The Hippodrome Part 18

The sense of exile was almost gone, the nostalgia for his own land no longer keen. Had he turned traitor to his own country, the country for whose woes he was now suffering--?

There he had neither home, parents, friends nor lover. Here he possessed at least interests.

A rustling sound behind him made him turn quickly. In the gloom he could only see the outline of a white moving figure. He groped for the matches, struck one and lit a candle.

Arith.e.l.li sat upright in bed; she had pushed back the clothes, and her long fingers were dragging at the blue scarf. It was knotted at the back under her plait of hair, and she had almost succeeded in loosening it. The fatal inertia was pa.s.sed, and she was beside herself with heat and pain and the fight for breath.

A couple of strides brought Emile to the bedside. He caught her hands between his own and drew them down.

"Listen, Arith.e.l.li," he said quietly. "You mustn't do that. This is to cure your throat. It may hurt you now, but to-morrow you will be better, _voyez-vous_?"

The girl writhed in his grasp, turning her head from side to side. The wild eyes, the tense, quivering body, made Emile think of some forest animal in a trap.

The bandage had fallen from her throat and therefore was useless, and the aromatic scent of the crushed herbs was pungent in the air. He remembered Michael's injunction, "See that she keeps it on. It's her only chance."

She was still struggling frantically, and he needed both hands. For a moment he meditated tying her wrists together, but he decided to trust to his influence over her to make her do as he wished, she had always obeyed him hitherto, and he knew that she was perfectly conscious now, and capable of understanding what he wanted.

He set his teeth and tightened his grip, and spoke again in the same quiet voice.

"Look at me! That's right. Put your hands down, and keep them so.

You must not touch your throat."

He held her eyes with his own as he spoke, and after a momentary struggle and shrinking she grew quiet, and he felt her body relax. Her eyes closed and she sank down against the pillow, turning her face towards him.

"_Pauvre enfant_!" Emile muttered.

He released her hands and they lay still, and she made no movement to hinder him as he re-adjusted the bandage.

He stood looking down upon her. A vast compa.s.sion shone in the grey eyes, that she had only seen hard and penetrating. The gesture of mute abandonment, the ready compliance had appealed to his complex nature, which he kept hidden under an armour of coldness and cynicism. For an instant his years of outlawry and poverty were blotted out and he had gone back to the days in Russia when he had first come into his kingdom, and had believed women faithful and their honour a thing on which to stake one's own.

As sweet and yielding Marie Roumanoff had seemed when she had lain in his arms. A few years hence if Arith.e.l.li did not succeed in breaking her neck in the ring, she would probably also make Paradise and h.e.l.l for some man.

He could see that the dangerous crisis was over. She would live and eventually go back to her work again. The swift intelligence, the wit and charm of her--_a quoi bon_? She had been saved, and to what end?

For a dangerous and toilsome profession, and, in secret, another and still greater peril.

Husband and children, and the average woman's uneventful, if happy, fate could never be hers. Her very beauty was of the type almost repellent to the strictly normal and healthy man.

She would no doubt have her hour of triumph, of pa.s.sion. Some _connoisseur_ of beauty would purchase her as a rare jewel is bought to catalogue among his treasures.

In Paris she might achieve notoriety. Not now, perhaps, but later when she had developed into a woman and knew her own power. Paris loved all things strange, and gave homage to the woman who was among her fellows as the orchid among flowers.

"_FATALITe_," he had named her in jest. Truly a name to bring misfortune to any woman. Her fate had been in his own hands a few minutes ago. He could so easily have denied her her chance, her chance of life. Perhaps the time might come when she would reproach him for having helped her to live.

He thrust back the thought and stooped over her.

"_Mon enfant_, do you want anything to drink? You are thirsty, _n'est ce pas_?"

"Yes. And Emile--you won't--go away--yet?"

"_Ma foi_, no! Drink this and go to sleep."

He was the Emile of every-day life once more, brusque, blunt and practical. As he turned away to put the gla.s.s back on the table, he was debating whether it would not be wise to call up Maria. A woman would understand better what to do for another woman. He knew that Arith.e.l.li would never ask for anything under any circ.u.mstances.

He had taught her too well his own depressing theory that life "mostly consisted of putting up with things," and in practice thereof the pupil had outshone her master.

The rigid tension of her arms and hands as they lay on the coverlet told of her effort for composure, and he noticed for the first time that beautiful as the latter still were in shape and colour, one of the nails was broken, and the finger tips had spread and widened. When there had been meetings up in the hills at night she had always been left to see to the unharnessing of the horses and mules, and these disfigurements were the result of her struggles with saddle-girths and straps. Her work was usually well done, and if it did not happen to be satisfactory, she came in for the united grumbles of the whole party.

Emile bit into his cigarette as his eyes caught the discoloured lines of Sobrenski's sign-manual on her wrist.

It was entirely through him, Emile, that she had in the first place joined the league of conspirators, and this was one of the results.

Sobrenski's judgment had been more far-seeing than his own. One girl in a roomful of fanatics, (he was one himself, but that did not make any difference,) would naturally stand a very poor chance if she was foolish enough to oppose them.

With masculine thoughtlessness Emile had set the candle close beside the bed, where it flared full into Arith.e.l.li's eyes.

They were wide open now. The look of desperation had faded, and there was in them only the appeal of one human being to another for help and sympathy.

"_Eh, bien_, Fatalite?"

She s.h.i.+fted her position wearily and stretched out her hands towards him, murmuring, "_Je veux dormir_."

If Emile had possessed either chloroform or any other narcotic he would at once have given it to her without much thought of the possible consequences. An inspiration seized him to use the power for soothing and alleviating provided by Nature. He knew that Arith.e.l.li would be an easy subject for the exercise of animal magnetism, and her morbid condition would make it even easier for him to send her to sleep.

He moved away the candle, so as to leave her face in shadow, and leaning forward he laid his hand across her forehead and eyes, and began a series of regular and monotonous pa.s.ses, always in a downward direction. Once he rested his thumbs lightly on her eyeb.a.l.l.s, remaining so for a few seconds, while his will went out to her, bidding her sleep and find unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XIII

"There is a woman at the beginning of all great things."

LAMARTINE.

The whizzing rush and discordant scream of the electric trams, the sun warm upon his face, aroused Emile from a restless, fitful sleep of a few hours. The street cries had begun to swell into a volume of sound, and at the earliest dawn the whole place teemed with stir and life.

There was no hour in all the night in which Barcelona really slept.

Some of the shops did not close before midnight, and people were continually pa.s.sing through the Rambla, and entering and leaving the _posadas_, which were open for the sale of wine and bread soon after three o'clock in the morning.

Emile yawned and stretched, and pulled himself up slowly from the chair by the open window in which he had fallen asleep. He was cramped and stiff from his uncomfortable position. Anxiety and strain had deepened the lines on his face, and his eyes were dull and sunken. He looked less hard, less alert, and altogether more human and approachable.

A glance at the bed a.s.sured him that Arith.e.l.li was still asleep and in exactly the same att.i.tude as he had left her. Though her sleep was not a natural one, at least it was better than drugs, and he had given her a respite, a time of forgetfulness. In a few minutes he would have to arouse her again to more pain and discomfort, and the inevitable weariness of convalescence. He stood inhaling the wonderful soft air and gathering up his energies to face the work of another day.

Arith.e.l.li's affairs had to be put straight, and Vardri provided for in some way. He did not in the least know how this was all to be accomplished, and at present the problems of the immediate future seemed likely to prove a little difficult.

He was not by nature optimistic, and the events of the last few days had made him even less so than ordinary. He felt that he must go back to his rooms, and finish out his _siesta_ before he could work out any more plans.

Arith.e.l.li awoke at once when he touched her and called her name, but before she had realised where she was Emile was half way downstairs in search of Maria.

As it happened it was Sunday morning, and being at least outwardly devout, the damsel was just on the point of starting for an early Ma.s.s, and was arrayed in her church-going uniform of black gown and _velo_, and armed with missal and rosary.