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Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

P >> Perceval Gibbon >> The Second Class Passenger




The mate had the middle watch, from midnight till four o'clock in the
morning, and for the first two hours it was Conroy's turn on the
lookout. The rest, in oilskins and sea-boots, were standing by under
the break of the poop; save for the sleeping men in the shut
forecastle, he had the fore part of the ship to himself. He leaned
against the after rail of the fore-castle head, where a ventilator
somewhat screened him from the bitter wind that blew out of the dark,
and gazed ahead at the murk. Now and again the big barque slid
forward with a curtseying motion, and dipped up a sea that flowed aft
over the anchors and cascaded down the ladders to the main-deck;
spray that spouted aloft' and drove across on the wind, sparkled red
and green in the glare of the sidelights like brief fireworks.

The splash and drum of waters, the heavy drone of the wind in the
sails, the clatter of gear aloft, were in his ears; he did not hear
one bell strike from the poop, which he should have answered with a
stroke on the big bell behind him and a shouted report on the lights.

"Hoy! You schleepin' up dere--hey?"

It was the mate, who had come forward in person to see why he had not
answered. He was by the fore fife-rail, a mere black shape in the
dark.

"Sleepin'--no, sir!"

"Don't you hear yon bell shtrike?" cried the mate, slithering on the
wet deck toward the foot of the ladder.

"No, sir," said Conroy, and stooped to strike the bell.

The mate came up the ladder, hauling himself by the hand-rails, for
he was swollen beyond the ordinary with extra clothes under his long
oilskin coat. A plume of spray whipped him in the face as he got to
the top, and he swore shortly, wiping his eyes with his hands. At the
same moment, Conroy, still stooping to the bell-lanyard, felt the
Villingen lower her nose and slide down in one of her disconcerting
curtseys; he caught at the rail to steady himself. The dark water,
marbled with white foam, rode in over the deck, slid across the
anchors and about the capstan, and came aft toward the ladder and the
mate. The ship rolled at the same moment.

Conroy saw what happened as a grotesque trick of circumstance. The
mate, as the deck slanted, slipped and reached for the hand-rail with
an ejaculation. The water flowed about his knees; he fell back
against the hand-rail, which was just high enough for him to sit on.
lit was what, for one ridiculous moment, he seemed to be doing. The
next, his booted feet swayed up and he fell over backward, amid the
confusion of splashing water that leaped down the main-deck. Conroy
heard him strike something below with a queer, smacking noise.

"Pity he didn't go overboard while he was about it," he said to
himself, acting out his role. Really, he was rather startled and
dismayed.

He found the mate coiled in the scupper, very wet and still. He took
hold of him to draw him under the forecastle head, where he would
have shelter, and was alarmed at the inertness of the body under his
hands.

"Sir!" he cried, "sir!-sir!"

He shook the great shoulders, bat quickly desisted; there was
something horrible, something that touched his nerves, in its
irresponsiveness. He remembered that he might probably find matches
in the lamp-locker, and staggered there to search. He had to grope
in gross darkness about the place, touching brass and the uncanny
smoothness of glass, before his hand fell on what he sought. At last
he was on one knee by the mate's side, and a match shed its little
illumination. The mate's face was odd in its quietude, and the sou'-
wester of oilskin was still on his head, held there by the string
under the chin. From under its edge blood flowed steadily, thickly,
appallingly.

"But----" cried Conroy. The match-flame stung his fingers and he
dropped it. "Oh Lord!" he said. It occurred to him then, for the
first time, that the mate was dead.

The men aft, bunched up under the break of the poop, were aware of
him as a figure that came sliding and tottering toward them and fell
sprawling at the foot of the poop ladder. He floundered up and
clutched the nearest of them, the Greek.

"The mate's dead," he broke out, in a kind of breathless squeal.
"Somebody call the captain; the mate's dead."

There was a moment of silence; then a cackle of words from several of
them together. The Greek's hands on his shoulders tightened. He heard
the man's purring voice in his ear.

"How did you do it?"

Conroy thrust himself loose; the skies of his mind were split by a
frightful lightning flash of understanding. He had been alone with
the mate; he had seen him die; he was sworn to kill him. He could see
the livid smile of the Greek bent upon him.

"I didn't do it," he choked passionately, and struck with a wild,
feeble hand at the smile. "You liar--I didn't do it."

"Hush!" The Greek caught him again and held him.

Some of the men had started forward; others had slipped into the
alleyway to rouse the second mate and captain. The Greek had him
clutched to his bosom in a strong embrace and was hushing him as one
might hush a scared child. Slade was at his side.

"He slipped, I tell you; he slipped at the top of the ladder. She'd
shipped a dollop of water and then rolled, and over he went. I heard
his head go smack and went down to him. I never touched him. I swear
it--I never touched him."

"Hush!" It was Slade this time. "And yer sure he's dead. Well----"
the old man exchanged nods with the Greek. "All right. Only--don't
tell the captain that tale; it ain't good enough."

"But----" began Conroy. A hug that crushed his face against the
Greek's oilskin breast silenced him.

"Vat is all dis?"

It was the captain, tall, august, come full-dressed from his cabin.
At his back the second mate, with his oilskin coat over his pajamas,
thrust forward his red, cheerful face.

Slade told the matter briefly. "And it's scared young Conroy all to
bits, sir," he concluded.

"Come for'ard," bade the captain. "Get a lamp, some vun!"

They followed him along the wet, slippery deck slowly, letting him
pass ahead out of earshot.

"It was a belayin'-pin, ye'es?" queried the Greek softly of Conroy.

"He might have hit his head against a pin," replied Conroy.

"Eh?" The Greek stopped. "Might 'ave--might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead? Ah,
dat is fine! 'E might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead, Slade! You 'ear dat?"

"Yes, it ain't bad!" replied Slade, and Conroy, staring in a wild
attempt to see their faces clearly, realized that they were laughing,
laughing silently and heartily. With a gesture of despair he left
them.

A globe-lamp under the forecastle head lighted the captain's
investigations, gleaming on wet oilskins, shadow-pitted faces, and
the curious, remote thing that had been the mate of the Villingen.
Its ampler light revealed much that the match-flame had missed from
its field--the manner in which the sou'wester and the head it covered
were caved in at one side, the cut in the sou'wester through which
clotted hair protruded, the whole ghastliness of death that comes by
violence. With all that under his eyes, Conroy had to give his
account of the affair, while the ring of silent, hard-breathing men
watched him and marvelled at the clumsiness of his story.

"It is strange," said the captain. "Fell over backwards, you said. It
is very strange! And vere did you find de body?"

The scupper and deck had been washed clean by successive seas; there
was no trace there of blood, and none on the rail. Even while they
searched, water spouted down on them. But what Conroy noted was that
no pin stood in the rail where the mate had fallen, and the hole that
might have held one was empty.

"Ah, veil!" said the captain at last. "De poor fellow is dead. I do
not understand, quite, how he should fall like dat, but he is dead.
Four of you get de body aft."

"Please, sir," accosted Conroy, and the tall captain turned.

"Veil, vat is it?"

"Can I go below, sir? It was me that found him, sir. I feel rather--
rather bad."

"So!" The tall captain considered him inscrutably, he, the final
arbiter of fates. "You feel bad--yes? Veil, you can go below!"

The little group that bore the mate's body shuffled aft, with the
others following like a funeral procession. A man looked shivering
out of the door of the starboard forecastle, and inquired in loud
whispers.

"Was ist los? Sag mal--was ist denn los?" He put his inquiry to
Conroy, who waved him off and passed to the port forecastle on the
other side of the deckhouse.

The place was somehow strange, with its double row of empty bunks
like vacant coffin-shelves in a vault, but solitude was what he
desired. The slush-lamp swung and stank and made the shadows wander.
From the other side of the bulkhead he could hear stirrings and a
murmur of voices as the starboard watch grew aware that something had
happened on deck. Conroy, with his oilskin coat half off, paused to
listen for comprehensible words. The opening of the door behind him
startled him, and he spun round to see Slade making a cautious entry.
He recoiled.

"Leave me alone," he said, in a strangled voice, before the other
could speak. "What are you following me for? You want to make me out
a murderer. I tell you I never touched him."

The other stood just within the door, the upper half of his face
shadowed by his sou'wester, his thin lips curved in a faint smile.
"No!" he said mockingly. "You didn't touch him? An' I make no doubts
you'd take yer oath of it. But you shouldn't have put the pin back in
the rail when you was through with it, all the same."

"There wasn't any pin there," said Conroy quickly. He had backed as
far from Slade as he could, and was staring at him with horrified
eyes.

"But there would ha' been if I hadn't took a look round while you
were spinnin' your yarn to the Old Man," said Slade. "I knew you was
a fool."

With a manner as of mild glee he passed his hand into the bosom of
his coat, still keeping his sardonic gaze fixed on Conroy.

"Good thing you've got me to look after you," he went on. "Thinks I,
'He might easy make a mistake that 'ud cost him dear;' so I took a
look round. An' I found this." From within his coat he brought forth
an iron belaying-pin, and held it out to Conroy.

"See?" His finger pointed to it. "That's blood, that is--and that's
hair. Look for yourself. Now I suppose you'll tell me you never
touched him!"

"He hit his head against it when he fell," protested the younger man.
"He did! Oh, God, I can't stand this!"

He sank to a seat on one of the chests and leaned his face against
the steel plate of the wall.

"Hit his head," snorted old Slade. "Couldn't you ha' fixed up a
better yarn than that? What are you snivellin' at? D'ye think yer the
only man 'as ever stove in a mate's head--an' him a murderin'
mandriver? Keep them tales for the Old Man; he believes 'em
seemingly; but don't you come them on me."

Conroy was moaning. "I never touched him; I never touched him!"

"Never touched him! Here, take the pin; it's yours!"

He shrank from it. "No, no!"

Slade pitched it to his bunk, where it lay on the blanket. "It's
yours," he repeated. "If yer don't want it, heave it overboard
yerself or stick it back in the rail. Never touched him--you make me
sick with yer never touched him!"

The door slammed on his scornful retreat; Conroy shuddered and sat
up. The iron belaying-pin lay where it had fallen, on his bed, and
even in that meager light it carried the traces of its part in the
mate's death. It had the look of a weapon rather than of a humble
ship-fitting. It rolled a couple of inches where it lay as the ship
leaned to a gust, and he saw that it left a mark where it had been, a
stain.

He seized it in a panic and started for the door to be rid of it at
once.

As if a malicious fate made him its toy, he ran full into the Greek
outside.

"Ah!" The man's smile flashed forth, wise and livid. "An' so you 'ad
it in your pocket all de time, den!"

Conroy answered nothing. It was beyond striving against. He walked to
the rail and flung the thing forth with hysterical violence to the
sea.

The watch going below at four o'clock found him apparently asleep,
with his face turned to the wall. They spoke in undertones, as though
they feared to disturb him, but none of them mentioned the only
matter which all had in mind. They climbed heavily to their bunks,
there to smoke the brief pipe, and then to slumber. Only Slade, who
slept little, would from time to time lean up on one elbow to look
down and across to the still figure which hid its face throughout the
night.

Conroy woke when the watch was called for breakfast by a man who
thrust his head in and shouted. He had slept at last, and now as he
sat up it needed an effort of mind to recall his trouble. He looked
out at his mates, who stood about the place pulling on their clothes,
with sleep still heavy on them. They seemed as usual. It was his turn
to fetch the coffee from the galley, he remembered, and he slipped
out of his bunk to dress and attend to it.

"I won't be a minute," he said to the others, as he dragged on his
trousers.

A shaggy young Swede near the door was already dressed.

"I vill go," he said. "You don't bother," and forthwith slipped out.

The others were looking at him now, glancing with a queer, sharp
interest and turning away when they met his eyes. It was as though he
were a stranger.

"That was a queer thing last night," he said to the nearest.

"Yes," the other agreed, with a kind of haste.

They sat about at their meal, when the coffee had been brought by the
volunteer, under the same constraint. He could not keep silent; he
had to speak and make them answer.

"Where is he?" he asked abruptly.

"On de gratings," he was told. And the Swede who fetched the coffee
added, "Sails is sowin' him up now already."

"We'll see the last of him to-day," said Slade. "He won't kick nobody
again!"

There was a mutter of agreement, and eyes turned on Conroy again.
Slade smiled slowly.

"Yes, he keeck once too many times," said the Greek.

The shaggy young Swede wagged his head. "He t'ink it was safe to kick
Conroy, but it aindt," he observed profoundly. "No, it aindt safe."

"He got vat he asked for. . . . Didn't know vat he go up againdst
. . . No, it aindt--it aindt safe. . . Maybe vi'sh he aindt so handy
mit his feet now."

They were all talking; their mixed words came to Conroy in broken
sentences. He stared at them a little wildly, realizing the fact that
they were admiring him, praising him, and afraid of him. The blood
rose in his face hotly.

"You fellers talk," he began, and was disconcerted at the manner in
which they all fell silent to hear him--"you talk as if I'd killed
him."

"Well! . . . Ach was!"

He faced their smiles, their conciliatory gestures, with a frown.

"You better stop it," he said. "He fell--see? He fell an' stove his
head in. An' any feller that says he didn't----"

His regard traveled from face to face, giving force to his challenge.

"Ve aindt goin' to say nodings!" they assured him mildly. "You don't
need to be scared of us, Conroy."

"I'm not scared," he said, with meaning. "But look out, that's all."

When breakfast was over, it was his turn to sweep up. But there was
almost a struggle for the broom and the privilege of saving him that
trouble. It comforted him and restored him; it would have been even
better but for the presence of Slade, sitting aloft in his bunk,
smiling over his pipe with malicious understanding.

The Villingen was still under reefed upper topsails, walking into the
seas on a taut bowline, with water coming aboard freely. There was
little for the watch to do save those trivial jobs which never fail
on a ship. Conroy and some of the others were set to scrubbing teak
on the poop, and he had a view of the sail-maker at his work on the
gratings under the break of the poop, stitching on his knees to make
the mate presentable for his last passage. The sailmaker was a
bearded Finn, with a heavy, darkling face and the secret eyes of a
faun. He bent over his task, and in his attitude and the slow rhythm
of his moving hand there was a suggestion of ceremonial, of an act
mysterious and ritual.

Half-way through the morning, Conroy was sent for to the cabin, there
to tell his tale anew, to see it taken down, and to sign it. The
captain even asked him if he felt better.

"Thank you, sir," replied Conroy. "It was a shock, findin' him dead
like that."

"Yes, yes," agreed the captain. "I can understand--a great shock.
Yes!"

He was bending over his papers at the table; Conroy smiled over his
bowed head. Returning on deck, he winked to the man at the wheel, who
smiled uncomfortably in return. Later he borrowed a knife to scrape
some spots of paint off the deck; he did not want to spoil the edge
of his own.

They buried the mate at eight bells; the weather was thickening, and
it might be well to have the thing done. The hands stood around,
bareheaded, with the grating in the middle of them, one edge resting
on the rail, the other supported by two men. There was a dark smudge
on the sky up to windward, and several times the captain glanced up
from his book towards it. He read in German slowly, with a dwelling
upon the sonorous passages, and towards the end he closed the book
and finished without its aid.

Conroy was at the foot of the ladder; the captain was above him,
reading mournfully, solemnly, without looking at the men. They were
rigid, only their eyes moving. Conroy collected their glances
irresistibly. When the captain had finished his reading he sighed and
made a sign, lifting his hand like a man who resigns himself. The men
holding the grating tilted it; the mate of the Villingen, with a
little jerk, went over the side.

"Shtand by der tobs'l halliards!" roared the second mate.

Conroy, in the flurry, found himself next to a man of his watch. He
jerked a thumb in the direction of the second mate, who was still
vociferating orders.

"Hark at him!" he said. "Before we're through I'll teach him manners
too."

And he patted his knife.



V

THE VICTIM

Cobb was crossing the boulevard, and was actually evading a taxi-cab
at the moment when he sighted the little comedy which he made haste
to interrupt. Upon the further pavement, Savinien, whom he once
believed in as a poet, had stopped in the shelter of a shop door, an
unlighted cigarette between his lips, and was prospecting his vast
person with gentle little slaps for a match. The current of the
pavement rippled by him; the great expanse of his back was half
turned to it, so that he and his search were in a kind of privacy,
and the situation was favorable to the two inconspicuous men who
approached him from either side. The one, with an air of hurry, ran
against him at the instant, when he was exploring his upper waistcoat
pocket, staggered and caught at him with mumbled apologies; the
other, with the sure and suave movement of an expert, slid an arm
between the two bodies, withdrew it, and was making off.

"Hi!" shouted Cobb, as the taxi shaved past him, and came across with
a rush. People stopped to see what he was shouting at, and a group of
them, momentarily blocking the pavement, made it easy for the lanky
Cobb to bowl the fleeing pickpocket against the wall and lay secure
hands on him.

"You come along with me," said Cobb, who always forgot his French
when he was excited.

The thief, helpless under the grip on the nape of his neck, whined
and stammered. He was a rat of a man, white-faced, pale-eyed, with a
sagging, uncertain mouth.

"M'sieur!" he whimpered. "But I have got nothing! It is a mistake.
The other man----"

Cobb thrust him at the end of a long arm to where Savinien stood, the
cigarette still unlighted. The other man, of course, was gone.

"Hullo, Savinien," said Cobb. "You know you've been robbed, don't
you? I just caught this fellow as he was bolting. See what you've
lost, won't you?"

"Lost!" Savinien stared, a little stupidly, Cobb thought, and
suddenly smiled. He was bulky to the point of grotesqueness, with a
huge white torpid face and a hypochondriac stoop of the shoulders,
and the hand that traveled over his waistcoat, from pocket to pocket,
looked as if it had been shaped out of dough.

"Well!" said Cobb impatiently, stilling the thief's whimpering
protests with a quick grip of the hand that held him.

"My watch," murmured Savinien, still smiling though he were pleased
and relieved to be the victim of a theft. "But let him go."

"Let him go! Oh no," said Cobb. "I'll hand him over to the police and
we'll get the watch out of him."

"The watch is nothing," said Savinien. "Let him go before there
arrives an agent, or it will be too late."

He came a pace nearer as he spoke, and nodded at Cobb confidentially,
as though there were reasons for his request which he could not
explain before the on-lookers.

"But----" began Cobb.

"Let him go," urged Savinien. "It is necessary. Afterwards, I will
explain to you." He put his shapeless soft hand on Cobb's arm which
held the thief.

"Let him go."

"You are serious?" demanded Cobb. "He's to go, is he? With your
watch? All right!"

He let go the scraggy neck which he held in the fork of his hand.
They were, by this time, ringed about by spectators, but the thief
was not less expert with crowds than with pockets. He was no sooner
loose than he seemed to merge into the folk about, to pass through
and beyond them like a vapor. Heads turned, feet shuffled. Savinien
came about ponderously like a battleship in narrow waters, but the
thief was gone.

"Tiens!" ejaculated someone, and there was laughter.

Savinien's arm insinuated itself through Cobb's elbow.

"Let us go where we can sit down," said the poet. "You are puzzled--
not? But I will explain you all that."

"It wasn't a bet, was it?" asked Cobb.

The poet laughed gently. "That possibility alarms you?" he suggested.
"But it was not a bet; it is more vital than that. I will tell you
when we sit down."

At Savinien's slow pace they came at last to small marble-topped
tables under a striped awning. Savinien, with loud gasps, let himself
down upon an exiguous chair, rested both fat hands upon the head of
his stick, and smiled ruefully across the table at Cobb. A tinge of
blue had come out around his lips.

"Even to walk," he gasped, "that discomposes me, as you see. It is
terrible."

"Take it easy," counseled Cobb.

An aproned waiter served them, Cobb with beer, Savinien with a
treacly liqueur in a glass the size of a thimble. When he was a
little restored from his exertions, he laid his arm on the table,
with the little glass held between his thumb and forefinger, and
remained in this attitude.

"Go ahead," said Cobb. "Tell me why you are distributing watches to
the deserving poor in this manner."

"It is not benevolence," replied Savinien. "It is simply that I have a
need of some misfortune to balance things."

There was a muffled quality in his voice, as though it were subdued
by the bulk from which it had to emerge; but his enunciation was as
clean and dexterous as in the days when he had made a vogue for his
poems by reading them aloud. It was the voice of a poet issuing from
the mouth of a glutton.

"To balance things," he repeated. "Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a
pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further
it returns on the side of disaster. And with me, who cannot take your
arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the
neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than
a step a minute, disaster has only one shape. It arrives and I am
extinguished! It is for that reason that I fear a persistence of good
luck. Of late, the luck that dogs me has been incredible.

"Listen, now, to this! Three days ago, being in a difficulty, I go in
search of Rigobert. You know Rigobert, perhaps?"

"Yes," said Cobb. "That is, I have lent him money!"

"Precisely," agreed Savinien. "The sum which he owed me was no more
than two hundred and fifty francs but I had not much hope of him. I
went leisurely upon the way towards his studio, and at the corner by
the Madeleine I entered the post office to obtain a stamp for a
letter I had to send. The first thing which I perceived as I opened
the door was the back of Rigobert, as he sprawled against the
counter, signing his name upon a form while the clerk counted out
money to him. Hundred franc notes, my friend--noble new notes, ten in
number, a thousand francs in all, which Rigobert received for his
untidy autograph upon a blue paper. As for me, I planted myself there
at his back in an attitude of expectancy and determination to await
his leisure. He was cramming the money into his trousers pocket as he
turned round and beheld me. He was embarrassed. He, the universal
debtor, the bottomless pit of loans and obligations, to be discovered
thus.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"I!" I replied, and took him very firmly by the arm and mentioned my
little affair to him. He was not pleased, Rigobert, but for the
moment he was empty of excuses. When he suggested that we should go
to a cafe, to change one of the notes, that he might pay me my two
hundred and fifty, I agreed, for I had him by the arm, but I could
see that he was gathering his faculties, and I was wary. A bon rat
bon chat!

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