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Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

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The priest had set the girl on her knees before the improvised altar
and stood beside her in silence. The three, with no word spoken,
proceeded with their business. With deft speed they lashed their
man's hands behind his back, forcing them back with rough skill. The
chief of them motioned his subordinates to take him by the elbows and
signed to the priest with his hand. The priest came forward, holding
the crucifix, and took his place close to the prisoner. For a final
touch of the grotesque the executioner produced and put on a tall
silk hat.

"March!" he said, and they took the condemned man toward the door. He
twisted his head round for a last glance at the room.

"Good-bye, little one!" he cried loudly. The kneeling girl only
moaned.

"Good-bye, M'sieur Rufin."

Rufin stepped forward and bowed mechanically.

"Adieu, Maitre," he answered.

He saw that the condemned man's eyes lightened, a flush rose in his
face; he smiled as if in triumph. Then they passed out, and Rufin,
after standing for a moment in uncertainty, crossed the room and
knelt beside the girl, with his hands pressed to his ears.



VIII

"PARISIENNE"

"At least," said the Comtesse, still staring at the brisk fire in the
steel grate--"at least he saw them with his own eyes."

She was thinking aloud, and Elsie Gray, her distant relative and
close companion, only looked up without reply. The Comtesse's face
stood in profile against the bright appointments of the fireplace,
delicate and serene; the tall salon, with its white panels gleaming
discreetly in the light of the candles, made a chaste frame for her
fragile presence. The window-curtains had been drawn to shut out the
evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the
girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She
sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with
many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the
tick of a little clock worked themselves into her patient thoughts.

"He was to come at nine, I think," said the Comtesse at last, without
turning her head.

"Yes," said Elsie, leaning forward to look at the little clock. "It
still wants twenty minutes."

The Comtesse nodded slowly; all her gestures had the gentle
deliberation of things done ceremonially.

"It is not much longer to wait, is it?" she said. "After twenty
years, one should be patient. But to think! To-night, for the first
time I hear of Jeanne from one who saw her at the end. Not a lawyer
who has sought out the tale and rearranged it, but one who knew. You
see, Elsie?"

Elsie put a hand on her arm, and her little thrill of excitement died
out at once.

"Yes," said the girl; "I see, but you must be tranquil."

"I will be tranquil," promised the Comtesse. "I will have
consideration for my heart. It is only the waiting which tries me."

"And that is nearly at an end." Elsie released her arm, and the
Comtesse turned again to the fire. The tick of the clock renewed its
tiny insistence; the great room again enveloped them in the austerity
of its silence. The girl returned to the silk strings in her lap. She
knew the occasion of the Comtesse's sudden emotion; it was a familiar
tale, and not the loss familiar for being told in whispers. She had
heard it first when she came from her English home to be the
Comtesse's companion. It had been told to her officially, as it were,
to guide her in her dealings with the Comtesse. A florid French
uncle, with a manner of confidential discretion that made her blush,
had been the mouthpiece of the family, and from him she had learned
how Jeanne, the Comtesse's half-sister, had run away with a rogue, a
man who got his deserts, an officer in a regiment stationed in
Algeria.

"Eventually he committed suicide, but before that there were
passages," the French uncle had said. The dreadful word "passages"
seemed to contain the story, and he gave it an accent of unspeakable
significance. "The Comtesse has suffered," he told her further. "It
was a sad affair, and she had much tenderness for Jeanne." And that,
at first, seemed to be the whole of it, though once or twice the
uncle checked himself on the brink of details. But on this evening
the tale was to be told afresh. There had arrived from Africa one
Colonel Saval, who had served with the sorry hero of poor Jeanne's
romance; he had known him and dealt with him; and he was appointed to
come to the Comtesse in the quality of eye-witness.

He was punctual, at all events; the little clock was yet striking
when the gaunt footman opened the door and spoke his name. The
Comtesse looked up, and Elsie Gray rose to receive him; he advanced
and made his bow.

"Madame la Comtesse?" he said, with a faint note of inquiry. The
Comtesse's inclination answered him. "Madame la Comtesse honors me. I
am happy to be of service."

He bowed to Elsie, who gave him "Good evening;" the footman set
forward a chair for him and withdrew. His white hair stood about his
head like a delicate haze; under it, the narrow wise face was brick-
red, giving news of his long service under the sun of North Africa.
He was short and slight, a tiny vivacious man, full of charming
formalities, and there was about him something gentle and suave, that
did not quite hide a trenchant quality of spirit. He stood before
them, smiling in a moment of hesitation, half paternal, wholly
gallant.

"Madame la Comtesse is suffering," said Elsie, in the spacious French
idiom. "There is little that she can say. But she thanks Monsieur
most sincerely for giving himself this trouble. But please be
seated."

He was active in condolences at once. "I am most sympathetic," he
said seriously. "And for the trouble"--he nicked it from him--"there
is no trouble. I am honored."

The Comtesse bowed to him. "Monsieur is very amiable," she murmured.

He hitched up his chair and sat down, facing the pair of them. His
shrewd eye took the measure of the Comtesse and her infirmity,
without relinquishing a suggestion of admiration. He was a man
panoplied with the civil arts; his long career in camps and garrisons
had subtracted nothing of social dexterity. There was even a kind of
grace in his attitude as he sat, his cane and hat in one hand, with
one knee crossed upon the other. He spent a moment in consideration.

"It is of the Capitaine Bertin that I am to speak? Yes?" he asked
suddenly.

The Comtesse stirred a little in her chair. "Yes," she answered, in a
voice like a sigh--a sigh of relief, perhaps.

"Ah!" He made a little gesture of acknowledgment. "Le Capitaine
Bertin! Then Madame will compose herself to hear little that is
agreeable, for it is a tale of tragedy." His eyes wandered for a
moment; he seemed to be renewing and testing again the flavor of
memories. Under his trim moustache the mouth set and grew harder.
Then, without further preamble, he began to speak.

"Bertin and I were of the same rank," he said, "and of much the same
age. There was never a time when we were friends; there stood between
us too pronounced a difference--a difference, Madame, of spirit, of
aim, and even of physique. Bertin was large, sanguine, with the face
of a bold lover, of a man noticeably gallant. I recall him most
vividly as he sat in a cafe behind a little round table. It was thus
one saw him most frequently, with his hard, swarthy face and
moustaches that curled like a ram's horns. In such places he seemed
most at home, with men about him and cards ready to his hand; and
yet--has Madame seen the kind of man who is never wholly at his ease,
who stands for ever on his guard, as it were! Bertin was such a one;
there were many occasions when I remarked it. He would be in the
centre of a company of his friends, assured, genial, dominant; and
yet, at each fresh arrival in the room, he would look up with
something furtive and defensive in his expression. I have seen
deserters like that, but in Bertin it lacked an explanation."

"And there was a further matter yet. He was my fellow officer; I saw
him on parade and at mess; but his life, the life of his own choice,
was lived among those who were not our equals. How shall I make that
clear to you, Madame? In those days, Europe drained into Algiers; it
had its little world of men who gambled and drank much, and
understood one another with a complete mistrust; it was with such as
these that Bertin occupied his leisure. It was with them that his
harshness and power were most efficacious. Naturally, it was not
pleasant for us, his colleagues, to behold him for ever with such
companions; the most of them seemed to be men connected with one
sport or another, with billiards, or racing, or the like; but there
was nothing to be done."

The Comtesse shifted slightly in her chair. "He had power," she said
thoughtfully.

The little Colonel nodded twice. "He had power, as Madame observes.
He had many good qualities--not quite enough, it is true, but many.
There were even those that loved him, dogs, horses, waiters,
croupiers and the poor women who made up the background of his life.
I have thought, sometimes, that it is easy for a man to be loved,
Madame, if he will take that responsibility. But what befell Bertin
was not commonplace. He returned to France on leave, for six months,
and it was then, I believe, that he first met the lady who became
Madame Bertin?"

He gave the words the tone of a question, and the Comtesse answered
with a slow gesture of assent.

"Yes, I have heard that it was so," said the Colonel. "Of what took
place at that time I can tell nothing, naturally, and Madame is no
doubt sufficiently informed. But I saw him--I saw them both--within a
week of their return. Upon that occasion I dined at a hotel with two
friends, Captain Vaucher and Lieutenant de Sailles. Bertin, with some
friends and his wife, was at a table near-by. She was the only lady
of the party; her place was between an Englishman, a lean, twisted
man with the thin legs of a groom, and a Belgian who passed for an
artist. It was de Sailles who pointed them out; and in effect it was
a group to see with emotion. The lady--she was known to you, Madame?
Then the position will be clear. She was of that complete and perfect
type we honor as the Parisienne, a product of the most complex life
in the world. She was slender and straight--ah! straight as a lance,
with youth and spirit and buoyancy in the carriage of her head, the
poise of her body, the color upon her cheeks. But it was not that--
the beauty and the courage--that caused her to stand out among those
men as a climbing rose stands out from an old wall; it was the
schooled and perfected quality of her, the fineness and delicacy of
her manner and expression, the--in short, the note of breeding,
Madame, the unmistakable ensign of caste. The Englishman fidgeted and
lounged beside her; the fat Belgian drank much and was boisterous;
Bertin was harsh and rudely jovial and loud. It was as though she
were enveloped in a miasma."

"'So that is what Bertin has brought back,' said Vaucher slowly, as
his custom was."

"'It is a crime,' said de Sailles."

"'I wonder,' said Vaucher, and drank his wine. He was much my friend,
a man with the courage and innocence of a good child; but his thought
was not easy to follow. He gave Bertin's group another look under
puckered brows, and then turned his back on it and began to talk of
other matters. I might have known then that--but I must tell my tale
in order."

"Bertin was not wise--if it were nothing more--to bring such a wife
to Algiers. It turned eyes upon him. Those who had been aware of him
merely as a man of low tastes now began to notice his particular
actions. He had a house in a certain impasse, and one night there was
a brawl there--an affair of a man drunk and angry, of a knife drawn
and some one stabbed. Before, it might have passed; our discipline
was indulgent; but now it took on the shape of a scandal. It was
brief and ugly, but it marked a stage passed in Bertin's career. And
it was only two days later that Vaucher came to me in my quarters
with a manner at once deprecating and defiant. He sat in my arm-chair
and laughed quietly before he spoke."

"'I am looking for friends,' he said; 'for a pair of friends.'"

"Then, of course, I understood. I bade him count on me. 'And there is
also de Sailles,' I reminded him. 'He has a very just taste in these
affairs. But who is our opponent?'"

"'It is Bertin,' he answered."

"I was astonished, and he told me all. It was an episode of quixotry,
a thing entirely imprudent and altogether lovable in him. It chanced
that on the evening of Bertin's little--er--fracas, Vaucher had
passed by the impasse in which Bertin lived. He had heard the scream
of the man with the knife in him and paused. It was a dark night, and
in the impasse there was but one lamp which stood near Bertin's door.
There was a babble of many voices after that scream--shouts of fury,
the whining of the would-be assassin, and so on; he was about to pass
on, when Bertin's door opened and a woman slipped out and stood
listening on the pavement. Her attitude was that of one ready to
flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she
relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the
light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he
waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig
you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall,
weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence.
But Vaucher was not moved when he told me of it."

"'That I could have endured,' he said. 'I held my peace and did not
intrude upon her. But presently they brought the wounded man
downstairs, and Bertin came forth to seek a fiacre to take him away.
She heard him ere he came out and gained thus the grace of an
instant. There was never anything in life so pitiful, so moving, as
the woman's strength that strangled down her sobs, dried the tears at
their source, and showed to her husband a face as calm as it was
cold. He spoke to her and she gave him a word in answer. But'--and he
leaned forward in my chair and struck his fist on the arm of it--'but
that poor victory is sore in my memory like a scar."

"All that was comprehensible. Vaucher was a man of heart. 'But what
is the quarrel?' I demanded."

"'The quarrel!' he repeated. 'Let me see; what was it, now?' He had
actually forgotten. 'Oh yes. He spoke to me. That was it. He spoke to
me, and I desired him not to speak to me for the future, of course.'

"Madame, up to the time when I went with Vaucher to the ground I had
not given a thought to the issue of the affair. I had taken it for
granted that Bertin would go down; at such seasons, one is blinded by
one's sense of right. It lasted not two minutes. They fought with the
saber--our custom at that time. Though it was early in the morning,
there was a strong sun; it made a flame on the blades as they saluted
before engaging. Bertin was very sober and serious, but one had only
to glance at him to perceive a very heat of wrath masked under his
heavy countenance. Vaucher was intent, wary, full of careful purpose.
Their blades touched. 'All'ez!' There were a couple of moments of
fencing, of almost formal escrime, and then Vaucher lengthened his
arm and attacked. Bertin stepped back a pace, and, as Vaucher
advanced, he slashed with a high open cut, and it was over. Vaucher
threw up both hands and came to his knees. I remember that I stood,
unable to move, staring aghast at this end to the affair; while
Bertin threw down his sword, turned his back, and went to where his
clothes lay. At that moment he seemed as vast against the morning sky
as a monument, as a sphinx carved out of a mountain. He had spoken no
word."

"We took Vaucher back to the city. It was a cut in the head. Madame
shall be spared the particulars. I think he is living yet, but it was
the end of him, none the less."

The little Colonel's voice dropped on the last words. He did not take
the sympathy and friendship that waited for him in Elsie's grey eyes;
he looked with a somber gaze at the Comtesse. She still held her
favorite attitude, leaning a little to one side in her great chair,
so that she could watch the shifting shapes in the fire. She was
smiling slightly, but her smile vanished as the Colonel paused.

"He was a gallant gentleman," she said softly. Elsie turned her head
to look at her, surprised, for the thing was said perfunctorily, in
the manner of a commonplace of politeness.

Colonel Saval bowed. "Madame la Comtesse is only just," he said. But
he glanced sharply at her serene, preoccupied face with a manner of
some dissatisfaction.

He resumed his tale with a sigh. "After all," he said, "there is not
much to tell. I was not fortunate enough to meet Madame Bertin
frequently during the two years that followed. From time to time I
saw her, always with some wonder, for she preserved to the end that
delicate and superb quality which so distinguished her. The scandal
of the brawl was the small thing that was needed to turn Bertin's
course downhill; almost from that day one could mark his decline. It
was not a matter of incidents; it was simply that within a year most
of us were passing him without recognition, and there was talk of
debts that troubled him. He had deteriorated, too; whereas of old he
was florid, now he was inflamed and gross; where he had been merely
loud, he was now coarse. Within eighteen months the Colonel had made
him a scene, had told him sour truths, and shaken his finger at him.
That power of his, Madame, was not the power that enables a man to
hold his level. Even with the companions of his leisure, his
ascendancy faded. I recollect seeing him once, at the corner of the
Place du Gouvernement, in the centre of a group of them, raging
almost tearfully, while they laughed at him. The horrible laughter of
those outcasts, edged like a saw, cruel and vile! And he was purple
with fury, shaking like a man in an ague, and helpless against them.
I was young in those days and not incapable of generous impulses; I
recollect that as I passed I jostled one of those creatures out of
the path, and then turned and waited for the remonstrance which he
decided not to make."

The Comtesse nodded at the fire, like one well pleased. The little
Colonel gave her another of his shrewd glances and went on.

"As you see, Madame, it is not possible to describe to you the steps
by which Bertin sank. The end came within two years of the duel. One
knew--somehow--that it was at hand. There were things dropped in
talk, things overheard and pieced together--a whole atmosphere of
scandal, in which there came and went little items of plain fact. The
trouble was with regimental funds; again I will spare Madame the
details; but certain of them which should have passed through
Bertin's hands had not arrived at their destination. Clerks from a
bank came to work upon the accounts; strange, cool young men, who
hunted figures through ledgers as a ferret traces a rat under a
floor. You must understand that for the regiment it was a monstrous
matter, an affair to hide sedulously; it touched our intimate honor.
There was a meeting of the rest of us to consider the thing; finally,
it was I that was deputed to go forthwith to Bertin and persuade him
to leave the city, to vanish, to do his part to save our credit. And
that evening, as soon as it was dark enough to be convenient, I
went."

"There was still that light in the impasse by which my poor friend
Vaucher had seen Madame Bertin weeping; but from the windows of the
house there came none. It was shuttered like a fort. It was not till
I had knocked many times upon the door that there came any response.
At last I heard bolts being withdrawn--bolt after bolt, as if the
place had been a prison or a treasury; and Madame Bertin herself
stood in the entry. The one lamp in the impasse showed her my
uniform, and she breathed like one who had been running."

"I saluted her and inquired for Bertin."

"'Captain Bertin?' she repeated after me. 'I do not know--I fear----'"

"'My business with him is urgent,' I told her, and at that she
whitened. 'And unofficial,' I added, therefore."

"At that she stood aside for me to enter. I aided her to fasten the
door again, and she led me up the stairs to a small room, divided by
large doors from an inner chamber."

"'If you will please be seated,' she said, 'I will send Captain
Bertin in to you.'"

"She was thinner, I thought, and perhaps a trifle less assured; but
that was to be understood. For the rest, she had the deliberate tones
of the salon, the little smile of a convention that is not irksome.
Her voice, her posture, had that grace one knows and defers to at
sight. It was all very wonderful to come upon in that house. As she
left the room, her profile shone against the wall like a cameo, so
splendid in its pallor and the fineness of its outline."

"She must have gone from the passage by another entrance to the room
beyond the double doors, for I heard her voice there--and his. They
spoke together for some minutes, she at length, but he shortly; and
then the doors slid apart a foot or so, and he came through sideways.
He gave me a desperate look, and pulled at the doors to close them
behind him. They stuck and resisted him, and he ceased his efforts at
once."

"'You wanted to speak to me?' he asked. He seemed to be frowning as a
child will frown to keep from bursting into tears. 'But not
officially, I believe? It is not official, is it?'"

"'No,' I answered. 'It is a message--quite private.'"

"He ceased to frown at that, staring at me heavily, and chewing his
moustache."

"'Sit down,' he said suddenly, and came nearer, glancing over his
shoulder at the aperture of the doors. Something in that movement
gave me the suggestion that he was accustomed to guard against
eavesdroppers; all those poor forlorn gamesters and wastrels are full
of secrets and privacies. One sees them for ever in corners with
furtive eyes for listeners, guiding their business like
conspirators."

"I gave him my message at once. There was a need upon me for plain
speech with the man, like that need for cold steel which came upon
poor Vaucher."

"'There is time for you to make your packages and be gone,' I said.
'Time for that and no more, and I recommend you to let the packages
be few. If you go, you will not be sought for. That is what I have to
say to you.'"

"He glanced over his shoulder again and came a step nearer. 'You
mean----'he said, and hesitated."

"'The money? Yes,' I answered. 'That is what I mean. You will go?"

"He stared at me a moment in silence. I felt as if I had struck him
and spat in his face. But he had no such thought."

"'How long have I?' he asked suddenly."

"'You have to-night,' I answered."

"It seemed as if he were going to ask further questions, but at that
moment Madame Bertin appeared in the doorway behind him. I knew she
had heard our talk.

"'Your business is finished?' she asked carelessly, coming forward
into the room."

"'It is quite finished,' I replied."

"She nodded, smiling. 'Captain Bertin has to catch a train,' she
said, 'and if I did not watch the time for him, he would surely lose
it. He has no idea of punctuality.'"

"'I hope he has not much packing to do,' I said."

"'I have seen to that,' she replied."

"'Then I will not intrude upon your adieux,' I said, preparing to
depart. Ma foi, I was ready to weep, as Vaucher had wept, at the gay
courage of her. But she stopped me."

"'Oh, the adieux are complete like the packing,' she said. 'And if
you should have anything further to say to Captain Bertin, you can
drive with him to the station.'"

"I could see her meaning in that; my company would guard him till he
left. So I bowed."

"'I shall be very happy,' I said."

"'Then if you will send for a fiacre,' she suggested to her husband.
He was standing between us, wordless and dull. He gave her a look of
inquiry; she returned it with a clear, high gaze, and he went at
once."

"'It is a good season for traveling, I believe!' she said, when the
door had closed behind him."

"'Captain Bertin could not have chosen a better,' I assured her."

"Her composure was more than wonderful; by no sign, no hint of
weakness or ill ease, did she make any appeal to me. To my sympathy,
my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of
her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house
crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not
a hairbreadth from the line of social amenity."

"'But he is hardly likely to have company?' she asked again."

"As for me, I had visions of the kind of company that was due to him
--a formal sons-officer with a warrant of arrest, a file of stolid
soldiers, with rigid faces and curious eyes."

"But I answered her in her own manner."

"'There is certainly that drawback,' I said, and I thought--I hoped--
I saw gratitude in her answering look."

"Then Bertin returned, with the hat of a civilian and a cloak that
covered him to the ears. I saw their farewell--his look of appeal at
her, the smile of amusement which answered it. And next I was seated
beside him in the fiacre and she was framed in the door, looking
after us, slender and erect, pale and subtle, smiling still with a
manner as of weariness. It is thus that I remember her best."

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