"I have something more to think of than Love. All the women in the
world would not make me waste an hour."
SAYING OF NAPOLEON.
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 anticipated 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 ejaculations and covetous eyes. She had
previously contrived to get Arithelli 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 coarse
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 Señors would soon return and relieve her
of the responsibility of her charge.
The stillness oppressed her, for Arithelli 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 Señora was like all the English, a heretic, and
therefore, according to the comfortable tenets of the Roman faith,
eternally damned, 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.
Señor 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 glass
of the rough _Val de Peñas_, 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 Salpêtriére 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
practitioner. 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
quantity 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 Arithelli'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 lustily 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 space 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 _débris_ 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 entrée 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 pronounced 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 Arithelli's thin wrist. In his
shirt 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 Arithelli 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 Arithelli'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 Arithelli 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
_paséos_, 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 _cafés_ 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
Massenet 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 fashion 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.
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.
Arithelli 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 passed, 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, Arithelli," 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 compassion 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 Arithelli did not succeed in breaking
her neck in the ring, she would probably also make Paradise and Hell
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--_À 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 passion. 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.
"_FATALITÉ_," 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 glass 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
Arithelli would never ask for anything under any circumstances.
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 Arithelli'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_, Fatalité?"
She shifted 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 Arithelli 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 passes, always in a downward
direction. Once he rested his thumbs lightly on her eyeballs,
remaining so for a few seconds, while his will went out to her, bidding
her sleep and find unconsciousness.