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Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

P >> Perceval Gibbon >> The Second Class Passenger




"It was not till we were out of her sight that Bertin spoke. He lit a
cigarette and stared up at the great white stars."

"'She spoilt my luck from the first,' he said."

"I don't know why, but I laughed. At the moment it seemed to be a
very droll saying. And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in
sympathy. He was a wonderful man. When he was established in the
train, he held out his hand to me."

"'Adieu,' he said. 'You have been kind in your way. You didn't do it
for me, you know--so adieu!"

"I took his hand. It was a small thing to grant him, and I bad no
other answer. As the train moved away, I saw his face at the window
of the carriage, full of a kind of sly humor--gross, amiable, and
tragic! He waved me a good-bye."

The Colonel paused, staring at his trimly booted toe. Madame la
Comtesse looked at him thoughtfully.

"You saw him again? she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "But possibly the tale becomes too painful."

The Comtesse passed a hand over her eyes. "I must hear the rest," she
said. "You saw her, too, again?"

"Yes," said the Colonel.

"She was very hard," said the Comtesse thoughtfully. "Very hard
always. As a girl I remember----"

The Colonel was looking at her intently, as though some thought had
suddenly brought him enlightenment. Both he and the Comtesse seemed
quite to have forgotten Elsie, listening on her stool in bewilderment
and compassion. She saw them now exchange guarded glances, as though
measuring each other's penetration.

The Comtesse leaned back. "I beg you to proceed," she said, with a
sigh. Elsie reached over the arm of the chair and took her hand and
held it.

The little Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

"Since Madame la Comtesse wishes it," he said. "But some years
elapsed before I saw either of them again. Madame Bertin had said
nothing which could encourage me to call at the house in the impasse,
and there was no message from him to carry thither. I heard--it was
said--that she, too, left the city; Bertin's exit from the service
was arranged, and thus the matter seemed to close. I preserved
certain memories, which I still preserve; I was the richer by them.
Then came active service, expeditions to the interior, some fighting
and much occupation. It chanced that I was fortunate; I gained some
credit and promotion; and by degrees the affair of Bertin sank to
rest in the background of my life. It was a closed incident, and I
was reconciled never to have it reopened. But it seems one can never
be sure that a thing is ended; possibly Bertin in his hiding-place
thought as I did and made the same mistake. I heard the news when I
visited Algiers on my way to a post up-country at the edge of the
desert. New powers had taken charge of our business; there was a new
General, an austere, mirthless man, who knew of Bertin's existence,
and resented it. He had been concerned here and there in more than
one enterprise of an unpleasant flavor, and it was the General's
intention to put a period to him. My friends in barracks told me of
it, perfunctorily; and my chief sense was of disgust that Bertin
should continue to be noticeable. And then I went away up-country, in
a train that carried me beyond the borders of civilization, and set
me down at last one dawn at a point where a military line trickled
out into the vast yellow distance, against an undulated horizon of
sandhills. It was in the chill hour of the morning; a few sentries
walked their beats, and beyond them there was a plot of silent tents.
The station was no more than planks laid on the ground beside some
locked iron sheds, a tank for the engine, and a flagstaff. It was
infinitely forlorn and empty, with an air of staleness and
discomfort. At some distance, a single muffled figure sat apart on a
seat; I thought it was some Arab waiting for the day. Be judge,
then, of my amazement when it rose, as I would have passed it, and
spoke."

"'This, also, is a good season for traveling?' it said, and I spun on
my heel to face it. From the hood of a bernouse there looked out at
me, pale and delicate still, the face of Madame Bertin."

"In my bewilderment and my--my joy, I caught at both her hands and
held them for a moment. She smiled and freed herself gently, and her
eyes mocked me. She was the same as ever, impregnably the same;
stress of mind, sorrow, exile, loneliness--they could not avail to
stir her from her pedestal of composure. That manner--it is the armor
of the woman of the world."

"'I came here on a camel,' she told me, in answer to my inquiries.
'On a camel from my home. I understand now why chameau is a word of
abuse.'"

"'I am not very sure that the season is good for traveling,' I said."

"She shrugged her shoulders. 'When one is acclimatized, seasons are
no longer important.'"

"'And you are acclimatized, Madame?' I asked her."

"She showed me the bernouse. 'Even to this,' she said."

"Across the slopes of sand, one could hear the engine of the little
military train grunting and wheezing as it collected its cars, and
the strident voice of a man cursing Arab laborers."

"'You go by that train?' she asked me."

"'To Torah,' I answered."

"'I also,' she said, looking at me inquiringly.

"I said I was fortunate to have her company, and it was plain that
she was relieved. For I guessed forthwith that it was at Torah that
Bertin was, and she knew that if my going thither were to arrest him,
I would spare her. I am sure she knew that."

"It was a journey of a day and a night, while that little train
rolled at leisure through a world of parched sand, beyond the
sandhills to the eye-wearying monotony of the desert. Sometimes it
would halt beside a tank and a tent, while a sore-eyed man ran along
the train to beg for newspapers. Over us, the sky rose in an arch
from horizon to horizon, blue and blinding; the heat was like a hand
laid on one's mouth. I had with me my soldier-servant and a provision
of food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving
her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always
so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little
graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her
through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness.
I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her
inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me very
sweetly for my aid."

"Another dawn, and we were at Torah. A half-circle of dusty palms
leaned away to one side of the place, the common ensign of a well on
a caravan route. The post was but a few structures of wood and mud,
and, a little way off, the tents of the camp. In the east, the sky
was red with foreknowledge of the sun; its light already lay pale
over the meanness of all the village. I helped her from the train,
and demanded to know whither I should conduct her."

"'I will not give you further trouble,' she said; and though I
protested, she was firm. And at last she walked away, alone, to the
huddle of little buildings, and I saw her pass among them and out of
my sight. Then I turned and went over to the camp, where my duty
lay."

"That was a sorrowful place, that Torah. The troops were chiefly men
of the Foreign Legion, of whom three in every four expressed in their
eyes only patience and the bitterness of men whose lives are hidden
things. With them were some elderly officers, whose only enthusiasms
showed themselves in a crazy bravery in action, the callous courage
of men who have already died once. From some of these I heard of
Bertin. It was a brown, sun-dried man who told me."

"'Yes, we know him,' he said. 'He passes under various names, but we
know him. A man wasted, thrown away, my friend! He should have joined
us.'"

"'You would have accepted him?' I asked."

"'Why not?' was the answer. 'It is not honest men we ask for, nor
true men, nor even brave men--only fighting men. And any man can be
that.'"

"It made me wonder if it were yet too late for Bertin, 'and whether
he might not still find a destiny in the ranks of that regiment where
so many do penance. But when I saw him, a week later, I knew that the
chance had gone by with his other chances, It was in a cafe in the
village, a shed open at one side to the little street of sand, and
furnished only with tables and chairs. A great Spahi, in the splendid
uniform of his corps, lounged in one corner; a shrouded Arab tended
the coffee apparatus in another; in the middle, with a glass before
him, sat Bertin. The sun beat in at the open front of the building
and spread the shadows in a tangle on its floor; he was leaning with
both elbows on the table, gazing before him with the eyes of a dead
man. He had always promised to be stout, but he was already fat--a
flabby, blue-jowled heap of a man, all thick creases and bulges; and
his face had patches of blue and purple in its hollows. He was
ponderous, he was huge; and with it there was an aspect of horror, as
though all that flesh were diseased."

"I paused by his table and slowly he looked up to me. His features
labored with thought, and he recognized me."

"'Saval!' he ejaculated hoarsely. 'You--you want me?'"

"I sat down at his table. 'I haven't come to arrest you,' I told him.
'But you had better know that the authorities have decided to arrest
you.'"

"He gasped. 'For--for----'"

"'I don't know what for,' I told him. 'For whatever you have been
doing.'"

"He had to blink and swallow and wipe his brow before he mastered the
fact. His mind, like his body, was a shameful ruin. But the fact that
he was not to be arrested at the moment seemed to comfort him. He
leaned over the table to me."

"'My wife's here,' he said, in a raucous whisper."

"'Yes; she knows,' I answered."

"He frowned, and seemed perplexed. 'She'll make me shoot myself,' he
went on. 'I know what she means. I warn you, she'll make me do it.
Have a drink?'"

"He was horrible, an offence to the daylight. He bawled an order to
the Arab, and turned to me again."

"'That's what it'll come to,' he said. 'I warn you.'"

"He repeated the last phrase in whispers, staring at me heavily: 'I
warn you; I warn you.'"

"'Have you a pistol?' I asked him. Yes, Madame, I asked him that."

"He smiled at me. 'No, I haven't,' he said, still confidentially.
'You see how it is? I haven't even a pistol. But I know what she
means.'"

"I was in field uniform, and I unbuttoned my holster and laid the
revolver on the table before him. He looked at it with an empty
smile. 'It is loaded,' I said, and left him."

"But I wondered. It seemed to me that there was a tension in the
affairs of Bertin and his wife which could not endure, that the
moment was at hand when the breaking-point would be reached. And it
was this idea that carried me the same evening to visit Madame
Bertin. The night about me was still, yet overhead there was wind,
for great clouds marched in procession across the moon, trailing
their shadows over the sand. Bertin inhabited a little house at the
fringe of the village; it looked out at the emptiness of the desert.
I was yet ten paces from the door when it opened and Madame Bertin
came forth. She was wrapped in her bernouse, and she closed the door
behind her quickly and stepped forward to meet me. She gave me
greeting in her cool even tones, the pallor of her face shining forth
from the hood of her garment."

"'Since you are so good as to come and see me,' she said, 'let us
walk here for a while. Captain Bertin is occupied; and we can watch
the clouds on the sand.'"

"We walked to and fro before the house. 'I saw your husband to-day,'
I told her."

"'He said so,' she answered. 'It was pleasant for him to talk with an
old comrade.'"

"One window in the house was lighted, with a curtain drawn across it.
As we paused, I saw the shadow of a man on the curtain--a man who
lurched and pressed both hands to his head. I could not tell whether
Madame Bertin saw it also; she continued to walk, looking straight
before her; her face was calm."

"'Doubtless he has his occupations here?' I ventured presently.
'There are matters in which he interests himself--non?'"

"'That is so,' she replied. 'And this evening he tells me he has a
letter to write, concerning some matters of importance. I have
promised him that for an hour he shall not be interrupted. What
wonderful color there is yonder?'"

"The shadow of a great cloud, blue-black like a moonlit sea, was
racing past us; it seemed to break like surf on a line of sandhills.
But while I watched it awe was creeping upon me. She was erect and
grave, with lips a little parted, staring before her; the heavy folds
of the bernouse were like the marble robe of a statue. I glanced
behind me at the lighted window, and the shadow of an arm moved upon
it, an arm that gesticulated and conveyed to me a sense of agony, of
appeal. I remembered the revolver; I felt a weakness overcome me."

"'Madame!' I cried. 'I fear--I doubt that it is safe to leave him for
an hour to-night.'"

"She turned to me with a faint movement of surprise. The moon showed
her to me clearly. Before the deliberate strength of her eyes, my
gaze faltered."

"'But I assure you,' she answered; 'nothing can be safer.'"

"I made one more effort. 'But if I might see him for an instant,' I
pleaded."

"She smiled and shook her head. I might have been an importunate
child. 'I promised him an hour,' she said. Her voice was indulgent,
friendly, commonplace; it made me powerless. I had it on my lips to
cry out, 'He is in there alone, working himself up to the point of
suicide!' But I could not utter it. I could no more say it than I
could have smitten her in the face. She was impregnable behind; that
barrier of manners which she upheld so skillfully. She continued to
look at me for some seconds and to smile--so gently, so mildly. I
think I groaned."

"She began to talk again of the clouds, but I could not follow what
she said. That was my hour of impotence. Madame, I have seen battles
and slaughter and found no meaning in them. But that isolated tragedy
boxed up in the little house between the squalid town and the
lugubrious desert--it sucked the strength from my bones. She
continued to speak; the cultivated sweetness of her voice came and
went in my ears like a maddening distraction from some grave matter
in hand. I think I was on the point of breaking in, violently,
hysterically, when I cast a look at the lighted window again. I cried
out to her."

"'Look! Look!' I cried."

"She did not turn. 'I have seen the sea like that at Naples,' she was
saying, gazing out to the desert, with her back to the house. 'With
the moon shining over Capri----'"

"'For the love of God!' I said, and made one step toward the house.
But it was too late. The shadowed hand--and what it held--rose; the
shadowed head bent to meet it."

"Even at the sound of the shot she did not turn. 'What was that?' she
said tranquilly."

"For the moment I could not speak. I had to gulp and breathe to
recover myself."

"'Let us go and see,' I said then. 'The hour is past, and the letter
of importance is finished.'"

"She nodded. 'By all means,' she agreed carelessly, and I followed
her into the house."

"Once again I will spare Madame la Comtesse the details. Bertin had
evaded arrest. At the end of all his laborings and groanings, the
instant of resolution had come to him and he had made use of it. On
the table were paper and writing-things; one note was finished."

"'It is not for me,' said Madame Bertin, as she leaned upon the table
and read it. I was laying a sheet upon the body; when I rose she
handed it to me. It bore neither name nor address; the poor futile
life had blundered out without even this thing completed. It was
short, and to some woman. 'Tres-chere amie,' it said; 'once I made a
mistake. I have paid for it. You laughed at me once; You would not
laugh now. If you could see----'"

The Colonel stopped; the Comtesse was holding out both hands as
though supplicating him. Elsie Gray rose and bent over her. The
Comtesse put her gently aside.

"You have that letter?" she asked.

The little Colonel passed a hand into a breast pocket and extracted a
dainty Russia-leather letter-case. From it he drew a faded writing
and handed it to the Comtesse.

"Madame la Comtesse is welcome to the letter," he said. "Pray keep
it."

The Comtesse did not read it. She folded it in her thin smooth hands
and sighed.

"And then?" she asked.

"This is the end of my tale," said the Colonel. "I took the letter
and placed it in my pocket. Madame Bertin watched me imperturbably."

"'I may leave the formalities to you?' she asked me suddenly; 'the
notification of death and so on?'"

"I bowed; I had still a difficulty in speaking."

"'Then I will thank you for all your friendship,' she said."

"I put up my hand. 'At least do not thank me,' I cried. I could not
face her serene eyes, and that little lifting of the brows with which
she answered my words. Awe, dread, passion--these were at war within
me, and the dead man lay on the floor at my feet, I pushed the door
open and fled."

Colonel Saval sat up in his chair and uncrossed his legs.

"I saw her no more," he said. "Madame la Comtesse knows how she
returned to Algiers and presently died there? Yes."

The Comtesse bowed. "I thank you, Monsieur," she said. "You have done
me a great service."

"I am honored," he replied, as he rose. "I wish you a good-night.
Mademoiselle, good-night."

He was gone. The white doors closed behind him. The Comtesse raised
her face and kissed the tall, gentle girl.

"Leave me now," she said. "I must read my letter alone."

And Elsie went. The story was finished at last.



IX

LOLA

Rubies ripped from altar cloths Leered a-down her rich attire; Her
mad shoes were scarlet moths In a rose of fire.

A. T. Quiller-Couch.

From the briskness of the street, with its lamps aglitter in the
lingering May evening, O'Neill entered to the sober gloom and the
restless echoes of the great studio. He had come to hate the place of
late. The high poise of its walls, like the sides of a well, the pale
shine of the north light in the roof, the lumber of naked marble and
formal armor and the rest, peopling its shadows, were like a tainted
atmosphere to him; they embarrassed the lungs of his mind. Only the
name of friendship exacted these visits from him; Regnault, dying
where he had worked, was secure against desertion.

Buscarlet opened the door to him, his eyes wide and bewildered behind
his spectacles.

"How is he?" asked O'Neill curtly, entering the great room.

"Ill," answered the other. "Very ill, so that one cannot tell whether
he sleeps or wakes. There should be a nun here to nurse him, only--"

O'Neill nodded. The sick man's bed was set in the centre of the great
room, shielded from the draughts of the door by a tall screen of gilt
leather. From behind this screen, a shaded lamp by the bedside made
an island of soft radiance in the darkness.

They went together past the screen and stopped to look at Regnault.
He was lying on his back, with closed eyes, and his keen aquiline
face upturned to the pallor of the "light" in the roof. The white
hair tumbled on the pillow, and the long, beautiful hands that lay on
the coverlet were oddly pathetic in contrast to the potency of the
unconscious face. Even in sleep it preserved its cast of high
assurance, its note of ideals outworn and discounted. It was the face
of a man who had found a bitter answer for most of life's questions.
By the bed sat Truelove, his servant, ex-corporal of dragoons. He
rose noiselessly as O'Neill approached.

"No change, sir," he reported. "Talked a bit, an hour ago. Mr.
Buscarlet was then 'ere."

"Any attacks?" asked O'Neill.

"One, sir, but I 'ad the amyl under 'is nose at the first gasp, an'
'e came round all right."

"Good," said O'Neill. "You go and get some supper now, Truelove. I'll
attend to everything till you get back."

The corporal bowed and went forthwith. O'Neill set the capsules out
on the table to be easily accessible, and joined Buscarlet by the
great fireplace at the end of the room, whence he could keep watch on
the still profile that showed against the gold of the screen. From
without there came the blurred noises of the Paris street, mingled
and blended in a single hum, as though life were laying siege to that
quiet chamber.

Buscarlet was eager to talk. He was a speciously amiable little man,
blonde and plump, a creature of easy emotions, prone to panic and
tears.

"Ah, he talked indeed!" he said, as soon as O'Neill was seated. "At
first I thought: 'This is delirium. He is returning to the age of his
innocence.' But his eyes, as he looked at me, were wise and serious.
My friend, it gave me a shock."

"What did he talk about?" asked O'Neill.

Buscarlet coughed. "Of his wife," he answered. "Fancy it!"

"His wife? Why, is he married?" demanded O'Neill in astonishment.

Buscarlet nodded two or three times. "Yes," he replied; "that is one
of the things that has happened to him. One might have guessed it,
hein?--a life like that! Ah, my friend, there is one who has put out
his hours at usury. What memories he must have!"

O'Neill grunted, with his eyes on the bed. "He's had a beastly life,
if that's what you mean," he said, "Who was the woman?'

"One might almost have guessed that, too," said Buscarlet. He rose.
"Come and see," he said.

There was a recess beside the great mantelpiece, and in it hung
Regnault's famous picture, "The Dancer," all scarlet frock and white
flesh against an amber background.

"That?" exclaimed O'Neill. "Lola?"

Buscarlet nodded; he had forced a good effect.

"That is she," he answered.

The picture was familiar to O'Neill; to him, as to many another young
painter of that time, it was an upstanding landmark on the road of
art. He looked at it now, in the sparse light from the bedside lamp,
with a fresh interest in its significance. He saw with new
understanding the conventionalism of the pose--hip thrust out, arm
akimbo, shoulder cocked--contrasted against the dark vivacity of the
face and all the pulsing opulence of the flesh. It was an epic, an
epic of the savage triumphant against civilization, of the spirit
victorious against the forms of art.

He stared at it, Buscarlet smiling mildly at his elbow; then he
turned away and went back to his seat. The face on the bed was
unchanged.

"So Regnault married Lola!" he said slowly. "When?"

"Ah, who knows?" Buscarlet shrugged graphically. "Many years ago, of
course. It is twenty years since she danced."

"And what was he saying about her?" asked O'Neill.

"Nothing to any purpose," replied Buscarlet. "I think he had been
dreaming of her. You know the manner he has of waking up--coming back
to consciousness with eyes wide open and his mind alert, with no
interval of drowsiness and reluctance? Yes? Well, he woke like that
before I knew he had ceased to sleep. 'I should like to see her now,'
he said. 'Whom?' I asked, and he smiled. 'Lola,' he answered, and he
went on to say that she was the one woman he had never understood.
'That was her advantage,' he said, smiling still; 'for she understood
me; yes, she knew me as if she had made me.' After a while, he smiled
again, and said, 'Yes, I should like to see her now.'"

O'Neill frowned thoughtfully. "Well, she ought to be here if she's
his wife," he said. "Is she in Paris, d'you know? We might send for
her."

"I do not know," replied Buscarlet. "Nobody knows, but I have heard
she retired upon religion."

Their talk dwindled a little then. O'Neill found himself dwelling in
thought upon that long-ago marriage of the great artist with Lola,
the dancer. To him she was but a name; her sun had set in his
boyhood, and there remained only the spoken fame of her wonderful
dancing and a tale here and there of the fervor with which she had
lived. It was an old chronicle of passion and undiscipline, of a
vehement personality naming through the capitals of Europe, its trail
marked by scandals and violences, ending in the quick oblivion which
comes to compensate for such lives. On the whole, he thought, such a
marriage was what one would have looked for in Regnault; as Buscarlet
said, one might almost have guessed. He, with his genius and his
restlessness, his great fame and his infamy, the high achievement of
his art and the baseness of his relaxations, he was just such another
as Lola.

Friendship, or even the mere forms of friendship, are the touchstone
of a man. O'Neill was credited in his world with the friendship of
Regnault. It had even been to him a matter of some social profit;
there were many who deferred willingly to the great man's intimate.
O'Neill saw no reason to set them right, but he knew himself that he
had come by a loss in his close acquaintance with the Master. To know
him at a distance, to be sure of just enough to interpret his work by
the clue of his personality, was a thing to be glad of. But if one
went further, incurred a part of his confidence, and ascertained his
real flavor, then, as O'Neill once said, it was like visiting one's
kitchen; it killed one's appetite.

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