The Hippodrome Part 19

Her round eyes widened and her round mouth grew sulky when she heard that she was expected to go upstairs without further delay and attend to Arith.e.l.li. Juan would be waiting for her outside the church door, Maria reflected, and perhaps if she did not come he would seek others.

There was Dolores, of the cigarette factory, for example. The English Senora could surely wait a few minutes. Her expression, and her obvious unwillingness, supplied Emile with material for cynical reflections upon the working value of religion. He did not trouble to communicate his views to Maria, but merely gave orders and instructions. His tone and manner were convincing. Like all the rest of her s.e.x Maria respected a man who knew what he wanted, and showed that he intended to get it.

Emile made his way into the cool, shady Rambla, where a double avenue of plane trees met overhead, and where a grateful darkness could always be found even at mid-day. On either side of the promenade were the finest shops, the gaiest _cafes_. A band of students pa.s.sed him, waving a scarlet flag and shouting a revolutionary _chanson_ of the most fiery description. Emile scowled angrily. He had not the least sympathy with these childish exhibitions of defiance, which he considered utterly futile and a great waste of time. They did harm to the serious aims and intentions of the Anarchist community, and were often the means of getting quite the wrong people arrested.

At the Flower Market (La Rambla de las Flores) he paused to look at the heaped roses, gorgeous against the grey stones. Daily they were brought there in thousands, dew-drenched and fresh from the gardens of Saria. He took up a loose handful from the piled ma.s.s of sweetness and laid it down again.

Red roses were not for Fatalite. They would not suit her, and she had good reason to loathe the colour that was symbolical of blood and sacrifice. He chose instead a sheaf of lilies, long-stalked and heavily scented, and despatched them in the care of a picturesque _gamin_. Sobrenski and the others would certainly have considered him hopelessly mad if they had known. It was many years since he had sent flowers to a woman. His present life did not encourage little courtesies and graceful actions. It was in the natural course of events that all the comrades should help one another in every possible way, but none of them made any virtue out of it. It was all done in the most matter-of-fact way possible. As he had told Arith.e.l.li when they had talked up at Montserrat, one only kissed the hands of a Marie Spiridonova. And he was sending bouquets as to some _mondaine_ of the vanished world and of his youth.

He shrugged and walked slowly on. In pa.s.sing the house where Michael Furness lodged, he stopped to leave a message as to Arith.e.l.li's condition, and the advisability of another visit.

When "_The Witch_" touched at Corfu for letters Count Vladimir found among them one that twisted afresh the thread of two destinies--his own and that of a woman. His companion had still the same features and colouring of the boy who had sung at night under the stars in the harbour of Barcelona. Pauline Souvaroff still sang through the hours between dusk and dawn, but her disguise had been discarded, and now soft skirts trailed as she pa.s.sed, and the cropped fair hair had grown and twisted into little rings. Her secret had been no secret to Emile, though Arith.e.l.li with her trick of taking everything for granted had never guessed that Paul, the singer, was other than the boy he professed to be. Besides the two women had never talked together alone, and seldom even seen each other by daylight, for Pauline had sought no one's company.

There was for her but one being in the world, and when she could not be with the man she wors.h.i.+pped she was content to be with her thoughts and dreams.

At first she had, like many another Russian woman, yearned to make an oblation of herself in the service of her horror-ridden country, but with the coming of love she had put aside all thoughts of vengeance.

The Cause was identified for her with the person of her lover. She toiled willingly at it still, but from entirely different motives. His interests were hers, and while he worked for the revolutionary party, so also must she.

Pauline Souvaroff had loved much and given freely. All that she possessed of beauty and charm, her whole body and soul she had laid at the feet of the man at whose lightest word she flushed and paled, and on whom she looked with soft, adoring eyes. She lived in dreams, a life of drugged content in which there was neither past nor future.

In all the Brotherhood no one could be considered a free agent, and the ordering of no man's life was in his own hands. The private actions of each member were almost as well known as his public ones, for each man spied systematically upon his companions. If the devotion of two people to one another seemed likely to outrival their devotion to the Cause, then separation came swiftly. Nothing would be said, no accusations made, but each would receive orders that sent them in opposite directions. The supporters of the Red Flag movement were always particularly ingenious in arranging affairs to suit themselves.

An Anarchist could form no lasting ties. Some time in the future there was always separation to be faced.

It was in Vladimir's power to settle matters in his own way by ignoring Emile's letter, and remaining where he was in enjoyment of the present idyll. As long as they kept out to sea they were safe. But he had pledged his word to answer any summons and to give his help, and with him, as with all men, love came only second to his work. Emile had also explained Vardri's position, and it would be impossible to adjust anything without being on the spot.

He read the letter over again, slowly and carefully. It hinted and suggested more than it had said. Emile had just come from an interview with Sobrenski, and there had been a talk of an entire re-organization of the band. Some of the members would be required to carry on the propaganda in other countries, Russia, for example. They all knew what that meant--!

As he climbed the ladder by the yacht's side, and swung himself onto the deck, the girl ran up to him with outstretched hands, her white skirts fluttering behind her in the wind. She was as incapable of disguising her feelings as a child, and she was a joyous pagan in her happiness.

Vladimir slipped his hand under the warm round arm. "Have I been long, _pet.i.te_? Come and walk up and down. I want to talk to you."

"You have found letters, _mon ami_?" Pauline asked carelessly.

"From Poleski. Yes. I'm afraid they are rather important ones. We shall have to talk them over later on."

"When you like. Vladimir, do you remember the girl Monsieur Poleski brought on board once for a few days. I never knew her real name. She always looked so ill and miserable. Do you remember?"

"It is about this very girl that he has written."

Pauline looked up quickly. "She is dead?"

"No! No! I suppose you think that because she always looked such a tragedy. However, she is very ill, out of danger now, but of course not able to ride--she was in the Hippodrome, you know--and apparently she has no money, so one must do something for them. Poleski has barely enough for two, especially under these circ.u.mstances."

"I am sorry," Pauline said gently. "I remember how she used to sit all day and look at the sea. Monsieur Poleski left her too much alone, and always spoke so roughly, but I think he loved her."

Vladimir gave a short laugh.

"You're wrong there, child. No, I'm sure that's not the case with Poleski."

"But she loves him?"

"Possibly! She always seemed to me uncanny with those extraordinary eyes, and that voice. Poleski has certainly failed to educate her as regards taste in clothes. You saw how she was dressed when she came on board--!"

Half an hour later the anchor was up, and they were cutting through the white-crested waves. The girl pointed to a green headland on the left that rose suddenly and overhung the water like a sentinel on guard.

"I have been watching that all the morning in the distance, and I could think of nothing but the Winged Victory in the Louvre. You remember how she stands on a rough-hewn pedestal at the head of the marble staircase, and she is all alone against a dull red background. And as one looks one goes back all those centuries, and sees her as she was on the day the Greeks set her up to celebrate their great sea-victory. It must have all looked just as it does to-day, those centuries ago in the Island of Samothrace. There was a strong wind blowing, and the waves met and raced and leapt together, and the sky was the same wonderful colour that it is now, and there were wild birds hovering and screaming round her."

"What will you say to me, when I take you away from all this,--when we have to go back to Barcelona?"

"But I shall go with you?" The blue eyes were searching his face, and there was fear as well as a question in them.

"Do you suppose I shall leave you here alone, child?" He hated himself for the evasive answer.

He turned her thoughts to other things, bidding her talk of those days they had spent together in Paris. She had named it Paradise, and to her it had been indeed a place of enchantment, for she saw it for the first time, and Vladimir was always with her.

She had seen its treasures of art, and abandoned herself to its glamour with the enthusiasm and the freshness of a child.

She had looked out of place in the artificial atmosphere of the boulevards, among the gas-lit _cafes_, dazzling shop-windows, _flaneurs_ and gaily dressed women. A man who wrote poetry, and starved on what he received for his verses in the Quartier Latin, had stood beside her for a few moments in the Rue de Rivoli, and had gone home to his garret inspired to produce some lines in which he compared her to the delicate narcissus blooms that died so quickly in the flower sellers' baskets.

Together she and Vladimir had strolled among the wonders of the Louvre, he critical and unmoved, but indulgent and gratified at her pleasure as at the pleasure of a child.

Pauline had never been able to express what she felt. She could only wors.h.i.+p dumbly before the changeless unfading beauty of these relics of the fairy-cities, of Athens, and Rome, and Alexandria. She had loved the Greek marbles best. The weird shapes in the Corridor of Pan, the glorious torso of the Venus Accroupie with the two deep lines in her side that make her more human and alive than any other Venus, more divine even than the Milo, faultless in her "serpentining beauty rounds on rounds," serene and gracious in the shadow of her crimson-hung alcove.

And Vladimir was wise, for he allowed her to dream, and did not show her more than he could help of modern Paris.

From there they had gone to Brussels, then to Vienna, and last, and most beautiful of all, Buda-Pesth, the city among the hills. They had seen it first of all as Buda-Pesth should be seen, at night, hanging between earth and sky, and with her million lights sparkling against the soft darkness of the surrounding hills. Pauline's eyes had never become satiated with the sight of beautiful things.

Perhaps, as she had told Vladimir, it was her love for him that had given her this gift of clear-seeing. Without love she might have allowed herself to be blindfolded as many other women are, by ambition, or money, or intellect.

CHAPTER XIV

"La vie est vaine, Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine, Et puis bon jour."

In the process of Arith.e.l.li's convalescence, comedy fought for place with tragedy.

For the first time in her life she felt irritable, and inclined to grumble, and her racked nerves made the lonely hours appear doubly long and lonely.

Day after day, each one seemingly more unending than the last, the sun poured into her room, and the dust and litter acc.u.mulated in all four corners, and she lay and gazed at the hideous meandering pattern of the stained wall-paper, and the cracks and blistering paint on the door. The nights were less terrible, for the darkness veiled all sordid details, and there was a star-lit patch of sky visible through the open window.

The attendance she received could only be described as casual. Neither Emile nor Maria possessed one idea on the subject of hygiene between them. The methods of the former were, as might be expected, a little crude, and Maria combined a similar failing with a vast ignorance.

Moreover, she was not original. At the beginning of Arith.e.l.li's illness pineapple juice had seemed to Maria a happy inspiration, and she continued to provide it daily. What was good to drink on Sunday, she argued, must also be good on Monday.

Arith.e.l.li's throat had healed quickly, but the depression and weakness clung to her persistently. She fought it and was ashamed of it, true to her Spartan traditions, but was forced to realise that it was not in her own power to hurry her return to the world and work.

Michael Furness, who was much elated by the success of the Jewish herbalist's remedy, continued his treatment on the same lines, giving her various tisanes of leaves and flowers, which if they tasted unpleasant were at least harmless. He had grown fond of his patient, and she always looked for his visits with pleasure. He treated her with a genuine, almost fatherly kindness, and they were drawn together by the kin feeling of race, so strong among all Celts. In many respects Michael was not ideal as a medical attendant.