"I am tired of tears and laughter
And men that laugh and weep,
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow and reap.
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And everything but sleep."
SWINBURNE.
If anyone had told Arithelli that she was in for a sharp attack of diphtheria, she would have felt surprised and not very much enlightened. Her ignorance of everything connected with illness was supreme, and since childhood she had had no recollection of medicine and doctors. Her parents indulged in theories on the subject of complaints, the principal one being a large disbelief in their existence. To them anything unhealthy or ailing was an aversion, a thing to be avoided rather than pitied.
For accidents, sprains and breakages their pharmacopoeia suggested and did not go beyond two ideas,—salt and water and Nature.
The Oriental strain in her character helped her to endure where an ordinary woman would have fussed, cried, or grumbled. At home if she had had a fall or did not look her best she had been expected to consider herself in disgrace, and to keep out of the way till such time as she had completely recovered her looks and spirits.
When she returned to her lodgings, it did not occur to her to rouse the landlady and demand remedies or attentions. The walk home had been a nightmare, and now she had all she wanted—solitude and the blessed darkness. She threw off her dress and boots, and walked the room hour after hour. She still heard the brazen band, and saw the flaming lights and her ears echoed to the dreadful sounds of hissing. Sometimes she had drunk feverishly of the very doubtful water against which Emile had so often cautioned her. When it was nearly dawn she gave in, and lay huddled up on the bed, half-delirious with the pain and feeling of suffocation.
Two streets away, and in a room more squalid than her own, Vardri was also enduring his own private Purgatory. Hers was physical, his mental. That was all the difference.
Long before half-past eight he was down at the stables and there received the dismissal he had fully expected, being ordered off the premises by the head groom, who had received directions the night before to give Vardri a week's wages, and turn him out of the place without delay. It was no use protesting. The Manager was not yet visible, and even if he had been Vardri knew there was no appeal.
There had been complaints about his negligence more than once, and of course he had been missed on the previous evening. None of the "strappers" would have reported him, but one of the clowns, a Spaniard with whom he had fought for ill-treating a horse, had seen him leaving the vicinity of the dressing-rooms, and had carried the information to headquarters.
The informer had chosen his time well, and had found the Manager raging over Arithelli's mishap, and ready to dismiss anyone with or without reason.
Vardri turned his back on the place whistling defiance, and with his courage fallen below zero. He would have liked to say good-bye to the horses, and to some of the men who were his friends. He had never disliked the actual work, and it was at the Hippodrome that he had first met Arithelli. Her misfortune and his had come together. At any other time it would not have been quite so bad. A few months ago he would not have cared whether he lost his place or not.