A Girl Among the Anarchists | Page 8

small hours of the morning were rapidly slipping by as I turned at last into bed to dream of Anarchist meetings, melting into a confused jumble with the rights of cats and the claims of the proletariat.
CHAPTER II
A GATHERING IN CHISWICK
As my first actual acquaintance with Anarchists was effected in Nekrovitch's house, it will not be out of place for me to give a slight sketch of the gatherings held there and of my host himself.
An interminably dreary journey by tram and rail, omnibus and foot, the latter end of which lay along a monotonous suburban road, brought you to the humble dwelling of the famous Nihilist. Here from time to time on Sunday evenings it was my wont to put in an appearance towards ten or eleven, for the journey was deceptively long from Fitzroy Square, and Nekrovitch, like most Russians, was himself of so unpunctual and irregular a nature, that he seemed to foster the like habits in all his friends. The nominal hour for these social gatherings to commence was eight, but not till past nine did the guests begin to assemble, and till midnight and later they would come dribbling in. Only one conscientiously punctual German was ever known to arrive at the appointed hour, but the only reward of the Teuton's mistaken zeal was to wait for hours in solitary state in an unwarmed, unlighted room till his host and fellow-guests saw fit to assemble.
The meeting-room, or parlour, or drawing-room in Nekrovitch's house was by no means a palatial apartment. Small and even stuffy to the notions of a hygienic Englishman, and very bare, scanty in furniture, and yet poorer in decoration, this room bore evidence to its owners' contempt for such impedimenta, and their entire freedom from slavery to household gods. It was evidently the home of people used to pitching their tent often, and to whom a feeling of settled security was unknown. But its occupants usually made up for any deficiencies in their surroundings.
The company was always of a very mixed cosmopolitan character--Russian Nihilists and exiles, English Liberals who sympathised with the Russian constitutional movement, Socialists and Fabians, Anarchists of all nationalities, journalists and literary men whose political views were immaterial, the pseudo-Bohemian who professes interest in the "queer side of life," all manner of faddists, rising and impecunious musicians and artists--all were made welcome, and all were irresistibly attracted towards the great Russian Nihilist.
The most notable figure in this assembly, and he certainly would have been in most assemblies, was Nekrovitch himself. Nekrovitch was essentially a great man; one of those men whom to know was to admire and to love; a man of strong intellect, and of the strong personal magnetism which is so frequently an adjunct of genius. Physically he was a huge powerful man, so massive and striking in appearance that he suggested comparison rather with some fact of nature--a rock, a vigorous forest tree --than with another man. He was one of those rare men who, like mountains in a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their environments, whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He stood out from among his guests the centre of conversation, of feeling, and of interest. He was almost invariably engaged in eager conversation, pitched in a loud tone of voice, broken at intervals when he listened to the other disputants, while puffing the cigarettes which he was constantly rolling, and looking intently out of his deep-set penetrating eyes.
Nekrovitch's wife, a Russian like himself, had been a student of medicine at the Russian University until, along with her husband, she had been compelled to take flight from the attentions of the Russian police. She was a curly-headed brunette, with bright hazel eyes and a vivacious manner; a very intelligent and highly "simpatica" woman, as the Italians would put it.
Round Nekrovitch there always clustered an eager crowd of admirers and intimates, discussing, disputing, listening, arguing. They were mostly foreigners, of the shaggy though not unwashed persuasion, but two English faces especially attracted notice. One belonged to a young woman, still on the right side of thirty, dressed without exaggeration in the aesthetic style, with a small but singularly intellectual head and an argumentative manner, whom I knew as Miss Cooper. The other was a man of some thirty-seven years, with auburn hair, which displayed a distinct tendency to develop into a flowing mane; tall, slim, and lithe of limb, with a splendid set of teeth, which showed under his bushy moustache whenever his frank, benevolent smile parted his lips. He was somewhat taciturn, but evidently tenacious; a glance at his spacious forehead and finely-shaped head revealed a man of mind, and the friendly, fearless glance of his eyes betokened a lovable nature, though, as he listened to his opponents or answered