The Visionists/Chapter 1
I
FOR several moments nobody spoke. The five sat about the table staring at the dice upon the green baize cover. Nomé had thrown double-six; the number was not only decisive as to its choice of her, but in its definite extreme it seemed to affirm that no one else could possibly have been selected by Destiny. She gazed at the little cubes with wide eyes, her lips apart, and her hand laid upon her breast to still the beating of her heart. It was like a sentence of death—as if she were suddenly picked off and left alone, while the universe receded from her. But she did not blench.
Irma Strieb watched her jealously from beneath heavy auburn brows, biting her lip to conceal its sullen droop. Little Ospovat had turned clay-white about the mouth and stared glassily, as if he were about to faint. O'Brien, the Fenian, folded his arms and waited, but the beads of sweat upon his temples showed how sensitive he was to the tensity of the situation. Old Mangus, at the head of the table, pulled at his shaggy, unkempt beard, sucked at his pipe, and stared at Nomé. The dirty red fez on his head nodded slowly.
The light from the single window toward the west, casting each face into shadow, emphasized the characteristics of the group. O'Brien looked more like a bull than ever, Mangus more like a bear. Ospovat's mingled strength and weakness, affection and determination, his timidity ever lashed by his will, his effeminacy and his courage—all were plainly modeled upon his features. Irma Strieb's harsh, mannish countenance was hardened by envy in that revelation. Nomé alone, sitting with her back to the light, shone in suffused color, with a radiant charm that penetrated the half-light and made itself felt, though shrouded from distinct vision. Behind the table the room was already dusky, and showed only a vague disorder—the cheap couch, the lithographs on the walls, and a few scattered papers on the floor making spots of color against the dingy background of gray wall-paper and dull, ragged carpet. A little wooden Swiss clock upon the mantel ticked busily on.
Mangus was the first to break the silence. He shook his gray head and growled through his beard: "I'm sorry-it had to be a woman. This is a man's work!"
The color flashed into Nomé's cheek as she turned to him with new spirit. He put a hand on her arm, adding, "It's all right, Nomé; of course we can trust you, only—" Breaking off, he went to the sideboard, filled a glass with brandy, and brought it to her. Irma was still sullenly staring, and O'Brien's great mouth had fallen open like a slavering dog's. Little Ospovat's muscles were twitching.
Nomé put the glass away from her with a gesture of disdain. "Do you think—do you dare to think that I'm less able than a man to do the work?" she demanded proudly.
"Drink this!" Mangus commanded. "We'll talk afterward!"
"Give it to Ospovat—he needs it more than I do!" was her scornful reply.
The little Jew sprang to his feet. "Oh, Nomé, Nomé, I can't bear it! If it had only been I!" Then he sank into his chair again and dropped his head on his arms.
Nomé's eyes softened.
"One would think we had met to form a literary club!" Irma Strieb sneered. "What did you expect, Ospovat—to do what we have to do with cologne water? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs! What are you whining at?"
"It's a serious business, just the same," O'Brien broke in. "It'll take a bit of doing, I'm thinking. You all know me, but I don't mind saying it makes me feel solemn."
"It's horrible!" cried Ospovat. "I wouldn't mind if I only had it to do myself, but to stand and look on"
"There'll be enough to do for us all," Mangus growled. "We've only just begun. There'll be danger enough to go round, I promise you! We haven't enlisted for this thing alone, have we? It's the first stroke that tells, though, and it must be given hard and clean. I'm glad the day has come at last when we can stop talking and do things!" He took a packet of papers from his pocket and began to arrange them upon the table. Then he looked up. "You'd better all go, now," he added. "I've got something to say to Nomé."
The three arose awkwardly to take their leave, all self-conscious and embarrassed, their eyes fastened with a new curiosity upon the tall, dark, beautiful girl who had been their comrade for so long, now to go to instant peril, perhaps her death, alone.
The burly, sentimental Irishman went to her and wrung her hand in a strong grip, his eyes filling as he looked into hers. "Good-bye, Nomé, my girl," he said, choking. "I wish to God it had been me, but there's plenty left for us to do, as Mangus says. I've always been proud of you, Nomé—you'll do us credit, I'm sure. Come back to us safe—if you can!" He ran his big hand through his red hair and gazed at the wall, stupidly. Then, with a cough, he turned, went out the door, and stumbled down one flight of stairs, there to wait for Irma.
Irma Strieb's farewell was without sentiment. Her cold, gray-blue eyes did not moisten as she looked at Nomé for what would be, in all probability, the last time. The two women had always been at variance, and even physically they presented a contrast that Irma had always resented. Irma Strieb was a German of the most uncompromising plainness, unaccented by color or delicacy of feature. Her lack of comeliness was made up for, in a way, by an almost masculine strength, shown in her firm, heavy, wilful jaw, her yellow teeth and bushy yellow hair. The lines of her figure were all flattened where Nomé's were curved in full development, and her angular joints were ill disguised by a stiff, plain and unbecoming costume.
"You won, as usual, Nomé," she said. "Of course you'll become our heroine. Someone has got to get the glory, I suppose. But so long as the Cause needs to have drudgery done, I'll be here to do it. It doesn't matter. We must have a few good wheel-horses, even if they can't address meetings and electrify audiences."
"You have already done far more than I can ever do; you have been in the Movement since I was a child," said Nomé, steadily facing Irma's look. "Chance has given me this to do, and I shall do it as well as I can, but I wish I had done half as much as you have done, through all those first dark days, when you were almost alone!"
"Well, good-bye, then," said Irma coldly. "Come, Ospovat, let's go now!" She cast a contemptuous look at the little Russian. Then, as he shook his head sadly, she left the room deliberately, to meet O'Brien on the floor below.
Little Ospovat crept to Nomé's side like a hound and kissed her hand repeatedly, almost prostrated by his emotion and the intensity of his Slavonic temperament. Nomé put her hand on his curly head, then raised him, to kiss him upon the cheek. He was trembling violently, far more distraught than she. He left her without a word, his eyes on her to the last. The door closed softly behind him.
There was a hush in the cold, drearily furnished room, and the twilight had fallen, filling the place with shadows. Mangus still sat at the table, intent upon his papers. Nomé walked to the window to watch the orange light of the western sky flooding the jumble of London roofs and chimney-pots. She was calm now, but before Mangus spoke she must be calmer still. For the credit of her sex, for her own justification, she must not only carry this thing through successfully, but brilliantly, gallantly, as a man would do it.
She had been for several years in sympathy with the Movement, but had joined this most radical branch only a few months previously. Since entering the Circle she had carried all before her—all, that is, but Mangus, the brains and will of the conspiracy. Little Ospovat had been won at a glance, and O'Brien almost as easily; most of the others had been fascinated by the beautiful, spirited American girl who had so enlivened their meetings with a new charm and a new romance. Her enthusiasm had been picturesque and piquant. She had given her mind, her energy as well as her fortune to the Cause, but Mangus was too wise to trust anyone without a trial. She felt his distrust even when it was not expressed, and his apparent admiration of her beauty was scarcely less distasteful to her than his cynical comments upon her flamboyant emotions.
He looked up from his papers, at last, to see Nomé silhouetted against the dormer window, dark, gracile, ultra-feminine. As he watched her, she was never quite still. Every passing thought was written upon her face; her expression changed continually, urged by her conflicting emotions. Her hands worked convulsively, reflexing sudden moods of thought, her breath came suddenly or stopped as, in the intensity of her feeling, she went over the past and present and future. Woman as she was in intellect, she was but a child in emotional schooling—that was, perhaps, her final charm, the ingenuousness which was so marked as almost to seem like an affectation.
He went up to her and laid a hand upon her shoulder gently. She started, as if she had been summoned from the depths of consciousness, looked at him with a startled expression, then smiled graciously. She seemed younger than usual tonight. This last hour, when the theories of her life were to be unleashed into action, had not as yet touched her nerves.
"I didn't mean to doubt you, Nomé," he began. "We all know how true you are, none better than I, who have watched you from the beginning. You're prepared to die for the Cause, and you'll do your part as well as you can. It's only this that worries me—you're a woman, and I fear you've not yet killed that woman's heart of yours. You must kill that heart, Nomé, before you leave this room tonight. You may think you have given yourself to the Movement, body and soul; you may not have had a thought outside this matter since you first came to us, but you're a woman still—I could tell that by the way you kissed little Ospovat. A woman may often do bigger things than a man, but she often does littler things, too. You've done with the woman's battle of the heart against the brain. You've surrendered all right to a personal life. You belong to the Cause, without a will of your own, without desires or sympathies or emotions apart from the righting of a great wrong. As a nun gives herself to God when she takes the veil, so you gave yourself to Humanity when you took the oath. Your life may be wrecked this night, but the Cause, God bless it, will go on!"
She had kept her eyes on the sanguine glory of the sunset as he spoke, but she turned, now, her face bathed in the reddening light, her eyes on fire.
"Do you need to tell me this?" she cried. "Do you need to bolster up my courage—mine? Don't I know all this as well as you?" she exclaimed almost fiercely.
He met her gaze calmly. "How did you happen to join the Movement?" he inquired.
The color surged to her face, and she put her hand to her heart. "Because—because I became interested in the Cause—because I believed it was right and just and noble—why do you ask me? Why does anyone join, else? Why did you?"
"Have you ever had a love-affair, a serious one?" Mangus put the question as one who has the right to ask, and, in the conflict of wills, he won.
"Yes," she whispered, looking down.
"It was an unhappy affair?"
"Yes," she repeated.
"And for that reason, perhaps, you entered the Movement?"
"Yes," a third time.
Mangus brought his hand down on the table with a shock that startled the girl. "There you are again! It's always the way! Why can't a woman devote herself to a noble, righteous thing, because of its own compelling influence, because of its own human demand, instead of waiting till her heart is broken? I tell you, girl, that when a woman's heart is broken her will is broken, too! Otherwise she'd conquer this fetish worship of the emotions. A woman with a broken heart is never safe. It's well called a broken heart—she is weakened by it, in will and in mind. God! I've seen them—women studying the training for nurses in the hospitals, going in for philanthropy, sociology or religion, or joining the Movement—all on account of cardial fracture! Using the finest and noblest of human endeavors as a mere anesthetic! Isn't our Cause sublime enough to attract one whole heart, one happy life, from pure altruistic motives? How can I trust a woman if there is even one man in the world who can call himself her master?"
"You know I am resolved!" Nomé cried indignantly. "You know how I have burned at the thought of the injustice and the tyranny of all I see about me. You know how I hate the social system that forces this outrageous condition upon us—is not that enough?"
"Ah, that is not calmness, Nomé!" he replied. "You must forget all that now. It is true enough, but it is the talk for the platform, not for the thrower of a double-six. Keep to the scientific view. Our reform is inevitable—we do but make ready the day. This assassination must be differentiated from every sporadic attempt that has ever been made. It must be done with coolness and deliberation to have any effect. It must be one step in a chain of action, as mechanically performed as the stroke of the pen which drives the price of wheat up another point. You are not chosen to wreak poetic vengeance. Yours must not be the act of one burning with the wrongs of humanity, so much as the official act of a political plot, working logically to a positive end."
"I am in your hands," was Nomé's reply. "Have I not given my oath? You are dictator here. Command me!"
"Tell me something about your love-affair first."
Nomé spoke as to a confessor, rapidly and in a low voice. "He was George Camish, an Englishman, who expected before long to come into a title—I don't know what. I met him at home, in New York. I loved him, and thought he loved me. Then we quarreled, and since that I have never heard from him. That's all."
"But you cannot forget?" Mangus questioned coldly.
"No, I cannot forget." Nomé's words were scarcely audible.
"What if you were asked to kill him?"
"I should kill him."
There came a knock at the door. Mangus stalked to it in a rage. Little Ospovat, white-faced and trembling, a ridiculous figure in his large hat and ill-fitting overcoat, was upon the threshold.
"I thought you would be through, and Nomé would be alone," he whimpered. "I wanted to see her once more—for the last time!"
"Get out!" Mangus cried fiercely.
Ospovat retreated, with his bright eyes still searching the gloom.
"There's another of your little tuppenny love-affairs!" said Mangus. "How dares anyone bring his personal feelings into this room at such a time! Yet little Ospovat there, more a woman than you are, is more a man than some of us. I'd be surer of him than of O'Brien. There's stuff in that little Jew, for all his sentiment. I'll use him well, when his time comes!"
"He's a mere child," said Nomé, "but he's pure gold!"
"Gold!" muttered Mangus. "This is no esthetic Movement! What we want is steel, cold steel! Files and saws and knives and hammers are our tools. Phlebotomy, Nomé, phlebotomy is our game. Letting a little blood for the good of the race."
"Let us finish our business," pleaded Nomé, overcome by his taunts. "Whether I am worthy or not, this night will prove. If I still have a heart I have honor as well, and my mind is clear. I have given myself, my life, my soul to this Cause. I can strike, were it my mother who was to be the victim!"
"Listen, then," Mangus said, growing more gentle. "You're young. You've had your longings and your illusions; this is your chance for eternal peace. I envy you that. Let me give you what I can of my own strength, for you'll need all of your own, and more. One last word, then, before the final instructions.
"Our business tonight is to shock the whole world—to bring the land to its senses, if it has any—to compel men to gaze at a great evil, that it may, in time, be righted. By means of what men call a crime we shall force the recognition and discussion of what is, in the eyes of God, a far greater crime, the enslavement of a whole people. Ours is a war, and we employ the methods of warfare. Some believe that the general condition of mankind must needs improve slowly, laboriously, painfully, inch by inch, like the motion of a screw. We believe, you and I, that the only possible advance is by shock and conflict, by sudden leaps forward, like the wheel and ratchet, every step gained being a gain for all time. So civilization has always progressed by bloody wars, by fierce sacrifices of human life, by noble crimes. The man we have marked for death happens to be the one most in the way of liberty; yet it is not the man you are to kill, but the officer, the social system which he enforces. He may even be, according to his own standards and conventional moralities, good and just; but his life must be given that the people shall at last be free. His life—and perhaps yours!"
The dusk had grown closer, shrouding the chamber in gloom. Now Mangus arose and lighted the lamp. His manner changed. His speech was sharp and crisp as he spread the papers before her.
"See here. This is Westchester Square. You are to take your position here, where I have marked this cross, in the doorway of Number 11. Here is the Junior Arts Club, on the corner. At about one o'clock a man will come out of that club and walk across the square in your direction. You are to shoot that man. Wait till he is so near that you can't possibly miss him. Speak to him, if necessary, and fire at least three shots to make sure that the work is done."
"Who is he?" Nomé asked coolly.
"Lord Felvex, recently appointed Minister of Police. You will know him by a fur cap, a heavy frogged overcoat and a gold-handled stick. He wears a mustache. You can't mistake him, for we've made sure of his plans. He has agreed to meet someone in the vicinity at one o'clock to-night, and it's too near for him to need a cab."
Nomé took the pistol he handed her and watched him while he explained its action. He loaded it carefully. Next, he went over the plan for her escape. It was not till then that her attention wandered. She would never reach that waiting cab, she knew, and that part of the plot did not interest her. It seemed base to discuss her own safety. She was resolved to die.
"It is strange that you should have been chosen for this work," Mangus remarked after all the details had been arranged. "Before the lots were drawn in the Central Circle I felt sure that you would be the one. When the dice were thrown here tonight, I knew as well as if I had been told, that you would throw the highest. And yet, I would have preferred a man—Ospovat, or O'Brien. I could have used you to better advantage elsewhere, and I assure you that your work would have been equally perilous."
Nomé resented the repetition of his suspicion the more that it was coupled with the hint in regard to her beauty. He had tried before to enlist her in the crafty diplomacy of the Circle, where her appearance could be used to advantage, but her pride in her own determination had always denied him. She did not wish to be regarded as a woman, fit only for a woman's work; she longed passionately for an equal chance with the rest to do all that required will and nerve. Yet she had never quite convinced Mangus of her strength. It was not enough for her, now, that she would prove herself in two hours; her vanity demanded that she should bring him to her feet immediately. She could not bear not to be, even now, the heroine, equal to him in determination and coolness. She had already begun to act, to take her pose before the world. A way came to her mind to compel his admiration.
"Suppose we play a game of chess," she suggested. "I have plenty of time yet, and we have never played off our rubber. Let's see which is the better man."
The two had played often and were about equal in skill. To concentrate her mind, now, in such a crisis of her life, upon the complex strategy of the game was a tour de force that he knew how to admire. His own indomitable will could scarcely have gone further.
"Very well," he said, smiling in spite of himself at her ingenuous bid for admiration. "But I warn you, I'll not spare you. Take the white; I'm rather anxious to see your attack."
They were neither of them experts at chess, but had begun the study of it together and had succumbed together to its fascinations; both felt its excitement.
"It's a game of conspiracy," Mangus had often said, "and there's two kinds of conspirator. My kind is the Fabian policy—mobilize your force with deliberation, maneuvre with discretion, await your chance to pierce the enemy's defense. Yours is the other sort—strike hard and fast, take chances, force the attack always and finish in a whirl of glory or in the dust of defeat. It's the game I'm interested in; it's the winning you care for. But we need both sorts in the Cause. The supreme conspirator has a dash of both in him—discretion and recklessness, and, above all, a sane, swift recognition of opportunity." So he watch eagerly tonight for the significant move which should disclose her opening.
His eye lit, and he smiled with satisfaction as her moves developed the Muzio gambit, with its bold initial sacrifice of the knight. He accepted her piece and awaited her attack upon his king's flank. The opening must be pressed home rapidly and vigorously to gain with an inferior force, and one error in the player's analysis of the situation, one misstep in tactics often forfeits the game. Mangus opposed her craftily, but her play was sure.
Nomé was more beautiful than usual tonight. It was "her day," as women say, and the excitement had given her a splendid color. She had taken off her stock and opened the top of her gown at the neck to give herself freedom. Mangus smiled as she rolled up the right sleeve of her shirt waist; Nomé's arm was perfect, and her one conscious coquetry was in the use of her hands.
Mangus reached over the board and felt her hand. "You're cold!" he said. "But, good God, what a beautifully feminine creature you are, Nomé! It is a pity to throw you away on a man's work. Oh, I could use those black eyes and that black hair where they'd cut keener than daggers! What do you say if now we rearrange matters?"
"Mate in three moves!" she announced icily.
"You've beaten me, Nomé!" he said, rising after a look at the board. "Chess is the next to the greatest game in the world—war is greatest. We'll see what skill you have at that."
He took up the revolver and examined it thoughtfully.
"I wonder if you'll be able to handle this as well as you handled your rooks," he said. "The question now is, can you press this trigger at just the right time and point this barrel in just the right direction—that the ratchet may slip forward another notch?"