A Girl Among the Anarchists Part 15

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

I had not chanced to see him since Giannoli's last letter in which he was denounced as belonging to the ranks of the Italian's false friends, since when I had only heard the insinuations of Short, which, as can easily be imagined, had not deeply impressed me, coming from such a quarter. Still I should not have been surprised had I felt a momentary embarra.s.sment at finding myself suddenly in his company, and under such decidedly unusual circ.u.mstances, but such was not the case. No one could look into Kosinski's steady grey eyes and earnest face, pale with the inward fire of enthusiasm, and not feel conscious of standing face to face with one of those rare natures who have dedicated themselves, body and soul, to the service of an ideal. I walked on hurriedly, keeping up with his swinging stride, wondering where we were going, but not liking to break in on his reserve by probing questions. Suddenly he seemed to wake to a sense of reality, and turned sharply round to me.

"We are going to my room in Hammersmith," he said. "I want your a.s.sistance, if you care to come; there is a woman there dying, a friend of mine. 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's life; and simultaneously with this idea there flashed across my brain a feeling of shame at having for one instant entertained a mean thought of my friend. "I will come," I answered; "you did well to count on my friendship." We hurried on for several minutes in silence. Then again Kosinski spoke:

"I had best tell you a little how matters stand," he said. "I am not fond of talking about private concerns, but you have a right to know.

Eudoxia has lived with me for the past two years. I brought her over with me from America. She has been suffering with consumption all this while, and I do not 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 to herself when she is laid to rest at last. She was the wife of my dearest friend, perhaps my only friend outside the Cause. Va.s.sili had a great intellect, but his character was weak in some respects. He was full of n.o.ble ambitions; he had one of the most powerful minds I have known, a quite extraordinary faculty for grasping abstract ideas. I was first drawn towards him by hearing him argue at a students' meeting. He was maintaining a fatalistic paradox: the total uselessness of effort, and the vanity of all our distinctions between good and bad. All our acts, he argued, are the outcome of circ.u.mstances 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 morally on the same footing--both seek their own satisfaction, aiming at that goal by different paths; both by so doing obey a blind impulse. I joined in the argument, opposing him, and we kept the ball going till 4 A.M. He walked with me to my lodgings and slept on a rug on the floor, and we became fast friends. But though his mind was strong, he was swayed by sensual pa.s.sions. He married young, burdening himself with the responsibility of a woman and family, and went the way of all who do so. He would have lost himself entirely in the meshes of a merely animal life; he seemed even to contemplate with satisfaction the prospect of begetting children! But I could not stand by and witness the moral degradation of my poor friend. I kept him intellectually alive, and when once stimulated to mental activity, no one was ever more logical, more uncompromising than he. Soon after my imprisonment he got implicated in a conspiracy and had to flee to America. When I arrived there after my escape I found him in the most abject condition. His wife, Eudoxia, was ill with the germs of the disease which is now killing her, and was constantly railing at him as the cause of their misfortune, urging him to make a full confession and throw himself 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 its death.

Va.s.sili would never have done anything base, but he had not sufficient strength of character to rise superior to circ.u.mstances. Another weak trait in him was his keen sensibility to beauty. It was not so much the discomfort as the ugliness of poverty which irked him. I have always noted the deteriorating effect art has on the character in such respects. He was grieved at his wife's illness, goaded to desperation by her reproaches, sickened by the squalor of his surroundings, and instead of turning his thoughts inwards and drawing renewed strength and resolution from the spectacle of the sufferings caused by our false morality and false society, he gave way completely and took to drink.

When I found him in New York he was indeed a wreck. He and his wife were living in a filthy garret in the Bowery; he had nothing to do, and had retired permanently on to a rotten old pailla.s.se which lay in a corner; his clothes were in p.a.w.n; he could not go out. Eudoxia earned a few cents daily by slaving at the wash-tub, and most of this he spent in getting drunk on vile, cheap spirits. When he saw me arrive he railed at me as the cause of all his woes; blamed me for having dragged him on to actions he should never have done if left to himself; and pointing to his wife and to the squalid room, he exclaimed, 'See the results of struggling for a higher life.' Eudoxia, for her part, hated me, declaring that I was responsible for her husband's ruin, and that, not content with making his life a h.e.l.l on earth, I was consigning his soul to eternal perdition. Then Va.s.sili 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 fine mind; there was no hope now for him; I could only wish that his body might soon too dissolve. I gave him what little help I could, and he soon drank himself to death. I was with him at the last. He seemed overcome by a great 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 by exclaiming that he could not even die in peace, as he did not know what would become of his poor wife, whose strength was already rapidly failing. 'I am leaving her friendless and penniless. I dragged her away from a comfortable home, promising her happiness. She has had to sacrifice her only child to my safety, and now, prematurely old, soured by misfortune and illness, I am abandoning her to fight for herself. She is my victim and yours, the victim of our ideas; it is your duty to look after her.' I promised 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 the distance we were covering, and now I noticed that we were already skirting Hyde 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 we were going to Hammersmith, and there is still quite a long walk ahead of us," I suggested after a few minutes.

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

"Oh, it was not for me," I hastened to rejoin, "I am not in the least tired; I only thought it would be quicker, but after all we must now be near," and I brisked up my pace, though I felt, I confess, more than a little f.a.gged.

Again we trudged on, absorbed in our thoughts. At last, to break the silence 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 of the Jewish Comrades. I fear he is developing a failing common to many of you English Anarchists; he is becoming something of a crank. He talked to me a lot about vegetarianism and such matters. It would be a thousand pities were he to lose himself on such a track, for he has both intellect and character. He is unswerving where principle is at stake; let's trust he will not lose sight of large aims to strive at minor details."

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

After a quarter of an hour Kosinski exclaimed: "Here we are. You must not be taken aback, Isabel, if you get but scant thanks for your kindness. Eudoxia is not well disposed towards our ideas; she looks upon her life with 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 point of view."

Without further ado we proceeded along the pa.s.sage and up the mean wooden staircase of a third-rate suburban house, pushing past a litter of nondescript infancy, till we stopped before a back room on the top floor. As Kosinski turned the door handle a woman stepped forward with her finger to 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 my husband; he'll be in soon now."

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

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

The room was of a fair size for the style of dwelling and was divided in two by a long paper screen. The first half was evidently Kosinski's, and as far as I could see by the dim light, was one litter of papers, with a mattress on the floor in a corner. We walked past the screen; and the guttering candle, stuck in an old ginger-beer bottle, allowed me to see a bed in which lay the dying woman. There was also a table on which stood some medicine bottles, a jug of milk, and a gla.s.s; an armchair of frowsy aspect, and two cane chairs. The unwashed boards were bare, the room unattractive to a degree, still an awkward attempt at order was noticeable. I stepped over to the bed and gazed on its occupant. Eudoxia was a thin gaunt woman of some thirty-five years of age. Her cl.u.s.tering golden hair streaked with grey; small, plaintive mouth, and clear skin showed that she might have been pretty; but the drawn features and closed eyelids bore the stamp of unutterable weariness, and a querulous expression hovered round her mouth. The rigid folds of the scanty bedclothes told of her woeful thinness, and the frail transparent hands grasped convulsively at the coverlet. As I gazed at her, tears welled into my eyes. She looked so small, so transient, yet bore the traces of such mental and physical anguish. After a moment or two she slowly opened her eyes, gazed vacantly at me without apparently realising my presence, and in a feeble, plaintive voice made some remark in Russian.

Kosinski was at her side immediately and answered her in soothing tones, evidently pointing out my presence. The woman fixed on me her large eyes, luminous with fever. I stepped nearer. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I inquired in French. "No one can do anything for me except G.o.d and the blessed Virgin," she replied peevishly, "and they are punishing me for my sins. Yes, for my sins," she went on, raising her voice and speaking in a rambling delirious way, "because I have consorted with infidels and blasphemers. Va.s.sili was good to me; we were happy with our little Ivan, till that devil came along. He ruined Va.s.sili, body and soul; he killed our child; he has lost me. I have sold myself to the devil, for have I not lived 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 has no heart, no religion; he cares for nothing, for n.o.body, except his cruel principles. You love him, I see you do; it is in your every movement, but beware; he will trample on your heart, he will sacrifice you, throw you aside as worthless, as he did with Va.s.sili, who looked upon him as his dearest friend. Beware!"

and she sank back exhausted on the pillows, her eyes turned up under her eyelids, a slight froth tinged with blood trickling down the corners of her mouth.

I was transfixed with horror; I knew not what to say, what to do. I put my hand soothingly on her poor fevered brow, and held a little water to her lips. Then my eyes sought Kosinski. He was standing in the shadow, a look of intense pain in his eyes and on his brow, and I knew what he must be suffering at that moment. I walked up to him and grasped his hand in silent sympathy; he returned the pressure, and for a moment I felt almost happy in sharing his sorrow. We stood watching in silence; at regular intervals the church chimes told us that the hours were pa.s.sing and the long night gradually drawing to its close. Half-past three, a quarter to four, four; still the heavy rattling breath told us that the struggle between life and death had not yet ceased. At last the dying woman heaved a deep sigh, she opened her wide, staring eyes and raised her hand as if to summon some one. Kosinski stepped forward, but she waved him off and looked at me. "I have not a friend in the world,"

she gasped; "you shall be my friend. Hold my hand and pray for me." I knelt by her side and did as I was bid. Never had I prayed since I could remember, but at that supreme moment a Latin prayer learned in my infancy at my mother's knee came back to me; Kosinski turned his face to the wall and stood with bowed shoulders. As the words fell from my lips the dying woman clutched my hand convulsively and murmured some words in Russian. Then her grasp loosened. I raised my eyes to her face, and saw that all was over. My strained nerves gave way, and I sobbed convulsively. Kosinski was at my side.

"Poor thing, poor thing!" I heard him murmur. He laid his hand caressingly on my shoulder. The candle was flaring itself out, and everything a.s.sumed 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 over to the window. How cold and unsympathetic everything looked! I felt chilly, 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 staring fixedly before her. Kosinski had sunk into a chair, his head between his hands. I looked at him in silence and bit my lip. An unaccustomed feeling of revolt was springing up in me. I could not and did not attempt to a.n.a.lyse my feelings, only I felt a blind unreasoning anger with existence. How stupid, how objectless it all seemed! The church clock rung out the hour, five o'clock. Kosinski rose, he walked to the bedside, and closed poor Eudoxia's staring eyes, and drew the sheet over her face. Then he came over to me.

"I shall never forget your kindness, Isabel. There is yet one thing I will ask of you; I know that Eudoxia wanted a ma.s.s to be said for her and Va.s.sili; will you see about carrying out this wish of hers? I cannot give you 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; at last he said, "I am leaving London, Isabel, I can do nothing here, and I have received letters from comrades in Austria telling me that there things 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?" A pained look came into his eyes. He seemed to shrink from personalities.

"No," I continued rapidly, "I will, I must speak. Why should we ruin our lives? To what idol of our own creation are we sacrificing our happiness? We Anarchists are always talking of the rights of the individual, why are you deliberately sacrificing your personal happiness, and mine? The dead woman was right; I love you, and I know that you love me. Our future shall not 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, and even before I had finished speaking, I knew what his answer would be.

"An Anarchist's life is not his own. Friendship, comradeship may be helpful, but family ties are fatal; you have seen what they did for my poor 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. I thought of you as a comrade, and loved you as such."

I had quite regained my self-possession. "Enough," I said, interrupting him. "I do not regret my words; they have made everything clear to me.

You are of the invincibles, Kosinski; you are strong with the strength of the fanatic; and I think you will be happy too. You will never turn to contemplate regretfully the ashes of your existence and say as did your friend, 'See the result of struggling for a higher life!' You do not, you cannot see that you are a slave to your conception of freedom, more prejudiced in your lack of prejudice than the veriest bourgeois; that is your 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 of the sheet covering the dead woman; slowly I turned the handle and walked down 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 profoundly depressed. The weather had turned quite chilly and a fine drizzling rain began to fall, promising one of those dull, wet days of which we experience so many in the English spring. The streets were deserted but for the milkmen going their rounds, and the tired-looking policemen waiting to be relieved on their beats. I felt that feeling of physical exhaustion which one experiences after being up all night, when one has not had the opportunity for a wash and change of clothes. I was not sleepy, but my eyes were hot and dry under their heavy eyelids, my bones ached, my muscles felt stiff; I had the uncomfortable consciousness that my hair was disordered and whispy, my hat awry, my skin shiny; and this sub-consciousness of physical unattractiveness heightened the sense of moral degradation.

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