Читать книгу The Hippodrome - Rachel Hayward - Страница 5

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"Out of the uttermost end of things

On the side of life that is seamier,

There lies a land, so its poet sings,

Whose people call it Bohemia.

"It is not old, it is not new,

It is not false, it is not true,

And they will not answer for what they do,

Far away in Bohemia."

"Love in Bohemia," DOLF WYLLARDE.

"I think," Arithelli said with deliberation, "that all your friends are very fatiguing. They have such bad tempers, and do nothing but argue."

"They live for the serious things of life," retorted Emile. "Not to play the fool."

"Thanks! Is this one of the serious things of life, do you suppose?" She stuck the large needle with which she had been awkwardly cobbling a tear in her skirt, into the seat of a chair.

"What are you doing that for?" demanded Emile.

"Oh, pardon, I forgot." She extracted the needle. "I don't think I'm unwomanly but I'm not a good sewer. Emile! don't you think we might have some music? I really am beginning to sing 'Le Rêve' quite well."

Her education in Anarchy had commenced with the teaching of revolutionary songs. Emile, who was himself music-mad, had discovered her to be possessed of a rough contralto voice of a curious mature quality. It would have been an absurd voice for ballads in a drawing-room, but it suited fiery declamations in praise of La Liberté!

They were sitting in Emile's room now, for they made use of each other's lodgings alternately, and there was a battered and rather out-of-tune piano. Sometimes, after the evening performance, there would be a gathering of the conspirators, all more or less morose, unshaven and untidy; and while Emile played for her, Arithelli would stand in the middle of the room, her green eyes blazing out of her pale face, her arms folded, singing with a fervour which surprised even her teacher, the lovely impassioned "Rêve du prisonnier" of Rubinstein. She was always pleased with her own performances, and not in the least troubled with shyness. Also she was invariably eager to practise. She shook down her skirt, went across to the piano and began to pick out the notes.

"S'il faut, ah, prends ma vie. Mais rends-moi la liberté!"

Emile was sewing on buttons. Though he did not look in the least domesticated, he was far more dexterous at such work than the long-fingered Arithelli. In fact it was only at his suggestion that she ever mended anything at all.

"Do you ever by chance realise what you are singing about?" he demanded.

"Of course I do. I'm a red hot Socialist. I've read Tolstoi's books and lots of others. I got in an awful scrape over political things just the little time I was in Paris. It was when the Dreyfus case was on. Madame Bertrand was terrified at the way I aired my opinions. You see politics are so different abroad to what they are in England."

Emile agreed. The girl was developing even more than he had hoped.

"Ah! This is the first time I've ever heard about your political opinions."

"You've never asked me before. One doesn't know everything about a person at once."

Again Emile agreed. Then he said abruptly, "Well, if you have all these ideas you'd better join the Cause."

"I'd love to! Shall I have to go to meetings with Sobrenski and all the rest of them?"

"Probably. But you'll not be expected to talk. You may be told to do some writing or carry messages."

"Is that all?" She seemed rather disappointed. Emile felt for a moment almost inclined to develop scruples. She evidently regarded Anarchy at large as a species of particularly exciting diversion.

"Who are the other women mixed up with it?" she asked.

"There are no other women. You should feel honoured that we are having you."

Emile stood up, having completed his renovating operations. "You want to sing, eh?" Arithelli assented eagerly. "You will work?" Emile demanded.

"Yes!" Her eyes had become suddenly like green jewels, and she looked almost animated. She was more interested in Emile's music than in any other part of him. His wild Russian ballads sung with his strange clipped accent and fiery emphasis, fascinated her. She was content to listen for an indefinite period of time, her long body in a restful attitude, her feet crossed, her hands in her lap, as absolutely immovable as one who is hypnotised.

Emile, for his part, was equally interested in her exploits in vocalism, which he found as extraordinary and unexpected as everything else about her. Her singing voice was so curiously unlike her speaking voice that it might have belonged to another person. It had tremendous possibilities and a large range, but it was hoarse and harsh, and yet full of an uncanny attraction. In such a voice a sorceress of old might have crooned her incantations. Where did this girl get her soul, her passion, he wondered; she who was only just beginning life.

He flung over an untidy pile of music, and dragged out the magnificently devilish "Enchantement" of Massenet. "Try this," he said abruptly. "It's your kind of song."

For half-an-hour he exhorted, bullied and instructed, losing both his composure and his temper. Arithelli lost neither. "I don't understand music," she observed calmly. "But show me what to do and I'll do it. Mine's a queer voice, isn't it? A regular croak."

"You've got a voice; yes, that's true, but you don't know how to produce it, and you've no technique. You want plenty of scales."

"Wouldn't that take all the rough off, and make it just like anyone's voice?"

Emile stared angrily at the exponent of such heresy, and was about to annihilate her with sarcasm, when he suddenly changed his mind. After all, she was right. It was what she called "the rough" that helped to make her voice unlike the voices of most women.

"Is that your idea? A good excuse for being lazy! If you don't sing scales then you must work hard at songs."

"Yes, I know." She put her hands behind her back and leant against the piano. "There was a man in Paris, a friend of the manager. He heard me sing once. He knew I wanted to take up a profession, and he offered to train me for nothing, and bring me out on the stage. I was to sing those queer, dramatic, half-monotone songs in which one almost speaks the words. He meant to write them specially for me, and I was to wear an oriental costume. He said that every other voice would sound fâde after mine."

Emile glanced at her sharply, but her tone and manner was both absolutely void of conceit. "Well, why didn't you accept his offer?"

"I don't know. I suppose because it was fated I should come here. He wanted me to make my début at the cafés chantants, but I didn't like the idea somehow. He said my voice was only fit for the stage, and would sound horrible in a room."

Emile twisted his moustache upwards, and his eyebrows climbed in the same direction. "So! Do you think then that your life at the Hippodrome is going to be more what you English call respectable, than the cafés chantants?"

"There are the horses here. If I don't like anything else I can always like them."

Emile decided that the man in Paris had been apt in his judgment of this fantastic voice. Clever of him also to have noticed that she was Oriental. The setting of her green eyes was of the East. And horses were the only things she cared about—so far. Like most people whose lives are a complicated tangle of plots, Emile was not particularly interested in animals. His life, thoughts and environment were morbid, and the dumb creation too normal and healthy to appeal greatly to him. He discovered that his pupil was able to play in much the same inconsistent fashion that she sang. With a beautiful touch, full of temperament and expression, she possessed a profound ignorance of the rudiments of music. She could not read the notes, she said, but she could copy anything he played if she heard it two or three times. Emile found her astonishingly intelligent as well as amiable, and though the music lessons were not conducted on scientific principles, they produced good results.

He would give her plenty of music with which to occupy herself till the time came when she would be fully occupied in serving the Cause. As he had said, there were no other female conspirators in their circle. Sobrenski, the red-haired leader, detested women, and thought them all fools, who generally added the sin of treachery to their foolishness. Emile himself had taken no interest in any woman since he had lived in Barcelona. He too had found them treacherous. Since he had lost his little childish goddess, Marie Roumanoff, he had had no desire to play the role of lover. If he wanted companionship he preferred men, for as companions women bored him.

But Arithelli was not a woman—yet. She appeared able to keep own counsel, to do as she was told, and to judge by the way she rode, her courage would be capable of standing a severe test. Also it had occurred to him that she possessed the art of being a good comrade. It would amuse him to watch her develop. At present she was full of illusions about the charm of life in general. Everything for her showed rose-tinged. Well, it was not his business to dispel illusions. At present it was all "Le Rêve," but after the dream would come awakening. He took care to leave her very little alone during the first few days, and arranged her time according to his own ideas, and escorted her backwards and forwards from her rehearsals at the Hippodrome.

When she was free he took her for long walks up the hills where they could look down upon the gorgeous city, which, as far as natural loveliness went, might have been compared to Paradise rather than to the Hell to which he invariably likened it.

The beautiful harbour, the dry air, the sunlight and splashes of vivid colour—everything was intoxicating to her. She said very little, but Emile felt that she missed nothing, and lacked nothing in appreciation. For himself the place must be always hateful, for he was in exile. What was the golden sunlight to him when he longed for the snows and frozen wastes of Russia, that sombre country so like the hearts of those by whom it is peopled.

One day he took her for an excursion to Montserrat, three hours' journey from Barcelona. They left the train at Monistrol, and started to walk through the vineyards and pine woods towards the famous mountain that towers up to heaven in grey rugged terraces of rock. All round, for miles, were undulating waves of green, here and there the brown towers of some ancient castle, or the buildings of a farmstead; and below on the plain the glitter of the winding river. They climbed to the wooded slopes of Olese, where they sat down to rest. Arithelli threw herself on the short, dry grass, with her arms under her head, and drew a long breath of pleasure and relief.

"I love all this; it makes me feel so free."

Emile sat with his back against a huge plane tree, and rolled cigarettes, watching her under his heavy eyebrows. She looked in her proper place here, he thought. There was something wild and animal-like about the grace of her attitude.

"So you're out of a convent?" he said, hurling out the remark with his usual abruptness. "Tiens! It's absurd!"

"But it's true. Convent schools are cheap, you see, that's why we were sent there. No, I'm not a Catholic. Most of the girls made their abjurations, but I never did. They told lies there, and they spied. I hated that. The nuns spied on the children of Mary, and the children of Mary spied on the ones who were not the children of Mary, and—" she stopped.

Emile told her to continue. "I should like to hear more about your—your religious experiences," he said. "Besides, it will do you more good to talk than to go to sleep."

Arithelli complied at once, with unruffled good nature. "Oh, of course I'll tell you if you like," she said amiably. "I stopped because I thought you would probably be bored, ennuyé, you know."

She described the nuns mumbling their prayers, and punctuating them with irate commands to the children; the many and various rules, the Mére Supérieure, the food, the clothes, the eccentricities of Monsieur le Directeur. She had the rare and unwomanlike art of witty description, though it assorted badly with her tragic face and unsmiling eyes. As she talked her voice rippled and broke into suppressed laughter.

"It was all rather dull, n'est-ce-pas?" said Emile, who felt more amusement than he had any intention of showing. "You'll find the Cause more exciting."

Before any practical steps were taken to make her a member of the band it was necessary to stimulate her enthusiasm, her imagination. He knew that for all her outward calmness she had no lack of fire. The coldest countries sometimes produced the most raging volcanoes.

"It's the only thing you care about—isn't it—the Cause?" she said.

"Tell me more about it. As I'm going in for it I ought to understand.

Of course I like anything that's 'agin the Government.' All the Irish

have always been rebels and patriots. We've helped your country too."

Emile did not require a second invitation to induce him to expound his views. "I suppose you think we throw bombs about by way of a little distraction?" he asked sarcastically. "What have we suffered before we took to throwing bombs? Before I came here I saw men and women, old and young together, shot down in the streets of St. Petersburg. Because they rioted? No! Because they wished to offer a protest against the brutalities of the Government officials. Are our petitions ever read, our entreaties ever answered? There were other things too, but they didn't generally get into the newspapers. Women stripped in barrack rooms—and that in winter—the Russian winter—and beaten by common soldiers. Not women of the streets and slums, but women of the higher classes. Mock trials held with closed doors, the crime—to have incurred the displeasure of someone in favour at the Court—the end—Siberia! A student is known to be quiet, a great reader and interested in the condition of the serfs. He is watched, arrested, and on the false evidence of the police ends his days in the mines. Entreaties, reason, appeal! Have we not tried them? Now we have only one weapon left—retaliation. Sometimes we are able to avenge our martyrs. The two fiends who guarded Marie Spiridonova were shot by the members of her Society. She was only a girl too—about the same age as you. We Anarchists do not serenade women and make them compliments, but we think it an honour to kiss the hand of such as Marie Spiridonova. She was tortured, starved, outraged, and came through worse than death to be transported to a convict settlement. Now she is in the Malzoff Prison. She will never see the world again, but it may be years before the life is ground out of her by labour and privations. Her case will soon be forgotten, except by a few, and thousands of other women have gone the same road. The details of the tragedy may be a little different, the thing itself is the same. One day I shall go back to my own country. In the meantime I carry on the campaign here.

"It's a losing cause. But if we lose we pay. We don't ask for mercy!"

* * * * * *

They sat together that evening at a café on the Rambla, the strolling place of the Spanish beauties, who promenaded there in an endless stream, with waving fans and rustling draperies, carnations and roses burning in dark, elaborately dressed hair. Tziganes made wild, witch music. At the cafés people laughed and drank.

Suddenly Arithelli leant across the little table, raising her glass.

"To the Cause!" she whispered under her breath.

For an instant the two pairs of eyes flamed into each other; then those of the man, hard and steel-grey, softened into something like admiration. Their glasses clinked softly together. "To the Cause!" he repeated. "Mon Camarade!"