Part 22 (2/2)
”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, Fatalite. 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.”
Arith.e.l.li 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 hea.r.s.e 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 Arith.e.l.li 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.
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