The Hippodrome Part 26

"It's here."

"Thank you! How long is it since I've seen you? It seems like a century. Those brutes up there were driving me mad with their cold-blooded arrangements for wholesale murder. The latest idea is to explode a bomb outside one of the big _cafes_ when Alfonso comes here next week to inspect the troops. They might as well leave him alone.

What harm has he done them? As long as they can see people flying into atoms with the help of a little nitroglycerine they are quite happy.

Vengeance, vengeance! That is their eternal cry. Of course in Russia it's a different thing. One must either be an autocrat and slave-driver or a Nihilist out there, but here--they are mad, all of them! They have just settled to draw lots to-morrow night. I wonder who will have the 'honour' of becoming executioner? I suppose they can't do it to-night because Poleski isn't here."

Arith.e.l.li shook her head.

"That is not the reason. They have given Emile other work to do in Russia. He is leaving here very soon. I thought you knew."

"Who told you that Poleski is going away? It may not be true."

"Emile himself. Oh! it's true enough. I don't know when he will go.

He doesn't know himself, but soon."

"Will you trust me to take care of you when Poleski is gone?"

"I'll trust you always."

"Promise me you'll come away with me. If you care you'll come. I'll give up the Cause for your sake. I've told you so in my letter and now I say it again."

"So I've made you a traitor. Sobrenski was right."

"My sweet, how can I live with violence and death and misery since I have known you? I want to get away from men and back to Nature to be healed. It doesn't follow that because I have grown to hate some of the revolutionist methods that I am against all their theories. I believe they are right in sharing things, in fighting for those who are trodden down by the rich, but you and I can still believe all that without becoming inhuman. Think of Sobrenski. He's a werewolf, not a man! Promise me that you'll come soon. Let me take you away before they make you one of their 'angels of vengeance,' as they call these women of the revolution."

Excitement and the feverish devil of consumption had turned his blood to fire. He would take no denial, pay no heed to Arith.e.l.li's entreaties for time to think, and to consult Emile.

For once he forgot to be gentle, and dragged her head back roughly, whispering pa.s.sionate words, his face pressed against her own. For a moment he saw no longer the G.o.ddess on her ivory throne, but a woman of flesh and blood, warm, living, and fragrant and to be desired after a man's fashion.

Arith.e.l.li closed her eyes and leant back, yielding herself to his caresses. The pressure of his hand across her throat hurt her, but in some strange way it also gave her pleasure. Love, the schoolmaster, again stood by her side teaching her the lesson learnt sooner or later by all women, that pain at the hands of one beloved is a thing close akin to joy. She felt incapable of any struggle or resistance, bodily or mental. She had given her heart therefore her body was also his to use as he willed, and feeling her thus abandoned to him all the boy's chivalry was stirred anew, and the hunger for possession was lost in the desire to serve and protect.

Possibly if he had been forty instead of twenty-eight, he would perhaps have demanded a man's rights. Being, however, according to the world's standard, a fool and a dreamer, he chose to let the moment pa.s.s, to refuse what the G.o.ds offered, to think of Arith.e.l.li rather than of himself.

"I'm hurting you, dear." His voice shook a little, in spite of his efforts to control it.

"No. Nothing hurts now. And I'm glad you love me."

"I hurt you a minute ago. I was mad and a beast. Will you forgive me?

You are not frightened?"

"No. I was only thinking of the future of tomorrow."

"Let us forget to-morrow," the boy pleaded. "Can you not forget for once?"

"We have to-day, and each other. '_Aujourd'hui le Printemps, Ninon_.'

It's summer for us now, Fatalite! When one loves there is always summer."

He drew her out into the starlight as he heard the noise of the men pushing back their seats and moving about overhead.

Several voices were raised in angry altercation.

He raged inwardly as he thought how in a few minutes he would have to see her at the orders of them all, sent here and there, at everyone's call, and forced to work without either thanks or reward.

"Let me go in, dear," Arith.e.l.li said. "They will expect to find things ready."

But Vardri held her back.

"Let them expect! Give them the trouble of looking for you. They keep you up all night, so they can afford to waste a few minutes extra."

It was both a foolish and useless protest and Arith.e.l.li knew that she would pay afterwards for these s.n.a.t.c.hed moments, but she did not grudge the price, for to her they seemed worth the payment required.

She was glad of the air too.

She turned a little in Vardri's arms, lifting her face to the soft night wind. The coolness and the dark were like the touch of a soothing hand.

The branches of the tree under which they stood rustled softly, and the undergrowth stirred with the startled movements of some awakened bird or small animal.

A bat flew past, almost brushing them with its velvet wings. From the marsh lands below the dangerous white mist hovered like a fairy veil.

"I love the night," Arith.e.l.li whispered. "It makes me want to do all sorts of things. Do you remember the story of Marguerite of France, who heard the gypsies singing under her window and leant out and called to them to take her away. I feel like that. Do you understand?"

Vardri drew her closer. "I know, my heart. Tell me more."

"There were some gypsies singing under my window this morning,"

Arith.e.l.li went on. "I wished I could have gone out and followed them 'over the hills and far away' like the children in the old rhymes. The Irish and Jewish people have always been wanderers. Perhaps that is why I am fated never to stay long in one place."

He answered her in the same mood.

"We'll start at once, shall we, Fatalite? We'll saddle two of the horses and ride, ride day and night till we come to Montserrat, and there we shall find your gypsies and their tribe. When you come to my country there'll be gypsies too, and they shall play and sing for you, and you'll know what music is for the first time."

"How foolish we are!" Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling. "If Emile heard me talking like this he would be so angry."

"He talked like this once," Vardri replied. "Poleski was young too not so very long ago, and he loved someone."

"Yes, I know." She found it almost impossible to think of Emile as a lover in spite of the photograph she had found, and the words in his own writing upon his songs. She knew them by heart. "_Emile a Marie.

Sans toi la mort_." And on another, "_Etoile de mon ame! Je vous adore de tout mon coeur, ton Emile_."

Perhaps it was the memory of this pa.s.sion of his youth that had made him kind to her.

While they talked and lingered, Sobrenski was descending the rickety ladder that served as a staircase.

He had noticed Vardri's exit from the room, as he noticed everything else. All the other men had been too excited to care whether one more or less was there or not. In the hot argument that raged in the upper room, the absence of one of the members of the Brotherhood was apparently forgotten.

Their leader, however, did not lose his head or his powers of observation even when matters of life or death were in the balance.

Whatever he did was always done deliberately and in cold blood.

All the time he had been apparently presiding over the discussion he had also been thinking rapidly.

It would be to his ultimate advantage not to interfere with Arith.e.l.li and Vardri just now, but to let them be together, to see as much of each other as possible. It was as well that Vardri should become thoroughly infatuated, as then he would be certain to take some step that would bring things to a crisis. They would be sure to try to escape out of the country and hide themselves somewhere. They would not be the first people who had tried that sort of thing before.