The Hippodrome | Page 8

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