A Girl Among the Anarchists Part 11

"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 broke the bank at Monte Carlo," and other similar cla.s.sics. I was at the window and 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 a.s.sent.

"Oh, what a game it will be to see their faces to-morrow when Deveril comes round with his warrant! Meanwhile, I was sure those poor devils were boring themselves to death, so I went down to the Italian quarter and brought back these musicians. I have just told them that I hope the music will help them to pa.s.s a pleasant half-hour."

Just then Bonafede came down, followed by the false Matthieu. The lower part of his face was concealed in a m.u.f.fler, and the illusion was really very deceptive.

"I am going now for the cab," said the Italian. "As soon as I return Yoski must hurry out, jump in rapidly, and drive off. I shall be waiting for you, Isabel, and Matthieu with a cab just by Shoolbred's; time to leave the 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 two gla.s.ses, I will go over and offer some to the 'tecs; it will look as if I am trying to distract their attention from Bonafede and the cab, and will lend truth to the scene."

All pa.s.sed off to perfection. As the hansom drew up, Sylvestre, with a polite bow, offered a drink to Limpet and O'Brien. The latter caught sight of the cab, just as the false Matthieu hurriedly jumped in, and, pushing the Frenchman roughly aside, he leapt on his bicycle and rushed off in pursuit just as the cab disappeared round the street corner.

Bonafede had quietly slipped off down the Tottenham Court Road. Limpet was pacing up and down distractedly, uncertain whether to stick to his post or join his comrade in pursuit. In five minutes' time I quietly walked out, arm in arm with Matthieu, turning round on the doorstep to shake hands with Madame Combrisson. 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 Bonafede joined us. "All is well!" he exclaimed; "within a couple of hours our comrade will be safe in Leicester. It has been an anxious day, but it has ended better than I had dared hope for."

"And now let us get some dinner," broke in Sylvestre, "I am just fainting with hunger. Here is a sovereign, Madame; see if you can get us something fit 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 sanct.i.ty we owe our friend's escape."

We were soon enjoying a supper which Madame Combrisson got in from the neighbouring Italian restaurant. We were all in high spirits, and laughed and chatted freely. Limpet, and O'Brien who had returned after satisfying himself as to the true ident.i.ty of the false Matthieu, who had driven straight 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 dozing alternately. At midnight Deveril came, accompanied by two other officers, who relieved Limpet and O'Brien. The next morning, as the clock hands pointed to 9.15, a loud rat-tat resounded through the house.

Deveril, with our two friends of the previous day, accompanied by three uniformed policemen, were on the doorstep. Combrisson opened to them with his most engaging smile. He politely read the warrant which the inspector handed him, and bowed him in, saying that he was happy that he should persuade himself that Matthieu was not, and never had been, on the premises. Deveril seemed rather taken aback by this reception, but was too sure of his case to feel much doubt.

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

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

Bonafede merely shrugged his shoulders and turned aside, whilst the crestfallen Limpet, who had evidently received a severe wigging from his superior for allowing his quarry to escape, turned on me a look of intense hatred and hissed out,

"Remember, miss, you may not always be in London; you will yet pay me for this!" and with this melodramatic threat he and his comrades departed amidst the jeers of the a.s.sembled lodgers.

In the street they were met by deafening shouts of "Vive Deveril! Hurrah for the detective force!" Sylvestre, who had slipped out a few minutes before the arrival of the police, had a.s.sembled in the road all the Italian comrades of the _Tocsin_ group, several Frenchmen of his own acquaintance, and four or five organ-grinders, and amidst the ironic cheers of their enemies, the dejected guardians of law and order made their shamefaced exit from the scene.

CHAPTER IX

SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES

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

But there were elements in the Anarchist party which defied the science of the psychological a.n.a.lyst, so strangely and intricately were the most heterogeneous 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 totally different standpoint whence each views life. This it is which renders it impossible for the normal man really to understand or judge fanatics. He cannot grasp their motive, their point of view, and is therefore morally incapable of judging them.

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

Very diverse in nature were the motives which prompted the committal of these acts of violence--these a.s.sa.s.sinations and dynamite explosions--in different men. With some it was an act of personal revolt, the outcome of personal sufferings and wrongs endured by the rebel himself, by his family or his cla.s.s. In others violence was rather the offspring of ideas, the logical result of speculation upon the social evil and the causes thereof. These Anarchists referred to their actions as Propaganda by Deed.

emile Henry, the dynamitard of the Cafe Terminus, belonged to the number of what I may call the theoretical dynamitard. His terrible acts were the outcome of long and earnest thought; they were born of his mental a.n.a.lysis of the social canker. He committed them not in moments of pa.s.sion, but with all the _sang froid_ of a man governed by reason.

His defence when on trial was a masterpiece of logical deduction and eloquent reasoning.

To the average man it is no doubt very difficult to conceive that when he threw his bomb among the crowd in the Cafe Terminus, maiming and killing indiscriminately, emile Henry was performing his duty according to his own lights just as much as a soldier when he obeys orders and fires on the enemy, a city man when he embarks on the day's business, or a parson when he preaches a sermon against prevailing vices. It was his sermon--however vigorously preached--against the prevailing vices and injustices of Society, and against the indifference which all cla.s.ses displayed towards these. He took upon himself to strike a blow against this indifference on behalf of all the weaker and more unfortunate members of society. Being a man of intellect and some culture, he could not, like his more ignorant _confreres_, imagine that one man or one small group of men, was responsible for these. Earnest thought and reflection told him that if any section of society suffered, then society at large was guilty: all the thoughtless, all the indifferent members of society were equally responsible for its abuses. Now this may be true enough theoretically, but no one but a fanatic or a madman would carry the reasoning farther to the point of saying: "Society at large is guilty; society at large must suffer. Society is fairly well represented by the mixed crowd in a cafe. I will attack this crowd indiscriminately, and kill as many of their number as I can. I will unreluctantly end my days on the scaffold in order to accomplish 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 att.i.tude of the ordinary delinquent, it is no doubt more dangerous to the peace and continuance of society; and such was the att.i.tude and the reasoning which rendered the Anarchists so formidable, and which led up to many of their most terrible outrages. emile Henry was in his own way a well-meaning youth; kindly in private life, frugal in his habits; studious, industrious, and free from vice, he lived with his old mother and mixed little with his fellows, and no one who knew him could have suspected that this quiet, studious boy would have developed into the terrible a.s.sa.s.sin whose act sent a thrill of horror through the world.

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

Among the many frequenters of our office and of the weekly discussion meetings held there, was a Christian Anarchist, one of those holding what was known as the "non-resistance to evil" creed. He, too, was a man who fitted his life to his ideas, who lived in ideas, whose whole being centred round his ideas. He was a religious fanatic whose course had deviated into strange paths.

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

Both the organisationists and the individualists united in abusing and despising the Christian Norbery, but no amount of insults or invective ruffled his temper or aroused his wrath. "When you preach force or use force," he said to his opponents, "you imitate the very methods used by Governments. You will never attain universal peace and brotherhood by such means. As Anarchists we have no right to use other than pa.s.sive resistance, for by using coercion we are defeating our own ends and justifying the actions of our persecutors."

The more indignant his Anarchist opponents became in the course of debate, the calmer and more complacent grew Norbery. "Abuse me," he would say, "insult me, use violence towards me, if you will; I shall turn the other cheek." Once a hot-headed Italian Anarchist lost patience with him and 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 injured limb. Once during certain strike riots in the North of England, Norbery journeyed to the scene of trouble to preach pa.s.sive measures and the Anarchist principles to the rioters. He was dragged from his platform by the police and badly hustled and knocked about.

But Norbery was determined on having his say; he procured a chain and padlock, chained himself to a lamppost, threw away the key, and resumed the interrupted course of his harangue. A large crowd gathered round the persistent orator, attracted partly by his eloquence and partly by the novelty of his situation. The police hurried to the scene and tried to drag him down; his coat and shirt, torn to shreds, remained in their hands, while the semi-naked Anarchist preached away to the constantly increasing crowd. The officers of the law foamed with rage, and threatened and pommelled the enchained and defenceless Norbery. Norbery grew more eloquent and more argumentative under this treatment. Nearly an hour pa.s.sed before a file could be procured and the chain severed, and by that time Norbery had ample opportunity to finish his discourse, and was conveyed to the police station in a fainting and exhausted condition.

Armitage and I engaged in endless discussions with Norbery on the question of violence, maintaining on our side that violence could only be overcome by violence, and that, however peaceful our ultimate aims might be, force must inevitably be used towards their attainment. We argued and adduced reasons in support of our views, and Norbery argued and adduced counter-reasons in support of his views, but neither the one nor the other of us was ever in the least affected by his opponent's eloquence, and at the end of the discussion we were all, if anything, more staunchly persuaded of the sense and justice of our own case than at the start. So much for the profitableness of debate between confirmed partisans.

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

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

His action was not a theoretical protest translated into deeds; it was an act of vengeance, of personal and cla.s.s revenge.

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

Giacomo Giannoli was a man of some education, and no ordinary degree of natural refinement and culture, one whom you would p.r.o.nounce at first sight to be a gentleman. He was the son of a fairly well-to-do builder in a provincial town of Lombardy, and had received a good general education in boyhood. Early left an orphan by his father's death, he had inherited his business, and for some years he carried it on prosperously, living with his mother and sisters. But before he was two-and-twenty his naturally erratic disposition a.s.serted itself, and he chafed under the restraints and monotony of life in a small provincial town. He sold up his business at a great loss, well-nigh ruining his family, had it not been for his mother's small private means; and with his share of the proceeds of the sale he travelled about for some years, leading a roving life, and devoting most of his time and cash to the Anarchist propaganda, constantly getting into troubles and bothers, at times in hiding, at others in prison, always in difficulties, growing harder and harder up as the months went 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 notions of individual morality, and secondly, the discovery of the Anarchist doctrines which gave form to his new views. The incident which was primarily responsible for his new views of life, he recounted to me not long after his arrival in London.

"It was a woman," he said, "who completely altered my views of life, and made me see how perverted and unnatural are our ideas of s.e.x and love and morals, and, in short, of everything. She was an ignorant peasant girl who lived in a neighbouring village, but a woman of rare mind and character. I shall never forget her, nor what I owe her. I was a young fellow of some twenty-one years at the time, and I loved this girl with all the pa.s.sion and faith of a youth of those years. Teresina loved me in return, and for some two years we lived on happily till one day it was brought to my knowledge that she was unfaithful to me. I was beside myself with grief and mortification and jealous fury. For some hours I just raged up and down my room like one demented, crying like a child one minute, cursing and meditating revenge the next. I felt that I must have blood at all costs to appease my pa.s.sion--Teresina's or her lover's, or somebody's. I was to meet Teresina that evening as usual towards nine o'clock, and I thought the intervening hours would never go by. One hope suddenly suggested itself to me, and I clung desperately to it. 'Perhaps it is false!' 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 thoughts turned back to murder. Thus I went through the long hours, and at last evening came--a beautiful warm May evening, and long before the appointed hour I was at our rendezvous in a deserted _podere_ on the mountain-side, overgrown with flags and other spring flowers, among which the fireflies were flitting noiselessly. I had no eyes for the beauty of the scene, however. I paced up and down waiting for my sweetheart, cursing the treachery of women and the blindness of men. Suddenly she appeared, dark against the clear evening sky, graceful, gay, and unconscious as ever. 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 I will 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 defend themselves against the unreasoning savagery of their mates. I was disappointed. Teresina stood perfectly silent till I had finished speaking; then without flinching, without one instant's hesitation, she answered, 'It is true. Every word of it is true.'

"If the moon and the stars had all dropped simultaneously out of heaven at my feet I should not have been more astonished. The calmness of her answer, the steady earnestness of her gaze as she looked back fearlessly into my eyes, her utter lack of subterfuge, took away my breath.

I dropped her arm and stood staring at her, bereft of speech and understanding. At last I blurted out stupidly that I did not understand her, that I must be going 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.