Part 20 (1/2)

He smoked vile tobacco,--he dropped some things and knocked over others, he shaved apparently only on _festas_, and if he happened to arrive late in the day his speech was thick and his manner excitable.

Upon one occasion Arith.e.l.li had complained that her mane of untended hair made her uncomfortably hot, and Michael brought out a pocket knife, clubbed it all together in his hand like a horse's tail, and obligingly offered to relieve her by cutting it off. Emile had arrived only just in time to prevent the holocaust, and the two men exchanged fiery words for the next ten minutes.

Another day, prompted by a desire to amuse her, Michael introduced into her room a fat mongrel puppy with disproportionate legs and an alarmed expression. His wish to provide her with what he was pleased to call a ”divarsion” was, like many of his other good intentions, not entirely successful. He had deposited the excited animal on the bed, and in the course of its frantic gambols it overbalanced and fell sprawling to the floor on its back. The ancient canopied bed was high, and the puppy was frightened as well as hurt, and lifted up its voice in anguished yells.

When Michael had rescued it, and put it outside the door and finished laughing, he came back to find Arith.e.l.li weeping helplessly with her face buried in the pillow. His alarmed suggestion that he should fetch Emile helped her to recover more quickly than any amount of sympathy could have done.

Sometimes there were other visitors. The grooms and strappers from the Hippodrome came often to enquire, and Estelle, forbidden by the Manager to come at all on account of infection, sat on the stairs and showered effusive speeches in a high-pitched voice through the open door.

Arith.e.l.li had sent no word of her illness to her parents in London. She knew their views on the subject of complaints. They would consider the whole thing due to imagination, there would be unpleasant letters, and it was perfectly certain that they would send no a.s.sistance in the shape of money. Emile had wished to write, but she had begged him not to do so, and for once he had yielded to what he called her ”whims.”

From the sc.r.a.ps of information she had received from time to time it appeared that the uncomfortable _menage_ of her kindred had become even more disorganised. Her father had turned for consolation to the whisky of his country, her mother spent whole days in bed reading, and weaving futile dreams of a recovered fortune, and Isobel and Valerie grew taller and hungrier, and fought and wrangled after the manner of Hooligans.

Lazy and s.h.i.+ftless, they envied Arith.e.l.li the life she had chosen, but had neither the pluck nor the brains necessary to emulate her example.

Emile's manner had troubled her of late, for he had been strangely bad-tempered and variable in his moods. She had become more or less accustomed to his eccentricities of behaviour and speech, but this was something different, indefinable. One day he would be extraordinarily kind and considerate, the next almost brutal, either hardly speaking at all, or else finding fault with everything she said and did.

She often felt a presentiment that he had something important to tell her, but he would come and go without imparting any news, and, as always, she did not worry him with questions as many women would have done.

She wondered if he were feeling hara.s.sed over ”_les affaires politiques_,” or whether he was afraid that the Manager's small stock of patience would be exhausted before she was able to appear in the ring again, and that he would cancel her contract. If that happened she felt that the end of all things would have indeed arrived. She could not struggle against the Fates any longer, obviously she could not return home, and it was not fair that Emile should continue to keep her.

He came in one evening about eight o'clock to find her up for the first time since her illness, and sitting on the edge of the bed draped in the long blue cloak she used for covering her circus attire.

Her hair was parted over her ears, and divided into two long sleek braids drawn forward and falling over her shoulders, the ends resting on her lap.

She looked up, as he entered, with the haunting sea-green eyes that showed larger than ever in contrast to her hollowed cheeks. Something in her pose, in the arrangement of her hair, reminded Emile vividly of her first morning in Barcelona, when he had come in early in the morning to find her dazed with sleep. He remembered also how she had asked him to repeat his remarks, and how carelessly nonchalant had been her manner.

”You look like a witch sitting crouched up there, Fatalite,” he snapped.

”What's the matter? You don't seem very cheerful.”

”I don't feel very cheerful,” the girl responded. She spoke with grave deliberation, and without moving a muscle. Emile grunted and sat down.

”There has been another explosion of bombs on the Rambla,” he said. ”A market woman killed and two work people injured--I believe one has since died. Of course a got-up affair of the Government. They hope by doing this sort of thing often enough to make the populace take vengeance on us.”

”Then the Anarchists didn't do it?”

”My dear Fatalite, we don't blow up harmless people simply _pour pa.s.ser le temps_. I've told you that before, and being inside the movement yourself you ought to know. It is a favourite trick of the officials to excite public feeling against us. They have been doing it now for the last three years, letting off bombs in various parts of the city. They take care always to choose the most frequented places and to kill someone who doesn't matter, and then all the Republican journals have four columns of indignation with large head-lines, 'LATEST ANARCHIST OUTRAGE.'

They like to get their exploits well talked about. Everything seems to be against us now. Sobrenski will have it that there is treachery inside our circle as well as outside. You know whom he suspects?”

”No.”

”Vardri.”

”That is my fault,” Arith.e.l.li said quietly. ”Sobrenski has felt like that since the night Vardri made a scene about my being lowered down from the window. He just stood up for me because I'm a woman. I'm only a machine to the rest of you.”

She spoke without a touch of resentment. It was purely a statement of fact.

”Ah, that's just the point. The feminine side of you is exactly what we don't want. One Felise Rivaz is enough, most of us think. Try and keep the elfish boy you were when you arrived. It will be less trouble, Fatalite, _ma chere_. With the other thing there are always complications. No, I'm not accusing you of falling in love with Vardri.

I only say, be careful. Even an elf-child can develop suddenly into a woman once she arrives at a knowledge of the fact that there is a man ready to make love to her. Perhaps you do not know it yourself, but you have changed lately. You are losing your fearlessness, your indifference. I have watched you sometimes when you have not known, and have seen your eyes soften, your face change. You started when I spoke just now.”

”How did you learn things about women? From books?”