me down at Baker Street Station in tenminutes, " and away we went. I looked out of the spy window in the back ofthe cab and saw my "nark" standing staring in the middle of the road. AtBaker Street I took a ticket for the Edgeware Road and there I jumped intoa train for Aldgate Station. When I once more found myself in the streetsI looked carefully around me and to my relief was able to assure myselfthat no one was following me. Taking a circuitous route, for greaterprecaution, I at last reached my destination. 

I seemed to be in a foreign country. Dark-eyed comely women and prettychildren, dressed in gay colours, were walking up and down. The shop-signsand advertisements were mostly written in Hebrew characters, loudconversation in a foreign language accompanied by vivacious gesticulation, caught the ear. The narrow, dirty street was swarming with inhabitants, the front doors were mostly open, and many people had placed chairs on thedoorsteps and pavement and were sitting out, though it would be aneuphemism to speak of enjoying the fresh air in such a neighbourhood. Thehouse at which I stopped was a six-roomed "cottage, " but whilst I stood onthe doorstep, waiting to gain admittance, at least fourteen persons passedin and out. At last a wizened old woman, scrutinising me suspiciously, answered my inquiries. 

"Yoski! yes, he live on the tird floor back, vis his vife and schwester. Yes, you will find him in. "

Yoski was a small, unhealthy-looking man, not much unlike Matthieu, though darker in colouring, and of a weaker type of face. He was aserious, silent, earnest man, a model of solidarity, regularly settingaside his weekly contribution to the Cause out of his meagre earning onwhich he had to maintain a wife and four children and a young sister. Theyall lived in the one room, but one felt that this did not cause them anysuffering; they were evidently used to it. The three grown-ups were all atwork when I entered, and the children clustered round like inquisitivelittle animals. I explained briefly my identity and the object of myvisit, talking English, which was not understood by his female relatives. He nodded gravely, and said: "But I cannot change here; it would cause toomuch curiosity. I will tell my wife that I must go with you for some work, and I will go into the room of a friend of mine who is out and dressthere. " He did as he said and we left the room together. 

On the landing I handed him the bag. "Is everything here?" he inquired, "hat and all?"

The hat! Who had thought of it? And yet without that it was impossible togo out. 

"Cannot you get at your wife's or your sister's?" I inquired. 

"Impossible, " he replied, "they would never give me a moment's peace tillthey knew why I wanted it. You might, however, try with Rebecca Wiesmann;she is a comrade and lives two streets farther down. Do not, however, tellher all this matter; make up some story and see if you can manage. "

Much doubting my success, I went round to Rebecca's. I had seen hersometimes at meetings, but I felt that she would be surprised at myappearance, and still more at my errand. Still there was nothing for it, the shops were all shut, and so I went round to her. This girl livedalone, having separated from her parents, who were strictly orthodox andintolerant Jews. She was indeed taken aback at seeing me, but did not liketo refuse my request. I told her that I was expected at a comrade's house, that I had been followed by detectives and wished to lose sight of them, and she, with the foreign Jews' dread of policemen as omnipotent beings, swallowed the tale and provided me with a showy best hat quite unlike myown. This I donned and left with my own in a paper under my arm, in spiteof her pressing offer to keep it for me. 

In a few minutes I was knocking at the door Yoski had pointed out to me. I found him ready, carefully shaved of his moustache, and quitetransformed in appearance. The hat and veil completed the disguise. By sixo'clock we were in Grafton Street. I was relieved to find that Deveril hadleft, and that only Limpet and O'Brien were on guard. They took a goodstare at us as we passed them by. 

Combrisson himself opened to us. "Oh, here you are at last. We began tofear you would never come. It has been as much as we could do to preventMatthieu from spoiling everything by making a rush for it. Come in, thereis not a moment to lose. Deveril may be back any minute, and he's not soeasily gulled as those two mugs. "

We found Matthieu in a state of great nervous excitement. The long, anxious hours of waiting had told on him. A nervous twitch convulsed hismouth. He jumped spasmodically to his feet as we entered the room. "Atlast, " exclaimed Bonafede, with a sigh of relief on seeing us. "Now, Matthieu, " he said, laying a hand encouragingly on the man's shoulder, "there is no time to be lost. Isabel will go downstairs whilst you twoexchange clothes. As soon as you are ready I will fetch the cabs. Becourageous, and, above all, calm, and in half-an-hour all will be over. "

I went downstairs with Madame Combrisson, and we paced nervously up anddown the front parlour. Every other minute one of us went to look out ofthe window. It was nearly dark. The street lamps were lighting up, andstill the two detectives watched on the other side of the road. 

"Where is Sylvestre?" I at last inquired, to break the tense silence. 

"Who knows? He left about half-an-hour ago, saying he would soon be back. He is off on some madcap expedition, you may be sure. He is a dreadful_farceur. _"

At that moment no fewer than three barrel-organs came up the street, stopped nearly opposite the house, and started playing "The man who brokethe bank at Monte Carlo, " and other similar classics. I was at the windowand saw Sylvestre go gravely up to the detectives, bow, say a few words, and cross over to our door. Madame rushed out to open to him. 

"So here you are, Mademoiselle. All is well, I hope?" he inquired. 

I nodded assent. 

"Oh, what a game it will be to see their faces to-morrow when Deverilcomes round with his warrant! Meanwhile, I was sure those poor devils wereboring themselves to death, so I went down to the Italian quarter andbrought back these musicians. I have just told them that I hope the musicwill help them to pass a pleasant half-hour. "

Just then Bonafede came down, followed by the false Matthieu. The lowerpart of his face was concealed in a muffler, and the illusion was reallyvery deceptive. 

"I am going now for the cab, " said the Italian. As soon as I return Yoskimust hurry out, jump in rapidly, and drive off. I shall be waiting foryou, Isabel, and Matthieu with a cab just by Shoolbred's; time to leavethe house five minutes after the departure of Yoski. Here is Matthieu;you, Madame Combrisson, see if his dress is right; now I am going. "

"Wait a minute, " exclaimed Sylvestre, "give me a bottle of whisky and twoglasses, I will go over and offer some to the 'tecs; it will look as if Iam trying to distract their attention from Bonafede and the cab, and willlend truth to the scene. "

All passed off to perfection. As the hansom drew up, Sylvestre, with apolite bow, offered a drink to Limpet and O'Brien. The latter caught sightof the cab, just as the false Matthieu hurriedly jumped in, and, pushingthe Frenchman roughly aside, he leapt on his bicycle and rushed off inpursuit just as the cab disappeared round the street corner. Bonafede hadquietly slipped off down the Tottenham Court Road. Limpet was pacing upand down distractedly, uncertain whether to stick to his post or join hiscomrade in pursuit. In five minutes' time I quietly walked out, arm in armwith Matthieu, turning round on the doorstep to shake hands with MadameCombrisson. We walked boldly past Limpet, and were soon at Shoolbred's, where I left the dynamitard with Bonafede, and, taking a roundabout walk, returned within half-an-hour to Grafton Street. In an hour's time Bonafedejoined us. "All is well!" he exclaimed; "within a couple of hours ourcomrade will be safe in Leicester. It has been an anxious day, but it hasended better than I had dared hope for. "

"And now let us get some dinner, " broke in Sylvestre, "I am just faintingwith hunger. Here is a sovereign, Madame; see if you can get us somethingfit to eat, though I fear that, with this hateful English Sunday, everything will be shut. "

"Do not abuse the English Sunday, " rejoined Bonafede, "to its sanctity weowe our friend's escape. "

We were soon enjoying a supper which Madame Combrisson got in from theneighbouring Italian restaurant. We were all in high spirits, and laughedand chatted freely. Limpet, and O'Brien who had returned after satisfyinghimself as to the true identity of the false Matthieu, who had drivenstraight home, kept pacing up and down in front of the area railings, evidently half suspecting that we had played them a trick. 

All that night we sat round the kitchen fire, chatting and dozingalternately. At midnight Deveril came, accompanied by two other officers, who relieved Limpet and O'Brien. The next morning, as the clock handspointed to 9. 15, a loud rat-tat resounded through the house. Deveril, withour two friends of the previous day, accompanied by three uniformedpolicemen, were on the doorstep. Combrisson opened to them with his mostengaging smile. He politely read the warrant which the inspector handedhim, and bowed him in, saying that he was happy that he should persuadehimself that Matthieu was not, and never had been, on the premises. Deveril seemed rather taken aback by this reception, but was too sure ofhis case to feel much doubt. 

Never shall I forget that man's face when, after a three hours' hunt inevery hole and corner of the building he had to come down persuaded thathis victim had escaped him. 

He was perfectly green with rage. Turning to Bonafede who, with usothers, was sitting in the front parlour, he said, "Well, Signore, youhave been one too much for me on this occasion, but remember, he laughsbest who laughs last. We shall doubtless meet again soon. "

Bonafede merely shrugged his shoulders and turned aside, whilst thecrestfallen Limpet, who had evidently received a severe wigging from hissuperior for allowing his quarry to escape, turned on me a look of intensehatred and hissed out, "Remember, miss, you may not always be in London; you will yet pay me forthis!" and with this melodramatic threat he and his comrades departedamidst the jeers of the assembled lodgers. 

In the street they were met by deafening shouts of "Vive Deveril! Hurrahfor the detective force!" Sylvestre, who had slipped out a few minutesbefore the arrival of the police, had assembled in the road all theItalian comrades of the _Tocsin_ group, several Frenchmen of his ownacquaintance, and four or five organ-grinders, and amidst the ironiccheers of their enemies, the dejected guardians of law and order madetheir shamefaced exit from the scene. 

CHAPTER IX

SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES

There has been of late years a remarkable, and, on the whole, a veryfutile tendency among certain men of science to dissect and classifyabnormal people and abnormal ideas, to discover that geniuses are mad, andthat all manner of well-intentioned fanatics are born criminals. 

But there were elements in the Anarchist party which defied the scienceof the psychological analyst, so strangely and intricately were the mostheterogeneous qualities blended in certain of their number--fanaticism, heroism, criminality, and not unfrequently a spicing of genius. 

The primary difference between the ordinary normal man and the fanatic--as between the normal man and the madman or the genius--is the totallydifferent standpoint whence each views life. This it is which renders itimpossible for the normal man really to understand or judge fanatics. Hecannot grasp their motive, their point of view, and is therefore morallyincapable of judging them. 

Among the Anarchists, who may be said to represent the intellectualrather than the material side of the Socialist movement--there were manyfanatics. This fanaticism showed itself in different ways--sometimes inthe most admirable self-abnegation, in the sacrifice of wealth, position, and happiness; frequently in abnormal actions of other kinds, and mostnoticeably in deeds of violence. 

Very diverse in nature were the motives which prompted the committal ofthese acts of violence--these assassinations and dynamite explosions--indifferent men. With some it was an act of personal revolt, the outcome ofpersonal sufferings and wrongs endured by the rebel himself, by his familyor his class. In others violence was rather the offspring of ideas, thelogical result of speculation upon the social evil and the causes thereof. These Anarchists referred to their actions as Propaganda by Deed. 

Émile Henry, the dynamitard of the Café Terminus, belonged to the numberof what I may call the theoretical dynamitard. His terrible acts were theoutcome of long and earnest thought; they were born of his mental analysisof the social canker. He committed them not in moments of passion, butwith all the _sang froid_ of a man governed by reason. His defencewhen on trial was a masterpiece of logical deduction and eloquentreasoning. 

To the average man it is no doubt very difficult to conceive that when hethrew his bomb among the crowd in the Café Terminus, maiming and killingindiscriminately, Émile Henry was performing his duty according to his ownlights just as much as a soldier when he obeys orders and fires on theenemy, a city man when he embarks on the day's business, or a parson whenhe preaches a sermon against prevailing vices. It was his sermon--howevervigorously preached--against the prevailing vices and injustices ofSociety, and against the indifference which all classes displayed towardsthese. He took upon himself to strike a blow against this indifference onbehalf of all the weaker and more unfortunate members of society. Being aman of intellect and some culture, he could not, like his more ignorant_confrères_, imagine that one man or one small group of men, wasresponsible for these. Earnest thought and reflection told him that if anysection of society suffered, then society at large was guilty: all thethoughtless, all the indifferent members of society were equallyresponsible for its abuses. Now this may be true enough theoretically, butno one but a fanatic or a madman would carry the reasoning farther to thepoint of saying: "Society at large is guilty; society at large mustsuffer. Society is fairly well represented by the mixed crowd in a café. Iwill attack this crowd indiscriminately, and kill as many of their numberas I can. I will unreluctantly end my days on the scaffold in order toaccomplish this very obvious duty;" and proceed from words to deeds. 

There is something terribly, if pervertedly logical in this reasoning, and although nothing could be farther from the attitude of the ordinarydelinquent, it is no doubt more dangerous to the peace and continuance ofsociety; and such was the attitude and the reasoning which rendered theAnarchists so formidable, and which led up to many of their most terribleoutrages. Émile Henry was in his own way a well-meaning youth; kindly inprivate life, frugal in his habits; studious, industrious, and free fromvice, he lived with his old mother and mixed little with his fellows, andno one who knew him could have suspected that this quiet, studious boywould have developed into the terrible assassin whose act sent a thrill ofhorror through the world. 

To Anarchists of this order, abstract ideas and opinions replaced all theordinary forces of life. Their every action was prompted by some theory, and they fashioned their lives to fit their peculiar views of what itought to be. Émile Henry belonged to this number no less than Kosinski, Bonafede, and certain so-called Christian Anarchists. For in some fanaticsthe Anarchist ideas, instead of leading to violence, led to the absolutenegation and rejection of it. 

Among the many frequenters of our office and of the weekly discussionmeetings held there, was a Christian Anarchist, one of those holding whatwas known as the "non-resistance to evil" creed. He, too, was a man whofitted his life to his ideas, who lived in ideas, whose whole beingcentred round his ideas. He was a religious fanatic whose course haddeviated into strange paths. 

Norbery was a pale, anxious-looking Lancashire man, with weak, restlesseyes and a resolute mouth, who did not lack a certain dignity of bearing. 

Both the organisationists and the individualists united in abusing anddespising the Christian Norbery, but no amount of insults or invectiveruffled his temper or aroused his wrath. "When you preach force or useforce, " he said to his opponents, "you imitate the very methods used byGovernments. You will never attain universal peace and brotherhood by suchmeans. As Anarchists we have no right to use other than passiveresistance, for by using coercion we are defeating our own ends andjustifying the actions of our persecutors. "

The more indignant his Anarchist opponents became in the course ofdebate, the calmer and more complacent grew Norbery. "Abuse me, " he wouldsay, "insult me, use violence towards me, if you will; I shall turn theother cheek. " Once a hot-headed Italian Anarchist lost patience with himand threw him downstairs. He lay where he fell with a sprained ankle, repeating good words from the Sermon on the Mount, until his adversary, overcome with shame and remorse, picked him up and bandaged his injuredlimb. Once during certain strike riots in the North of England, Norberyjourneyed to the scene of trouble to preach passive measures and theAnarchist principles to the rioters. He was dragged from his platform bythe police and badly hustled and knocked about. But Norbery was determinedon having his say; he procured a chain and padlock, chained himself to alamppost, threw away the key, and resumed the interrupted course of hisharangue. A large crowd gathered round the persistent orator, attractedpartly by his eloquence and partly by the novelty of his situation. Thepolice hurried to the scene and tried to drag him down; his coat andshirt, torn to shreds, remained in their hands, while the semi-nakedAnarchist preached away to the constantly increasing crowd. The officersof the law foamed with rage, and threatened and pommelled the enchainedand defenceless Norbery. Norbery grew more eloquent and more argumentativeunder this treatment. Nearly an hour passed before a file could beprocured and the chain severed, and by that time Norbery had ampleopportunity to finish his discourse, and was conveyed to the policestation in a fainting and exhausted condition. 

Armitage and I engaged in endless discussions with Norbery on thequestion of violence, maintaining on our side that violence could only beovercome by violence, and that, however peaceful our ultimate aims mightbe, force must inevitably be used towards their attainment. We argued andadduced reasons in support of our views, and Norbery argued and adducedcounter-reasons in support of his views, but neither the one nor the otherof us was ever in the least affected by his opponent's eloquence, and atthe end of the discussion we were all, if anything, more staunchlypersuaded of the sense and justice of our own case than at the start. Somuch for the profitableness of debate between confirmed partisans. 

Émile Henry was representative of the theoretical dynamitard; Matthieu, like Ravachol, of the dynamitard by passion. A----, who belonged rather tothe Ravachol type, and ended by killing one of the crowned heads ofEurope, was during a few weeks a frequenter of the _Tocsin_. He hadturned Anarchist in revolt against the society which had cramped his life, starved him in childhood, overworked his body, underfed his mind, where hehad found neither place nor welcome. Born into the lowest depths ofsociety, dragged up amid criminals and drunkards, he had spent his earlyyears between the streets and the jail-house, at times working hisundeveloped muscles, at other times begging or picking pockets. 

"It is all very well, " he said to me one day, "for those on the top rungsof the ladder to talk of the unrelenting laws of nature and the survivalof the fittest. For my part I have felt very forcibly one great law ofnature, the law of self-preservation: the right to live when you have oncebeen born, the right to food and to the pleasures of life, and Idetermined to survive at all costs. When my stomach is empty and my bootslet in water, the mere sight of a replete and well-clothed man makes mefeel like murder. It may be true that it is natural for the strongest andthe best men to rise above their fellows, but even this is not the case inour society of to-day. The weakest and the worst have somehow got to thetop, and giants are bolstering up the impotence of dwarfs. These dwarfsare crushing the life-blood out of us. We must pull them down, exterminatethem; we must turn the whole world upside down before we can create a newand better order of things. "

His action was not a theoretical protest translated into deeds; it was anact of vengeance, of personal and class revenge. 

Giannoli was a type apart. His desires and actions were responsible forhis views. They coloured and distorted his opinions and destroyed allsense of proportion. An incident in his private life would stand upgiant-like in the way of all the doctrines in the world, dwarfing opinionsand creeds. He was a physically active man and his ideas grew out of hislife, whereas men like Kosinski might be said to abandon the material lifein the pursuit of an ideal. 

Giacomo Giannoli was a man of some education, and no ordinary degree ofnatural refinement and culture, one whom you would pronounce at firstsight to be a gentleman. He was the son of a fairly well-to-do builder ina provincial town of Lombardy, and had received a good general educationin boyhood. Early left an orphan by his father's death, he had inheritedhis business, and for some years he carried it on prosperously, livingwith his mother and sisters. But before he was two-and-twenty hisnaturally erratic disposition asserted itself, and he chafed under therestraints and monotony of life in a small provincial town. He sold up hisbusiness at a great loss, well-nigh ruining his family, had it not beenfor his mother's small private means; and with his share of the proceedsof the sale he travelled about for some years, leading a roving life, anddevoting most of his time and cash to the Anarchist propaganda, constantlygetting into troubles and bothers, at times in hiding, at others inprison, always in difficulties, growing harder and harder up as the monthswent by, and his moderate means slipped through his untenacious fingers. 

Two convergent factors had led up to this sudden change in his life. Firstly, an incident of a private nature which revolutionised his notionsof individual morality, and secondly, the discovery of the Anarchistdoctrines which gave form to his new views. The incident which wasprimarily responsible for his new views of life, he recounted to me notlong after his arrival in London. 

"It was a woman, " he said, "who completely altered my views of life, andmade me see how perverted and unnatural are our ideas of sex and love andmorals, and, in short, of everything. She was an ignorant peasant girl wholived in a neighbouring village, but a woman of rare mind and character. Ishall never forget her, nor what I owe her. I was a young fellow of sometwenty-one years at the time, and I loved this girl with all the passionand faith of a youth of those years. Teresina loved me in return, and forsome two years we lived on happily till one day it was brought to myknowledge that she was unfaithful to me. I was beside myself with griefand mortification and jealous fury. For some hours I just raged up anddown my room like one demented, crying like a child one minute, cursingand meditating revenge the next. I felt that I must have blood at allcosts to appease my passion--Teresina's or her lover's, or somebody's. Iwas to meet Teresina that evening as usual towards nine o'clock, and Ithought the intervening hours would never go by. One hope suddenlysuggested itself to me, and I clung desperately to it. 'Perhaps it isfalse!' I said to myself. 'I will ask Teresina. It is all a lie, ' and then'Proofs, proofs, I must have proofs!' I cried, and once more my thoughtsturned back to murder. Thus I went through the long hours, and at lastevening came--a beautiful warm May evening, and long before the appointedhour I was at our rendezvous in a deserted _podere_ on themountain-side, overgrown with flags and other spring flowers, among whichthe fireflies were flitting noiselessly. I had no eyes for the beauty ofthe scene, however. I paced up and down waiting for my sweetheart, cursingthe treachery of women and the blindness of men. Suddenly she appeared, dark against the clear evening sky, graceful, gay, and unconscious asever. Without a word of welcome I rushed at her, seized her by the arm, and hurled forth all my accusations and all my reproaches. 

"'Tell me it is not true, ' I cried at last, 'tell me it is not true, or Iwill kill you where you stand!'

"I expected the usual routine of tears and protestations of innocence, all the lies and subterfuges with which women are wont to defendthemselves against the unreasoning savagery of their mates. I wasdisappointed. Teresina stood perfectly silent till I had finishedspeaking; then without flinching, without one instant's hesitation, sheanswered, 'It is true. Every word of it is true. '

"If the moon and the stars had all dropped simultaneously out of heavenat my feet I should not have been more astonished. The calmness of heranswer, the steady earnestness of her gaze as she looked back fearlesslyinto my eyes, her utter lack of subterfuge, took away my breath. I droppedher arm and stood staring at her, bereft of speech and understanding. Atlast I blurted out stupidly that I did not understand her, that I must begoing mad, and entreated her to explain. 

"'I said it was true; that I love Giordano, and have accepted his love, 'she answered. Still I did not fully grasp her meaning. 

"'But, Teresina, I thought that you loved me; have you lied to me then?'I exclaimed. 

"'No, I have not lied, ' she answered me. 'I have never lied to you, ' andshe took my hand in her strong little hand, and led me like one blind orintoxicated to the projecting root of a tree close by, and there sat downby my side. 

"'Listen, ' she said, still holding my hand in hers, 'I ought to have toldyou what I have to say before now. I only hesitated because I knew itwould cause you acute suffering at first ... Until you could understand. Believe me, I do love you as much as ever I did, and I could not bear eventhe thought of living without you. I love Giordano too, in a different wayit is true, but still I love him. He has not got your mind or your heart, or your wonderful knowledge' (she was a very ignorant girl, so far aslearning was concerned, and my small knowledge of books appeared to herlittle short of miraculous, poor child!), 'but then he has some qualitiesyou do not possess. Well, I love him for these, and I enjoy being with himin a quite different way from what I experience with you. '

"I was silent, and she continued after a short pause:--

"'Nothing is more brutish or more selfish than jealousy, my friend. If Ithought another woman could give you a moment's happiness, I should say:"Take it, enjoy it!" We do not grudge our friends every moment ofenjoyment not enjoyed in our company. We wish them other friendships andother joys. What is there in the love between man and woman which shouldmake us so selfish and so unreasonable? For my part, I must have freedomat all costs, absolutely at all costs. It is dearer to me than anythingelse in life, and I had sooner sacrifice even love and happiness; indeed, I cannot love or be happy without it. For God's sake grant me this libertyas I grant it to you! Take my love as I can give it to you, but do not askme to be your slave on its account! Be sure you have my heart, and littleof it remains to be squandered in other directions. What does the restmatter? I do not grudge you your loves, your pleasures, your caprices! Donot grudge me mine. Life is necessarily full of sorrows; do not let usembitter it unnecessarily. '

"She ceased speaking. She had risen to her feet and stood in front of meas she spoke, then as she finished she sank down on her knees by my side. 

"'Do you understand?' she asked me. 'Can you love me on these terms?liberty--absolute liberty for us both?'

"I answered 'Yes, ' nor did I ever regret the answer. 

"I think that was the most momentous day in my life, for it wrought thegreatest change in me. My eyes were opened by the peasant girl's words, and from that evening forward I regarded life quite differently. For thefirst time I realised the necessity to the individual to enjoy absolutepersonal freedom in love as in all else in life. All my previous ideas andprejudices appeared to me monstrous and iniquitous. I saw the falseness ofall our ideas of morality, the absurdity of placing conventions beforenature and the detestable character of our dealings with women and of ourattitude in such matters. And with this suddenly awakened vision I lookedanew on life, and it seemed to me that till then I had never lived. Allthat which I had before taken for granted I now began to question. I foundthat instead of thinking out life's problems for myself I had allowedmyself to grow into other peoples' ideas, that I had tacitly taken forright what they had pronounced right, and for wrong what they hadstigmatised as wrong. My spiritual world now turned, as it were, acomplete somersault, and I was re-born a new man--an Anarchist. 

"I and Teresina and Giordano lived very happily for some months, much tothe scandal of the narrow-minded, bigoted village folk, until I wascompelled to absent myself from the country owing to some littledisturbances in the neighbourhood in which I had got implicated. 

"Teresina followed me into exile, and with little intermission remainedwith me during all those early years of wanderings and adventure. Shecared little about Anarchist doctrines, though herself a born rebel and aninnate Anarchist. She did more for me than all the doctrines in the world. Poor child! When at last I got through all my money, and life from day today grew harder and more precarious, food scantier, clothes raggeder, andsurroundings more dangerous, she still remained faithful to me in her ownway, but the life was too hard for her. We had spent the summer in Paris, and there I had got seriously implicated in a little Anarchist venture andfound it necessary to flee the country with all haste. Teresina followedme into Belgium in the bitter winter weather. She died of consumption in aBrussels hospital shortly after our arrival. "

Such, in his own words, were the influences and the circumstances whichrevolutionised Giannoli's entire life and his outlook on things. He becameone of the leaders of the most advanced section of the "IndividualistAnarchists, " who maintain that not only is government of man by man wrongand objectionable, but that no ties or obligations of any sort bind mentogether. The ethics of "humanity" and "brotherhood" are unknown to theseAnarchists. They recognise no laws, social or moral, no obligations orduties towards their fellows, no organisation or association of any sort. They claim absolute freedom for the individual, freedom to live, die, love, enjoy, think, work, or take--this freedom in each individual onlycurtailed by others claiming equal rights. And I am bound to admit thatthe question whether such individual freedom would not tend to individuallicence and domination by the stronger and cleverer or more unscrupulousman in the future, met with little consideration. 

That it led to such licence in the present among themselves was anindubitable fact. All the individualist Anarchists agreed that, being atwar with existing society, which interfered with, coerced, and usedviolence towards them, they were at liberty to use all means againstsociety in retaliation--force and even fraud if expedient. But the lessintelligent and more ignorant men who came in contact with theseprinciples considered themselves not only at liberty to use all meansagainst society, the enemy; but honour or scruples of any sort amongthemselves were tabooed. A naturally honourable man like Giannoli was, ofcourse, free from the danger of falling victim to such pervertedsophistry. But the manner in which these doctrines succeeded in pervertingthe minds of fairly intelligent and well-meaning men is illustrated by thefollowing incident. 

One evening, some months after the advent of Giannoli and his friends, there arrived at the office of the _Tocsin_ a small party of threemen and one woman--all of them Spaniards. They requested me to help themto procure lodgings for the night, and, as they knew nothing of theEnglish language, to assist them the following morning in procuringtickets, etc. , with a view to their immediate re-departure for the States. Giannoli, who knew the men, having spent some years in Spain, explained tome that the leader of the party, a handsome, well-spoken young man, was anengineer belonging to a good Barcelona family. The second one, agood-natured giant, was his brother and an engineer like himself. Thethird male member of the party was a lanky, scrofulous journalist, a manof many words and few wits. The lady, a pretty brunette, was their"compagna. " She had escaped from her family and eloped with Fernandez, the engineer, but was apparently shared on communistic principles. 

I settled the party for the night in a small hotel and procured theirtickets for the morrow's journey, after which they proceeded to hand overto Giannoli, with many cautions and precautions, a mysterious linen bagwhich, it was whispered, contained some twelve thousand lire in bank-notes(about five hundred pounds sterling). Then, having been assured byGiannoli that I was to be trusted, they told me their story. 

The two brothers, the engineers, had till quite recently been employed bya large electrical engineering firm in Barcelona, of which an elderbrother, some years their senior, was the manager. For some time the twoyounger men had been engaged, unknown to their family, in Anarchistpropaganda, and had fallen in with the section of the _individualisti_. Fernandez was in love with Adolfa, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, and had secretly talked her over to his own ideas. The girl's parentsobjected to the match on account of the extreme youth of the couple--thegirl was not quite eighteen and the young man still considerably underage. Therefore they settled to elope, and Fernandez's brother and Vanni, their journalist friend, expressed a desire to form an addition to theelopement. This Fernandez had at first objected to, but the girl, who hadmade rapid strides into the Giannolian free-love theories, insisted. Lackof money formed the only obstacle to this scheme, but an unforeseencircumstance enabled them to remove it. 

The eldest brother, who had charge of the finances of the establishment, and whose business it was to pay the men their wages, wished to absenthimself from the works for a few days, and, without the knowledge of hisemployers, he broke rules to the extent of handing over to his brotherFernandez, as to one beyond suspicion, the men's wages--the five hundredpounds now contained in the mysterious linen bag. 

"Now, " argued Fernandez to himself, "I, as an Anarchist, do not recogniseprivate property, nor any set moral laws. The company's money is theresult of plunder; they can afford to lose it and have no right to it; Istand desperately in need of it--and it is in my hands.... My brother?... Oh, my brother, he is after all nothing but a bourgeois, and I, as anAnarchist, admit of no family ties. "

Thus when, two days later, the unfortunate manager returned, he found hisbrothers gone, the money nowhere to be found, and disgrace and ruin ahead. Driven to despair, and not knowing in what direction to turn for thenecessary sum, the wretched man ended his perplexities with a bullet. Thiswas the first news which greeted the runaways on their arrival in theStates. 

Now the younger brothers who had perpetrated this cruel thing were nothardened criminals. From what little I saw of them, they appeared to bekindly, courteous, and, by nature, fairly honourable men. What they lackedwas moral strength. Under ordinarily good influences they would have actedin an ordinarily proper way. They had not the force of character necessaryfor handling the Anarchist individualist doctrines, which, excellently asthey may work with men of character, are fatal to weaker men. The man whorecognises no law outside himself must be capable of governing himself. 

The office of the _Tocsin_ was the constant scene of debate anddispute between the two rival camps in the Anarchist party--theorganisationists and the individualists. Bonafede and Gnecco belonged tothe former, while most of the active staff of the _Tocsin_--myselfamong others--adhered to the latter section. A curious feature of thematter--and I fancy it is not exclusively characteristic of the Anarchistparty--was the amount of invective and hatred, which both factions oughtproperly to have expended on the common enemy, but which instead theyspent most of their time in levelling at one another. A casual witness ofthese internal strifes might have imagined that the two parties were atthe antipodes in their ideas and objects, rather than comrades andparticipators in a common belief. Their dissensions were alone forgottenin a common hatred of government and existing society. And even in theirefforts to upraise the social revolution--the great upheaval to which allAnarchists aspired--I doubt whether there lurked not some secret hope thatthe detested rival faction might be demolished in the fray. Bonafede andGiannoli were warm friends personally, and held one another in greatesteem. Yet I can clearly recollect Giannoli one evening, with tears inhis eyes, assuring me that his first duty when the Revolution broke outwould be to disembowel his dear friend. 

"He is my friend, " Giannoli said to me, "and I love him as such, and as aman I admire him. But his doctrines are noxious; in time of Revolutionthey would prove fatal to our Cause; they would be the undoing of all thework for which we have suffered and fought. Organise a Revolution, indeed!You might as well attempt to organise a tempest and to marshal theelements into order! I know Bonafede to be above personal ambition, but, take my word for it, most of these organisationists hope to organisethemselves into comfortable places when their time comes! It is our dutyto destroy them. "

CHAPTER X

A FLIGHT

No man, having once thrown himself into an idea, was ever more sincerelyconvinced of the truth of his beliefs or more strenuous in his efforts topropagandise them than Giannoli. To destroy utterly the fabric of existingsociety by all possible means, by acts of violence and terrorism, byexpropriation, by undermining the prevailing ideas of morality, bybreaking up the organisations of those Anarchists and Socialists whobelieved in association, by denouncing such persons and such attempts, bypreaching revolution wherever and whenever an opportunity occurred orcould be improvised, to these objects he had blindly devoted the bestyears of his life. His was a gospel of destruction and negation, and hewas occupied rather in the undoing of what he had come to regard as badthan with any constructive doctrines. 

All existing and established things were alike under his ban: art no lessthan morals and religion. He nourished a peculiar hatred for all thoselinks which bind the present to the past, for ancient customs andsuperstitions, for all tradition. Had it been in his power he would havedestroyed history itself. "We shall never be free, " he used to say, "solong as one prejudice, one single ingrained belief, remains with us. Weare the slaves of heredity, and of all manner of notions of duties, of thelicit and the illicit. "

One day I took him to the National Gallery. I was quite unprepared forthe effect of this step. He walked about nervously for some time, lookingfrom one picture to another with evident displeasure. At last he stoppedin front of Leonardo's "Madonna delle Roccie, " and remained gazing at itfor some minutes in silence, while a heavy frown gathered round his brows. "I hate art, " he exclaimed at last. "I consider it one of the most noxiousinfluences in the world. It is enervating and deteriorating. Art hasalways been the slave of religion and superstition, from the ancientEgyptians and Assyrians to our own times. You see something beautiful, perhaps, in these pictures, in these saints and Madonnas and ImmaculateConceptions? Well, when I look at them, all the darkest pages of historyseem to open before me, and generations upon generations of superstitiousslaves, toiling on and suffering with the ever-present terror ofhell-fires and chastisement, pass before my mental vision. I should loveto burn them all, to raze all these galleries and museums to the ground, and libraries with them. For what are libraries but storehouses of humansuperstition and error? We must free ourselves from the past, freeourselves utterly from its toils, if the future is to be ours. And weshall never free ourselves from the past until we have forgotten it. Letus leave here. I cannot stand it any longer! I do not know which is mostrepugnant to me, the asceticism of these early Christians or the senselessfantasies of the Greeks, " and without further ado he fled. 

Fired by this gospel of destruction, he spent his life wandering aboutEurope, never resting for a month together, wrenching himself free fromall those ties which might curtail the freedom of his actions. Althoughnot fashioned by nature for enduring hardships, he alternately sufferedcold, hunger, heat, fatigue, privations, and dirt. In Paris one week, making a brief sojourn in Spain the next, fleeing thence under warrant ofarrest to find himself some days later in hiding in Italy; at times inprison, always in danger and uncertainty; starving one day, in fairlyflourishing conditions the next, never certain what fortune the morrowmight bring: thus the years went by, until, escaping from _domiciliocoatto_, or worse, in Italy, he had at length made his way to Londonand the office of the _Tocsin_, quite broken down in health after thelong winter tramp. As I knew him, among his few personal friends, Giannoliwas loyal and honourable in the extreme, independent and proud. Like manyother Anarchists he entertained an almost maniacal prejudice against plotsand conspiracies of any kind, maintaining that such organisations weremerely police traps and death-gins. "Propaganda by deed"--outrage, inshort--they maintained should, and could, be the outcome only of entirelyindividual activity. Never, indeed, did police or press make a greaterblunder than when they attributed deeds of violence to associations andlarge conspiracies, and sought for or denounced accomplices. Every one ofthose outrages and assassinations which startled Europe was the act of asingle man, unaided by, and frequently unknown to other Anarchists. 

This horror of plots and associations was, when I first met him, one ofthe most noticeable traits about Giannoli. He was beginning to lose hisearlier assurance, worn out by the roving life he had led, and was growingsuspicious in the extreme. "Such-a-one is a police emissary, " or"So-and-so is not to be trusted" were words constantly on his lips. 

To me he took a great liking, and he always showed implicit faith in meboth as an Anarchist and an individual. "You are a true Anarchist, " hesaid to me one day, "and I would trust you with anything, _even_" andhe emphasised the word so as to give greater weight to the compliment, "_even_ with _explosives_"

His suspiciousness, however, grew by leaps and bounds during his sojournin London. Every day he threw out hints against some new person or somefresh imaginary conspiracy. There was a plot brewing, he informed me, among various false comrades to ruin him. He was the victim of aconspiracy to deprive him of his liberty and perhaps even of his life. Nota day passed but some covert threat was made against him; men whom he hadbelieved his comrades, and to whom he--fool that he was!--had confided thedeadliest secrets in the past, had given him to understand the power theyheld over him, and had made it clear that they would avail themselves ofit should it serve their purpose. "What fools we Anarchists are, " heexclaimed to me one day, "ever to feel any confidence in any one! We areno longer free men when we have done this. We are slaves. "

I watched the progress of this monomania with painful interest, for amongall the Anarchists there was no individual for whom I entertained a moregenuine regard than for Giannoli. One of the worst aspects of the matter, moreover, was that I was really unable to judge how far Giannoli'ssuspicions were true and how far imaginary. As to his sincerity there wasno possibility of doubt, and this lent to all he said an air ofverisimilitude which was most convincing. I did not know the majority ofthe other Italians well enough to feel positive as to their honesty, andmany of them were uncertain and somewhat suspicious characters. Morì, forinstance--the youthful Neapolitan already referred to, the enigmatic"buttered muffin"--was quite incomprehensible. He was a youth of noparticular intelligence, and certainly of no ideality or genuine politicalor anti-political convictions, and I was quite at a loss to conjecture whyhe had followed the Anarchists into exile--his only apparent reason beinga disinclination to study and a desire to escape from school. WhenGiannoli informed me that he was a police-spy I really did not knowwhether to believe him or not. 

And as the weeks passed on, Giannoli's condition grew worse and worse, and I could see that a crisis must inevitably follow. Nor was I mistakenin this conviction. 

Late one afternoon, towards the end of September, I was busy in theprinting-room "making up" the pages of the forthcoming number of the_Tocsin_, when, looking up from my work on which I was very intent, Isaw Giannoli walk in hurriedly with his usual restless step, and lookabout the place in a nervous short-sighted way, evidently in search ofsomebody. He was just about to leave again, not having noticed me, when Icalled to him. "Oh, Isabel, " he replied, evidently much relieved, "are youhere then!" and he came up to me. "I did not see you!" and then, casting aglance round the room, he inquired, "Are we quite alone?"

"There are others upstairs, " I answered. "If you wish to speak to mealone I will come to your room a little later, when I have finished thiswork. "

"Oh, thank you, thank you, " he exclaimed; "I _must_ speak to you; Ishall wait for you till you come;" and he hurried away, once more lookingfurtively round the office as though fearing he were watched. 

From his manner it was evident to me that he was terribly perturbed aboutsomething and that his fears and suspicions were reaching a climax. "Whatever can be the matter?" I asked myself as I hammered away at myform. "Has anything serious really happened?"

Towards seven o'clock I left the printing-office and the work to thetender mercies of Short, who was just writhing out of a peaceful sleep ofsome hours' duration on the "bed" of the machine, and made my way towardsGiannoli's room, which though quite close was by no means easy of access. Turning to my right, half-way down the court-yard, I passed into Mrs. Wattles's house, at the summit of which my friend was located; and here atonce my progress was arrested by that lady herself, only half sober and ina mood evidently requiring sympathy. 

"Oh, my dear, " she exclaimed, "are you going up to see that pore youngman? I don't know what's gone wrong with 'im of late, but for all theworld 'e looks as if 'e were sickening for something. To look at 'im'senough. It just sets my inn'ards all of a 'eave and a rumble, and I 'aveto take a little drop o' something warm to settle 'em again. "

"Damnation!" I muttered inwardly at finding myself trapped at such amoment; but there was nothing for it; I had to wait and hear out the longand weary recital of the sickness and agony of her deceased son, to whomshe had suddenly discovered a resemblance in Giannoli. At the end of along discourse, full of those "sickening details" in which women of herclass delight, she summed up her case with a brief but telling epitome ofhis career, to the effect that he never smoked, nor drank, nor swore, butthat he "only gave one sniff and died;" and I, determined to escape fromthe inevitable sequel, when Wattles senior's vices would be declaimed incontrast to the son's virtues, beat a hasty retreat. A few scraps of thisanticlimax, mingled with hiccups and sobs, wafted after me as I wended myway up the uneven wooden stairs. At the top of these a perilous-lookingladder gave access to a trap-door, through which I dexterously made my wayinto Giannoli's room. 

The interior was familiar to me--a squalid little den, some ten feetsquare, whose dirty, brown-paper-patched window looked out over thechimneys and yards of the "Little Hell" district. In one corner of theroom was a mysterious cupboard, through which a neighbouring chimneycontrived to let in a constant supply of filthy black smoke. The bareunwashed boards were rotting away, and at one spot the leg of the bed hadgone through the floor, to the considerable alarm of its dormant occupant. The wall-paper, which had once been a gorgeous combination of pink andcobalt and silver, was tattered and discoloured, and so greasy that onemight imagine that generations of squalid lodgers had made their meals offit. The furniture consisted of a small table, now covered with a perpetuallitter of papers; a ramshackle wash-hand stand, on which a brokenvegetable dish served as a receptacle for soap and such objects; a bed, which bred remarkable crops of fleas, and to which clung an old patchworkquilt, but which was otherwise poor in adornment; a chair, and an oldtravelling-box. As I have already mentioned, a trap-door in the floor gaveaccess to this apartment. There was no other door. 

When I entered Giannoli was sitting at his table with his face buried inhis hands, so deeply absorbed in his own reflections that for some secondshe did not notice my advent. When at last I made my presence known to himhe gave a violent start, and, holding out both his hands, he wrung minefor some moments in silence. Then he motioned me to the box; I seatedmyself; once more he became silent; then, suddenly raising his head, helooked me full in the face. 

"Do you know why I wished to speak to you?" he asked; "can you guess? Oh, it is no light matter, Isabel, which has led me to trouble you, nopleasant matter either. I am on the brink of ruin, threatened and betrayedby my most trusted friends. I must leave here at once, go right away fromLondon and England. My life is not safe here for another day. " He spoke inItalian, and as he grew more excited his voice rose higher and higher, though every now and again he was minded to control it, as though fearinghe might be overheard. "Yes, " he continued, "those men whom I have mosttrusted, whom I have treated as my own brothers, with whom I have oftenshared my last shilling and the very clothes off my back, have turnedagainst me. They are in league to destroy me. They are plotting against myliberty and my life!" For some minutes he raved on in this style, everynow and again breaking off into curses, while I listened half horrified, half incredulous. 

"For goodness' sake, " I exclaimed at last, "do try and be calmer, Giannoli, and tell me what has happened and what you wish me to do. "

"You are right, " he answered, making an effort to control himself; "Imust explain the matter or you cannot understand.... I will talk to youfrankly, for you at any rate are above suspicion. You may perhaps be awarethat I have been connected with many serious Anarchist ventures in thepast. The explosions at St. ----, the affair in V---- three years ago, thesacking of the bank in Barcelona. All of these were, of course, verydangerous matters, in which I risked my life; but it all tended towardsthe destruction of society, and I readily took the risk. As far aspossible I avoided taking other comrades into my confidence--partly out ofregard for my own safety, partly with a view to theirs. To one or twowell-trusted men, however, I confided my projects, so that in case of myarrest all proper measures might be taken. " (Gnecco was one of these"trusted comrades, " B---- and Morì were others. ) "I was mistaken in myestimate of these men, mistaken in my confidence in them. From their lipsmy secret has been wormed or bought by others, until now it has become abyword, and every indiscreet fool and paid spy in our midst knows the taleof my past better than I do myself. I no longer dare attend our meetings, for all around me I hear whisperings and insinuations, and my name beingpassed from one mouth to another along with references to my past actions. The torture is becoming unendurable. Some of these cowards even descend totaunting me with their knowledge; and when I, in any way, cross theirpurposes in our discussions, they threaten me covertly with exposure. Thatdisgusting young fool, Morì, only to-day, being jealous of me in sometrivial matter, tried to intimidate me by hinting at the V---- affair. Ifelt that I could have struck him down where he stood; and then a sense ofmy own impotence overtook me, and I stood there, silent and confused, trying to laugh the matter off, as though I had not grasped his meaning. But I can stand this state of things no longer: it is driving me mad. WhenI am alone now I suddenly start with the feeling that some one is comingon me unawares. This afternoon, wishing to be alone and to think mattersover, I took a walk about the Park, but the very trees seemed to bewhispering about me, and before long I perceived that I was followed, thatmy movements were being dogged step by step. When I am alone in my roomthey do not even leave me in peace. They obtain entrance here by means ofthat Wattles woman, who is evidently in their pay. B---- cannot forgive mefor not having appropriated to our private use the money expropriated inBarcelona for the propaganda; and this indeed is one of their principalgrievances against me. Would you believe it, Isabel, last night heactually got into this house and woke me from sleep by shouting the nameof the bank through that hole? When I rushed down to find him, determinedto teach him a sound lesson, he was gone. But what use is there in myenlarging on this subject? You cannot fail to see the danger I am in, andthe absolute imperative necessity for flight. Another day'sprocrastination may be my undoing. Who knows what signal they are awaitingto denounce me, and how many others may be implicated in my ruin? I mustget away from here; I must flee in absolute secrecy, and none of them mustbe allowed to suspect where I am gone. You and Kosinski alone I can trust. You alone must be in the secret of my flight. Will you help me, Isabel?"and at this point Giannoli seized my hand, and then, overcome and unnervedby excitement, he allowed his head to sink on to the table and sobbedconvulsively. 

My head was fairly swimming by this time. How far was all this true? howfar the imaginings of an over-wrought, over-excited brain? However, theimmediate urgencies of the situation gave me no time to carefully weighthe matter. I must either act or refuse to act, thereby leaving my friendalone to his despair and possible ruin. I decided on the former course. 

"I think that you exaggerate, Giannoli, " I answered him. "You are ill andover-wrought, and require rest and change. Get away from here by all meansif there is any danger in remaining, but do not take too gloomy a view ofthe situation. I am at your disposal and willing to help you in every wayin my power. Tell me where you think of going, and what I can do. But inthe meantime, had we not better get supper somewhere, and discuss thesituation over a little reassuring food?"

This unheroic but practical suggestion met with poor Giannoli'sapprobation, and he confessed to not having broken his fast all day. Healso seemed relieved at the prospect of leaving the vicinity of the officewhere he was convinced that spies surrounded him, and having thanked andre-thanked me over and over again for my proffered assistance, he led theway down the ladder, and together we gained the street. I was horriblyshocked at the haggard strained look of the unfortunate Italian which theclearer light down here revealed. He had aged ten years since his arrival. We made our way towards a small restaurant in Soho frequented principallyby the lower order of _cocotte_, and here over a savoury butinexpensive meal we discussed our plans. 

"I can scarcely dare believe that this hell is coming to an end!"exclaimed Giannoli. "The assurance of your sympathy is already lighteningmy burden. I am beginning once more to take hope and courage! Oh, to haveat last left that awful den where night and day I have felt myself watchedby unseen treacherous eyes, and my every breath noted by my enemies! Ishall never put foot there again. You and Kosinski must get my things awayfrom there to-night, and to-morrow I leave London by the first continentaltrain. "

"Where do you purpose going?" I inquired. 

"To South America, as soon as the arrival of funds will allow it, but, this not being practicable for the moment, I propose going first toLisbon. There I will hide for a few weeks until I restart for BuenosAyres, and I trust that this will have the advantage of putting my'friends' off the track. Even for this little voyage I do not at thepresent moment possess the necessary funds, but in this you can no doubtassist me, for in a few days I expect some thirty pounds from my relationsin Italy. If you will return to my room to-night you might rescue myguitar and what few little objects of value I possess and pawn them, andburn all papers and documents of any kind. "

"You have left everything till rather late!" I could not help exclaiming, not a little taken aback at the amount to be done, and at the rapidlyadvancing hour. 

Supper over, I left Giannoli in Oxford Street, and made tracks for hislodging, which by great good luck I reached without any obstruction. Ilocked myself in, rescued a few papers of importance, burnt the rest, puthis scanty personal belongings together in a box which it had been agreedI was subsequently to send Kosinski to fetch, and having secured hisguitar, a silver-handled umbrella, and two or three other articles ofsmall value, I proceeded with these to a neighbouring pawnbroker. I maymention here that since my connection with the Anarchist movement, and itsconsequent demands on my pocket, I had become quite familiar with the insand outs, and more especially the ins, of these most invaluable relatives. 

I reached the side door of Mr. Isaac Jacob's establishment on the strokeof eleven, but as Providence and would-be drunkards had mercifullyordained that pawnbrokers should remain open later than usual on Saturday, I was still able to effect an entrance. I laid my goods down on thecounter, and politely requested the temporary loan of 3 pounds. "Threepounds for this damned lot of old rubbish, " exclaimed the indignant Jew. "Do you take this for a public charity? It's not worth fifteen shillingsto me, the whole lot!" and he turned the things over with his greasyhands, as though they were objectionable offal. We finally compromised forthirty-two shillings, with which sum in my pocket I triumphantly salliedforth. 

My next move was to disinter Kosinski, whom I felt pretty certain offinding at a certain coffee-stall where, at that advanced hour, he was inthe habit of making his one and only diurnal, or rather nocturnal repast. This coffee-stall was situated at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and aside street, and there, sure enough, stood Kosinski, munching sardines ontoast, and buns, and drinking coffee, surrounded by a motley group ofcabmen and loose women. These had evidently grown used to his regularattendance and treated him with marked respect and friendliness, many ofthe unfortunate women having often had to thank him for a meal and theprice of a night's lodging when luck had failed them in other directions. 

Kosinski was somewhat taken aback at my sudden appearance. "You, Isabel!"he exclaimed in some confusion, "what can have brought you here? But may Ioffer you a little supper? These buns are excellent!"

Tired and worried as I was, I could not help smiling at the awkwardmanner in which he made this offer. "No, thank you, " I answered, "I am nothungry. I have come to fetch you in connection with a rather importantmatter. Can you come with me when you have finished your supper?"

"Yes, certainly, " answered Kosinski, "if there is anything I can do. Justlet me finish these few mouthfuls and I will follow you. In the meantimewill you explain what is the matter?"

Without further ado I explained to him the whole Giannoli affair as Iunderstood it. It was a relief to me to do so, and I was anxious to hearhis opinion. He was silent for some minutes after I had finished speaking, and munched reflectively the last relics of his supper. 

"I am afraid, " he said at last, "that Giannoli is not quite well--notquite well, mentally, I mean, " he added after a slight pause. "At the sametime, it is quite possible that there is some truth in what he suspects. Spies have always been abundant in our party and Giannoli is a very likelyvictim. He has been imprudent in the past, too believing and toofoolhardy. I do not know very much about the men whom he primarilysuspects, but Gnecco certainly I believe to be above suspicion. In anycase it will be safer for him to leave.... I am ready now.... What can Ido? Where are you going?"

"Home, and to bed, " I answered. "I have been on my feet all day and I amvery tired. Moreover, there is nothing that I can do till to-morrow. "

I then explained to him what he was to do, where we were to meet on thefollowing morning, and where he could find Giannoli that night. Heacquiesced and we parted. 

Early the following morning I found Giannoli and Kosinski, asprearranged, awaiting my arrival under the bridge of Waterloo Station. Both looked very washed out, with the fagged and pasty look of people whohave been up all night. They were strolling up and down, carryingGiannoli's box between them, and making a fine but very obvious show ofindifference towards a policeman who eyed them suspiciously. "Here, moveon, you fellows, " he was saying gruffly as I came up with them, and onperceiving me they seemed glad enough to be able to do so. 

"That stupid policeman wanted to arrest us as rogues and vagabonds, "Kosinski explained to me as we made our way towards a neighbouringcoffee-shop for breakfast. "A pretty fix that would have been just now! Wehad scarcely settled down for a quiet sleep on the box when the meddlesomefool came up and asked our names and addresses, what we had there, what wewere doing at that hour, and threatened to take us in charge unless wemoved on. When I explained that we were simply waiting for our train helaughed, and said that was a likely tale! If you had not come along andthus confirmed our assertion that we expected a friend, I really believehe would have arrested us. "

"Well, is everything arranged?" I inquired as we settled down to ourbreakfast. "How did you get on last night?"

"Oh, we have had nothing but mishaps and adventures all night, " returnedKosinski. "What a night! Thank goodness it is over at last. After youleft, towards one o'clock, I went off to Giannoli's room to fetch his box. I confess that I felt a little nervous about this, for I dreaded anencounter with that horrible Mrs. Wattles. She talks and talks and talksto me whenever she sees me, and insists upon asking the most indelicatequestions. She is a perfect savage. But no matter; let me get on. As Icrawled upstairs, I heard her in her room abusing her poor husband in themost disgusting terms. I held my breath and crept up. I found the trunkright enough in the corner, though it was none too easy to find, as therewas no light in the room, and I was afraid of lighting even a match forfear of attracting attention. But on the way down a terrible accidentoccurred. My foot caught in a scrap of oilcloth at the top of the stairs, just outside Mrs. Wattles's room, and I fell. Crash down the stairs wentthe box, and I rattled after it. The noise, of course, brought Mrs. Wattles screaming and swearing to the door. Then, bruised and bewilderedas I was, I seized on the box and fled. Down the remaining stairs, outthrough the door, and into the street, I ran as for dear life. Oh I havenever run like that before, Isabel! I remember years ago, when escapingfrom prison in Russia, my life depended on the efficiency of my legs. ButI did not run with such fervour as I ran last night from that woman. Istill feel unspeakably grateful when I think that I escaped without beingrecognised. She raced down after me, but being half-drunk she fell in thepassage, and it was that which saved me.... I found Giannoli in TrafalgarSquare. "

The remainder of the night they had spent peacefully enough, wanderingabout the streets, occasionally being "moved on" by a policeman, until thesceptical officer already referred to had evinced an intention ofarresting them both as rogues and vagabonds. I could not help smiling atthe peremptory manner in which poor Giannoli's adventures had almost beenbrought to a conclusion. 

I gave Giannoli the proceeds of the previous night's pawnings, and I andKosinski turned out on the table what money we had about us. It was justsufficient to cover the expenses of the first stage of Giannoli's journey. 

We proceeded--a quaint procession--to the station. Kosinski led the waywith head bent forward and even resolute tread, apparently untired andunaffected by his night's vicissitudes, with the much battered box on hisshoulders. Behind him followed Giannoli and myself, the former nervous andunstrung, constantly turning from right to left with the idea that we werebeing followed. In the station, half deserted this Sunday morning, we hadanother long wait. We talked of many things together, and I had neverfound Kosinski so friendly and communicative before. There existed betweenGiannoli and himself the keen sympathy and understanding of two menequally devoted to an idea, equally willing to sacrifice everything to it. The Russian was more of a philosopher than the Italian, more engrossed inabstractions, more oblivious of his own personality, and this it was thathad saved him from the possibility of Giannoli's terrible malady. At thesame time he was by no means inclined to make light of Giannoli's fears, and together they talked them over, Kosinski promising to investigate themafter his friend's departure, and to see if it was possible to discoverwho was really at fault. 

"No man can ever hold such threats over me, " said Kosinski, "for I havenever taken any one into my confidence. I have always acted alone. Someday it may fall to my lot to pay with my life for some action on behalf ofour ideas. When that moment comes I shall be ready for the sacrifice. "

"I too, " exclaimed Giannoli with fervour--"I too would not hesitate tomake the sacrifice if I felt the right moment had arrived. If to-morrow--if at this very moment--I saw the means of advancing the Anarchist causeby the sacrifice of my life, I would give it without regret or hesitation. But to lose it for no purpose, before I have finished my work, to fall avictim to the envy and treachery of my own comrades, and to involve othersin my own ruin, I cannot bear. When my time comes to die I wish to feelthat my death is at any rate of some use. There are moments when anAnarchist can help his ideas on better by dying than by living. But for methe moment is not yet quite ripe. "

He then relapsed into silence, and the two friends sat together, engrossed in their own reflections, without saying a word. 

After a time Giannoli turned to me: "I will write to you as soon as Ireach Lisbon, Isabel, and let you know how I am getting on. There at leastI am little known, and I will stay with an old friend whose sincerity isabove suspicion--Avvocato Martini. You and Kosinski are the only twopersons whom I regret in leaving London. You have done more for me than Ican ever thank you for. You have saved my life, and although I do notvalue life for itself, it may be of value to our Cause, and I hope yet togive it for some good purpose. Give what explanation you think fit of mydisappearance. Above all, let no one suspect where I am gone. "

The train left at ten o'clock. Giannoli was deeply affected at partingfrom us, and as the train was about to leave he seized our hands andembraced us. "Something tells me, " he exclaimed, "that I shall never seeeither of you again. Write to me sometimes and bear me in mind. Do notbelieve any lies you may be told about me. I have only our principles atheart. Good-bye, " and the train steamed out of the station. 

I remained alone with Kosinski. The hour was still quite early, and therewas much to be talked over together. "Let us go to some picture gallery, "I suggested, "so as to talk things over and to settle what we are to giveout concerning Giannoli's disappearance. "

"No, please, don't, " answered the Russian in genuine alarm; "you know howI hate art, Isabel. It goads me to madness. We must think of some otherplace. "

We strolled out of the station together and wended our way across thebridge and along the Strand, up by St. Martin's Church, and eventuallyfound ourselves close to old St. Giles's Churchyard. "Let us sit downhere, " I said, indicating a seat; "I am tired of walking. "

"It is little better than a picture gallery, " murmured Kosinski, "but itwill do if you are tired, " and we sat down. Kosinski advised me to feignabsolute ignorance of Giannoli's whereabouts and to set afloat the idea ofhis having committed suicide. He asked me to let him know as soon as Ireceived news from the fugitive, and he, in the meantime, wouldinvestigate the matter of the "conspiracy. " As we parted he said to me:

"I am very glad, Isabel, that I have had to deal with you in this matter. You may sometimes have thought me unduly harsh in my estimate of your sex. I am not without reason in this. Women are rarely of much use in amovement like ours. They so rarely seem able to forget _themselves_, to detach themselves from the narrow interests of their own lives. Theyare still the slaves of their past, of their passions, and of all mannerof prejudices. But you are different.... There have even been moments whenI felt that I had other things to say to you, things which it is better toleave unsaid. I must not be guilty of the weakness which I condemn inwomen. An Anarchist's life, you see, is scarcely his own. He has no timeto indulge in personal sentiment. Good-bye, " and before I had time toanswer he was gone. 

I returned home and spent the remainder of the day locked in my room, absorbed in many conflicting thoughts. I was grieved beyond words atGiannoli's trouble, at the possibility of foul play, at the almost moregrievous possibility of mental disorder in him. Then again and againKosinski's last words recurred to me, and I could not help reflectingthat, slight as they were, he had probably never said so much to any otherwoman. I was compelled to admit to myself that the Russian, for all hisstrange ideas and brusque manners, had grown to be a great deal to me. ButI felt that he was a hopeless case--the kind of man to whom personalhappiness was unknown, and who would succeed in rendering unhappy any onerash enough to care for him. "How easy happiness might be, " I reflected, "with our ideas, with our freedom from prejudice. And yet it is these veryideas which will ruin his life, which----" Half unconsciously I found thatmy thoughts had been drifting from abstract ideas and abstract enthusiasmsto persons, and with this divorce from abstractions began a feeling ofweariness, of nausea. I thought of Kosinski's words again, of his contemptfor personal sentiment in an Anarchist, of what he had said about women;and I struggled hard within myself to turn my thoughts into otherchannels. It was useless, and at last, weary of the effort, I retired tobed and took refuge in slumber. 

During the following weeks I worked on fairly regularly at the_Tocsin_ and saw Kosinski not unfrequently, on which occasions hemost carefully avoided any recurrence of personalities, however vaguethese might be. Giannoli's disappearance created considerable commotion, and every one was at a loss to imagine what could have become of him. Myrelations with those Italians whom he had suspected were naturally verystrained and uncomfortable, for I did not know what to think of them, howfar to trust or mistrust them. Kosinski, as promised, investigated thematter as carefully as he could, but the exact truth was difficult toascertain. Gnecco we neither of us for one instant suspected, but we feltsome degree of uncertainty about the others. Whether or no there had beensome amount of unclean work going on, it was anyway quite certain that agreat part of Giannoli's suspicions were the outcome of his overwroughtand exhausted mental condition. 

About a fortnight after his departure I received at last a letter fromGiannoli. This consisted of a few words, written evidently in much hurryand perturbation of spirit. He thanked me for the money from hisrelatives, which I had forwarded, which would, he said, enable him toleave at once for Argentina. "It has arrived in the very nick of time, " hewrote, "for here I am no longer safe. Avvocato Martini, of whom I spoke toyou in such high terms, is not to be trusted. He intercepts my letters, and has, I believe, communicated with my enemies in London. Thank Heaven!I am now able to get away. In South America I shall once more settle downto the propaganda work, and I shall be out of the power of theseinformers. My old friend, Giovanni Barelli, awaits me there. We shall livetogether and life will once more become endurable. I am anxious to hearfrom Kosinski. What is the result of his inquiries? My best love to himand to you, dear friend, and again a thousand thanks to you both. I willwrite at greater length from America. "

I showed the letter to Kosinski. He read it through with a seriousexpression. "I fear, " he said, "that it is a case of hallucination, andthat there is but very slight foundation of truth to his suspicions. Ihave looked into the matter and can see no adequate grounds for suspectingthe men whom he regarded as his enemies over here. Giannoli exaggeratesand distorts everything. I must write to him and try to reassure him aboutthis. I will tell him that he is mistaken. We cannot afford to lose such acomrade. "

"Beware, " I returned half in jest--"beware, lest you too fall under hisban. "

"Oh, there is no fear of that, " answered Kosinski with assurance. "Heknows me too well. I am the oldest friend he has. I can and must tell himthe truth. "

Kosinski wrote, and the weeks passed on. A month after Giannoli's arrivalin Buenos Ayres I received another letter from him. Once again he declaredthat he was not safe, that he must take flight. Barelli, of whom he hadalways spoken with the most brotherly affection, had turned against him. He and other false comrades had entered into a plot to murder him, and atthe time of writing he had fled from their ken and was in hiding in someremote and populous district, awaiting the arrival of money which wouldenable him to return to Europe. Then, later on, there arrived anotherletter from Lisbon, disconnected in matter, shaky in writing, full of thewildest and most improbable statements. 

"I feel like a hunted animal, " he wrote; "I have been driven about frompillar to post, from one end of the civilised world to another. I amgrowing very weary of all this, and am trying to devise how to terminate asituation which is growing intolerable. Here I am again in hiding, anddare not venture from my lair till the dead of night. What money I had isalmost at an end. My clothes are falling off my back. I have not changedmy linen for weeks, having forgotten my old valise in my hurried departurefrom Buenos Ayres. My health is failing, and I feel utterly helpless andwretched. You would be horrified if you could see me now. I am ill, and atnight I can get no sleep. Every moment I expect them to break in, murderme, and seize my papers. Those devils from Buenos Ayres are already on mytrack. I have not heard from Kosinski. His letter has no doubt beenintercepted. As soon as possible I shall proceed to Gibraltar. I amthinking out a plan to end all this. _Do you understand?_"

Some weeks later I received from Gibraltar a letter in which Giannoliinformed me that yet once more he was compelled to abscond himself, further plottings against him rendering this necessary. He had beenseriously ill, he wrote, and his strength was quite giving out. He was, atthe time of writing, on the eve of departure for Barcelona, where he wasdetermined "to end it all. " He had at last received Kosinski's letter, andwould write at greater length from Barcelona. He warned me to beware offalse friends. 

These last sentences troubled me very much. What could it all mean? Whatwas impending? And Kosinski; did he doubt _him_ too?

But this state of uncertainty as to his meaning was destined to be but ofshort duration. Barely a week had elapsed since my receipt of the aboveletter when, as I stood alone in the composing-room one morning, I wassurprised to see the figure of an unknown man appear above the balustradeleading from below. He was evidently a foreigner and a Southerner, andwalking straight up to me he asked in Italian, but with a distinct Spanishaccent, "Are you Isabel Meredith?"

On my answering in the affirmative, he handed me a sealed note on whichwas written my name in Giannoli's familiar hand. 

"This is for you, " he said, "I bring it direct from Barcelona. It isstrictly private. Good morning, " and as mysteriously as he had appeared hewas gone. 

Even before opening it, the shaky writing on the envelope told me onlytoo eloquently that matters were no better with Giannoli at the time hepenned it. Moreover, I felt certain, from the extraordinary nature of itsdelivery, that it must contain news of exceptional moment. A dull, sickfeeling of dread overcame me as I stood irresolute, holding the unopenedletter in my hand. I was tempted to put it aside and postpone theknowledge of any unpleasant news it might contain. I knew this, however, to be a weakness, and so with an effort I tore it open. It read asfollows:--

"DEAREST FRIEND, --This is a letter which it would be unsafe to consign tothe post. Therefore I send it to you by hand, by means of an old friendwho can be trusted. He is not a comrade, and has no knowledge of itscontents. A few days back I wrote to you from Gibraltar, telling you ofthe serious break-down in my health, and of the circumstances which hadcompelled me once again to leave Lisbon. Now, at last, I feel in a measuremore composed, for my resolution is taken, and I mean to end my life--notwithout benefit to our Cause, I hope. You are the only person with whom Iam communicating. Even Kosinski has been bought over by my enemies. Aletter from him was forwarded to me in Lisbon, in which he sided with thespies who have been trying to ruin me, and which contained covert threatswhich I understood only too well. Thus another illusion is shattered! Theburden of all these disillusions, all these disgusts and disappointments, is too heavy to bear any longer. I must get away from it all before myhealth and intellect are completely shattered. I have always thoughtsuicide a cowardly death for an Anarchist. Before taking leave of life itis his duty to strike a final blow at Society and I, at least, mean tostrike it. Here the moment is in every way ripe. Ever since the explosionin Madrid, eight months ago, the Anarchists have been the victims of themost savage persecutions. I have seen one man with his nails torn off, andanother raving mad with thirst, after having been kept without water, andfed on salt cod during sixty hours. Others have been tortured in prison inother ways--some tortures so vile and filthy that I would not tell you ofthem. I write this in order to show you that the moment is ripe here forsome vigorous act of reprisal. It is impossible to strike a blow at allthose who are responsible, for the whole of Society is to blame: but thosemost guilty must suffer for it. I am prepared to strike my final blowbefore I take my leave, and you will learn from the papers in a few days'time the exact nature of the act I contemplate. 

"And now I must beg you to pardon me for all the trouble and disturbanceI have occasioned you, dear friend; I can never thank you enough. You, andyou alone, have been true to me. For your own sake, I entreat you also tobeware of false friends--especially avoid Kosinski. ----Yours ever, "GIACOMO GIANNOLI. "

CHAPTER XI

A CRISIS

The flight of Giannoli, and all the worry and turmoil occasioned thereby, told on my health. I did not admit as much to myself, and I still kept onat the paper as usual through the very thick of it all. For one thing, this was necessary in order not to arouse the curiosity of many of thecomrades, and moreover there is no doubt that whatever line of life we mayadopt we gradually become the creatures of our habits, however much we mayscoff at such a notion. Thus, though I had grown out of the first stage ofyouthful enthusiasm when I revelled in squalor and discomfort, andsincerely believed myself to be one of the hubs round which the futureRevolution and the redemption of mankind circled, and though experiencehad opened my eyes to much that was unlovely, and not a little which wasdespicable, in my associates, still I stuck at my post and continued mywork on the paper. 

On arriving at the office towards nine every morning, my first task wasto get Short out of pawn in the neighbouring coffee-shop, where he retired--regardless of the fact that his pockets were but capacious vacuums--inorder to regale himself on shop eggs and fly-blown pastry, and where hisperson was detained as a pledge till my purse redeemed him. 

I would then work away, "dissing" or "comping, " "locking up forms, " orwriting a "leader, " till some of the Italians, keenly alive to theirownership of stomachs, would call me off to partake of a Milanese_minestra_, or to pronounce on the excellencies of a mess of_polenta_. Then would follow an hour devoted to digestion and talk, when Short, if in a bad temper, would smoke abominable shag, and raise thebowl of his clay pipe into quite perilous proximity with his eyebrows, andif genially inclined, would entertain some one member of the company todark tales and fearsome hints as to the depraved habits and questionablesincerity of his or her dearest friend. 

He had of late developed a great interest in my welfare, and Kosinski hadbeen his special butt. He had always hated the latter on account of hisvast moral superiority to himself, and seemed specially desirous ofdiscrediting him in my eyes. The Russian came pretty frequently to theoffice during the months following on Giannoli's disappearance. He wasalways singularly uncommunicative about his own concerns; his intimatefriends were not aware of his address; how he lived or what his home lifewas none seemed to know; and, indeed, he was one of those men who, withoutever saying a word to that effect, make one feel that their private lifeis no concern of any one but themselves. Short, however, hinted at thingshe _could_ say if he _would_, spoke in general terms of thedisgracefulness of exploiting the affections of women, referred in anundertone to "that Kosinski's" luck, adding that, of course, one had aright to act according to one's inclination, still Anarchists should setan example, &c. , &c. I, of course, took such observations at their truevalue; I knew Short and Kosinski too well to give two thoughts to thematter. Still when, on top of all this mysterious talk, I receivedGiannoli's letter, in which he spoke of his folly in trusting his supposedfriend, and accused him of being neither more nor less than an agent inthe hands of the International police, I felt my brain whirl, and reallywondered whether I was the sole sane person in a mad world, or whether thereverse were not the case. 

It was now some weeks since I had last seen Dr. Armitage. He had writtento explain his absence, alleging stress of work, in which I readilybelieved; for though I knew his regular practice had been much neglectedduring the preceding year, I also knew that there was not an Anarchistwithin twenty miles who did not expect him to attend on himself and familywhen in illness or trouble, an obligation with which the doctor willinglycomplied, though not only did he take no fees, but generally had toprovide the patients with all their creature comforts. No sort of changehad occurred in our relations to each other, but lately he had seemed morethan ever preoccupied, absorbed in the propaganda, ever devising new plansfor spreading the "movement. " He seemed less and less inclined to keep uphis West End connection, and confessed that he had but scant patiencewherewith to listen to the polite ailments and sentimental troubles offashionable ladies. He had given much time to the _Tocsin, _ writingmany really remarkable papers for it, but lately, since Kosinski had comemore to the front, and I had been so much taken up with Giannoli'saffairs, he had, perhaps intentionally, kept more away from the office. 

It was with a feeling of real pleasure that I saw him enter at last oneSaturday evening early in April. I had been feeling tired and depressed, and only by an effort of will had I kept myself at my work. I was struckat the change that a few weeks had wrought in the doctor's appearance. Hishair had grown unusually long, quite noticeably so, his tall figure wassomewhat bent, and there was an unusual appearance about his dress. He hadnot yet cast aside the garb of civilisation, but his trousers evinced atendency to shrink, and he appeared to contemplate affecting low necks inthe matter of shirts. His feet were shod in sandals of a peculiar make, and there was a feverish look in his eyes. As he came towards me hischaracteristic kindly smile lit up his drawn features, and he grasped myhand with friendly warmth. I was delighted to see him, but somewhatshocked at the alteration in his looks. In answer to my inquiries as tohis prolonged absence, he explained that he had been very busy for onething, and that he had also been much preoccupied with his own thoughts onquestions of principle and propaganda. 

"You know, Isabel, " he said, "my habit of silence when confronted bymental problems. I think I must belong to the race of ruminating animals, and it is only by quietly chewing the cud of my ideas that I can digestand assimilate them. It used to be just the same in my student days, anddoubtless the habit will stick to me through life. When I have oncethought out a point, and settled in my own mind on the right course ofaction, I am not as a rule troubled by hesitation or doubts, and then Ilike to talk and discuss, but the initial stage seems to need solitude. Besides, I know you have been very much taken up of late months. I haveseen Kosinski sometimes, and had your news from him. You are not lookingwell; you must have been overtaxing your strength, and need a rest. "

"Doctor, cure yourself, I might well say, " I rejoined. "There is nothingmuch amiss with me. I am a little fagged perhaps, nothing more. But youlook very much run down. I am sure you have been neglecting yourself verymuch of late. "

"Oh, no, on the contrary, " replied the doctor, "I have been giving muchthought lately to food and dress reform in their bearings on the socialquestion, and I have been putting some of my ideas into practice in my ownperson. I have never felt in better health. All superfluous fat has beengot rid of, and my mind feels singularly lucid and clear. I have beengoing on quite long rounds propagandising, often walking as much as twentyand thirty miles a day, and, thanks to my somewhat more rational dress andto my diet of raw oatmeal and fresh fruit, I have found no difficulty inso doing. But will you not come for a walk with me? It is a beautifulevening, and here the atmosphere is so close and stuffy. Do come, I shouldso enjoy a quiet talk with you. I have much I want to say to you, and Ihave come this evening in the hope of an opportunity to say it. "

I agreed, and we sallied forth. At the entrance to the courtyard weencountered Mrs. Wattles holding forth to a group of gossips amongst whomstood Short (for no scandal-mongering was too trivial to interest him), onthe disappearance of Giannoli from her house and her suppositions as tohis fate--a theme of which she never wearied. I managed to slip by withoutattracting her attention, so absorbed was she with the enthrallingmystery, only to find myself in for another almost worse danger. For thereat the corner of P. Street and the Euston Road stood the Bleeding Lamb, surrounded by a hooting and uproarious crowd. He had, it appeared, interrupted the Gospel-preaching of the Rev. Melchisedek Hicks with someinappropriate inquiry as to the probable whereabouts of Nelson on theresurrection day. This was considered irreverent by the admirers of theRev. Hicks, who forthwith began to jibe and jeer at the Bleeding Lamb, who, in his turn, exchanging the meekness of the traditional victim forthe righteous indignation of a prophet misjudged, had volleyed a torrentof abuse on all present, consigning them unconditionally to hell-fire. AsArmitage and I neared the scene a constable was taking the names andaddresses of all concerned, and was manifesting his intention of marchingoff the poor Lamb to durance vile. 

Armitage took in the situation at a glance, and, hurrying up, addressedthe man in blue. "I know this man very well, officer, " he said in anauthoritative voice. "I can answer that he gives his name and addresscorrectly; there is no need to arrest him. "

"And who are _you?_ I should like to know, " inquired the iratepoliceman; "I think I can answer for your address, Colney Hatch ain't faroff the mark. "

"This is my card, " answered the doctor, handing one over to the constablewith a dignified gesture. The latter seemed somewhat impressed and takenaback, and after grumbling some remarks in an undertone and eyeing theLamb in a suspicious and unconvinced manner, he told him to be off sharpif he did not wish to find himself in the cells, and then vented hisspleen and unappeased zeal on behalf of his country by cuffing, shovingand abusing the corner-boys who had assembled to witness the fun. Weavailed ourselves of the consequent confusion to make good our escape, dodging the Lamb, who manifested an intention of coming along with us; andsoon we found ourselves, thanks to a penny tram fare, in fresher, cleanerquarters. We got down at the corner of Parliament Hill. The sun had justset and the clear spring twilight lent a wonderful charm of serene peaceto the scene. The undulating expanse of Heath was growing darker anddarker; in the west still lingered the last sunset hues of pink andsaffron and green; and overhead in the deep blackening blue of night thestars were just becoming visible. We had strolled on in silence for sometime, hushed by the solemn stillness of the evening. At last Dr. Armitageexclaimed, "Ah, Isabel, how I sometimes long for rest and peace, and sweetwholesome surroundings! How beautiful life might be passed with acompanion such as you. The earth is beautiful, man is naturally good; whycannot we all be happy?"

I was a little taken aback at the doctor's remark, though I had halfexpected something of the sort. During the early months of my Anarchistcareer, when battling with the first difficulties of starting the_Tocsin_, we had been so constantly together that we had got into away of divining each other's thoughts and feelings almost without the needof words. We never thought or talked of anything but abstract questions ofprinciple or the immediate needs of the propaganda, yet, as was onlynatural, an undercurrent of personal sympathy had sprung up between uswhich I had felt to be somewhat more pronounced on the doctor's side thanon my own. However, with him, excess of emotion always manifested itselfin renewed and redoubled zeal for the propaganda, leading him to elaboratesome quite extraordinary schemes for advancing the Cause, such as, forinstance, supplementing his daily work by keeping a coffee-stall at night, as he considered that such a plan would afford an excellent opportunityfor quiet personal argument and for the distribution of literature toprobable converts; so that he had never broached personalities in anydefinite style. Then events had followed on one another with surprisingrapidity; the advent of the Italian refugees had contributed to change the_personnel_ if not the principles of the _Tocsin_; a commonfriendship for Giannoli had brought Kosinski and myself more together andI had, always had a decided sympathy for the Russian, increased perhaps bythe instinctive feeling that if there were one man who would refuse tobudge one inch from his principles for a woman that man was he. I seemedto have lived ages, my character was developing, a sense of humour wasgradually modifying my views of many matters, and during these last fewmonths Armitage and I had drifted somewhat apart. 

There was something pathetic in his voice that night as he spoke. Hiswhole appearance told me that he had been passing through an acute mentaland moral crisis, and a queer feeling came over me which seemed to warn methat something irreparable was about to take place between us. I felt deepsympathy for this noble nature struggling for the ideal in a world all outof gear; so thoroughly unselfish and self-sacrificing as hardly to graspclearly the personal side of its sufferings, and slowly and unconsciously, in its very effort to free itself from material trammels, falling a victimto monomania--striving too high only to fall in a world where the sublimeis divided by but a step from the ridiculous, and where all are capable oflaughing and sneering, but few indeed of appreciating qualities such asArmitage possessed. 

"We might well ask 'what is happiness?'" I rejoined in answer to hisremark, anxious to steer the conversation clear of personalities. "Howvain and trivial all our struggles seem whenever we find ourselves face toface with the serene indifference of Nature. What are we, after all, butfretful midges whizzing out our brief hour?"

"Ah, one is often tempted to think so, " answered Armitage--and I confessthat I gave vent to a sigh of relief as I realised that he was now startedon a discussion--"but as long as injustice prevails we must continue thestruggle. I often long for rest, silence, oblivion; but the mood passesand I awake more keenly alive than ever to the greatness of our Cause, andour duty toward the propaganda. Nothing must be allowed to interfere withour devotion to it, and, what is more, Isabel, we must strive to live insuch a way as to free ourselves from all considerations that might hamperour action on its behalf. We must simplify our lives; we must not neglectto set an example even in small matters. The material claims of lifeabsorb far too much of our time. We are constantly selling our birthrightfor a mess of pottage. We shall never be truly devoted propagandists tillwe have freed ourselves from all care for the morrow. "

"You are right, " said I, "but such ideas may be carried to an excess. Wemust live our lives; and as that is so we must attend more or less to ourpersonal wants. "

"That I do not deny, Isabel, " answered the doctor; "what I aim at is tosimplify them as much as possible. Thanks to my new diet I shall neverhave to waste time to procure the wherewithal to fill my stomach. Nuts andraw fruit are easily procured, and contain all the elements essential tophysical health. I am sure you will agree with me on this point when youhave considered it at length. Then again in the matter of dress, whatcould be more hateful or harmful than our modern costume? It is awful tothink of the lives wasted in useless toil to produce the means by which aso-called man of fashion contrives to make himself hideous and ridiculousin the eyes of all sensible people. Besides there is no doubt that we areall the creatures of our surroundings, and so the influence of food anddress on character must be inestimable. "

"Oh, doctor, do not harp so on this dress and food question!" I could nothelp exclaiming. "Really, seriously, I think you have let your mind runsomewhat too much in a groove lately. Talk of vegetarianism and dressreform! why, what you need, it seems to me, is a steak at the Holborn anda starched shirt collar! Seriously, it grieves me to think that you shouldbe giving yourself up so entirely to such notions. I consider you could dofar more good to the Cause by keeping up your practice, pursuing yourstudies, and working on the lines you used to be so successful in. "

Hardly had I spoken than I regretted the hastiness of my remark. I couldsee at a glance that my friend was pained, more at feeling that I was outof sympathy with him than at my actual words. He suggested that we shouldturn homewards. We were nearing Fitzroy Square when he exclaimed--

"You know, Isabel, that I have always had a great admiration for you. Ihave thought you would prove one of the great figures of the comingRevolution; I still think so, but I see that our ways are parting. Youlaugh at me; yet I feel sure that my position is right. I am sorry I havenot your sympathy in my work. I had counted on it; I had come this eveningto tell you so. Perhaps some day you will understand my views and agreewith them. Till then, good-bye. I am due at a comrade's house atWillesden; he is going in for the No Rent Campaign, and I have promised tohelp him move to-night, but first I must go home and get out of thesecumbersome clothes into a more rational dress; coats and trousers impedeone's every thought and movement. Good-bye, " and he grasped my hand andwas off, walking with a rapid, almost feverish stride. 

On reaching home the servant informed me that a gentleman had called forme, and that on hearing I was out he had expressed his intention ofreturning. The girl could not remember his name, but I gathered from herdescription that he was a foreigner. 

Just then a ring at the door interrupted her remarks, and I was surprisedto see Kosinski enter the room. He walked straight up to me with anunwonted look of perturbation about him. 

"Could you come with me at once?" he said in low, hurried tones. 

"Where?" said I, feeling quite alarmed. "What is the matter?"

"With me, to my room. I need the help of some woman, but there is no timeto waste. I will explain _en route_. Will you come?"

"Certainly, at once, " and I walked out with him. 

I had not chanced to see him since Giannoli's last letter in which he wasdenounced as belonging to the ranks of the Italian's false friends, sincewhen I had only heard the insinuations of Short, which, as can easily beimagined, had not deeply impressed me, coming from such a quarter. Still Ishould not have been surprised had I felt a momentary embarrassment atfinding myself suddenly in his company, and under such decidedly unusualcircumstances, but such was not the case. No one could look intoKosinski's steady grey eyes and earnest face, pale with the inward fire ofenthusiasm, and not feel conscious of standing face to face with one ofthose rare natures who have dedicated themselves, body and soul, to theservice of an ideal. I walked on hurriedly, keeping up with his swingingstride, wondering where we were going, but not liking to break in on hisreserve by probing questions. Suddenly he seemed to wake to a sense ofreality, and turned sharply round to me. 

"We are going to my room in Hammersmith, " he said. "I want yourassistance, if you care to come; there is a woman there dying, a friend ofmine. You are the only person of whom I should care to ask such a favour. Will you come? I hardly think it will be for many hours. "

So then Short was right; there was a woman at the bottom of Kosinski'slife; and simultaneously with this idea there flashed across my brain afeeling of shame at having for one instant entertained a mean thought ofmy friend. "I will come, " I answered; "you did well to count on myfriendship. " We hurried on for several minutes in silence. Then againKosinski spoke:

"I had best tell you a little how matters stand, " he said. "I am not fondof talking about private concerns, but you have a right to know. Eudoxiahas lived with me for the past two years. I brought her over with me fromAmerica. She has been suffering with consumption all this while, and I donot think she will last the night. "

"Is she a comrade?" I ventured to inquire. 

"Oh, no. She hates Anarchists; she hates me. It will be a blessing toherself when she is laid to rest at last. She was the wife of my dearestfriend, perhaps my only friend outside the Cause. Vassili had a greatintellect, but his character was weak in some respects. He was full ofnoble ambitions; he had one of the most powerful minds I have known, aquite extraordinary faculty for grasping abstract ideas. I was first drawntowards him by hearing him argue at a students' meeting. He wasmaintaining a fatalistic paradox: the total uselessness of effort, and thevanity of all our distinctions between good and bad. All our acts, heargued, are the outcome of circumstances over which we have no control;consequently the man who betrays his best friend for interested motives, and the patriot who sacrifices happiness and life for an idea are morallyon the same footing--both seek their own satisfaction, aiming at that goalby different paths; both by so doing obey a blind impulse. I joined in theargument, opposing him, and we kept the ball going till 4 A. M. He walkedwith me to my lodgings and slept on a rug on the floor, and we became fastfriends. But though his mind was strong, he was swayed by sensualpassions. He married young, burdening himself with the responsibility of awoman and family, and went the way of all who do so. He would have losthimself entirely in the meshes of a merely animal life; he seemed even tocontemplate with satisfaction the prospect of begetting children! But Icould not stand by and witness the moral degradation of my poor friend. Ikept him intellectually alive, and when once stimulated to mentalactivity, no one was ever more logical, more uncompromising than he. Soonafter my imprisonment he got implicated in a conspiracy and had to flee toAmerica. When I arrived there after my escape I found him in the mostabject condition. His wife, Eudoxia, was ill with the germs of the diseasewhich is now killing her, and was constantly railing at him as the causeof their misfortune, urging him to make a full confession and throwhimself on the mercy of the Russian authorities. Poor thing! she was ill;she had had to leave behind her only child, and news had come of itsdeath. Vassili would never have done anything base, but he had notsufficient strength of character to rise superior to circumstances. Another weak trait in him was his keen sensibility to beauty. It was notso much the discomfort as the ugliness of poverty which irked him. I havealways noted the deteriorating effect art has on the character in suchrespects. He was grieved at his wife's illness, goaded to desperation byher reproaches, sickened by the squalor of his surroundings, and insteadof turning his thoughts inwards and drawing renewed strength andresolution from the spectacle of the sufferings caused by our falsemorality and false society, he gave way completely and took to drink. WhenI found him in New York he was indeed a wreck. He and his wife were livingin a filthy garret in the Bowery; he had nothing to do, and had retiredpermanently on to a rotten old paillasse which lay in a corner; hisclothes were in pawn; he could not go out. Eudoxia earned a few centsdaily by slaving at the wash-tub, and most of this he spent in gettingdrunk on vile, cheap spirits. When he saw me arrive he railed at me as thecause of all his woes; blamed me for having dragged him on to actions heshould never have done if left to himself; and pointing to his wife and tothe squalid room, he exclaimed, 'See the results of struggling for ahigher life. ' Eudoxia, for her part, hated me, declaring that I wasresponsible for her husband's ruin, and that, not content with making hislife a hell on earth, I was consigning his soul to eternal perdition. ThenVassili would burst into maudlin tears and weep over his own degeneracy, saying that I was his only true friend. I grieved at the decay of a finemind; there was no hope now for him; I could only wish that his body mightsoon too dissolve. I gave him what little help I could, and he soon drankhimself to death. I was with him at the last. He seemed overcome by agreat wave of pity for himself, spoke tearfully of the might-have-beens, blamed me for having urged him to deeds beyond his strength, and ended byexclaiming that he could not even die in peace, as he did not know whatwould become of his poor wife, whose strength was already rapidly failing. 'I am leaving her friendless and penniless. I dragged her away from acomfortable home, promising her happiness. She has had to sacrifice heronly child to my safety, and now, prematurely old, soured by misfortuneand illness, I am abandoning her to fight for herself. She is my victimand yours, the victim of our ideas; it is your duty to look after her. ' Ipromised him so to do, and she has been with me ever since. "

I had walked on, absorbed in the interest of his tale, heedless of thedistance we were covering, and now I noticed that we were already skirtingHyde Park, and reflected that our destination must still be far ahead. 

"As your friend is so ill had we not better take the 'bus? You said wewere going to Hammersmith, and there is still quite a long walk ahead ofus, " I suggested after a few minutes. 

"Oh, are you tired?" he inquired; "I ought to have thought of it. Ialways walk. " I noticed that his hand strayed into the obviously emptypocket of his inseparable blue overcoat, and a worried look came into hisface. I at once realised that he had not a penny on him, and deeplyregretted my remark. Not for worlds would I have suggested to him payingthe fares myself, which I should have thought nothing of doing with mostof the others. 

"Oh, it was not for me, " I hastened to rejoin, "I am not in the leasttired; I only thought it would be quicker, but after all we must now benear, " and I brisked up my pace, though I felt, I confess, more than alittle fagged. 

Again we trudged on, absorbed in our thoughts. At last, to break thesilence I inquired of him if he had seen Armitage lately. 

"It must be quite ten days now since I last saw him at a group-meeting ofthe Jewish Comrades. I fear he is developing a failing common to many ofyou English Anarchists; he is becoming something of a crank. He talked tome a lot about vegetarianism and such matters. It would be a thousandpities were he to lose himself on such a track, for he has both intellectand character. He is unswerving where principle is at stake; let's trusthe will not lose sight of large aims to strive at minor details. "

Again a silence fell on us. My companion was evidently reviewing hispast; my brain was occupied in blindly searching the future; what wouldbecome of us all? Kosinski, Armitage, myself? Vassili's words, "This isthe result of struggling for a higher life, " haunted me. Should we afterall only succeed in making our own unhappiness, in sacrificing the weak toour uncompromising theories, and all this without advancing the cause ofhumanity one jot? The vague doubts and hesitations of the past few weeksseemed crystallising. I was beginning to mount the Calvary of doubt. 

After a quarter of an hour Kosinski exclaimed: "Here we are. You must notbe taken aback, Isabel, if you get but scant thanks for your kindness. Eudoxia is not well disposed towards our ideas; she looks upon her lifewith me as the last and bitterest act in the tragedy of her existence. Poor thing, I have done what I could for her, but I understand her pointof view. "

Without further ado we proceeded along the passage and up the mean woodenstaircase of a third-rate suburban house, pushing past a litter ofnondescript infancy, till we stopped before a back room on the top floor. As Kosinski turned the door handle a woman stepped forward with her fingerto her lips. "Oh, thank Gawd, you're here at last, " she said in a whisper, "your sister's been awful bad, but she's just dozed off now. I'll go to myhusband; he'll be in soon now. "

"Thanks, Mrs. Day. I need not trouble you further. My friend has come tohelp me. "

The landlady eyed me with scant favour and walked off, bidding usgood-night. 

The room was of a fair size for the style of dwelling and was divided intwo by a long paper screen. The first half was evidently Kosinski's, andas far as I could see by the dim light, was one litter of papers, with amattress on the floor in a corner. We walked past the screen; and theguttering candle, stuck in an old ginger-beer bottle, allowed me to see abed in which lay the dying woman. There was also a table on which stoodsome medicine bottles, a jug of milk, and a glass; an armchair of frowsyaspect, and two cane chairs. The unwashed boards were bare, the roomunattractive to a degree, still an awkward attempt at order wasnoticeable. I stepped over to the bed and gazed on its occupant. Eudoxiawas a thin gaunt woman of some thirty-five years of age. Her clusteringgolden hair streaked with grey; small, plaintive mouth, and clear skinshowed that she might have been pretty; but the drawn features and closedeyelids bore the stamp of unutterable weariness, and a querulousexpression hovered round her mouth. The rigid folds of the scantybedclothes told of her woeful thinness, and the frail transparent handsgrasped convulsively at the coverlet. As I gazed at her, tears welled intomy eyes. She looked so small, so transient, yet bore the traces of suchmental and physical anguish. After a moment or two she slowly opened hereyes, gazed vacantly at me without apparently realising my presence, andin a feeble, plaintive voice made some remark in Russian. Kosinski was ather side immediately and answered her in soothing tones, evidentlypointing out my presence. The woman fixed on me her large eyes, luminouswith fever. I stepped nearer. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Iinquired in French. "No one can do anything for me except God and theblessed Virgin, " she replied peevishly, "and they are punishing me for mysins. Yes, for my sins, " she went on, raising her voice and speaking in arambling delirious way, "because I have consorted with infidels andblasphemers. Vassili was good to me; we were happy with our little Ivan, till that devil came along. He ruined Vassili, body and soul; he killedour child; he has lost me. I have sold myself to the devil, for have I notlived for the past two years on his charity? And you, " she continued, turning her glittering eyes on me, "beware, he will ruin you too; he hasno heart, no religion; he cares for nothing, for nobody, except his cruelprinciples. You love him, I see you do; it is in your every movement, butbeware; he will trample on your heart, he will sacrifice you, throw youaside as worthless, as he did with Vassili, who looked upon him as hisdearest friend. Beware!" and she sank back exhausted on the pillows, hereyes turned up under her eyelids, a slight froth tinged with bloodtrickling down the corners of her mouth. 

I was transfixed with horror; I knew not what to say, what to do. I putmy hand soothingly on her poor fevered brow, and held a little water toher lips. Then my eyes sought Kosinski. He was standing in the shadow, alook of intense pain in his eyes and on his brow, and I knew what he mustbe suffering at that moment. I walked up to him and grasped his hand insilent sympathy; he returned the pressure, and for a moment I felt almosthappy in sharing his sorrow. We stood watching in silence; at regularintervals the church chimes told us that the hours were passing and thelong night gradually drawing to its close. Half-past three, a quarter tofour, four; still the heavy rattling breath told us that the strugglebetween life and death had not yet ceased. At last the dying woman heaveda deep sigh, she opened her wide, staring eyes and raised her hand as ifto summon some one. Kosinski stepped forward, but she waved him off andlooked at me. "I have not a friend in the world, " she gasped; "you shallbe my friend. Hold my hand and pray for me. " I knelt by her side and didas I was bid. Never had I prayed since I could remember, but at thatsupreme moment a Latin prayer learned in my infancy at my mother's kneecame back to me; Kosinski turned his face to the wall and stood with bowedshoulders. As the words fell from my lips the dying woman clutched my handconvulsively and murmured some words in Russian. Then her grasp loosened. I raised my eyes to her face, and saw that all was over. My strainednerves gave way, and I sobbed convulsively. Kosinski was at my side. 

"Poor thing, poor thing!" I heard him murmur. He laid his handcaressingly on my shoulder. The candle was flaring itself out, andeverything assumed a ghastly blue tint as the first chill light of dawn, previous to sunrise, stole into the room. I rose to my feet and went overto the window. How cold and unsympathetic everything looked! I feltchilly, and a cold shudder ran down my limbs. Absolute silence prevailed, in the street, in the house, in the room, where lay the dead woman staringfixedly before her. Kosinski had sunk into a chair, his head between hishands. I looked at him in silence and bit my lip. An unaccustomed feelingof revolt was springing up in me. I could not and did not attempt toanalyse my feelings, only I felt a blind unreasoning anger with existence. How stupid, how objectless it all seemed! The church clock rung out thehour, five o'clock. Kosinski rose, he walked to the bedside, and closedpoor Eudoxia's staring eyes, and drew the sheet over her face. Then hecame over to me. 

"I shall never forget your kindness, Isabel. There is yet one thing Iwill ask of you; I know that Eudoxia wanted a mass to be said for her andVassili; will you see about carrying out this wish of hers? I cannot giveyou the money to pay for it; I have not got it. "

I nodded in silent consent. 

He paused a few minutes. He seemed anxious to speak, yet hesitated; atlast he said, "I am leaving London, Isabel, I can do nothing here, and Ihave received letters from comrades in Austria telling me that therethings are ripe for the Revolution. "

I started violently: "You are leaving! Leaving London?" I stammered. 

"Yes, I shall be able to do better work elsewhere. "

I turned suddenly on him. 

"And so you mean to say that we are to part? Thus? now? for ever?" Apained look came into his eyes. He seemed to shrink from personalities. "No, " I continued rapidly, "I will, I must speak. Why should we ruin ourlives? To what idol of our own creation are we sacrificing our happiness?We Anarchists are always talking of the rights of the individual, why areyou deliberately sacrificing your personal happiness, and mine? The deadwoman was right; I love you, and I know that you love me. Our future shallnot be ruined by a misunderstanding. Now I have spoken, you must answer, and your answer must be final. "

I looked at him whilst the words involuntarily rushed from my lips, andeven before I had finished speaking, I knew what his answer would be. 

"An Anarchist's life is not his own. Friendship, comradeship may behelpful, but family ties are fatal; you have seen what they did for mypoor friend. Ever since I was fifteen I have lived solely for the Cause;you are mistaken in thinking that I love you in the way you imply. Ithought of you as a comrade, and loved you as such. "

I had quite regained my self-possession. "Enough, " I said, interruptinghim. "I do not regret my words; they have made everything clear to me. Youare of the invincibles, Kosinski; you are strong with the strength of thefanatic; and I think you will be happy too. You will never turn tocontemplate regretfully the ashes of your existence and say as did yourfriend, 'See the result of struggling for a higher life!' You do not, youcannot see that you are a slave to your conception of freedom, moreprejudiced in your lack of prejudice than the veriest bourgeois; that isyour strength, and it is well. Good-bye. "

He grasped my proffered hand with warmth. 

"Good-bye, Isabel. I knew you were not like other women; that _you_could understand. "

"I can understand, " I replied, "and admire, even if I deplore. Good-bye. "

Slowly I moved towards the door, my eyes fascinated by the rigid lines ofthe sheet covering the dead woman; slowly I turned the handle and walkeddown the mean wooden staircase into the mean suburban street. 

CHAPTER XII

THE _TOCSIN'S_ LAST TOLL

As I walked home from Kosinski's in the early morning I felt profoundlydepressed. The weather had turned quite chilly and a fine drizzling rainbegan to fall, promising one of those dull, wet days of which weexperience so many in the English spring. The streets were deserted butfor the milkmen going their rounds, and the tired-looking policemenwaiting to be relieved on their beats. I felt that feeling of physicalexhaustion which one experiences after being up all night, when one hasnot had the opportunity for a wash and change of clothes. I was notsleepy, but my eyes were hot and dry under their heavy eyelids, my bonesached, my muscles felt stiff; I had the uncomfortable consciousness thatmy hair was disordered and whispy, my hat awry, my skin shiny; and thissub-consciousness of physical unattractiveness heightened the sense ofmoral degradation. 

I felt weary and disgusted, and it was not only, nor even principally, the knowledge that Kosinski had gone out of my life which accounted forthis. I felt strangely numbed and dull, curiously able to look back onthat incident as if it had occurred to some one else. Every detail, everyword, was vividly stamped on my brain: I kept recurring to them as Itrudged along, but in a critical spirit, smiling every now and again asthe humour of some strangely incongruous detail flashed across my brain. 

What really weighed me down was a sense of the futility, not only ofAnarchist propaganda but of things in general. What were we striving for?Happiness, justice? And the history of the world shows that man hasstriven for these since the dawn of humanity without ever getting muchnearer the goal. The few crumbs of personal happiness which one might hopefor in life were despised and rejected by men like Armitage, Kosinski, andBonafede, yet all three were alike powerless to bring about the largerhappiness they dreamed of. 

I had acquired a keener sense of proportion since the days when I hadfirst climbed the breakneck ladder of Slater's Mews, and I now realisedthat the great mass of toiling humanity ignored our existence, and thatthe slow, patient work of the ages was hardly likely to be helped orhindered by our efforts. I did not depreciate the value of thought, of theeffort made by the human mind to free itself from the shackles ofsuperstition and slavery; of that glorious unrest which spurs men on toscrutinise the inscrutable, ever baffled yet ever returning to thestruggle, which alone raises him above the brute creation and which, afterall, constitutes the value of all philosophy quite apart from the specialcreed each school may teach; and I doubted not for a moment that the yeastof Anarchist thought was leavening the social conceptions of our day. 

But I had come to see the almost ludicrous side of the Anarchist party, especially in England, considered as a practical force in politics. Shortand Simpkins were typical figures--M'Dermott, an exceptionally good one--of the rank and file of the English party. They used long words theybarely understood, considered that equality justified presumption, andcontempt or envy of everything they felt to be superior to themselves. Communism, as they conceived it, amounted pretty nearly to living at otherpeople's expense, and they believed in revenging the wrongs of theirclasses by exploiting and expropriating the bourgeois whenever such actionwas possible without incurring personal risk. Of course I was not blind tothe fact that there were a few earnest and noble men among them, men whohad educated themselves, curtailing their food and sleep to do so, men oforiginal ideas and fine independent character, but I had found that withthe Anarchist, as with the Socialist party, and indeed all parties, suchwere not those who came to the surface, or who gave the _ton_ to themovement. Then, of course, there were noble dreamers, incorrigibleidealists, like Armitage, men whom experience could not teach nordisappointment sour. Men gifted with eternal youth, victimised andsacrificed by others, yet sifting and purifying the vilest waste in thecrucible of their imaginations, so that no meanness, nor the sorrow bornof the knowledge of meanness in others, ever darkens their path. Men wholive in a pure atmosphere of their own creation, whom the worldly-wisepity as deluded fools, but who are perhaps the only really enviable peoplein the world. Notable, too, were the fanatics of the Kosinski type, sternheroic figures who seem strangely out of place in our humdrum world, whosepractical work often strikes us as useless when it is not harmful, yetwithout whom the world would settle down into deadly lethargy andstagnation. Then in England came a whole host of cranks who, without beingAnarchists in any real sense of the word, seemed drawn towards our ranks, which they swelled and not infrequently brought into ridicule. The"Bleeding Lamb" and his atheist opponent Gresham, the Polish Countess VeraVoblinska with her unhappy husband who looked like an out-at-elbows muteattached to a third-rate undertaker's business, a dress-reforming ladydisciple of Armitage, a queer figure, not more than four feet in height, who looked like a little boy in her knickers and jersey, till you caughtsight of the short grizzled hair and wrinkled face, who confided to methat she was "quite in love with the doctor, he was so _quaint_;" andnumerous others belonged to that class; and finally a considerablesprinkling of the really criminal classes who seemed to find in theAnarchist doctrine of "Fais ce que veux" that salve to their consciencefor which even the worst scoundrels seem to crave, and which, at worst, permitted them to justify their existences in their own eyes as being the"rotten products of a decaying society. " Such were the heterogeneouselements composing the Anarchist party with which I had set out to reformthe world. 

The neighbouring church chimes rang out half-past six as I approachedhome, and on reaching the doorstep of the Fitzroy Square house I found mybrother Raymond just letting himself in. On seeing me he exclaimed, "Oh, Isabel, where have you been so early?--though really your appearancesuggests the idea that you have never been to bed rather than that youhave just risen!" I confirmed his suspicion and together we entered hisstudy. 

"Well, where have you been? Is there something new on with theAnarchists? I have seen so little of you for the past six months that Ifeel quite out of the world--your world at least. "

It was a great relief to me to find my brother so conversable. We hadboth been so occupied of late in our respective ways that we had had butscant opportunity for talk or companionship. Raymond had now startedpractising on his own account; he was popular with his poor patients inthe crowded slums round King's Cross, amongst whom his work chiefly lay, and day and night he toiled in their midst. Certainly the sights he sawthere were not calculated to destroy his revolutionary longings, thoughthey were often such as might well have made him doubt of the ultimateperfectibility of the human race. 

"Oh, I am so glad to find you, Raymond, and I should enjoy a nice longtalk together; but you must be tired; you have, I suppose, only just comein after working all night?"

He explained to me that he had been summoned after midnight to attend apoor woman's confinement, and had stayed with her till past four, when, feeling more inclined for a walk than for his bed, he had wandered off inthe direction of Highgate and had only just got home. 

"By the way, Isabel, " he said, "as I was coming down the Caledonian RoadI met your friend Armitage. He is a good fellow whom I have always liked, so I stopped him and we had a chat. He explained to me that he was attiredin his new pedestrian costume, which indeed struck me as almostpre-Adamite in its simplicity. He had been helping some of his friends tomove--to shoot the moon, I fancy, would describe the situation. Heinquired of me what I was doing, and we got talking on all sorts ofscientific and philosophic problems. It is extraordinary what an intellectthat man has. Only he lives too much in a world of his own creation; heseems absolutely oblivious of self, and I feel sure his hygiene andvegetarianism are simply the outcome of his desire to free himself fromall worldly cares which might impede his absolute devotion to his Cause. He seems to have practically abandoned his practice. As we were wanderingon rather aimlessly, I suggested accompanying him home, but he did notappear to jump at the idea, and as I know that it is not consideredetiquette amongst you folk to press inquiries as to address and so on, Iwas going to drop the subject; but Armitage, after a short silence, explained that the fact was he had not exactly got a home to go to. Iconcluded that he was in for the bother of changing diggings, and madesome sympathetic remark to that effect; but he said that was not exactlythe case--that, in fact, he had given up having a fixed abode altogether. As you can imagine, Isabel, " continued my brother, "this informationsomewhat staggered me. I knew through you that he had long ago given uphis Harley Street establishment and moved into more populous quarters, where I quite supposed him still to be residing. But he calmly went on toexplain, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, that hehad been in need of a rather considerable sum of money some weeks back forpurposes of propaganda, and that, not knowing where else to obtain themoney, he had sold up all his belongings and cleared out of his lodgingswithout paying his rent, 'by way of an example. ' All this he explainedwith the air of a man adducing an unanswerable argument, and as his mannerdid not admit of remonstrance, I simply asked him what he thought of doingnow, which started him off on a long account of the opportunities forpropaganda afforded by such establishments as Rowton House, the casualwards, and the Salvation Army Shelters. 'We want to get at the oppressed, to rouse them from their lethargy of ages, to show them that they too haverights, and that it is cowardly and wicked to starve in the midst ofplenty; we want to come amongst them, not as preachers and dilettantists, but as workers like themselves, and how can this be done better than bygoing in their midst and sharing their life?' I could not but feelamazement and admiration at the enthusiasm and sincerity of this man, mingled with sorrow at the thought that such an intellect as his should bethus wasted. He is a man who might have done almost anything in thescientific world, and now he seems destined to waste his life, a dreamerof dreams, a sort of modern St. Francis in a world lacking in idealism, and where he will be looked upon as a wandering lunatic rather than asaint. "

I sat silent for a few minutes. I had not quite realised that poorArmitage had come to this--a frequenter of casual wards, a homeless andwandering lunatic; my brother was right, the world would judge him assuch. I was not, however, in the least surprised at the news. 

The servants had by now come down and we had breakfast brought to thestudy, and I gave Raymond an account of my night's proceedings. When Iconcluded my brother said, "Well, Isabel, you will remain almost alone at the _Tocsin_. Kosinski is leaving, Giannoli is gone, Armitage is otherwise occupied. Will you be able to keep it going?"

"Oh, I could keep it going, " I replied. "There are still a lot ofcomrades hanging on to it; new ones are constantly turning up. The workcan be done between us, there is no doubt of that. It is rather of myselfthat I doubt. I begin to feel isolated in the midst of the others; Icannot believe that people like Short and Simpkins can change Society;they would have to begin reforming themselves, and that they are incapableof. I can admire a man like Kosinski: I cannot exactly sympathise withhim. As to Armitage, I can only grieve that he should thus waste his lifeand talents. Probably, had he thought a little more of his personalhappiness, he would have avoided falling a victim to monomania, for suchhe is in part. And then--and then--it is not only of others that I doubt, but of myself. Am I really doing any good? Can I sincerely believe thatthe _Tocsin_ will help towards the regeneration of mankind? Canmankind be regenerated? When such questions never occurred to me, or, ifthey did, were answered by my brain with an unhesitating affirmative, thenit was easy to work. No difficulties could daunt me; everything seemedeasy, straightforward. But now--but now.... "

"Well, then, why don't you give it up, Isabel?" "Give it up? Oh, howcould I? I have never really thought of that. Oh no; the paper must comeout. I have undertaken it. I must go on with it. "

"And you an Anarchist! Why, I always thought you believed in the absolutefreedom of the individual, and here you are saying that you must go onwith a work in which you no longer feel the requisite confidence, for themere reason that you once, under other circumstances, started it. "

"You are right, Raymond, logically right, but life is not ruled by logic, whether we be Anarchists or Reactionaries. I feel that I could not give upthe _Tocsin_, my interests centre round it; besides, I do not saythat I have altered my ideas; I am still an Anarchist, I can honestly workfor the Cause; I only said that I doubt. I feel depressed. Who has not hadat times periods of depression and doubt?"

"Well, we shall see, " replied Raymond. "I got a letter from Caroline lastnight which I wanted to show you. She says she will be home in anotherthree months, as she has accepted a further engagement for the States nowthat her tour is nearly over. When she comes home it will be a littlecompany for you in the house. She has friends, and she is sure to be muchsought after now, as she seems fairly on the road to becoming a celebrityin the musical world. "

I read the long letter, written in the brilliant style whichcharacterised everything about Caroline. She described her triumphs in thevarious cities of the Argentine and Brazil, the receptions given in herhonour, the life and society of these faraway countries, with a brightnessand humour which brought home to me the whole atmosphere of the places andpeople she described. Caroline had always been fond of society, and evenbefore leaving England had become quite a favourite in musical circles;but her quick, bright intelligence had never allowed her to be blind tomuch that was vulgar and ludicrous in her surroundings. I was truly gladto think that we should meet again before long. The common memories andaffections of our childhood formed a solid basis for our mutualfriendship, but I could not help smiling as I read the last paragraph ofher long epistle: "I expect by now Isabel has had time to grow out of herenthusiasm for revolutions and economics, and will feel less drawn towardsbaggy-trousered democrats and unwashed philosophers than when I left. Perhaps she may even have come round to my view of life, _i. E. _, thatit is really not worth while taking things too tragically, and that it isbest to take the few good things life brings us without worrying one'sbrains about humanity. Selfish, is it not? But I have generally noticedthat it is your stern moralists and humanitarians who cause the mostunhappiness in the world. Anyhow, if Isabel is less wrapped up inSocialism and Anarchy we shall be able to have a good time when I comehome. I am sure to be asked out a good deal, and if the fashionable peoplewho patronise musical celebrities are not free from their foibles andridicules we shall anyhow be able to amuse ourselves and laugh at them upour sleeves. "

So Caroline already counted on my having outgrown Anarchy and unwashedphilosophy, as she phrased it, and grown into drawing-room etiquette! Butshe was wrong! I should go on with the _Tocsin_. I should still workin the Cause; I had done so till then, and what had happened sinceyesterday to alter my intentions? Nothing, or at least nothing of outwardimportance. Only, since my last interview with Armitage and my partingwith Kosinski, I had begun to formulate to myself many questions whichtill then I had only vaguely felt. Still I repeated to myself that Ishould go on with the paper, that I should continue to lead the same life. Of course I should! How could I do otherwise? And even if I had changedsomewhat in my ideas and my outlook on life, I certainly did not feel evenremotely attracted towards the sort of society Caroline referred to. I hada vivid recollection of once accompanying her to an _at home_, givenin a crowded drawing-room, where the heavily-gilded Louis XV. Mirrors andSevres vases and ornaments, with their scrolls and flourishes, all seemedto have developed the flowing wigs which characterised the Roi Soleil, andwhere the armchairs and divans were upholstered in yellow and pink satin, and decked out with ribbon bows to resemble Watteau sheep. Oh no;certainly I should not exchange the low living and high thinking of myAnarchist days for such artificiality and vulgar display. Sunday wasgenerally a very busy day with me, almost more so than week-days, forthere were meetings to be held, literature to be sold and distributed, andlectures and discussions to be attended. I was in the habit of risingrather late, as very often Saturday night was an all-night sitting at theoffice of the _Tocsin_, and Sunday morning was the only time I foundit convenient to pay a little attention to the toilet. But I usedgenerally to manage to be by twelve in some public place, and help Shortand M'Dermott to start a meeting. Short, influenced by his inherentlaziness, had succeeded in persuading the Italians that he was a greatorator, and that they could not better forward the Cause in their newcountry than by carrying for him the movable platform from which hedelivered his spirited harangues; so that one or two of them weregenerally present helping to form the nucleus of an audience, and ready tolend their valid support should any drunken loafer or top-hattedbourgeois, outraged in his feelings, attempt to disturb the proceedings. Hyde Park was generally my destination in the afternoon, and in theevening we used to repair in force to the hall of the Social Democrats, there to take part in the discussion which followed the lectures, or elsesome meeting in Deptford, Canning Town, or Stratford would claim myattendance. But on this particular Sunday I felt too tired and despondentto think of rushing out in my usual style. 

I shut myself in my room and tried to rest, but I could not free myselffrom the sights and thoughts which had beset me during the night. Thewords of Kosinski's friend, "And this is what comes of struggling for thehigher life, " still haunted me; the dead woman, staring blindly into spacerose before me, an image of the suffering forced on the weak by thestrong. Then my thoughts reverted to Giannoli. What was he doing? I hadnot heard from him for over a month, and his last letter had been far fromreassuring. He hinted at some desperate enterprise he was engaged on, andas I had no further news of him from any quarter I thought it not unlikelythat he had been arrested, and was, even then perhaps, suffering unknowntortures in one of those dreaded Spanish prisons, where the old systems ofthe Inquisition still prevail, though modern hypocrisy requires that allshould pass in silence and darkness, content on these conditions never topush too closely its inquiries, even though some crippled victim who mayescape should rouse for a moment a spasmodic outburst of indignation inthe civilised world. And even were this not his fate, it was a sad enoughone in all conscience: to rush all over the world, wrecked in health, driven from place to place by his wild suspicions, the offspring of adiseased imagination; deprived of friends, for his mania of persecutiondrove them off; deprived of means, for he had sacrificed his all to thepropaganda, and his health and mode of life did not permit of any settledoccupation. I felt strangely anxious about him, and this led my thoughtsback once more to Kosinski, with whom I had been brought so closely intocontact through our relations with Giannoli. I should never see him againin all probability. He had told me he was going to Austria. He toobelonged to the _knights of death_, as an Italian comrade had named acertain section of the Anarchists; and he was working out his inevitabledestiny. I wondered now how I had ever allowed myself to conceive of himotherwise. I had always known it was impossible, and I felt that it wasonly an impulse of rebellion against fate which had led me to speak. 

Finding sleep out of the question, I got up and attempted to write anarticle which I had promised to bring down to the _Tocsin_ thefollowing morning. The subject I had chosen was "The Right to Happiness, "and I argued that man has a right not only to daily bread, as theSocialists maintain, but also to happiness, consisting in the fullestdevelopment and exercise of all his faculties, a condition only possiblewhen the individual shall be perfectly free, living in a harmonioussociety of free men, untrammelled by artificial economic difficulties, andby superstitions inherited from the past. Some days previously we had hada discussion on the subject at the office of the _Tocsin_, and I hadmaintained my views victoriously against the pessimistic dogmatism of aGerman comrade. But now my arguments seemed hollow to myself, mererhetoric, and even that of third-rate quality. Happiness! Did not the merefact of attaining our desires deprive them of their charm? Life was analternating of longing and regret. I pushed paper and pen aside, and beganroaming aimlessly about the house. The large old-fashioned rooms impressedme as strangely silent and forlorn. I wandered up to the attic which ourfather had used as a laboratory, and which had always struck us childrenas a mysterious apartment, where he did wonderful things withstrange-shaped instruments and bottles which we were told containeddeadly poison. His apparatus was still ranged on the shelves, thick indust, and the air was heavy with the pungent smell of acids. The largedrawing-rooms with their heavy hangings looked shabbier and dingier thanof old; I could not help noticing the neglected look of everything. I hadhardly entered them during the past year, and now I vaguely wonderedwhether Caroline on her return would wish to have them renovated. Then Iremembered how I had received there for the first time, some four yearsago, my brother's Socialist friend, and I could not help smiling as Irecollected my excitement on that occasion. I was indeed young in thosedays! I picked up a book which was lying on a table thick in dust, and satdown listlessly in the roomy arm-chair by the fireside, which had been myfather's favourite seat. I began turning the pages of a volume, "TheThoughts of Marcus Aurelius, " and gradually I became absorbed in itscontents. Here was a man who had known how to create for himself in hisown soul an oasis of rest, not by practising a selfish indifference to, and isolation from, public matters--not by placing his hopes in somefuture paradise, the compensation of terrestrial suffering, but by risingsuperior to external events, and, whilst fulfilling his duty as emperorand man, not allowing himself to be flustered or perturbed by theinevitable. "Abolish opinion, you have abolished this complaint, 'Some onehas harmed me. ' Suppress the complaint, 'Some one has harmed me, ' and theharm itself is suppressed. " What wisdom in these words!

It was a long while since I had thus enjoyed a quiet read. For severalmonths past my life had been a ceaseless round of feverish activity. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had allowed myself to be strangelypreoccupied and flustered by trifles. What were these important dutieswhich had so absorbed me as to leave me no time for thought, for study, notime to live my own life? How had I come to give such undue importance tothe publication of a paper which, after all, was read by a very few, andthose few for the most part already blind believers in the ideas itadvocated? Yet I told myself that the _Tocsin_ had done good work, and could yet do much. Besides, I had undertaken it, I must go on with it;life without an object would be intolerable. The slow hours passed, andwhen night came I felt thoroughly worn out and exhausted, and soon got tosleep. 

I awoke on Monday morning with a sense of impending misfortune hoveringover me. I had taken refuge in sleep the previous night from a host oftroublesome thoughts and perplexing doubts, and I now experienced thehateful sensation of returning consciousness, when one does not yetrecollect fully the past, yet realises vaguely the re-awakening tosuffering and action. I wanted to get to the office early that morning, for publishing day was near at hand and there was a lot of work to befinished. I felt that the drudgery of composing would be a relief to myover-strained nerves; so, without waiting for breakfast and the morningpaper which I generally scanned before leaving home, I dressed rapidly andset out for the _Tocsin_. I had not gone many yards when my attentionwas attracted by the large placards pasted on the boards outside anewspaper shop:--

"Shocking outrage in Madrid. Attempt on the life of SpanishPrime-Minister--Many victims. Arrest of Anarchist Assassin. London Policeon scent. "

Giannoli! The name flashed across my brain as I rushed into the shop andpurchased the paper. My heart thumped with excitement as, standing in theshadow of some houses at the corner of the street, I hastily opened andfolded the sheet and ran my eyes down the long column, freely interspersedwith headlines. 

"On Sunday evening, at half-past six, when the fashionable crowd whichthrongs the Prado at Madrid was at its thickest, and just as the MinisterFernandez was driving by in his carriage, a man pushed his way through thecrowd, and shouting 'Long live Anarchy, ' discharged at him three shotsfrom a revolver; the aim, however, was not precise, and one of the bulletswounded, it is feared mortally, the secretary, Señor Esperandez, who wasseated beside his chief, whilst the Minister was shot in the arm. Severalpeople rushed forward to seize the miscreant, who defended himselfdesperately, discharging the remaining chambers of the revolver amidst hisassailants, two of whom have sustained serious injuries. He was, however, overcome and taken, handcuffed and bound, to the nearest police station. On being interrogated he refused his name and all particulars as tohimself, only declaring that he attempted the life of the MinisterFernandez on his own individual responsibility, that he had noaccomplices, and that his object was to revenge his comrades who had beenpersecuted by order of the Minister. When informed that he had missed hisaim, and that Fernandez had escaped with a broken arm, whilst hissecretary was in danger of death, he expressed his regret at not havingsucceeded in his object, saying that this was due to his wretched health, which rendered his aim unsteady; but as to Señor Esperandez, he declaredthat he considered him also responsible, inasmuch as he was willing toassociate himself with the oppressor of the people. Neither threats norpersuasion could induce him to say more. The police, however, are makingactive inquiries, and have ascertained so far (midnight of Sunday) thatthe prisoner is an Italian Anarchist recently landed at Barcelona fromAmerica, passing under the name of Paolo Costa. This name, however, isconsidered to be false. He is a tall man, of rather distinguishedappearance. The police do not credit the idea that he has no accomplices, and during the evening extensive arrests have been made in Madrid andBarcelona. Over a hundred of the most noted Anarchists and Socialists inthese cities are now in prison. "

Such was the brief outline of facts as given by the _Morning Post. _Of course I had not the slightest doubt as to the identity of theprisoner; the state of weakness and ill-health which had caused him tomiss his aim was conclusive, added to the many other reasons I had forsupposing him to be Giannoli. This, then, was the deed he had beencontemplating! Only the day before I had been wondering why I had no newsof him; but a few hours previously he went forth to his death. For itmeant death, of course; of that I had no doubt. He would be garotted; Ionly hoped that he might not be tortured first. I gave a hasty glance atthe other details given by the paper. A column was dedicated to thevirtues of the prime-minister. He was upheld as a model of the domesticvirtues (a few months back Continental papers had been full of ascandalous trial in which Fernandez had been involved), and wasrepresented as the man who had saved Spain from ruin and disaster by hisfirm repression of the revolutionary parties: by which euphonious phrasethe papers referred to the massacres of strikers which had taken place atBarcelona and Valladolid, and the wholesale arrest and imprisonment ofAnarchists and Socialists in connection with a recent anti-clericalmovement which had convulsed the Peninsula. 

These arrests had given rise to a great political trial for conspiracybefore a court-martial, which had ended in a sentence of death passed onfive of the prisoners, whilst the others were sentenced to terms ofimprisonment varying from thirty to five years. It was to revenge theinjustice and the sufferings caused by this policy that Giannoli hadattempted the life of the Spanish minister. Another paragraph caught myeye:--

"London police hot on scent: raids and arrests. "

"Our correspondent has interviewed a leading detective at Scotland Yardwho for some years past has been charged with the surveillance ofsuspicious foreign Anarchists. This clever officer informs ourcorrespondent that he has no doubt the plot was hatched in London, andthinks that he could name the author, an Italian Anarchist of desperateantecedents who disappeared from London under mysterious circumstancesnearly seven months ago. London is a centre of Anarchist propaganda, andforeign desperadoes of all nationalities flock hither to abuse thehospitality and freedom which this government too rashly concedes them. Englishmen will one day be roused from their fool's paradise to find thattoo long have they nursed a viper in their bosom. We trust that thislesson will not be wasted, and that the police will see to closing withoutdelay certain self-styled clubs and 'printing-offices' which are inreality nothing but hotbeds of conspiracy and murder. "

I hurried along as I read these last words. We were evidently once morein for troublous times. The office of the _Tocsin_ was clearlydesignated in the paragraph I have quoted; perhaps the office would beraided; perhaps the Italian comrades who were staying there would bearrested. I rapidly reviewed in my mind's eye the papers and letters whichwere in the office, wondering whether anything incriminating would befound; but I did not feel much perturbed on that score, as it was myinvariable custom to burn all papers of importance, and I felt certainthat nothing more compromising would be found than the Bleeding Lamb'stract on the Seven-headed Beast, which, according to its author, would"make the old Queen sit up a bit, " and Gresham's treatise on thepersecutions of the Early Christians. I was glad to think that Kosinskihad settled to leave the country. I knew that Giannoli had left with himmuch of his correspondence, and I trusted that this would not fall intothe hands of the police. 

I had now nearly reached my destination and, as I turned up the corner ofLysander Grove, I at once realised that something unusual had taken placeat the office. The shutters were still up at Mrs. Wattles's green-grocer'sshop, and that lady herself loomed large at the entrance to the courtyardleading to the _Tocsin_, surrounded by her chief gossips and by adozen or two of dirty matrons. Several windows were up in the housesopposite and slatternly-looking women were craning out and exchangingobservations. I hurried on and, pushing my way past Mrs. Wattles, who Icould see at a glance was in liquor, and heedless of her remarks, I randown the narrow courtyard to the office door which I found shut. I knockedimpatiently and loudly; the door opened and I was confronted by adetective. 

What I had expected had happened. The office had been raided, and was nowin the hands of the police. In answer to my inquiring look, the detectiverequested me to come in and speak to the inspector. In the ground-floorroom three or four Italian comrades were gathered together. The one-eyedbaker, Beppe, was addressing the others in a loud voice; as far as I couldgather from the few words I caught, he was relating some prisonexperiences. The group looked unusually animated and jolly; the incidentevidently reminded them of their own country. As soon as they saw me enterthey interrupted their talk, and Beppe stepped forward to shake hands, butthe officer of the law interposed: "Now, you fellows, stay there; theyoung lady is going to speak to the inspector. " I told Beppe I should soonbe down, and he retired, pulling a wry face at the detective, and makingsome observation to his friends which made them all roar with laughter. Upstairs a scene of wild disorder greeted my eye. Four or five policemenwere turning over heaps of old papers, searching through dusty cupboardsand shelves; heaps of pie lay about the floor--evidently some one had puta foot through the form of type ready set for the forthcoming issue of the_Tocsin_; on the "composing surface" stood a formidable array of pintpots, with the contents of which the men in blue had been refreshingthemselves. On a packing-case in the middle of the room sat Short, hisbillycock hat set far back on his long, greasy hair, smoking a clay pipewith imperturbable calm; whilst little M'Dermott, spry as ever, watchedthe proceedings, pulling faces at the policemen behind their backs, and"kidding" them with extraordinary tales as to the fearful explosivequalities of certain ginger-beer bottles which were ranged on a shelf. Atthe editorial table, which was generally covered with a litter of proofsand manuscript, more or less greasy and jammy, owing to our habit offeeding in the office, sat the inspector, going through the heaps ofpapers, pamphlets, and manuscript articles which were submitted to hisscrutiny by his satellites. I took in all this at a glance, and walkingstraight up to the inspector, I demanded of him an explanation of thisunwarranted invasion of the office. 

His first answer was an interrogation. 

"You are Isabel Meredith, are you not?"

This opened up an explanation which was brief and conclusive. Theinspector showed me a search-warrant, duly signed by a magistrate, andanother warrant for the arrest of Kosinski, and informed me that theoffice had been opened to him by Short, who had represented himself as oneof the proprietors. The primary object of the search was to see ifKosinski, who was wanted by the police in connection with the Madridoutrage, were not on the premises, and also to see if there were noincriminating documents or explosive materials concealed there. 

"And have you found anything very alarming?" I inquired sarcastically. 

"No, miss, " the inspector replied in the same tone; "the most dangerousobject in this place seems to be your printer" (he pointed at Short), "andwe have kept at a fairly safe distance from _him_. Still, of course, I have to go through all these papers; they may yet give us a clue to thewhereabouts of Kosinski or your friend Giannoli;" and here he looked mestraight in the face. 

"Maybe, " I simply replied with a shrug. I felt perfectly tranquil on thatscore, and had but small doubt that Kosinski was by now already on his wayout of the country, as he would judge from the papers that the policewould be on his track. 

"And when will this search be over?" I inquired. 

"Oh, I cannot exactly tell you. It will take me some days to go allthrough these papers. We shall probably be here for two or three days. "

I looked around me. Everything was disorganised. The type cases had allbeen emptied into a heap in the middle of the room, the forms ready lockedup had been pied, the MSS. And papers sequestered. It was utterly hopelessto think of bringing out the _Tocsin_. The scene reminded me of myfirst experience of an Anarchist printing-office after the police raid onthe _Bomb_; but now I no longer had Armitage to encourage me with hisunswerving optimism and untiring energy, nor Kosinski to urge me on withhis contempt of dilettantism and half-hearted enthusiasm. True, Short wasthere, much the same as in the old days; even his dog could be heardsnarling and growling when the policemen administered to him some slykick; but as I looked at the squalid and lethargic figure with its sallow, unhealthy, repulsive face, I was overcome by a feeling of almost physicalnausea. I realised fully how loathsome this gutter Iago had become to meduring the past few months, during which I had had ample opportunity tonote his pettifogging envy and jealousy, his almost simian inquisitivenessand prying curiosity. I felt I could not work with him; his presence hadbecome intolerable to me. I realised that this was the _finale_, thedestined end of the _Tocsin_ and of my active revolutionarypropaganda. I had changed. Why not let the dead bury their dead?

At this moment the policeman who had opened the office door to me came upbringing a letter, which he handed to the inspector. 

"It is for you, miss, " that functionary said, reading the address, "but Ihave orders to open all correspondence. You will excuse my complying withthem. "

My heart stood still. Could it be from Kosinski or Giannoli? After amoment the inspector handed the note to me. It was from the landlord--anotice to quit. I walked up and showed it to Short. 

"Well, what will you do?" he inquired. They were the first words we hadexchanged that morning. 

"I shall leave, " I replied. 

"And how about the paper? Do you think of starting it again?"

"No, I do not think so; not for the present at any rate. "

"And the 'plant'?"

"I shall leave that too. You can look after it, you and the comrades!"

"Oh, the comrades!" sneered Short, and returned to his pipe. 

I turned once more to the inspector. "I am free to leave, I suppose?" Iinquired. "I cannot see that my presence here serves any purpose. "

"Oh yes, miss, you can go if you like. The presence of the printer issufficient for us. I understand he is one of the proprietors?"

"Oh yes, he is a proprietor, " I replied, and turned on my heel. M'Dermottcame up to me. 

"Well, my dear, " he said, "so you are leaving. Well, I don't blame you, nor wish you to remain. After all, it is no use trying to tinker up ourrotten system, or to prop up society with such wretched supports as ourfriend here, " and he pointed at Short. "What we need is to get round themby our insidious means, and then go in for wholesale assassination!"

I could not help smiling as the little man gave vent to this bloodthirstysentiment in an undertone; he wrung my hand warmly, and we parted. 

"What do you intend doing with those Italians who stay here?" I inquiredof the inspector as the sound of a guitar proceeding from downstairsrecalled my thoughts to them. 

"I think it best to detain them here until I have finished searching theplace thoroughly; then if I find nothing to incriminate them, they will befree. You need not worry about them, miss, they do not seem likely tosuffer from depression. "

The twanging of the guitar was now accompanied by Beppe's powerfulbaritone voice, whilst the others joined in the chorus:

 "_Noi, profughi D'Italia.... _"

I walked down the stairs. 

"Good-bye, Comrades!"

"Good-bye, a rivederci!" and after giving one last look at the familiarscene, I walked out. 

As I made my way down the yard leading to the street, I encountered Mrs. Wattles at the back door of her shop. She had now reached the maudlinstage of intoxication. Her eyes were bleary, her mouth tremulous, hercomplexion bloated and inflamed. There was something indefinite in herappearance, suggesting the idea that her face had been boiled, and thatthe features had run, losing all sharpness of outline and expression. Shefixed me with her fishy eye, and dabbing her face with the corner of herapron began to blubber. 

"S'elp me Gawd, miss, " she began, "I never thought as I should come tothis! To have them narks under my very roof, abrazenin' it out! I alwaysknew as there was something wrong abart pore Mr. Janly, and many's thetime I've said to 'im, 'Mr. Janly, sir, ' I've said, 'do take a littlesomething, yer look so pale. ' But 'e always answered, 'No, Mrs. Wattles, no; you've been a mother to me, Mrs. Wattles, and I know you're right, butI can't do it. 'Ere's for 'alf a pint to drink my health, but I can't doit. ' And I dare say as it were them temp'rance scrupils like as brought'im to 'is end. "

At these tender recollections of Giannoli the good lady quite broke down. 

"To think that it was I as let you that very shop two years lastChristmas, and that pore Mr. Cusings, as was sweet on you then--I've notseen 'im lately--and now the coppers are under my very roof! It seems ajudgment on us, it really does. But I always told Wattles that if he wenton treatin' of 'is wedded wife more like a 'eathen than a Christian woman, as a judgment would come on 'im, an' now my words is proved. "

She seemed by now quite oblivious of my presence: a quivering shapelessmass of gin-drenched humanity she collapsed on to the doorstep. And withthis for my last sight and recollection of the place which had witnessedso much enthusiasm, so many generous hopes and aspirations, and where somany illusions lay buried, I walked forth into the London street a sadderif a wiser woman. 

THE END