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Updated: June 1, 2025
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 Arithelli's unmistakably.
Reserved and limited of words as he himself always was, and now rendered savage by anxiety, he found it impossible to understand the other man's mercurial temperament. By this time he was without hope, and certainly without faith in either Michael or his remedies. The doctor having skilfully extracted his crumpled outer garment from under Arithelli's shoulders, regretfully prepared to depart.
He was sure of a welcome among the officials and work-people of his former home. The wife of the steward had been his mother's maid, and she and her husband would give him shelter till he could see his father and make terms. If things turned out well then his life and Arithelli's would be one long fairy-tale, which should begin where all other fairy-tales ended.
His anxiety on Arithelli's behalf was fast becoming an obsession. When she had first come into his life he had wondered sometimes how she would stand the late hours and all the hardships of a circus training, but after her one outburst she had never complained again. He thought the sea-trip had done her good. Of course she always looked pale, but then that was her type.
To appeal to him on Arithelli's behalf would only be to give him a chance for refusal and a jeer at female conspirators. Her turquoise rings Emile collected from the table, and put them into his pocket; her collar of turquoises he rescued from the floor, where it had fallen when she took off her bodice. The jewels could all be turned into the money they needed so badly.
She was the same fat Englishwoman who had driven Arithelli's horses in the chariot. She was by no means young, she had applied her rouge with a lavish hand, and her golden wig was an outrage. Her airs and graces were those of a well-fed operatic soprano.
He sat down on the bed and took up Arithelli's thin wrist. In his shirt sleeves, with his hair well on end, and his robust voice very little subdued below its usual pitch, Michael did not convey the impression that he was capable of taking either Life or Death in a serious spirit.
They pledged each other in the yellow wine of the country, and presently Vardri set about the manufacture of what he inaccurately described as Turkish coffee. That the result of his efforts was half cold and evil-tasting mattered not to either of them. Arithelli's red hair was crowned with vine leaves that he had stripped from the grape-cluster and twisted into a Bacchante wreath.
Now he had abjured the Revolution, his father would be only too glad to have him back, to see him married to a woman of Arithelli's charm and breeding. There had never been any quarrel with his family, except when he had joined the Red Flag party, and it was only natural that they should quarrel over that. Love or the Revolution? There would never be any more doubt now as to which he would choose.
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 Arithelli'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.
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