The Hippodrome Part 10

"There are neither men nor women in the Cause. Do you need to be taught that now? Stand back!"

"I'll go down in her place."

"You will do nothing of the kind. Which of us is the leader here?"

Sobrenski had twisted the girl's arms behind her back, and he was holding her by the wrists. He expected her to scream or struggle, but she remained absolutely pa.s.sive.

One of the men was making a slip-knot in a coil of rope.

Vardri's blood was hot as he looked on. Blind with helpless rage, he was conscious of nothing but the little set face and defiant head. He had come suddenly into his heritage of manhood at the sight of her alone, defenceless and roughly handled by brute beasts who called themselves men.

He was mad, too, with a man's jealousy. From the earliest moment he had seen Arith.e.l.li he had given her homage as a woman. The _gamin_, the "Becky Sharp" that Emile and the others knew, he had never seen, and he had always resented her numerous irreverent nicknames.

He could do nothing, nothing!

Get himself shot or strangled, perhaps, and what use would that be to her?

"Come!" said Sobrenski, turning her towards the window.

For the first time since she had entered the room, Arith.e.l.li spoke: "Leave me alone for a minute. No, I won't move--_parole d'honneur_!"

When she was released, she put out her left hand. "_Mon ami_, what's the use of arguing? I'm the errand boy, _vois-tu_? My work is to carry messages. If you make a scene it's only the worse for me. It's good of you to want to go instead. I shall not forget."

The voice, subtle and sweet as ever, the intimacy implied by the familiar "thou" acted like a charm to the boy's wild fury. Before her courage and dignity it seemed out of place to make any further protest.

He crushed the long and lovely hand against his lips with mingled pa.s.sion and reverence.

There was a red streak across the wrist.

"A fine melodrama!" sneered Sobrenski. "Keep all that for the stage, it isn't needed here. _Allons_! We can't waste any more time, there has been too much wasted already."

Vardri walked to the furthest end of the room, turning his back upon the group at the window, and thrust his fingers into his ears to deaden the sound of the scream for which he waited in tortured antic.i.p.ation.

Excitable and neurotic, like all consumptives, his imagination made of those waiting moments a veritable h.e.l.l.

She would never get down in safety--an old and hastily knotted rope, a disregard of all ordinary precautions, and her body in the hands of men who handled human lives more carelessly than most people would handle stones. He bit his lip till the blood ran down to his chin.

Here he stood doing nothing, he who would have been tortured to save her!

The window was shut and one of the men said: "She's down all right after all. I thought by the look of her she would have fainted. She has some pluck, Mademoiselle Fatalite!"

"Yes," answered Sobrenski. "Here's the coward and traitor."

Vardri wheeled round, looking straight into the cold eyes of his leader. He had heard the last words. She was safe, that was all that mattered, and for himself he was reckless.

"Traitor, am I? Yes, if the Cause is to include the ill-treatment of women!"

"Women? Again women? Are our meetings to be used as love trysts.

There was a certain episode two years ago--Gaston de Barres and Felise Rivaz--you remember it? Ah, I thought so! Then let it be a warning--in the future you will be suspected and watched. There is no need for me to dilate upon the punishment for treachery, all that you knew when you joined us. You may consider yourself lucky to have escaped so easily to-night. Through the few minutes' delay you have caused, Poleski may have been arrested."

Vardri shrugged and sat down. Like Arith.e.l.li, he recognized the futility of mere words upon certain occasions.

Moreover, now that the flame of his indignation had died down, he had begun to feel wretchedly ill and spiritless with the reaction that comes after any great excitement.

He sat s.h.i.+vering and coughing till the dawn, while the other men talked in low voices or played cards. One or two slept fitfully in uncomfortable att.i.tudes on the floor.

No one grumbled at the discomfort or weariness of the vigil.

They who looked forward to ultimate prison and perhaps death itself were not wont to quarrel with such minor inconveniences as the loss of sleep.

Sobrenski had pulled the solitary candle in the room towards him and sat writing rapidly and frowning to himself.

His fox-like face framed in its red hair and beard looked more relentless and crafty than ever in the revealing light, and the boy s.h.i.+vered anew, but not from physical cold.

He did not fear the leader of the Brotherhood for himself, but for Arith.e.l.li--Arith.e.l.li, the drudge, the tool, the "errand boy," as she had called herself.

Perhaps in time even she would become a heartless machine.

Human life had seemed so cheap and of so little account to him once, but since he had loved her--

She could never live among such people and in such scenes, and still remain unscarred.

Again the little desperate face rose before him.

If they did not succeed in killing her soon by their brutalities, she would commit suicide to escape from the horrors that surrounded her.

It had never occurred to Vardri to be jealous of Emile.

With the curious insight that love gives he had formed a true idea of the relations.h.i.+p between the oddly-a.s.sorted pair. He had never thought of himself as her lover.

To him she was always the Ideal, the divinity enthroned.

He was content to kiss her feet, and to lay before them service and sacrifice.

Yet, though he might build a wall of love around her, he knew it could give her no protection against the realities of her present life.

She had given him dreams, and in them he could forget all other things, the things that the world calls real.

Everything had vanished as a mist--the dirty room, the chill of the dawn, his own physical wretchedness.

He heard only the honey-sweet voice, saw only the outstretched hand of friends.h.i.+p.

"_Mon ami_," she had called him, he who had never aspired higher than to be known as her servant.

CHAPTER VIII