The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
under all their bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now,
in the hour of peril, make Syme think so again?
“Comrades,” began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, “it is not
necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy
also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has
been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered.
Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and
anywhere to get their information, except to us, except to the fountain
head. They learn about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn
about anarchists from tradesmen’s newspapers; they learn about
anarchists from _Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday_ and the _Sporting Times_.
They never learn about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of
denying the mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from
one end of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are
walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not hear
it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is deep,
deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to assemble, as
the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by some incredible
accident, there were here tonight a man who all his life had thus
immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question to him: ‘When
those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of moral reputation
had they in the streets above? What tales were told of their atrocities
by one educated Roman to another? Suppose’ (I would say to him),
‘suppose that we are only repeating that still mysterious paradox of
history. Suppose we seem as shocking as the Christians because we are
really as harmless as the Christians. Suppose we seem as mad as the
Christians because we are really as meek.”’
The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually
growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the
abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky
voice—
“I’m not meek!”
“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek.
Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant;
his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste)
unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as
mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at
the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the
true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as
they revere simple—look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they
were modest—look at me. We are merciful—”
“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket.
“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early
Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused
of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—”
“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?”
“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is
anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any
rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—”
“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.”
“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth,
“there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a
body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of
that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as
assassins and enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral
courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of
brotherhood and simplicity.”
Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The
silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an
automaton, and said in a colourless voice—
“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?”
The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and Comrade
Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick
beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have
been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put
it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small and quiet voice—
“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.”
The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the
voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these
first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he
made his next word ring and volley in the vault as if one of the guns
had gone off.
“Comrades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of his
boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live underground like rats in
order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to
while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with
weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone should come and hear
Comrade Gregory saying to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’
‘Honesty is the best policy,’ and ‘Virtue is its own reward’? There was
not a word in Comrade Gregory’s address to which a curate could not
have listened with pleasure (hear, hear). But I am not a curate (loud
cheers), and I did not listen to it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The
man who is fitted to make a good curate is not fitted to make a
resolute, forcible, and efficient Thursday (hear, hear).
“Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we
are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of
society, and so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of
society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most
pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory has told us
(apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There I agree. We are
not murderers, we are executioners (cheers).”
Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face
idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay parted,
and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness—
“You damnable hypocrite!”
Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale blue
ones, and said with dignity—
“Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do that
I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do not
mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit
to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be
Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme
Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is
no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is it a time for ceremonial
modesty. I set myself against Comrade Gregory as I would set myself
against all the Governments of Europe, because the anarchist who has
given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as he has
forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed
cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as
calmly as I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that
rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his
milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself for
election—”
His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The
faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his tirade
grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with grins of
anticipation or cloven with delighted cries. At the moment when he
announced himself as ready to stand for the post of Thursday, a roar of
excitement and assent broke forth, and became uncontrollable, and at
the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam upon his mouth,
and shouted against the shouting.
“Stop, you blasted madmen!” he cried, at the top of a voice that tore
his throat. “Stop, you—”
But louder than Gregory’s shouting and louder than the roar of the room
came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless thunder—
“I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us
murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the priest
who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says
these men are the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says
these men are the enemies of order and public decency, to all these I
will reply, ‘You are false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come
to destroy you, and to fulfil your prophecies.’”
The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased
Witherspoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and
had said—
“I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the post.”
“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and
hands. “Stop it, it is all—”
The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent.
“Does anyone second this amendment?” he said. A tall, tired man, with
melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on the back
bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been screaming for
some time past; now there was a change in his accent, more shocking
than any scream. “I end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as
stone. “This man cannot be elected. He is a—”
“Yes,” said Syme, quite motionless, “what is he?” Gregory’s mouth
worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl back
into his dead face.
“He is a man quite inexperienced in our work,” he said, and sat down
abruptly.
Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was
again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone—
“I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme.”
“The amendment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. Buttons, the
chairman, with mechanical rapidity.
“The question is that Comrade Syme—”
Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate.
“Comrades,” he cried out, “I am not a madman.”
“Oh, oh!” said Mr. Witherspoon.
“I am not a madman,” reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity
which for a moment staggered the room, “but I give you a counsel which
you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I
can give you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad
command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do
not elect this man.” Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a
moment Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you
could not have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began—
“Comrade Gregory commands—”
Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory—
“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and another anarchist added in a
heavier voice, “And you are not Thursday.”
“Comrades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in an
ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, “it is nothing to me whether
you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take
my command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at
your feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man.”
“Comrade Gregory,” said the chairman after a painful pause, “this is
really not quite dignified.”
For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a
real silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a
man, and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly
started again—
“The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday
on the General Council.”
The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three
minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was
elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the
Anarchists of Europe.
Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the
sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the