Part 24 (2/2)

”You have been together often?”

Her head drooped. ”Yes. I should have told you before.”

”What plans have you made? I suppose it will be the usual mad scheme of running away. I ought to betray you, of course, but--”

”We haven't arranged anything yet; there is plenty of time.”

”Plenty of time--Mon Dieu!” the man rasped out. ”How like you, Fatalite! What a pair! Vardri always living _au clair de la lune_, and you half asleep, and full of illusions. _Les illusions sont les hirondelles_. How often have I told you that?”

”They make life possible,” Arith.e.l.li answered softly.

Again the man stared and marvelled. Verily, here was another being who was neither ”Becky Sharp” nor ”Fatalite.” The exultation, the triumph of one loved and desired, was hers for the moment. Who, seeing her now, could have the heart to warn her of inevitable disillusion, the doubts and fears, the clinging and the torments that are the heritage of all womenkind.

He, too, had once dreamed foolish dreams.

He gripped her by the shoulder and forced her to look at him.

”Vardri is your lover? You shall answer me before I leave this room.”

She did not flinch, or blush, or look away.

”I love him.”

Joy shone in her widely open eyes. Love hovered about her mouth, and the pa.s.sion that had stirred in him momentarily shrank back ashamed.

He pushed back her hair with a rough caress.

”It's all right, _ma chere_. You needn't be afraid. I shall not be here to advise you soon, and all I have to say now is, never imagine yourself secure for an instant. Sobrenski is bound to discover this in the course of time, and he has seen this sort of thing before, which will not make him any more merciful. He has watched human nature long enough to know that where there is what you would call love, people want to create, they no longer want to destroy. If, as you say, you have made no plans, then make them. And now you'd better go to bed, unless you want to look more like a ghost than usual to-morrow.”

As he went out into the moonlit street Emile knew that he had taken the first step on his _Via Crucis_. He did not call it that, for of religion in the orthodox sense he possessed nothing, but he knew that his feet were set upon the path where snow and blood would mingle in his footprints. He was going back to Russia, where death would be a thing to be welcomed and desired. He had listened to the tales of escaped prisoners, and he knew that no words could exaggerate this frozen h.e.l.l in which flourished vices unnamable, where men rotted alive, and women strangled themselves with their own hair, or cut their throats with a sc.r.a.p of gla.s.s to escape the brutalities of a gaoler or Cossack guard.

He wondered whether it would be Akatui, or the mines, for him. It was no use to try and delude himself that he could escape the police.

He had got out of Russia by the skin of his teeth last time, and, even if he managed to get his despatches safely delivered, there would be a raid on the newspaper office, an arrest in the street. Of course there was always the hope that he might come in for a chance shot in a scrimmage, but that was too much luck to expect.

He had nothing to wait for now after what he had heard to-night, and the sooner he put himself out of the way, the better. He would volunteer at once for the St. Petersburg mission. The usual custom was to cast lots, unless some enthusiast begged for the privilege of a speedy doom. By virtue of his long service he had a right to claim that privilege.

If he could go to-morrow so much the better. After what Arith.e.l.li had confessed it would be dangerous for them both if he stayed. For a moment the primaeval man in him leapt up, telling him that he had only to pit himself against Vardri, and the victory would be a.s.suredly his own. His rival was only a boy, and Emile knew that if there came the struggle between male and male, the odds were all in his own favour.

Arith.e.l.li had grown into the habit of obedience to him, and if he wished it he could make it practically impossible for her to see Vardri without his knowledge and consent. She would sorrow for her lover at first, but he was a man, and he could make her forget.

A thousand little devils crowded close, whispering how easy it would be to get Vardri sent out of the way. A few words to Sobrenski, and the whole thing would be done.

His sense of justice reminded him that he least of all people had a right to grudge her a few hours of happiness. If he obliterated himself he was only making her a deserved reparation for some of the things she had suffered. Through him she had joined the Anarchist ranks, and through him she had taken vows that despoiled her of the hopes and joys of womanhood, and transformed her into an instrument of vengeance. She had apparently never realised that she had been in any way injured, for she had never blamed him, and been invariably grateful for anything he had done for her physical comfort.

She loved Vardri, or imagined that she did. Emile told himself savagely that he was a fool who deserved no pity, for he had had his own chance and missed it. He had been with her by night and day, and her life had been in his own hands all these months, but he had never made love to her. He had only bullied her, taught her, made her work, looked after her clothes and food, and, he knew it now too late, loved her.

She had never suspected it, and the secret should remain his own. Love and love-making were two very different things. She did not know that now, but later on she would, when she was ten years older, perhaps, and then it would not matter to him, for he would be under two or three feet of snow in a Siberian convict settlement.

He had gone about persuading himself that she was still a child, and this Austrian boy, this wastrel and dreamer, had awakened her.

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