Section 4

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is used up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away. I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view ; from the point of view you pre- tend to have been serving for the last eleven years. I will try not to talk above your head. The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted. Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be no mistake ? That's the question. By directing your blows at something outside the ordinary passions of humanity is the answer. Of course, there is art A bomb in the National Gallery would make some noise. But it would not be serious enough. Art has
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never been their fetish. It's like breaking a few back windows in a man's house ; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try at least to raise the roof. There would be some screaming of course, but from whom ? Artists art critics and such like people of no account Nobody minds what they say. But there is learning science. Any imbecile that has got an income believes in that. He does not know why, but he believes it matters some- how. It is the sacrosanct fetish. All the damned professors are radicals at heart. Let them know -that their great panjandrum has got to go too, to make room for the Future of the Proletariat. A howl from all these intel- lectual idiots is bound to help forward the labours of the Milan Conference. They will be writing to the papers. Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfishness of the class which should be im- pressed. They believe that in some mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity. They do. And the absurd ferocity of such a demonstration will affect them more profoundly than the mangling of a whole street or theatre full of their own kind. To that last they can always say : ' Oh ! it's mere
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class hate.' But what is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incom- prehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable ; in fact, mad ? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a civilised man. I would never dream of direct- ing you to organise a mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it. But I wouldn't expect from a butchery the result I want. Murder is always with us. It is almost an institution. The demonstration must be against learning science. But not every science will do. The attack must have all the shocking sense- lessness of gratuitous blasphemy. Since bombs are your means of expression, it would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure mathematics. But that is impossible. I have been trying to educate you ; I have expounded to you the higher philosophy of your usefulness, and suggested to you some serviceable argu- ments. The practical application of my teach- ing interests yoti mostly. But from the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have also given some attention to the practical aspect of the question. What do you think of having a go at astronomy ? "
For sometime already Mr Verloc's immobility
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by the side of the arm-chair resembled a state of collapsed coma a sort of passive insensibility interrupted by slight convulsive starts, such as may be observed in the domestic dog having a nightmare on the hearthrug. And it was in an uneasy doglike growl that he repeated the word:
" Astronomy."
He had not recovered thoroughly as yet from that state of bewilderment brought about by the effort to follow Mr Vladimir's rapid incisive utterance. It had overcome his power of assimilation. It had made him angry. This anger was complicated by incredulity. And suddenly it dawned upon him that all this was an elaborate joke. Mr Vladimir exhibited his white teeth in a smile, with dimples on his round, full face posed with a complacent inclina- tion above the bristling bow of his neck-tie. The favourite of intelligent society women had assumed his drawing-room attitude accompany- ing the delivery of delicate witticisms. Sitting well forward, his white hand upraised, he seemed to hold delicately between his thumb and forefinger the subtlety of his suggestion,
"There could be nothing better. Such an outrage combines the greatest possible regard for humanity with the most alarming display of
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ferocious imbecility. I defy the ingenuity of journalists to persuade their public that any given member of the proletariat can have a personal grievance against astronomy. Star- vation itself could hardly be dragged in there eh ? And there are other advantages. The whole civilised world has heard of Greenwich. The very boot-blacks in the basement of Charing Cross Station know something of it. See?"
The features of Mr Vladimir, so well known in the best society by their humorous urbanity, beamed with cynical self-satisfaction, which would have astonished the intelligent women his wit entertained so exquisitely. "Yes," he continued, with a contemptuous smile, "the blowing up of the first meridian is bound to raise a howl of execration."
"A difficult business," Mr Verloc mumbled, feeling that this was the only safe thing to say.
" What is the matter ? Haven't you the whole gang under your hand ? The very pick of the basket ? That old terrorist Yundt is here. I see him walking about Piccadilly in his green havelock almost every day. And Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle you don't mean to say you don't know where he is ? Because if you don't, I can tell you," Mr Vladimir went on
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menacingly. " If you imagine that you are the only one on the secret fund list, you are mistaken. 11
This perfectly gratuitous suggestion caused Mr Verloc to shuffle his feet slightly.
" And the whole Lausanne lot eh ? Haven't they been flocking over here at the first hint of the Milan Conference ? This is an absurd country."
" It will cost money," Mr Verloc said, by a sort of instinct.
" That cock won't fight," Mr Vladimir re- torted, with an amazingly genuine English accent " You'll get your screw every month, and no more till something happens. And if nothing happens very soon you won't get even that What's your ostensible occupation ? What are you supposed to live by ? "
" I keep a shop," answered Mr Verloc.
" A shop ! What sort of shop ? "
"Stationery, newspapers. My wife "
11 Your what?" interrupted Mr Vladimir in his guttural Central Asian tones.
" My wife." Mr Verloc raised his husky voice slightly. " I am married."
" That be damned for a yarn," exclaimed the other in unfeigned astonishment. " Married ! And you a professed anarchist, too ! What is
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this confounded nonsense ? But I suppose it's merely a manner of speaking. Anarchists don't marry. It's well known. They can't. It would be apostasy."
" My wife isn't one," Mr Verloc mumbled sulkily. " Moreover, it's no concern of yours."
"Oh yes, it is," snapped Mr Vladimir. "I am beginning to be convinced that you are not at all the man for the work you've been em- ployed on. Why, you must have discredited yourself completely in your own world by your marriage. Couldn't you have managed with- out ? This is your virtuous attachment eh ? What with one sort of attachment and another you are doing away with your usefulness."
Mr Verloc, puffing out his cheeks, let the air escape violently, and that was all. He had armed himself with patience. It was not to be tried much longer. The First Secretary be- came suddenly very curt, detached, final.
" You may go now," he said. " A dynamite outrage must be provoked. I give you a month. The sittings of the Conference are suspended. Before it reassembles again some- thing must have happened here, or your con- nection with us ceases."
He changed the note once more with an unprincipled versatility. P
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" Think over my philosophy, Mr Mr Ver- loc," he said, with a sort of chaffing condescen- sion, waving his hand towards the door. " Go for the first meridian. You don't know the middle classes as well as I do. Their sensi- bilities are jaded The first meridian. No- thing better, and nothing easier, I should think."
He had got up, and with his thin sensitive lips twitching humorously, watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc backing out of the room heavily, hat and stick in hand. The door closed.
The footnian in trousers, appearing suddenly in the corridor, let Mr Verloc another way out and through a small door in the corner of the courtyard. The porter standing at the gate ignored his exit completely ; and Mr Verloc re- traced the path of his morning's pilgrimage as if in a dream an angry dream. This detachment from the material world was so complete that, though the mortal envelope of Mr Verloc had not hastened unduly along the streets, that part of him to which it would be unwarrantably rude to refuse immortality, found itself at the shop door all at once, as if borne from west to east on the wings of a great wind. He walked straight behind the counter, and sat down on a wooden chair that stood there. No one ap-
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peared to disturb his solitude. Stevie, put into a green baize apron, was now sweeping and dusting upstairs, intent and conscientious, as though he were playing at it; and Mrs Ver- loc, warned in the kitchen by the clatter of the cracked bell, had merely come to the glazed door of the parlour, and putting the curtain aside a little, had peered into the dim shop. Seeing her husband sitting there shadowy and bulky, with his hat tilted far back on his head, she had at once returned to her stove. An hour or more later she took the green baize apron off her brother Stevie, and instructed him to wash his hands and face in the peremptory tone she had used in that connection for fifteen years or so ever since she had, in fact, ceased to attend to the boy's hands and face herself. She spared presently a glance away from her dishing-up for the inspection of that face and those hands which Stevie, approaching the kitchen table, offered for her approval with an air of self-as- surance hiding a perpetual residue of anxiety. Formerly the anger of the father was the supremely effective sanction of these rites, but Mr Verloc's placidity in domestic life would have made all mention of anger incredible even to poor Stevie's nervousness. The theory was that Mr Verloc would have been inexpres-
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sibly pained and shocked by any deficiency of cleanliness at meal times. Winnie after the death of her father found considerable consola- tion in the feeling that she need no longer tremble for poor Stevie. She could not bear to see the boy hurt. It maddened her. As a little girl she had often faced with blazing eyes the irascible licensed victualler in defence of her brother. Nothing now in Mrs Verloc's appearance could lead one to suppose that she was capable of a passionate demonstration.
She finished her dishing-up. The table was laid in the parlour. Going to the foot of the stairs, she screamed out " Mother ! " Then opening the glazed door leading to the shop, she said quietly " Adolf ! " Mr Verloc had not changed his position ; he had not apparently stirred a limb for an hour and a half. He got up heavily, and came to his dinner in his over- coat and with his hat on, without uttering a word. His silence in itself had nothing start- lingly unusual in this household, hidden in the shades of the sordid street seldom touched by the sun, behind the dim shop with its wares of disreputable rubbish. Only that day Mr Verloc's taciturnity was so obviously thoughtful that the two women were impressed by it. They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful
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eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits of loquacity- He faced Mr Verloc across the table, and remained very good and quiet, staring vacantly, The endeavour to keep him from making himself objectionable in any way to the master of the house put no inconsiderable anxiety into these two women's lives. " That boy," as they alluded to him softly between themselves, had been a source of that sort of anxiety almost from the very day of his birth. The late licensed victualler's humilia- tion at having such a very peculiar boy for a son manifested itself by a propensity to brutal treatment; for he was a person of fine sen- sibilities, and his sufferings as a man and a father were perfectly genuine. Afterwards Stevie had to be kept from making himself a nuisance to the single gentlemen lodgers, who are themselves a queer lot, and are easily aggrieved. And there was always the anxiety of his mere existence to face. Visions of a workhouse infirmary for her child had haunted the old woman in the basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house. " If you had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to her daughter, " I don't know what would have become of that poor boy." Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to
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Stevie as a man not particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat ; and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same quality. Both women admitted to themselves that not much more could be reasonably expected. It was enough to earn for Mr Verloc the old woman's re- verential gratitude. In the early days, made sceptical by the trials of friendless life, she used sometimes to ask anxiously : " You don't think, my dear, that Mr Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about ? " To this Winnie replied habitually by a slight toss of her head. Once, however, she retorted, with a rather grim pertness : " He'll have to get tired of me first/ 1 A long silence ensued. The mother, with her feet propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap. She had never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc. It was very sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but her girl might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age. There had been a steady young fellow, only son of a butcher in the next street, helping his father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking out with obvious gusto. He was
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dependent on his father, it is true ; but the business was good, and his prospects excellent He took her girl to the theatre on several evenings. Then just as she began to dread to hear of their engagement (for what could she have done with that big house alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance came to an abrupt end, and Winnie went about looking very dull. But Mr Verloc, turning up provi- dentially to occupy the first-floor front bed- room, there had been no more question of the young butcher. It was clearly providential
Ill
". . A LL idealisation makes life poorer. -** To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalism for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies ? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy."
Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, was speaking in an even voice, a voice that wheezed as if deadened and oppressed by the layer of fat on his chest. He had come out of a highly
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hygienic prison round like a tub, with an enor- mous stomach and distended cheeks of a pale, semi-transparent complexion, as though for fifteen years the servants of an outraged society had made a point of stuffing him with fattening foods in a damp and lightless cellar. And ever since he had never managed to get his weight down as much as an ounce.