The Hippodrome Part 17

The stolid niece blundered heavily about the room, doing things that were entirely unnecessary, and raising much dust. She was a conscientious person in her own way, and felt that she must get through a certain amount of work in return for the antic.i.p.ated reward.

She banged chairs and table about, folded up scattered clothes, investigated them with much interest, and fingered and re-arranged the row of boots with muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and covetous eyes. She had previously contrived to get Arith.e.l.li into a night dress, had brushed her hair back and plaited it, and pulled the green shutters together to keep out the midday glare.

As she looked at the livid face patched with scarlet against the coa.r.s.e linen, Maria began to feel a little perturbed. Something in the atmosphere of the room had penetrated even the brick wall of her stolidity. She hoped the two Senors would soon return and relieve her of the responsibility of her charge.

The stillness oppressed her, for Arith.e.l.li had ceased her moaning and muttering for a merciful stupor.

As the hours went on the fever increased, and the horrible fungus in her throat spread with an appalling rapidity.

As Michael Furness had prophesied, the crisis would soon be reached, and she had everything save youth against her in the fight for life.

Maria crossed herself perfunctorily and mumbled a few prayers.

Doubtless the Senora was like all the English, a heretic, and therefore, according to the comfortable tenets of the Roman faith, eternally d.a.m.ned, but a little prayer would do no harm, and would be counted to herself as an act of charity.

That ceremony over, more mundane considerations engrossed her mind.

She could smell the pungent odour of the _olla podrida_, or national stew, insinuating itself through the half-open door, and she knew that if she were not present at the meal, there would be more than one hungry mouth ready to devour her share.

She drew a breath of relief as she marched heavily downstairs to the more congenial surroundings of the kitchen. She had done her duty.

Senor Poleski had not told her to stay in the room all the time he was away, and she could easily be back again before he came in.

Michael was the first to appear, almost aggressively sober, and carrying a small wooden box. His interest in his case was as much human as professional, and instead of wasting the afternoon, after his usual custom, loafing and drinking, he had gone, after one modest gla.s.s of the rough _Val de Penas_, to search in out-of-the-way streets for a certain herbalist of repute.

This was an aged Spanish Jew, unclean and cadaverous, with patriarchal grey beard and piercing eyes, a man renowned for his marvellous cures among the peasantry.

He was regarded more or less as a wizard, though his wizardry consisted solely in a knowledge of natural remedies, and the exercise of a power which would have been described at the Paris Salpetriere as hypnotic suggestion. By the aid of this he was able to inspire his patients with the faith so necessary to a successful treatment.

Michael was not fettered in any way by the ordinary conventions of a pract.i.tioner. He had neither drugs nor instruments of his own wherewith to effect a cure on ordinary lines, and what he had seen of herbalists in Spain had inspired him with a vast respect for the simplicity and success of their methods. The wooden box contained a quant.i.ty of leaves which, steeped in scalding water, and applied to the patient's throat, possessed the power of reducing the inflammation and drawing out the poison through the pores of the skin. Of their efficacy Michael entertained not the slightest doubt.

He walked straight to the bed, and glanced at Arith.e.l.li's throat, now almost covered with white patches of membrane. There was no time to waste if she was to be saved from the ghastliness of slow suffocation.

He went to the head of the stairs and yelled l.u.s.tily for Maria, whom he commanded to produce boiling water immediately, thus further adding to the reputation of the mad English for haste and unreasonableness.

Then he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and began busily to clear a s.p.a.ce on the table, on which he emptied the contents of the box.

All his movements had suddenly become alert and energetic. The joy of the true physician, the healer, had awakened in him at the prospect of a duel with Death, and he was no longer merely the slouching, good-natured wastrel who doctored horses at the Hippodrome.

He possessed for the moment the dignity of a leader, of the master of a situation. He smiled to himself as he moved about humming a verse of "Let Ireland remember," and swept away a _debris_ of books, a rouge pot, some dead flowers, and a large over-trimmed hat.

"Shure 'tis back in the surgery again I am," he told himself, while his lean, ugly face beamed with satisfaction.

No one who knew Michael Furness had ever suspected the regret by which he was for ever haunted, regret at the loss of his profession. His rollicking manner made it impossible to believe him capable of any depth of feeling, and he had a trick of talking least about the things for which he cared most. The failing that banned him from his work was an inherited one. He suffered for the sins of his fathers, for the indulgences of many generations of hard riding, hard living, reckless hot-blooded Celts. He was too old to reform now, he would say.

Perhaps later on he would be "making his soul"; in the meantime he drifted.

Emile, Maria and the boiling water all made their entree together. The eyes of the former travelled first of all to the bed and then to the heap of vegetation.

"_Qu 'est-ce que c'est que ca_?" he demanded. "She is better, eh?"

"No, she's worse," answered Michael. He seized upon the leaves and began to bundle them into the steaming basin.

"We shouldn't have been gone so long. What's this did ye say, Poleski?

Well, 'tis the only thing I can do for her. After I left you I went and got these. They're great believers in herbs in this counthry, and by the light of what I have seen, so am I. The poor people never use anything else, and I've seen some fine cures. It's unprofessional, but it's giving her a chance and as I told you I can't operate." He withdrew his fingers hurriedly.

"Faith, that jade with the dark eyes knew what she was doing when she made this water hot! They're ready now, and I'll want a piece of stuff to lay them on. Find me a piece of the colleen's finery, something old that she won't be wanting to use any more."

He p.r.o.nounced the last two words as "ANNIE MOORE," and would have been furious if the fact had been pointed out to him, for like all Irishmen he would never admit the possession of a brogue.

A pale blue silk scarf was found, and ruthlessly utilised as a bandage.

Then Emile lifted the inert figure, while the doctor wound it round her throat and fastened it securely.

"Lift her higher, man," he adjured Emile.

"There's only one pillow?--Then use this." He rolled up his coat, and put it behind her head.

"We've done all we can now, and must just wait till this begins to draw. It will make her uncomfortable, and we must watch that she doesn't pull it off. Give me a cigarette if ye have one, Poleski.

'Tis hot work this."

He sat down on the bed and took up Arith.e.l.li's thin wrist. In his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with his hair well on end, and his robust voice very little subdued below its usual pitch, Michael did not convey the impression that he was capable of taking either Life or Death in a serious spirit. He talked on gaily, in no way depressed by his unsympathetic audience, telling tales of his own escapades in the matter of fighting and love-making, of wild midnight steeplechases ridden across unknown country, and the delights of the fair town by the river Lee.

Once he stopped talking for a few minutes to boil some more water on the stove that Arith.e.l.li sometimes used for making coffee, and to renew the application of leaves. The fact that his patient was in exactly the same condition of stupor, and had not stirred, did not discourage Michael's optimistic views of her recovery.

"Ye must give it time, me bhoy," he told Emile. "There's no hurry in Spain, ye know, with anything. Be careful that ye watch her and keep her hands off her throat. She'll not be lying so quiet presently."

Emile growled out an inaudible response. He was in a smouldering condition of wrath and impatience. Reserved and limited of words as he himself always was, and now rendered savage by anxiety, he found it impossible to understand the other man's mercurial temperament. By this time he was without hope, and certainly without faith in either Michael or his remedies.

The doctor having skilfully extracted his crumpled outer garment from under Arith.e.l.li's shoulders, regretfully prepared to depart. He was obliged to be somewhere about the premises of the Hippodrome during every performance in case of accident to any of the animals, and careless as he was where his own benefit was concerned, he had sufficient wisdom to be always within call.

When he had vanished Emile walked to the window, and threw open the now useless shutters. He guessed instinctively that Arith.e.l.li needed more air, and he had himself begun to find the temperature almost unbearable, for the building was lofty, and the room they were in near the roof. He rested his folded arms upon the sill and leaned his head and shoulders far out.

The house stood at a corner, and while the side of it was in a small street, the front overlooked one of the many wide and beautiful _paseos_, with which the city abounded.

A little breeze borne of the incoming tide in the harbour came sweeping along, and its coolness stirred him into fresh vitality.

It was the hour of pleasure, when the inhabitants threw off their sun-begotten sloth and thronged the _cafes_ and public gardens and promenades.

On the Rambla, once the bed of a river, the military bands played waltz music, and the favourite operas, and hot blood moved faster to the unfailing enchantment of the Habernera, and the newest works of Ma.s.senet and Charpentier.

It was now dark, and the stars blazed down upon the never-resting city, with its sinister record of outrages and crimes, and its charm which was as the alluring of some wild gypsy queen.

Men fleeing from the justice or vengeance of their own country could find here a City of Refuge. Here the tide of life ran swiftly, and churches and cruelty walked hand in hand, and Hate trod close upon the heels of Love.

Here no man's life was safe, for from time to time an epidemic of bomb throwing would break out. Infernal machines would be hurled in an apparently purposeless fas.h.i.+on wherever there was a large gathering of people in street or square. A few policemen, soldiers, or onlookers would be killed or mutilated, and a panic created, but few arrests were ever made. The whole of the Press would unite to lift up its voice in an indignant appeal to the Government, and then everything would be forgotten till the next explosion. People in Barcelona lived from day to day and accepted lawlessness as a matter of course.

Emile's own particular circle had no hand in these promiscuous destructions of life. Their own attempts were invariably well organised and directed towards some definite end. They did not destroy life for mere wanton cruelty, and their victims were marked out and hunted down with an accurate aim.

It suddenly occurred to Emile that during the last few months he had looked upon Barcelona with a changed vision. He had always seen her beauties and hated them, as a man may hate the fair body of a despised mistress, while he yet sees it fair. Now the thought that he might at any time, and at a few days' notice, be forced to leave the place, struck him with a feeling of blankness and desolation.