Part 22 (1/2)

”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, Fatalite, and he saw you and loved you? How else could he have written this?

”_Avez-vous vu en Barcelone, Une Andalouse au sein bruni, Pale comme un beau soir d'Automne, C'est ma maitresse, ma lionne, La Marchesa d'Amagui._”

Arith.e.l.li 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 pa.s.sion, 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 Arith.e.l.li 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 s.h.i.+fted his position, and smiled up at her.

”You're getting tired, Fatalite!”

”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?”

Arith.e.l.li 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!”

Arith.e.l.li 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 _pate_, flowers, and an enormous cl.u.s.ter 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.

Arith.e.l.li's red hair was crowned with vine leaves that he had stripped from the grape-cl.u.s.ter 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.

Arith.e.l.li's long limbs appeared nymphlike in her plain blue high-waisted gown of Emile's choosing, that had no superfluous bow or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, 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 s.h.i.+vered 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?”