"There would no man do for your sake, I think,
What I would have done for the least word said;
I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink--
Broken it up for your daily bread."
SWINBURNE.
When the week of dreams and rest was over she went back to the
Hippodrome with somewhat of relief in her feelings.
At least the work prevented her from thinking. Though she was
physically less languid, the sea air had neither succeeded in putting
any more flesh on what the Manager called her "lean flanks," nor had it
made her look much more cheerful. He had the sense to let her take her
place as _equestrienne_ once more, and had announced her reappearance
in flaming posters.
The stablemen and helpers were all delighted to see her again, and in
token of their satisfaction presented her with a hideous and unwieldy
bouquet, in which all colours were arranged together so as to give the
effect of a kaleidoscope. They liked her for her sweet temper and
invariable courtesy, and respected her for her knowledge of horses.
Estelle came and embraced her and was voluble over the failings of her
"_bon ami_," the sardonic manager.
Arithelli received a hearty round of applause as she rode into the ring
on her favourite "Don Juan," whose wavy tail and mane were decorated
with turquoise ribbons that matched her habit.
At least she was happy on horseback, and she loved the animals and they
her.
Even the performing sheep and monkey, and the toothless lion came in
for a share in her affections. She had a new and difficult trick to go
through that night, but this particular sort of danger only made her
feel exhilarated.
Emile's stories of blood and horrors had sickened her, but the chance
of breaking her neck over a high jump held no terrors.
She made her exit, gaily waving her silver-handled whip, and Vardri,
who was standing at the entrance of the ring, came forward quickly to
lift her off her horse before the groom could reach her.
"You're wanted to-night in the Calle de Pescadores," he whispered, as
she rested her hand on his shoulder to jump down. "As soon as
possible, and go in carefully--there's a scare about spies."
He felt her body stiffen and the little smile that came so rarely died
in an instant, leaving her once more "Fatalité."
She nodded by way of assent and bent down to gather up her habit.
The ring-master was only a few feet away, and they could never be
certain as to who was to be trusted.
Vardri stood looking after her as she walked away with her head well up
and her shoulders thrown back as usual.
The two had become good friends with the comradeship induced by the
similarity in their misfortunes.
Both were young, reckless and without money beyond what they earned,
though, whereas Arithelli had been more or less tricked into her
present position, Vardri had been infatuated with the Cause from the
time he was old enough to take an interest in anything. The worship of
the goddess Liberty had left with him room also for the adoration of a
human being, and in a boyish chivalrous way he had tried to make things
easier for Arithelli.
He managed to bring her occasional flowers and music out of his
starvation wages, and was always jealously careful of the way in which
her horses were groomed and turned out. They had a curious resemblance
to each other, and when Arithelli was dressed in boy's clothes for her
journeys up in the mountains, they might have been two brothers. One
was dark and the other fair, but both had the same haggard,
well-modelled faces, the same pale skins, and thin, supple figures.
They were exactly of a height, too, and when Arithelli disguised
herself, she pushed her red hair under a sombrero and black wig.
Even Sobrenski's lynx eyes had been at fault in the semi-darkness of
the hut, and he had sworn at her in mistake for Vardri. As the dresser
took off her habit, she asked the woman whether Monsieur Poleski had
been behind the scenes during her turn, and was there a note or message?
It appeared that there had been no sign of Emile, and she hesitated for
a moment, hardly knowing what to do.
The order for her presence in the Calle de Pescadores, which of course
had been sent by Sobrenski, had told her to come at once.
On the other hand, Emile had always told her to wait for him in her
room till he came to fetch her. If she went through the streets alone
there would be a row, and if she were late at the _rendezvous_ there
would also be a row.
"_C'est ainsi que la vie!_"
She lifted her thin shoulders after the manner of Emile and decided to
start at once. She wiped all the make-up from her face with a damp
towel, swaying a little as she stood before the glass.
The excitement of her reception and the ensuing episode had made her
heart beat at distressing speed.
"You're not ill," she adjured her pale reflection. "It's all
imagination. Emile says all these complaints are. Any way, you're not
going to give in to it."
She shut both ears and eyes as she sped through the restless city that
even at this hour was astir with life.
She was only glad that there was no moon. Roused for once out of her
naturally slow and indolent walk, she was soon in the poor quarter and
climbing the stairs to the third floor of a horrible little house, the
back of which looked out on the dark slums of the quarter of the
Parelelo, the breeding-place of revolutions; the district between the
Rambla and the Harbour.
The house was like the one that Emile had described when telling her of
the murdered woman, Félise Rivaz.
The very air reeked of intrigue and hidden deeds.
She looked round first of all for Emile, but he was not there, and only
half the usual number of conspirators were assembled.
Vardri, who had left the Hippodrome the minute he had delivered his
message, was sitting on the end of the table swinging his feet and
whistling softly.
He had bribed one of the "strappers" to finish his work, and slipped
out, only arriving a few minutes before her.
He had risked dismissal, but that was no great matter.
The Cause came first, and he feared danger for Arithelli, knowing that
if there was anything specially risky to be done she would be the one
chosen.
Sobrenski was always harder on her than on the others.
He watched her with the hungry, faithful eyes of an animal, and got up
from his seat with instinctive courtesy. Like all the rest he wore the
Anarchist badge, a red tie, and the hot, vivid colour showed up the
lines of ill-health and suffering about his eyes and mouth.
In spite of his disreputable clothes and wild hair, there still
remained in him the indefinable signs of breeding, in the thin, shapely
hands that rested on his knee, and in the modulations of his boyish and
eager voice.
None of the others took the least notice of the girl's entrance.
Nearly all of them were as well-born as the young Austrian, but to them
she was simply a comrade, a fellow, worker, not a woman.
She gave him a little friendly gesture and went quietly to a seat
against the wall, where she sat in one of her characteristic attitudes,
her feet crossed, and showing under her short dark blue skirt.
Emile had made her buy this one plain and unnoticeable garment for use
on these occasions.
After she had been in the room a minute, Sobrenski turned from the man
to whom he had been talking in a careful under-tone, and bolted the
door.
"Listen, all of you," he said. "We have received information that this
house will be watched to-night. Whether the spy is one who was
formerly one of us, we do not know--yet. It appears that it is Poleski
who is the suspect. They have some evidence against him that is
dangerous. If he is seen coming in here to-night, they will arrest
him. The next time we will change the place, but for the present all
that can be done is to warn him against coming here. Fortunately he
will be later than usual, because he does not leave the Café Colomb
till after midnight. Someone must be sent there to stop him. It will
not do for any of us to be seen coming out, so she"--he indicated
Arithelli--"must go."
Arithelli wasted no time in response. She was only too eager to get
out of the abominable place, and was already half way to the door when
Sobrenski stopped her.
"Not that way!" he said. "What are you thinking of? You will walk
straight into the arms of the spies who are probably watching the house
by this time. No, you must go by the window at the back; the rest of
us will stay here all night."
"This house gives on the quay by a lucky chance," remarked one of the
older men; "we should be well trapped otherwise. There are several
feet between it and the water."
Vardri's eyes had never moved from the girl's face. He knew that her
heart was affected, and she had told him once that she would never
attempt to go on the tight-rope or trapeze because the mere thought of
a height always terrified her.
In answer to Sobrenski's gesture, she moved towards the window, which
another of the conspirators was cautiously opening.
Vardri pushed himself forward into the group. "She can't go down
there," he said hoarsely, "It's not safe--look at the height!"
"She'll go down well enough if she holds onto the rope."
"The rope may break or fray through on the sill."
"She takes her chance like the rest of us."
"The rest of us--we're _men_!"
"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 passive.
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 Arithelli 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, Arithelli 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
passion 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 anticipation.
Excitable and neurotic, like all consumptives, his imagination made of
those waiting moments a veritable hell.
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 Fatalité!"
"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 Barrés and Félise
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 Arithelli, 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 shivering and coughing till the dawn, while the other men talked
in low voices or played cards. One or two slept fitfully in
uncomfortable attitudes 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
shivered anew, but not from physical cold.
He did not fear the leader of the Brotherhood for himself, but for
Arithelli--Arithelli, 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 relationship between the oddly-assorted 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
friendship.
"_Mon ami_," she had called him, he who had never aspired higher than
to be known as her servant.