The Hippodrome Part 11

"For all things born one gate Opens, . . . and no man sees Beyond the G.o.ds and Fate."

SWINBURNE.

WHEN Emile arrived at the Hippodrome, only a few minutes after his usual time, he found no one but the dresser, who was clearing away the litter of clothes, jewellery, powder-puffs and flowers.

Arith.e.l.li had vanished.

She had never before failed to wait for him, and he knew she would not have started alone without some very good reason. He questioned the dresser and found she knew nothing beyond that "La Nina," as she called the girl affectionately, had left immediately after her last turn. She had asked if the Senor had been in yet, but hearing he had not, she had dressed and gone at once. She had not even stayed to put on a cloak, and had left her hair still in a plait, and only a _velo_ over it. She had seemed in great haste (but that was always so with the Englis.h.!.+) and had looked ill. The Senor must not be alarmed, she added, folding Arith.e.l.li's blue habit with wrinkled, careful hands. True, Barcelona was an evil place for one so young as "La Nina," but the blessed saints--

Emile gave her a _peseta_, and left her to her invocations. In the long pa.s.sage that led from the dressing-rooms he ran into Estelle, who was just sufficiently drunk to be excitable and quarrelsome. She still had on her dancer's costume of short skirts of poppy-coloured tulle, and scarlet shoes and tights. She was further adorned with long, dangling, coral ear-rings, and a black bruise on the left side of her face under the eye, the outward and visible sign of her last encounter with the Manager.

She saluted Emile with a vindictive glare from her black eyes, and tried to push past him. She hated him in a spiteful feminine way for his complete appropriation of Arith.e.l.li, of whom, thanks to him, she now saw very little. She had quarrelled with all the other women employed in the Circus, but Arith.e.l.li had always helped her to dress, and given her cigarettes and listened to her woes.

Emile blocked the way, catching the dancer by the wrist as she attempted to slip by, leaving his question unanswered. He repeated it, and after a minute's sullen refusal to speak, Estelle stamped her foot savagely upon the floor, and collapsed into a state of hysterical volubility. No, she had seen nothing, nothing! she protested in French. Scarcely ever did she see her little friend now, and whose fault was that? Would Monsieur Poleski answer her? As Monsieur Poleski did nothing of the kind, she continued to rage. All men were brutes! Yes, all! She had no friends now and if she did console herself--what would he have?

Emile decided that she was speaking the truth, and that there was no use wasting time in making other enquiries.

One thing seemed certain--that Arith.e.l.li had left the building. From the Hippodrome he went next to her lodgings, also with no result. He could only now suppose that Sobrenski had sent her off at a moment's notice on some unusual errand. The possibility of her having gone to the house in the Calle de Pescadores did not occur to him. According to the last arrangement they were not expected there till after midnight. It was only eleven now. He would go to the Cafe Colomb, and spend the hour there. It was no use to search for her further, and as he a.s.sured himself there was not the least reason to become alarmed.

She was not likely to lose her head, and she knew her way about the place.

The Colomb was more or less a recognised resort of the many revolutionaries with whom the city abounded. The proprietor was known to be in sympathy with their schemes, though he took no active part in them himself. He was considered trustworthy, for notes and messages were often left in his charge, and his private room was at the disposal of those who wished for a few minutes' secret interview. When Emile entered he was greeted by several of the men who sat in groups of two and three at little tables, busy with Monte and other card games.

The smoke of many cigarettes obscured their figures, and clouded the mirrors with which the place was lined from floor to ceiling. Emile sat down alone and ordered an _absinthe_.

When called upon to join in the play, he refused with a scowl and a rasping oath in his native tongue, and as the evening grew on towards midnight he was left to himself and his meditations.

His thoughts were still with Arith.e.l.li, the weird witch-girl, whose eyes were like those of Swinburne's fair woman,

"Coloured like a water-flower, And deeper than the green sea's gla.s.s."

He, who now never opened a book, had once known that most un-English of all poets by heart.

In her many phases Arith.e.l.li pa.s.sed before him, as he stared moodily at the s.h.i.+fting opal-coloured liquid in his gla.s.s. He thought of her as he had often seen her, fighting through her work at the Hippodrome, the little weary head always gallantly carried, and then when she had dismounted and was in her dressing-room, the rings round her eyes, her shaking hands and utter weariness. He remembered her consideration for her horses, her loathing of the ill-treatment of all dumb things so common here. Once he had found her in the market-place, remonstrating in her broken Spanish with the country women for the inhuman manner in which they carried away their purchases of live fowl, tied neck to neck, and slung across a mule, to die of slow strangulation under the blazing sun. All the animals at the Hippodrome had been better treated since she had been there. It was characteristic of the man that he laughed at her to her face for her campaign against the national cruelty, and in secret thought of her with admiration.

In many ways s.e.xless, in others purely a woman, to every mood she brought the charm of individuality.

_Tiens_! He was falling in love, he jeered to himself, cynically. In love with that tall, silent creature, who was never in a hurry and never in a temper, and who walked as if she had been bred in Andalusia.

Absurd! He was only interested. She had brains, and she never bored him.

Besides, she was only twenty-four, and one could hardly allow a girl of that age to be thrown warm and living to the wolves and vampires of Barcelona. Perhaps he had been wrong in letting her do some things--drink _absinthe_, for example. One lost one's sense of mental and moral perspective in a place like this. At least he had guarded her well. If he had not met her that day at the station, she might have fallen into worse hands than his own. Things could not go on indefinitely as they had been going. What was to be the end of it all?

Eventually she would fall in love, and a woman was no more use to the Cause once that happened. No vows would be strong enough to keep her from a man's arms once she cared. She would not love lightly or easily, and where would she find love, here in Barcelona?

Half unconsciously, he found himself comparing Arith.e.l.li with the woman who had betrayed him. Emile never lied, even to himself, and he knew now that Marie Roumanoff had almost become a shadow.

A plaything she had been, a child, a doll, a being made for caresses and admiration. To a woman of her type camaraderie would have been impossible. He had not wanted it, and it had not been in her nature to give it.

A man, who had been sitting opposite, got up, gesticulated, put on his hat at a reckless angle, and, with a noisy farewell to his companions, swaggered out.

In the mirror that faced him Emile saw the quick furtive glance bestowed upon him, though he sat apparently unconscious of it.

Something at the back of his brain suggested to him that he knew the man's face, that he had seen him before. A spy probably. It was nothing unusual for any of them to be "shadowed," and for their out-goings and in-comings to be noted.

The highly gilded French clock on the mantel-piece at the far end of the room announced the hour as being a quarter to twelve. Emile stooped down to pick up his sombrero which had tumbled off a chair on to the floor, when he remained with outstretched hand, arrested by the sound of a woman's voice which came through the partly opened door of the proprietor's private room and office. A woman's voice? It was Arith.e.l.li's unmistakably.

He recovered himself and the sombrero together, and twisted round in his seat so as to get a view of the door, which was on his left hand, half way down the long room. It had a gla.s.s top, across which a dark green curtain was drawn. Emile knew that it was possible to enter this room without pa.s.sing through the _cafe_. There was another door which led into a pa.s.sage through the kitchen and back part of the house, and from thence into a side-street, or rather a small alley.

He had often been that way, and it was generally used by the frequenters of the place when they had reason to guard their movements.

He listened again.

The voice was even more hoa.r.s.e than usual and more uncertain. Though he could not hear the words, the broken sentences gave an impression of breathlessness. When she stopped speaking he heard the voice of the proprietor raised in an emphatic stage-whisper. Yes, Monsieur Poleski was within. Mademoiselle was fortunately in time to find him. If Mademoiselle would give herself the trouble to wait but for one moment--.

The little man fancied himself an adept at intrigue, and his methods were often a cause of anxiety to those he befriended. His nods and gestures and meaning glances as he emerged would have been enough to arouse suspicion in the most guileless.

He stood blinking his short-sighted eyes through the haze in his effort to attract Emile's attention without being detected. The latter got up and sauntered towards him.

"_Bon soir, Monsieur Lefevre_," he said carelessly. "We have a little account to settle, you and I, is it not so?"

Fat Monsieur Lefevre rose gallantly to the occasion. He bowed Emile into the room, locked the door by which they had entered, and with another bow and a muttered apology scuttled through the pa.s.sage into the back regions. Two minutes later he made his reappearance in the _cafe_ by the front way, and went to his place behind the counter with the satisfied face of a successful diplomatist.

His little sanctum was typical in its arrangement of the Parisian _bourgeois_.

Numerous picture post-cards of a famous chanteuse of the Folies Bergeres proclaimed Monsieur's taste in beauty. For the rest, everything was neat and rather bare of furniture. There were chairs symmetrically arranged like sentinels along the walls, tinted lace curtains, a gilded mirror, and a few doubtful coloured pictures, all of women. An unshaded electric light flared in a corner. Arith.e.l.li stood resting one hand on the round polished table in the centre of the apartment. Her dark blue dress was torn in two places, and smeared with patches of dust. The _velo_, or piece of drapery worn on ordinary occasions instead of the mantilla, hung down her back in company with the long plait of hair, which had come untwisted at the ends. Her face was strained and haggard, and the tense att.i.tude spoke of tortured nerves.

She was still struggling for breath, and appeared almost unable to speak, but Emile was not minded to allow her much time for recovery.

Patience was not numbered among such virtues as he possessed.

"_Tiens_!" he began. "What is it now, Fatalite? You look as if you had been having adventures. Have you been getting into mischief? And where have you been?"

"In the Calle de Pescadores out at Barcelonetta. Sobrenski sent me with a message to you. The place is being watched. If they see you go in you may be arrested. The others got to hear about the spies, and went early. They are going to stay there all night because it isn't safe to leave." Her tone was that of one who repeats a well-learned lesson.

Emile shrugged. "Spies? So that's it! There was a man just now in the _cafe_ who looked like it. Probably he is waiting to go outside now to 'shadow' me. He may wait till--! And how did you get out?"

"They let me down from a window at the back of the house. I got on to the quay and came here by the long way and through the Rambla." There was a pause, and then she said in the same mechanical voice, "Sobrenski said I was to tell you not to come. It isn't safe."

Emile did not answer. He could see that she was trembling violently and on the verge of an hysterical crisis. He rather hoped she would break down. It would seem more natural. Women were privileged to cry and scream, not that it was possible to imagine her screaming. He dragged forward a chair from the immaculate row against the wall.

As he did so he noticed that she kept her left hand behind her back as if to conceal something.

"Sit down," he ordered. "What's the matter with your hand? Are you hurt?"

The girl retreated before him.

"No!" she answered defiantly.

But Emile's quick eyes had seen a crumpled handkerchief flecked with red stains.