"I kiss you and the world begins to fade."
W. B. YEATS.
Count Vladimir and Emile met and consulted together, the immediate
result of the interview being that Vardri was offered the post of
private secretary to the former. Emile had gone out leaving them
together, and Vladimir had hardly finished speaking when he found
himself faced by an unexpected situation.
"I accept with pleasure," Vardri said, "but on one condition--that it
means my remaining in Barcelona."
Vladimir hesitated. "Well, I had not contemplated that. Naturally one
requires one's secretary to be--"
"I understand, Monsieur. I hope you will not consider me ungrateful,
but there is a reason."
"It's a woman?"
Vardri bowed gravely. "Exactly, Monsieur. It's a woman."
"You are risking a great deal for her. Poleski has told me something
of your circumstances, and it appears that if you do not get some
appointment very soon, you will starve."
Vardri straightened himself, throwing back his head with a
characteristic gesture. He looked the older man in the eyes, his own
alight and eloquent under finely drawn brows.
"That's as it may be! I'll take my chance of work. In any case I
cannot leave Barcelona. Of course, I regret greatly that it is
impossible for me to fall in with your arrangements."
Vladimir smiled and shrugged. He knew the type with which he had to
deal. Quixotic and generous to the verge of folly, the type that will
sacrifice itself without reserve for an illusion, an ideal; the type
that filled monasteries, and Siberian prisons, and made a jest for half
the world. Such men were valuable to the Cause, because they gave
ungrudgingly, and never counted cost. The Russian was a man of
affairs, cautious, cynical and given to analysis, and he was also a
student of human nature. He was moreover interested in the unknown
woman.
If he had been told that she was Arithelli the circus-rider, who had
sat silently upon the deck of his yacht dressed in gaudy raiment, and
indifferent almost to stupidity, then his smile would have been
contemptuous instead of tolerant. He was interested too in the unknown
woman's champion. Something in Vardri's attitude of courteous defiance
appealed to him by the law that will attract strongly one man's mind to
another, diverse in every way. He could see that Vardri was plainly
consumptive, and that the disease was in its advanced stages. Even
with the aid of good food and an easier life he could not last more
than a year or two, so one might as well make things a little more
smooth for him during the time.
"I see you have the illusions of youth, my friend," he said carelessly.
"I trust they may remain long unbroken. Myself I am sorry to have
lived beyond the age when they content one. Sit down and talk to me."
He motioned Vardri towards a chair. "Well, since you have refused to
entertain my plan, we must think of something else. I'm at present
writing a series of articles on '_Militarism in France_,' and should
like to have them translated for publication in an English journal.
You speak the language well, better even than Poleski, for you have a
better accent. I have been a good deal in London and I notice the
difference. I suppose you also write it easily?"
"Yes, I had an English tutor."
"Good! Then you will undertake this work, and you shall fix the price
of payment. I'm not in the least afraid of your asking more than I
care to give. You are the type that gets rid of money, not the type
that acquires it. Also I will give you an introduction which will
enable you to get on the staff of _Le Combat_. They want another man
there who is a good linguist, as there is a great deal of
correspondence with other countries. As I have an interest in the
paper, you may consider it settled. No, don't thank me. Your thanks
are due to--a woman. She is unknown to me, but perhaps that is the
reason I--I also owe you something, Monsieur Vardri. Your example has
made me feel young again."
A week later Vardri went swinging quickly down the Calle San Antonio,
on his way to Emile's rooms. He was in exuberant spirits, and whistled
as he walked keeping step to the dancing gaiety of '_La petite
Tonquinoise_.' His headgear, which vied in picturesque disorder with
Emile's historical sombrero, was pushed to the back of his head,
exposing his thick, unruly hair, and over one ear, Spanish fashion, he
had stuck a carnation.
There was more money in his pocket than he had possessed since his days
of luxury in the Austrian chateau, and for him the sun was shining in a
metaphorical as well as a literal sense. During the last few days he
had been happier than he could have believed possible. He felt in
better health, for he had been able to go to bed at a reasonable time,
and though he missed the horses and the free life of the Hippodrome,
and found the work of a newspaper office somewhat trying, there were
shorter hours and other advantages.
He had also the joy of knowing that Arithelli was almost well again.
She had not been out yet, but Michael Furness had declared her to be
practically recovered.
One day Vardri hoped to take her along the sea-front towards the old
quarter of the town, where the fishermen and sailors lived, and where
she could sit on the stone parapet and look across the harbour, and let
the sea-air blow strength and vitality into her.
After all he told himself, life was good even if one were a vagabond.
Life with adventure, a little money, and love.
He burst open the door of Emile's sitting-room, and entered headlong.
The sun-blinds were all drawn, making everything appear pitch dark
after the blinding glare of the streets.
"I want some matches, Poleski! By luck, I've got some cigarettes. One
never has both matches and cigarettes at the same time." He had come
to a dead stop and stood staring.
"Fatalité! Fatalité! The gods are kind for once! If only I had known
you were here sooner."
The half-full box of cigarettes descended to the floor, and its
contents went in all directions, and he was kneeling beside her chair
and holding both her hands. It was Arithelli not "Fatalité" who smiled
back at him. The little mask-like face changed and grew soft till she
looked more a girl, less an embodied tragedy. Vardri's wild spirits
were infectious, and, as on the night of the Hippodrome fiasco, Youth
called and Love made answer.
"_Mon ami_, I am so glad you have come."
"Is this the first time you have been out? Who said you could get up?
The doctor?"
"No, it was Emile."
Vardri nodded towards the communicating door of the bedroom. "Poleski
is here then?"
"No, and he doesn't know I'm here. He has gone to Sária and will not
be back till late. I was horribly irritable this morning, so he thinks
I'm all right now." A ripple of amusement broke her voice as their
eyes met.
"My sweet, you must ask me to believe some other little _histoire_."
"Oh! but it's true. You should have heard us! I knew that it was
funny afterwards, but there was no one to laugh with at the time. It
was about that dreadful old coat of Emile's. He threw it on my bed,
and--I can't help being a Jewess, can I? and I so loathe dust and
dirt, and I said so. Emile was furious. 'Very well,' he said. 'If
you are strong enough to grumble, you are strong enough to get up.' So
when he had gone I dressed and came here. I was so glad to get away
from that room."
"Not as glad as I am to see you here. And I've heard you laugh,
Fatalité. You're a little girl today."
"I have moods, dear. I shall depress you sometimes."
Vardri smiled scornfully, and slid down to the floor, his head resting
against her knee. "_Je suis bien content_! What cool hands you have,
and how still you keep. No other woman in the world was ever so
restful. You love to be quiet, don't you? I know you better to-day
than I ever did. You were always in the wrong atmosphere at the
Hippodrome."
"And I have to go back to it," the girl said under her breath. "And I
may be hissed again. You will not be there now, and we shall miss you.
I and Don Juan and Cavaliero, and El Rey, and Don Quixote. Some of the
grooms are horrible, and the animals get so badly treated."
"It seems to me that everything gets badly treated here," Vardri
muttered. "Women and horses, it's all the same. Don't let us talk
about it. It drives me mad to think, I shan't be able to be near you.
I was some use to you there."
He jumped up and began to move about the room collecting the scattered
cigarettes.
"Shall I play to you, _mon ange_? I suppose the piano hasn't been
tuned yet." He struck a few notes, and made a rueful grimace. "It's
worse than ever."
"I'm afraid it never will be tuned now that I've been ill and caused so
much expense. Emile always says he will go without cigarettes to
afford it, and I say I will go without powder, but neither of us keep
our heroic resolutions, and the piano gets worse and worse."
Vardri shut down the lid with a bang.
"Well, anyway it doesn't matter," he said, "I don't want to play or do
anything; I just want to be with you."
"Bring up a chair, and sit and smoke, _mon camarade_." She held out
her hand with a gesture of invitation, and Vardri took it and kissed
it, and went back to his former position at her feet.
"Shall I read to you?" he asked. "Ah! I'd forgotten there was
something I wanted to tell you. I found a poem the other day, a
love-song of De Musset. Do you know that you lived in this very city
years ago, Fatalité, and he saw you and loved you? How else could he
have written this?
"_Avez-vous vu en Barcelone,
Une Andalouse au sein bruni,
Pâle comme un beau soir d'Autômne,
C'est ma maitresse, ma lionne,
La Marchesa d'Amagui._"
Arithelli listened, her eyes dilating, and a little flame of colour
creeping up under the magnolia skin that made her likeness to the woman
of the poem. Her awakening senses thrilled to the eager voice, the
riotous challenging words:
"_J'ai fait bien de chansons pour elle_."
He broke off abruptly and continued: "I hate all the rest of it. The
woman isn't like you, further on, and the lover laughs at his own
passion, and the whole thing jars. That first verse haunted me for
days after I'd read it."--The sentence was finished by a convulsive fit
of coughing, which he vainly tried to stifle.
"This is the first time to-day," he gasped, between the paroxysms.
"I'm quite well really. It's the cigarette. They often have that
effect. Don't look so worried, or I shall think you hate me for being
a nuisance."
"If you talk so foolishly I shall go."
She made an attempt to rise, but Vardri caught at her skirts. "You
won't go! You don't want to make me worse, do you? Think how sorry
you'll be if I cough and worry you all the evening!"
"Can't I get you anything? If only I were not so stupid about illness.
Don't try to talk if it makes you worse."
"I won't--if you'll stay."
To Arithelli caresses did not come easily, but during the last few
weeks she had learnt many things. She stroked the dark head that
rested against her knee, wondering how it was that she had never before
noticed till to-day how feverishly brilliant Vardri's eyes were, and
how his skin burnt. She had often heard him coughing before, but he
had always gone away and left her when an attack came on, with some
laughing excuse about the horrible noise he made. After a while he
shifted his position, and smiled up at her.
"You're getting tired, Fatalité!"
"No. Tell me, have you anything important to do to-night?"
"No, dear, and if I had I shouldn't do it. Do you feel well enough to
come out and have dinner with me somewhere? I'll take you to some
place where it's quiet."
"Why not let us stay here all the evening, and have supper together?"
Arithelli suggested. "We'll take Emile's things. He loves cooking
_cochonneries_, and there is sure to be a _quelque chose_ somewhere in
the cupboard."
Vardri scrambled to his feet. "_Bon_! Sit still, and I'll go and
_acheter les_--things! We'll leave Emile's _cochonneries_ alone. I'm
rich now, so we will have luxuries."
"Yes, and I'll hunt for plates and dishes, and wash them properly (not
like the Gentiles do) while you go and _acheter les_--things!"
Arithelli mocked. "What a dreadful mixture of languages we all use! I
used to speak German quite well when I was at the convent, but now I
have forgotten nearly all of it. This place is bad for both one's
French and English, and Emile says that when I try and speak Spanish it
sounds like someone sawing wood."
Vardri went out still coughing, and came back flushed and excitable,
laden with various untidy parcels, from which some of the contents were
protruding. Long rolls, the materials for a salad, a _pâté_, flowers,
and an enormous cluster of grapes. They pledged each other in the
yellow wine of the country, and presently Vardri set about the
manufacture of what he inaccurately described as Turkish coffee. That
the result of his efforts was half cold and evil-tasting mattered not
to either of them.
Arithelli's red hair was crowned with vine leaves that he had stripped
from the grape-cluster and twisted into a Bacchante wreath. She leant
her elbow on the table, resting her chin upon her hand. Her eyes
glowed jewel-like, almost the same colour as her garland. The flame of
love had melted into warmth her statue-like coldness, and given her the
one thing she had lacked--expression. Yet the mystery, the charm that
surrounded her clung to her even when she appeared most womanly. To
the boy lover gazing with devouring eyes she seemed that night more
than a woman. He thought of the tales he had heard as a child from the
peasants on winter nights in his own country. Tales of the forests and
legends of the Hartz Mountains, of lonely places haunted by nixies and
wood maidens, fairy shapes with streaming hair and vaporous robes,
seeing which a man would become for ever after mad with longing, and
desire no mortal woman.
Arithelli's long limbs appeared nymphlike in her plain blue
high-waisted gown of Emile's choosing, that had no superfluous bow or
trimming, and left free her beauty of outline. She possessed no
jewellery now wherewith to deck herself, and there was no trace of
artificial red on face and lips.
The candles on the table flickered to and fro in the draught from the
open window and she shivered in the midst of some laughing speech and
glanced over her shoulder at the door behind her.
Vardri, reading her thoughts, said, "You're afraid of something, dear,
what is it?"
"Nothing, at least I thought someone was listening, was coming in. We
are always talking of spies till one gets absurdly nervous and imagines
all sorts of foolish things. I have never said so to anyone else, but
there is always the feeling of being watched. It is so difficult to
know who is for and who against us, and so easy to give evidence
without meaning to be a traitor. Just before I got ill, Sobrenski sent
me to a little newspaper shop down in the Parelelo quarter. I was to
ask if they sold '_Le Flambeau_.' The man looked at me hard and asked
if there was any connection between that journal and the one published
at number 27 Calle de Pescadores. The sun must have made me feel
stupid, and I answered _Yes_, without thinking. I had taken it for
granted that the man was one of us, and then I knew suddenly that he
wasn't."
Vardri bent forward across the table. "Did you tell anyone what you
had said?"
"Not Sobrenski; I told Emile. He looked me up and down, and said
something that I couldn't hear, and then, 'I thought you could hold
your tongue, Fatalité. It seems, after all, you are a woman and
can't!' and then he walked out of the room. Vardri, did you ever feel
as I do when you first began to work for the Cause? Perhaps one gets
used to it in the end and doesn't care."
"Yes," the boy answered between his teeth, "Yes! One gets used to it.
Dear, your hands are trembling. Do you think anyone can hurt you while
I'm here? You are nervous because you've been ill, that's all. This
is the first time you've been out and you are overtired. I'll take you
back soon. You were all right a few minutes ago. You thing of moods!"
She tried to smile, "I warned you, _mon ami_."
"I know. It wasn't any use. That wreath makes you look like the
statue of Ariadne in Rome."
"I wish you would talk to me about yourself."
"Myself!" Vardri shrugged expressively, "_Ma foi_!"
"Tell me what made you join the Cause."
"Because of a man I believed in. You have heard of Guerchouni who died
early in the year? There was a great funeral in Paris. It was in all
the papers."
Arithelli nodded, "Yes, I heard the men talking about it at one of the
meetings. I wasn't interested enough to listen then. Was he--?"
"He was one of our greatest leaders. His death meant something to me,
because it was really through him that I joined the Red Flag. He had a
life sentence in Eastern Siberia and he escaped from there and got to
America. For some time none of us knew exactly where he was, and then
we heard rumours that he was dangerously ill at Geneva. Then came news
of his death and his funeral in Paris. His friends had decided to
bring the body there, so that all the comrades might be present, for
there are many anarchists in Paris. They gave him a guard of honour of
Russian students, men and women surrounding the coffin with linked
hands, and there were hundreds of red roses and red carnations, though
it was in the winter--there had been snow on the ground a few days
before. There was a crown of thorns from those who had been his
companions in prison, and the canopy of the hearse was a red flag. If
only I could have been there to do him homage!
"There are all sorts of wild stories about his escape from Siberia. I
suppose he bewitched the jailers as he bewitched other men. He was the
first man I ever heard speak about the Cause. He came to Vienna and
held meetings for the propaganda and collected enormous crowds. I had
just begun to take life seriously then, to think about things and to
hate injustice.
"My father drank and wasted money and treated his servants brutally.
My mother was dead, and when she was alive she was an invalid, and
could do nothing. Most of the people I knew seemed to think the serfs
no better than animals. I remember how sometimes when we were starting
off in the early morning for a boar hunt in the forest, they would come
begging and whining round the horses' heels.
"They seldom got anything except a kick or a curse. They looked
scarcely human, yet it was ourselves who were the brutes really.
"Well, Guerchouni spoke and I went and listened to him. A friend with
whom I had gone to the meetings gave me an introduction to him. I was
mad on the Cause long before the interview was over. He was a man
that! If he had looked at me twice, I would have walked through flames
to please him. Oh, I wasn't the only one! We all felt like that more
or less with Guerchouni. I couldn't describe him. He was not a tall
man, but he carried himself well, and he was dark and pale with
wonderful blazing eyes. One knew him at once, and talked as if one had
known him for years.
"Of course I accepted all his theories and doctrines except two. I
don't believe in '_L'Union fibre_.' (They all do, you know, or nearly
all) and I never was an atheist.
"A Catholic and an Anarchist! It sounds impossible, doesn't it,
but"--he flushed boyishly--"I believe in _Le bon Dieu_, and the _union
libre_ is hard on women. Yes, I adored Guerchouni. He worked day and
night, he feared nothing, he did impossibilities himself and he made us
do impossibilities."
"He was like Sobrenski."
"Yes, he was like Sobrenski in some ways. He will be a loss to the
Cause."
For a few moments there was silence, and then Arithelli spoke. "Tell
me one more thing. Now we are alone, we can speak the truth to each
other, you and I. Vardri, do you still care for the Cause--in the same
way you did before?" She whispered the question fearfully, yet knowing
well what the answer must be.
"I don't feel the same about it since I have known you."
"I have not tried to make you a traitor, have I? Sobrenski always
suspects me of that."
"My sweet, you have done nothing. I love you, therefore I must feel
differently about the Cause. Why? Because I'm afraid of it for you.
Because these men have no consideration for you as a woman, because
they always make you take the greatest risks. It is always so in this
work. Look what happens to the women in Russia. When there is a
political 'Execution' there, nine times out of ten it is a woman who
throws the bomb. Look at the things they have done lately. At the
printing office we see all the anarchist journals, and the comrades get
news privately. The men do little in risking their lives compared to
the women, and some of them are so young. An article in '_Les temps
Nouveaux_' of last week said that, '_beside the men these young girls
are as artistes beside artisans_.' The last case was Sophia Pervesky.
She was arrested for being in charge of a secret printing-press.
Before the police seized her she nearly found time to put her lighted
cigarette down on a pile of explosives. They wounded her in two
places, threw her down, and stamped on her injuries. Then they took
her to the hospital and kept her there till she had recovered. She
waited two months for death and then they brought her out one morning
in the dawn and hanged her.
"'You shall see how a Russian woman dies,' she told them as she ran up
the ladder and flung herself into space.
"You women shame us with your courage. Now every time I hear of a
thing like that, I think of you. You may have to run some great risk
here for a caprice of Sobrenski's."
"Vardri, Vardri, I wonder what will be the end of it all?"