Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

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While he pondered, he was none the less watchful; he saw the change
on the still face as soon as it showed. With a quick exclamation he
crossed to the bed. Regnault's jaw had set; his eyes were wide and
rigid. On the instant his forehead shone with sweat. Deftly and
swiftly O'Neill laid his hands on a capsule, crushed it in his palm,
and held it to the sick man's face. The volatile drug performed its
due miracle.

The face that had been a livid shell slackened again; the fixed glare
sank down; and Regnault shuddered and sighed. Buscarlet, trembling
but officious, wiped his brow and babbled commiserations.

"Ah!" said Regnault, putting up a thin hand to stop him. "It takes
one by the throat, this affair."

Though he spoke quietly, his voice had yet the conscious fullness,
the deliberate inflection, of a man accustomed to speak to an
audience.

"Yes," said O'Neill. "Were you sleeping?"

The sick man smiled. "A peu pres," he answered.

"I was remembering certain matters--dreaming, in effect."

He shifted his head on his pillow, and his eyes traveled to and fro
about the great room.

"If this goes on," he said, "I shall have to ask a favor of
somebody." His quick look, with its suggestion of mockery, rested on
O'Neill. "And that would be dreadful," he concluded.

"If it's anything I can do, I'll do it, of course," said O'Neill
awkwardly.

He aided Buscarlet to set the bed to rights and change the pillow-
cover, conscious that Regnault was watching him all the time with a
smile.

"One should have a nun here," remarked Buscarlet. "They come for so
much a day, and do everything."

"Yes," said Regnault;--"everything. Who could stand that!"

He shifted in his bed cautiously, for he knew that any movement might
provoke another spasm.

"Now, tell me, O'Neill," he said, in the tone of commonplace
conversation. "That doctor--the one that walked like a duck--he was
impressive, eh?"

O'Neill sat down on the foot of the bed.

"He's the best man in Paris," he answered. "He did his best to be
impressive. He thought we weren't taking your illness seriously
enough."

"Well," said Regnault, his fingers fidgeting on the coverlet, "I can
be serious when I like. I'm serious now, foi de gentilhomme. Did he
say when I should die!"

"Yes," replied O'Neill. "He said you'd break like the stem of a pipe
at the first strain."

Regnault's eyes were half closed. "Metaphor, eh?" he suggested
dreamily.

"He said," continued O'Neill, "that you were not to move sharply, not
to laugh or cry, not to be much amused or surprised--in fact, you
were to keep absolutely quiet. He suggested, too, that you'd had your
share of emotions, and would be better without them now."

Regnault smiled again. "Wonderful," he said softly. "They teach them
all that in the hospitals. Then, in effect, I hold this appointment
during good Conduct?"

"That's the idea," said O'Neill gravely.

There was a long pause; Regnault seemed to be thinking deeply. The
amyl had brought color back to his face; except for the disorder of
his long white hair he seemed to be his normal self.

"It will not be amusing," he said at length. "For you, I mean."

"Oh, I shall be all right," answered O'Neill, but the same thought
had occurred to him.

"No, it will not be amusing to you," repeated Regnault. "For this
good Buscarlet it is another thing. I shall keep him busy. You like
that, don'it you, Emile?"

Poor Buscarlet choked and gurgled. Regnault laughed softly.

"Take the lamp, Emile," he said, "and carry it to 'The Dancer.' I
want to see it."

Buscarlet was eager to do his bidding. O'Neill frowned as he picked
up the lamp.

"Careful," he said, in a low voice to Regnault.

"Oh," said Regnault, "this is not an emotion." He laughed again.

Across the room Buscarlet lifted the shade from the lamp and held it
up. Again there came into view the white and scarlet of the picture,
the high light on the bare shoulder, the warm tint of the naked arm,
the cheap diablerie of the posture, the splendid rebellion of the
face. Regnault turned and stared at it under drawn brows.

"Thank you, Emile," he said at last, and lay back on his pillow. For
an instant of forgetfulness his delicate face was ingenuous and
expressive; he caught himself back to control as he met O'Neill's
eyes.

"Il est un age dans la vie Ou chaque reve doit finir, Un age ou l'ame
recueillie A besoin de se souvenir,"

he quoted softly. Buscarlet was fitting the shade on the lamp again.

"I think," Regnault went on, "that I have come to that, after all. He
told you, eh? Buscarlet told you that she--Lola--is my wife?"

"Yes," answered O'Neill. "Would you like me to send for her?"

"She would not come for that," said Regnault. He was studying the
young man's face with bright eyes. "Ah," he sighed; "you don't know
these things. We parted--of course; but not in weariness, not in the
grey staleness of fatigue and boredom. No; but in a splendid wreck of
wrath and jealousy and hatred. We did not run aground tamely; we
split in vehemence on the very rock of discord. She would not come
for a letter."

"Is she in Paris?" asked O'Neill.

"No, in Spain," answered Regnault. "At Ronda, in a great house on the
edge of the hill, a house of small windows and strong doors. She is
religious, Lola is; she fears hell. Let me see; she must be near to
fifty now. It is twenty years and more since I saw her."

"But if I wrote," began O'Neill again.

"She would not come for a letter," persisted Regnault. "What would
you write? 'He is dying,' you would say, 'Poof!' she would answer,
'he has been dead this twenty years to me.'"

"Well, then, what do you suggest?"

Regnault opened his eyes and looked up sharply. He stretched out one
long slender hand in a sudden gesture of urgency. His face, upon the
moment, recovered its wonted vivacity.

"Go to her," he said. "Go to her, O'Neill; you are young and long-
legged; you have the face of one to whom adventures are due. She will
receive you. Speak to her; tell her--tell her of this gloomy room and
its booming echoes and the little white bed in the middle of it. Make
your voice warm, O'Neill, and tell her of all of it. Then, perhaps,
she will come."

There was no mistaking his earnestness. O'Neill stared at him in
astonishment. Regnault moistened his lips, breathing hard.

"Really," said O'Neill, "I don't quite know how to answer you,
Regnault."

Regnault put the empty phrase from him with a movement of impatience.

"Go to her," he said again, and his brows creased in effort. "Is it
because she is religious that you hesitate! You think I am an offence
to her religion? O'Neill, I will offer it no offence. I have myself
an instinct that way now. It is true. I have."

"Wait," said O'Neill. He was thinking confusedly. "You know you're
like a spoiled child, Regnault. You'd die for a thing so long as some
one denied it you. Now, what strikes me is this. Your wife ought to
be with you, as a matter of decent usage and--and all that. But if
you want her here just so that you can flog up the thrill of one of
your old beastly adventures, I'll not lift a finger to help you.
D'you see!"

Regnault nodded. Buscarlet, standing behind the bed, was trembling
like a man in an ague.

"I'll go to Ronda, and do what I can," said O'Neill, "so long as
you're playing fair. But I've got to be sure of that, Regnault."

Regnault nodded again. "I see," he answered. "What shall I say to
you? Will you not trust me, O'Neill, in a question of taste? Morals--
I don't say. But taste--come now!"

"You mean, you want to see your wife in ordinary affection and--well,
and because she is your wife?" demanded O'Neill.

"You put it very well," replied Regnault placidly. "Give me some
paper and I will write you her name and address. And, O'Neill, I have
an idea! I will give you, for your own, 'The Dancer.' It shall be my
last joke. After this, I am earnest."

He wrote painfully on the paper which they gave him.

"There," he said, when he had done. "And now I will compose myself."

Buscarlet saw O'Neill forth of the door, for he was to leave for
Spain in the morning. On the threshold he tapped O'Neill on the arm.

"It is worth a hundred thousand francs," he whispered, with startled
eyes. "And besides, what a souvenir!"

The little room in which they bade O'Neill wait for the Senora opened
upon the patio of the house, where a sword of vivid sunlight sliced
across the shadows on the warm brick flooring, and a little
industrious fountain dribbled through a veil of ferns. There was a
shrine in the room; its elaboration of gilt and rosy wax faced the
open door, and from a window beside it one could see, below the
abrupt hill of Ronda, the panorama of the sun-steeped countryside.

The cool of the room was grateful to O'Neill after the heat of the
road. He set his hat on the small table and took a seat, marking the
utter stillness that reigned in that great Moorish house. Save for
the purr of the fountain no sounds reached him in all that nest of
cool chambers. The thought of it awoke in him new speculation as to
the woman he had come to see, who had buried the ashes of her fiery
youth in this serene retreat. He had thought about her with growing
curiosity throughout the journey from Paris, endeavoring to reduce to
terms of his own understanding the spirit that had flamed and faded
and guttered out in such a manner. The shrine at his elbow recalled
to him that she was "religious." It explained nothing.

He was staring at it in perplexity, when the doorway darkened, and he
was conscious that he was not alone. He started to his feet and bowed
confusedly to the woman on the threshold.

"Mr. O'Neill?" she inquired. Her pronunciation had the faultless
precision of the English-speaking Spaniard. He bowed again, and drew
out a chair for her.

It seemed that she hesitated a moment ere she came forward and
accepted it. When she stood in the door, with the slanting sun at her
back, O'Neill could see little of her save the trim outline of her
figure, wrought to plain severity by the relentless black dress she
wore. Now, when she was seated, he regarded her with all an artist's
quick curiosity. As Regnault had said, she was not much less than
fifty years old, but they were years that had trodden lightly. There
was nothing of age in the strong brows and the tempestuous eyes that
were dark under them; the mouth was yet full and impetuous. Some
discipline seemed to have laid a constraint on her; there was a
somber seriousness in her regard; but O'Neill recognized without
difficulty the proud, hardy, unquelled countenance that stared from
the canvas in Regnault's studio.

She had his visiting-card in her fingers. Lest he should be denied
admittance he had penciled on it, below his name, "with a message
from M. Regnault, who is very ill."

She was looking at him steadily, aware of his scrutiny.

"I will hear your message," she said. "Please sit down."

O'Neill took a chair where he could continue to see her face.

"Senora," he said, "I must tell you, first of all, that M. Regnault
is ill beyond anything you can picture to yourself. He sends this
message, in truth, from his last bed, the bed he is to die on. And
that may be at any moment. His is a disease that touches the heart;
any emotion or quick movement--anything at all, Senora, may cut off
the very source of his life. I ask you to have this in mind while you
hear me."

Her dark face was intent upon him while he spoke.

"What do you call this disease?" she asked.

"The doctors call it angina pectoris," he answered. She nodded
slowly. Her interest encouraged him to speak with more liberty.

"I could tell you a great deal about it," he went on; "but it might
be aside from the point. Still--" he pondered a moment, studying
her. "Still, imagine to yourself how such a malady sits upon a man
like Regnault. It is a fetter upon the most sluggish; for him, with
all his vivacity of temperament, his ardor, his quickness, it is a
rack upon which he is stretched. You do not know the studio he has
now, Senora! It is a great room, with walls of black panels and a
wide window in the slope of the roof. Here and there are statues in
marble, suits of armor--the wreck and debris of dead ages. And in one
corner hangs a picture which the world values, Senora. It is called
'The Dancer.'"

A spark, a quick gleam in her eyes, rewarded him. Her hands, crossed
in her lap, trembled a little.

"It is all of a dark and somber splendor," O'Neill continued. "A
great, splendid room, Senora, uncanny with echoes. And in the middle
of it, like a little white island, there is a narrow bed where he
lies through the days and nights, camping on the borders of the
grave. There are some of us that share the watches by his bedside, to
be ready with the drug that holds him to life; and I can tell you
that it is sad there, in the hush and the shadows, with the noises of
Paris rising about one from without."

He ceased. She was frowning as she listened to him, with her
resemblance to the pictured face in Paris strangely accentuated by
the emotions that warred within her. For a minute neither of them
spoke.

"I can see what you would have me see," she said at last, raising her
head. "It belongs to that world in which I have now no part, Senior.
No part at all. And it brings us no nearer to the message with which
you are charged."

"Your pardon," said O'Neill. "It is a part of my message. And the
rest is quickly told. It is Regnault's request, his prayer to you,
that you will come to him, to your husband."

"Ah!" The constraint upon her features broke like ice under a quick
sun. "I guessed it. I--to come to him! You should be his friend
indeed, to be the bearer of such a message to me."

Her dark eyes, suddenly splendid, flashed at him with strong anger.
The whole woman was transformed; she sat up in her chair, and her
breast swelled. O'Neill saw before him the Lola of twenty years
before.

He held up one hand to stay her.

"I should be his friend, as you say," he told her. "But he knows that
it is not so. I came for two reasons: because now is not the time to
be discriminating in my service to him, and also because I am glad to
help him to do right. I will take back what answer you please,
Senora, for I came here with no great hopes; but still I am glad I
came, for the second reason."

"Help him to do right!" She repeated the words in a manner of
perplexity. "What is it you mean to do right?"

O'Neill had a moment's clear insight into the aspects of his task
which made him unfit for it. "Eight" was a term that puzzled his
auditor.

"Senora," he answered gravely, "his passions are burned out. He is
too sick a man to do evil. It is late, no doubt, and very late; but
his mood is not to die as he has lived. He asks, not for those who
would come at a word, but for his wife. And I am glad to be the
bearer of that message even if I carry back a curse for an answer."

It was not in O'Neill to know how well and deftly Regnault had chosen
his messenger. His lean, brown face and his earnestness were having
their effect.

The Senora bent her keen gaze on him again.

"Ah," she cried, with a sort of bitterness, "he regrets, eh? He
repents?" She laughed shortly.

"I do not think so," answered O'Neill.

"No?" She considered him anew. "Tell me,"--she leaned forward in a
sudden eagerness--"why does he ask for me? If he is sober and
composed for death, why--why does he ask for me?"

O'Neill made a gesture of helplessness. "Senora," he said, "you
should know; you have the key to him."

Gone was all the discipline to which her nature had deferred. Twenty
years of quiet and atonement were stripped from her like a flimsy
garment. The fire was alight in all her vivid face again as she
brooded upon his answer.

"Ah!" she cried of a sudden. "Everything is stale for a stale soul.
Does he count on that? Senor, you speak well; you have made me a
picture of him. He has heard that I have made religion the pillow of
my conscience, eh? He folds his hands, eh?--thin, waxen hands,
clasping in piety upon his counterpane, eh? He will wear the air of a
thin saint and bless me in a beautiful voice? Am I right? Am I
right?"

She forced her questions into his face, leaning forward in a quick
violence.

"Goodness knows!" said O'Neill. "I shouldn't wonder."

She nodded at him with tight lips. "I know," she said. "I know. I
have him by heart." She rose from her seat and stood thinking.
Suddenly she laughed, and strode to the middle of the room. Her gait
had the impatience and lightness of a dancer's. Quickly she wheeled
and faced O'Neill, laughing again.

"Now, by his salvation and mine," she cried, "I will do what he asks.
I will go to him. He thinks his heart is dry to me. I will show him!
I will show him!" She opened her arms with a sweep. "Tell me," she
cried, "am I old? Am I the nun you looked for?" Her voice pealed
scornfully. "Scarlet," she said; "I will go to him in scarlet, as he
pictured me when I posed for 'The Dancer!' His pulses shall welcome
me; his soul was in its grave when I was in my cradle."

O'Neill had risen too. "Senora," he protested, "you must consider--
he is a dying man!"

He spoke to her back. Laughing again, she had turned from him to the
gilt shrine and plucked a flower from it. She was fixing it in her
hair when she faced him.

"To-night," she said, "we travel north. You are"--she paused,
smiling--"you are my impresario, and Lola--Lola makes her curtsy
again!"

She caught her black skirt in her hand and curtsied to him with an
extravagant grace.

That was a strange journey to Paris that O'Neill made with the
Senora. He had seen her humor change swiftly in response to his
appeal; what was surprising was that that new humor should maintain
its nervous height. It was soon enough apparent that the Lola of
twenty years before lived yet, her flamboyant energy, her unstable
caprice, her full-blooded force conserved and undiminished. It was
like the bursting of one of those squalls that come up with a
breathless loom of cloud, hang still and brooding, and then flash
without warning into tempest. She faced him at the station with an
electric vivacity; her voice was harsh and imperious to her servants
who put her into the train and disposed of her luggage. It occurred
to O'Neill that she traveled well equipped; there were boxes and
baskets in full ampleness. When at last the train tooted its little
horn and started, she flung herself down in the seat facing him and
broke into shrill laughter.

"It is the second advent of Lola," she cried. "There should be a
special train for me."

Her dress was still of black, but it had suffered some change O'Neill
did not trouble to define. He saw that it no longer had the formal
plainness of the gown she had worn earlier. It achieved an effect.
But the main change was in the woman herself. It was impossible to
think of her and her years in the same breath. She had cast the long
restraint from her completely; all her sad days of quiet were
obliterated. She was once again the stormy, uneasy thing that had
dominated her loose world, a vital and indomitable personality
untempered by reason or any conscience. Even when she sat still and
seemingly deep in thought, one felt and deferred to the magnetism and
power that were expressed in every feature of that dark and alert
face.

O'Neill deemed himself fortunate that she did not speak of Regnault
till Paris lay but a few hours away. The whirlwind of her mood was a
thing that did not touch him, but it would have been mere torment to
battle on with that one topic. When she did speak of him it was with
the suddenness with which she approached everything. She had been
silent for nearly an hour, gazing through the window at the scurrying
landscape.

"Then," she said, as though resuming some conversation--"then he is,
in truth, sick to death?"

"You mean--Regnault!" asked O'Neill, caught unawares. "Yes, Senora.
He is sick to death."

Her steady gaze from under the level brows embarrassed him like an
assault.

"And he is frightened?" she demanded.

"I don't think he is in the least frightened," replied O'Neill.

She nodded to him, with the shape of a smile on her full lips.

"I tell you, then, that he is frightened," she said. "I know. There
is nothing in all that man I do not know. He is frightened."

She paused, still staring at him.

"People like us are always frightened in the end," she went on. She
lifted her forefinger like one who teaches a little child. "You see,
with us, we guess. We guess at what comes after. We are sure--certain
and very sure--that we, at least, deserve to suffer. And that is why
I have lived under my confessor for ten lifetimes. You gee!"

O'Neill nodded. It was not hard to understand that the splendid
animal in the Senora could never conceive the idea, of its utter
extinction. Death--to Lola and her kind--is not the end, it is the
beginning of bondage.

There was another interval of silence while she twisted her fingers
in her lap.

"Ah," she said. "I know. He will be beautiful in his bed, dying like
an abbot. He is frightened--yes. But he thinks himself safe from me.
He imagines me sour, decorous, with a skinny neck. Because he thinks
me all but a nun, he will be all but a priest. We shall see, Senor
O'Neill. We shall see!"

Soon after that she left him to retire to the compartment in which
her maid traveled alone.

"We arrive at eight, do we not?" she asked him. "Then I must make my
toilet." She smiled down on him as she spoke, and gave him a little
significant nod.

The train was already running into the station when she returned.
O'Neill, nervous and apprehensive, gave her a quick glance. She was
covered in a long cloak of black silk that hid her figure entirely;
the hood of it rose over her hair and made a frame to her face. Under
the hood he could distinguish the soft brightness of a red rose stuck
ever one ear.

"Senora," he said, "I take the liberty to remind you that we are
going to the bedside of a dying man."

She turned on him with slow scorn. "Yes," she replied. "It is, as
you say, a liberty."

The long robe rose and fell over her breast with her breathing; her
eyes traveled over him from head to feet and back again deliberately.

O'Neill took his temper into custody. "Still," he urged, "if you have
it in mind to compass any surprising effect, remember--it may be his
death."

She laughed slowly. "What is a death?" she answered. And then, with
a hissing vehemence: "He sent for me, and I am here. Should I wear a
veil, then--Lola?"

He put further remonstrances by, with a feeling of sickness in the
throat. Again realization surged upon him that he had no words with
which to speak to people like this. They lived on another plane, and
saw by other lights. He was like a child wandering on a field of
battle.

He found a carriage, and got into it beside her, and sat in silence
while they drove through the throng of the streets. He saw, through
the window, the brisk tides of the pavement, the lights and the
cafes; they seemed remote from him, inaccessible. Inside the
carriage, he could hear the steady, full breathing of the woman at
his side.

"You will at least allow me to go first," he said, as they drew up at
last. He was prepared to carry this point if he had to lock her out
of the house. But she made no demur.

"As you will," she murmured.

He found her a place to wait, an alcove on the stairs. As he guided
her to it, a touch on the arm showed him she was trembling.

"I will be a very little while," he promised, and ran up the stairs.

It was Buscarlet who opened the door to him, with Truelove standing
behind his shoulder.

"Welcome, welcome!" babbled Buscarlet. "Oh, but we have been eager
for you! Tell me, will she--will she come?"

"She is waiting on the stairs, in the alcove," answered O'Neill.

Buscarlet's mild eyes opened in amaze. "You have brought her with
you?" he cried.

O'Neill nodded.

"Thank God!" ejaculated Truelove.

"How is he?" asked O'Neill. "Still--er--living, eh?"

It was Truelove that replied. "Still keeping on, sir," he answered.
"But changed, as you might say. Softened would be the word, sir."

"What d'ye mean?" demanded O'Neill.

"Well, sir," said the ex-corporal of dragoons, with a touch of
hesitation, "it isn't for me to judge, but I should say he's--he's
got religion. Or a taste of it, anyway."

O'Neill stared at the pair of them in open dismay. "Let me see him,"
he said shortly, and they followed him through the little anteroom to
the great studio.

Behind the screen, the narrow bed was white, and on it Regnault lay
in stillness, looking up.

He started slightly as O'Neill appeared at the foot of his bed, and
the faint flush rose in his face. "Hush!" he said, with a forefinger
uplifted, and poised for a few seconds on the brink of a spasm.

"Ah!" he said when he was safe. "That was a near thing, O'Neill. I am
glad to see you back, my friend."

He was tranquil; even that undertone of mockery, so familiar in his
voice, was gone. A rosary sprawled on his breast; O'Neill recognized
it for a splendid piece of Renaissance work that had lain about the
room for months.

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