"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 passed, 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."
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 allow myself to be disconcerted on its account. I had no desire or ambition to be 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 a strange phase through which the Russian youth passed not many years since, the "V. Narod" ("To the People!") movement, when young men and girls by the thousands, some belonging to the highest classes in society, fled from their families, tore themselves free from all domestic and conventional yokes, 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 by settling in the people's midst, living their life, taking part in their work. I was passing through a similar phase of mental evolution.
I felt a strong desire to free myself from all the ideas, customs, and prejudices which usually influence my class, to throw myself into the life and the work of the masses. Thus it was that I worked hard to learn how to compose and print, that I might be of use to the Cause in the most practical manner of all—the actual production of its literature. Thus it was also that I resolutely hardened myself against any instinctive sentiments of repulsion which the unclean and squalid surroundings of the people might raise in me. I remember reading an article by Tolstoi which appeared in the English press, dealing with the conditions of the Russian moujik, in which he clearly and uncompromisingly stated that in order to tackle the social problem, it is necessary to tackle dirt and vermin with it. If you desire to reach your moujik you must reach him à travers his dirt and his parasites: if you are disinclined to face 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 had taken many steps farther, I heard him suddenly turn round, and in an instant he had come up with me again.
"By the way, Isabel," he exclaimed, "I was quite forgetting to mention something I had done, to which I trust you will not object. You know how full up my place is just now with hard-up comrades. Well I took the liberty to send on to you a young Scotchman, I forget his name, who has just tramped up from the North; a most interesting fellow, rather taciturn, but with doubtless a good deal in him. He had nowhere to pass the night, poor chap, and no money, so I told him that if he waited on your doorstep some time after midnight you would be certain to give him a night's lodgings when you returned. Did I do right?" and the doctor's kindly 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 bourgeois prejudice.
And, sure enough, on reaching my domicile, I found installed on the doorstep a most uncouth and villainous-looking tramp. Taciturn he certainly was, for he scarcely opened his mouth to say "Good-evening," and indeed during the three days of his residence with me he hardly ever articulated a sound. As I was getting out my latch-key the local policeman chanced 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 my unknown comrade to enter. I can still see in my mind's eye that constable's face. It looked unutterable things.
After conducting the tramp to the pantry, and letting him loose on a cold pigeon-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.