CHAPTER III

AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING

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

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

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

That same afternoon a loud explosion had aroused the inhabitants of a quiet suburban district, and on reaching the corner of ---- Park whence the report emanated, the police had found, amid a motley debris of trees, bushes, and railings, the charred and shattered remains of a man.

These, at the inquest, proved to have belonged to Augustin Myers, an obscure little French Anarchist, but despite the usual lengthy and unsatisfactory routine of police inquiries, searches, and arrests, practically nothing could be ascertained concerning him or the circ.u.mstances attending his death. All that was certain was that the deceased man had in his possession an explosive machine, evidently destined for some deadly work, and that, while traversing the park, it had exploded, thus putting an end both to its owner and his projects.

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

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

The office of the _Bomb_, as being the centre of English anarchy, had been selected as the scene for an inquiry _en group_ into the matter.

Thus on a wet and chilling January evening--one of those evenings when London, and more especially squalid London, is at the height of its unattractiveness--I set out towards my first Anarchist "group-meeting."

And certainly the spirit which moved me from within must have been strong that the flesh quailed not at the foul scenery amid which my destination lay.

Half-way down one of the busiest, grimiest, and most depressing streets in the W.C. district stands a squalid public-house, the type of many hundreds and thousands of similar dens in the metropolis. The "Myrtle Grove Tavern," pastoral as the name sounds, was not precisely the abode of peace and goodwill. From four A.M., when the first of her _habitues_ began to muster round the yet unopened doors, till half-past twelve P.M., when the last of them was expelled by the st.u.r.dy "chucker-out,"

the atmosphere was dense with the foul breath and still fouler language of drunken and besotted men and women. Every phase of the lower order of British drinker and drunkard was represented here. The coa.r.s.e oaths of the men, mingled with the shriller voices of their female companions, and the eternal "'e saids" and "she saids" of the latter's complaints and disputes were interrupted by the plaintive wailings of the puny, gin-nourished infants at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Here, too, sat the taciturn man, clay pipe in mouth, on his accustomed bench day after day, year in year out, gazing with stony and blear-eyed indifference on all that went on around him; deaf, dumb, and unseeing; only spitting deliberately at intervals, and with apparently no other vocation in life than the consumption of fermented liquor.

The side-door for "jugs and bottles" gave on to a dirty and odoriferous mews, down which my destination lay. The unbridled enthusiasm of eighteen years can do much to harden or deaden the nervous system, but certainly it required all my fort.i.tude to withstand the sickening combination of beer and damp horsy hay which greeted my nostrils.

Neither could the cabmen and stablemen, hanging round the public-house doors and the mews generally, be calculated to increase one's democratic aspirations, but I walked resolutely on, and turning to my left, dexterously avoiding an unsavoury heap of horse manure, straw, and other offal, I clambered up a break-neck ladder, at the top of which loomed the office of the _Bomb_.

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

It took me some seconds before I could accustom my eyes to the fetid atmosphere of this den, which was laden with the smoke of divers specimens of the worst s.h.a.g and cheapest tobacco in the metropolis. But various objects, human and inanimate, became gradually more distinct, and I found myself in a long, ill-lighted wooden shed, where type and dust and unwashed human beings had left their mark, and where soap and sanitation were unknown. Past the type racks and cases, which occupied the first half of this apartment, were grouped benches, stools, packing-cases, and a few maimed and deformed chairs for the accommodation of the a.s.sembly. Then came a hand printing-press, on which were spread the remains of some comrade's repast: the vertebral column of a bloater and an empty condensed-milk can, among other relics. The floor, from one extremity to the other of the "office," was littered with heaps of unsold revolutionary literature, the approximate date of which could be gauged by the thickness of dust in which it was smothered. On the walls and from beams and rafters hung foils and boxing-gloves; artistic posters and cartoons, the relics of a great artist who had founded the _Bomb_, and the effigies of divers comrades to whom a pathway to a better world had been opened through the hangman's drop. But what most riveted my attention was an indistinct animate _something_ enveloped in a red flag, rolled up in a heap on the frouziest and most forbidding old sofa it had ever been my lot to behold. That this _something_ was animate could be gathered from the occasional twitchings of the red bundle, and from the dark mop of black greasy hair which emerged from one end. But to what section of the animal kingdom _it_ belonged I was quite at a loss to decide.

Other stray objects which I noted about this apartment were an ostentatious-looking old revolver of obsolete make, and some chemical bottles, which, however, contained no substance more dangerous than Epsom salts.

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

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

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

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

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

This explanation was a square-built, st.u.r.dy-looking man of some forty years. His appearance was the reverse of engaging, but by no means lacking in intelligence. He was ill-satisfied and annoyed with the universe, and habitually defied it from the stronghold of a double bed. Thither he had retired after the death of his father, an old market-porter, who had been crushed by the fall of a basket of potatoes.

The son saw in this tragic circ.u.mstance the outcome and the reward of labour, swore a solemn oath never to do a stroke of work again, threw up his job, and from that day became a confirmed loafer in the Anarchist party. Some months previously, while propagandising in the workhouse, he found the youth there, and learned from his own lips how, being disinclined to become a burden on his poor old parents after his exit from the army, he had seen no other alternative but to become a pauper, and make the best he could of the opportunities afforded him by the poor-rates. From the workhouse he was dragged triumphantly forth by his new friend, and became an easy convert to anarchic and communistic principles.

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

There were several others present among whom the loafer type was perhaps in the ascendant. But there were also many of the more intelligent artisan cla.s.s, discontented with their lot; labourers and dockers who had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race.

O'Flynn, the printer of the _Bomb_, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew frightfully muddled and confused. He had a rather mad look in his eye and a disputatious manner.

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

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

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

"'Ear, 'ear! Why pay rent to robber landlords?" the navvy, Armitage's neighbour, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at this juncture, after which irrelevant inquiry he spat defiance at Society.

Then followed the speeches for the prosecution, if the use of such a word may be permitted in connection with an Anarchist transaction. The chief accusations made against Myers were his violent blood-and-thunder speeches which he had in no wise carried out in action, but which he had delivered under the eyes and in the hearing of the police who had listened and seen it all with quite commendable Christian forbearance.

Besides this several sensational articles had appeared in the daily press in connection with Augustin's death, exaggerating the importance of the affair and hinting at dark plots; of which articles he was suspected of being the author. Jacob was in fact accused of having egged on his unfortunate brother to his doom in order that he might turn a little money out of the transaction between newspaper reports and police fees. It apparently mattered little to this modern Shylock whence came his pound of flesh or what blood ran or congealed in its veins.

Through all these statements and questions Myers sat in stolid and insolent silence--occasionally whistling s.n.a.t.c.hes of some music-hall air. At last when reference was made to some chemicals which he was alleged to have procured and handed on to his brother, he roused up from his affected indifference and appealed to Armitage for a.s.sistance. "Dr.

Armitage knows," he exclaimed indignantly, "that I only procured the sulphuric acid from him for domestic purposes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"d.a.m.n about judging and not judging," exclaimed a st.u.r.dy-looking docker.

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

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

CHAPTER IV

A POLICE SCARE

I left the office of the _Bomb_ towards 1 A.M., undecided whether to weep or to laugh at what I had witnessed there. This, my first introduction into an English Anarchist circle had certainly not been very encouraging, but I was too deeply persuaded of the truth and justice of the Anarchist doctrines to be deterred by such a beginning, and I did not for one instant waver from my resolve to enter and take part in the "movement." That some insincere and dishonest men and some fools should also play their part in it I from the first recognised as inevitable, but I could not see that this affected the Anarchist principles or rendered it less necessary for those believing in them to advocate and spread them. Dr. Armitage accompanied me part of my way home and we talked the matter over _en route_. "Why trouble ourselves,"

he exclaimed, "about a few unprincipled men in such a wide, such a universal movement? Our objects and ideals are too far above such considerations to allow us to be influenced by them. Men like Myers are but the outcome of unnatural and vitiated conditions; they are produced by the very society which it is our object to abolish--as all manner of disease is produced by vitiated air. With better conditions such men will disappear; nay, the very possibility of their existence will be gone."

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

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

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