Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

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It was not till she fell over him that she was aware of the man on
the ground, who rolled over and cried out at the movement. She put a
steady hand on him.

"Are you hurt?" she asked eagerly.

He groaned; his face was a pale blur against the earth.

"They've got me," he said. "They stuck a knife in my back. I'm
bleeding; I'm bleeding."

"Get up," bade Miss Gregory. "Bleeding or not, we must get away from
here. Up you get."

She pulled him to a sitting position, and he screamed and resisted,
but Miss Gregory was his master. By voice and force she brought him
upright; he could stand alone, and seemed surprised to find it out.

"Take my arm," she ordered him. "Lean on it; don t be afraid. Now,
where are your rooms?"

"On this way," he sobbed.

Evidently he had an ugly wound, for at each few steps he had to stop
and rest, and sometimes he swayed, and Miss Gregory had to hold him
up. His breath came hastily; he was soft with terror. "They'll come
back! they'll come back!" he gabbled, tottering on his feet.

"They're coming now; I can hear them," replied Miss Gregory grimly.
"Here, lean in this doorway behind me, man. Stop that whimpering,
will you! Now, keep close."

She propped him against the nail-studded door, and placed herself
before, him, and the three robbers, bunched together in a group,
stealing along the middle of the way, might almost have gone past
without seeing them. But it was not a chance to trust to. Miss
Gregory let them come abreast of her; her whole honest body was tense
to the occasion; on the due moment she flung herself forward and the
brandished umbrella rained loud blows on aghast heads; and at the
same time she summoned to her aid her one accomplishment--she
shrieked. She was a strong woman, deep-chested, full-lunged; her raw
yell shattered the stillness of the night like some crazy trumpet; it
broke from her with the suddenness of a catastrophe, nerve-sapping,
ear-scaring, heart-striking. Before it and the assault of the stout
umbrella the robbers broke; a panic captured them; they squealed,
clasped at each other, and ran in mere senseless amaze. The Latin
blood, when diluted with Coast mixtures, is never remarkable for
courage; but braver men might have scattered at the alarm of that
mighty discordancy attacking from behind.

Fortunately the door they sought was not far off; through it they
entered a big untidy room, stone-floored as the custom is, and
littered with all the various trifles a man gathers about him on the
Coast. Miss Gregory put her patient on the narrow bed and turned to
the door; true to his fears, it would not lock. The youth was very
pale and in much fear; blood stained the back of his clothes, and his
eyes followed her about in appeal.

"You must wait a little," Miss Gregory told him. "I'll look at that
wound of yours when I've seen to the door. No lock, of course." She
pondered frowningly. "It's a childish thing at the best," she added
thoughtfully; "but it may be a novelty in these parts. Have you ever
arranged a booby trap, my boy?"

"No," he answered, wonderingly.

Miss Gregory shook her head. "The lower classes are getting worse and
worse," she observed. She put a chair by the door, which stood a
little ajar, and looked about her.

"As you are going away you won't want this china." It was his ewer
and wash-hand basin. "I don't see anything better, and it'll make a
smash, at any rate."

"What you goin' to do, ma'am?" asked the man on the bed.

"Watch," she bade him. It was not easy, but with care she managed to
poise the basin and the ewer in it on top of the door, so that it
leaned on the lintel and must fall as soon as the door was pushed
wider.

"Now," she said, when it was done, "let's have a look at that cut."

It was an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine--a
bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss
Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have
done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be
dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of
the patient's shirts, and he found himself a good deal more
comfortable. He lay back on his bed with some of the color restored
to his face, and watched her as she moved here and there about the
room with eyes that were trustful and slavish.

"Well," said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of
the apartment, "there doesn't seem to be much more one can do.
They'll come back, I suppose? But of course they will. How much money
have you got about you?"

"About two thousand pounds, ma'am," he said, meekly.

"H'm!" Miss Gregory thought a moment. "And they know it? Of course."
She added her little sharp nod of certainty. "Well, when they come
we'll attend to them."

There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it,
patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on
top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it
from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow
monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it
pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.

She was still at the mirror, with hatpins held in her mouth, when the
steps of the robbers made themselves heard. The man on the bed
started up on his elbow, with wide eyes and a sagging mouth. Miss
Gregory quelled him with a glance, then crossed the floor and blew
the candle out. In the darkness she laid her hat down that it might
not come to harm, and put a reassuring hand on the youth's shoulder,
it was quaking, and she murmured him a caution to keep quiet.
Together, with breath withheld, they heard the men in the entry of
the house, three of them, coming guardedly. Miss Gregory realized
that this was the real onslaught; they would be nerved for shrieks
this time. She took her hand from the youth's shoulder with another
whispered word, and stepped to the middle of the room and stood
motionless. The noise of breathing reached her, then a foot shuffled,
and on the instant somebody sprang forward and shoved the door wide.

The jug and basin smashed splendidly; whoever it fell on uttered a
little shrill yell and paused, confounded by the darkness. Miss
Gregory, her eyes more tuned to it, could make out the blur of white
clothes; with noiseless feet she moved towards them. She was all
purpose and directness; no tremor disturbed her. As calmly as she
would have shaken hands with the Consul she reached forward, felt her
enemy, and delivered a cool and well-directed thrust. An appalling
yell answered her, and she stepped back a space, the hatpin held
ready for another attack. There was a tense instant of inaction, and
then the three rushed, and one bowled her over on the floor and fell
with her.

Miss Gregory fell on her side, and before she was well down the steel
hatpin, eight inches long of good Paris metal, plunged and found its
prey. The man roared and wallowed clear, and she rose. The big room
was wild with stamping feet and throaty noises such as dogs make. The
bedside chair, kicked aside struck her ankles; she picked it up and
threw it at the sounds. It seemed to complicate matters. The place
was as dark as a well, and she moved groping with her hands towards
the bed. Some one backed into her--another yell and a jump, and, as
she stepped back, the swish of a blow aimed towards her that barely
missed her. Then she was by the bed, feeling over it; it was empty.

She had some moments of rest; every one was still, save for harsh
breathing. But she dared not stand long, lest their eyes too should
adapt themselves to the dark. It was evident that nobody had
firearms; there was that much to be thankful for. She gathered
herself for an attack, a rush at the enemy with an active hatpin,
when something touched her foot. She bent, swiftly alert for war, but
arrested the pin on its way. It was a hand from under the bed; her
protege had taken refuge there. She took his wrist and pulled; he
whimpered, and there was a grunt from the middle of the room at the
sound, but he came crawling. She dared not whisper, for those others
were moving already, but with her cool, firm hand on his wrist, she
sank down on all-fours and drew him on towards the door. It was
impossible to make no noise, but at any rate their noise was
disconcerting; the robbers could not guess what it betokened. Each of
them had his stab, a tingling, unaccountable wound, a hurt to daunt a
man, and they were separately standing guard each over his own life.

They encountered one half way across the room. He felt them near him,
and sent a smashing blow with a knife into the empty air. Miss
Gregory, always with that considered and careful swiftness that was
so like deliberation, reared to her knees, her left hand still
holding the youth's wrist, and lunged. Another yell, and the man,
leaping back, fouled a comrade, who stabbed and sprang away. They
heard the man fall and move upon the floor like a dying fish, with
sounds of choking. Then the door was before them, and, crawling
still, with infinite pains to be noiseless, they passed through it.
From within the room the choking noises followed them till they
gained the open air.

The tortuous alley received them like a refuge; they fled along it
with lightened hearts, taking all turnings that might baffle a chase,
till at last Miss Gregory smelt acacias and they issued again into
the little square. To Miss Gregory it was almost amazing that the
cafes should still be lighted, their tables thronged, the music
insistent. While history had paced for her the world had stood still.
She stood and looked across at the lights thoughtfully.

The youth at her side coughed. "The least I can do," he suggested
inanely, "is ask you to 'ave a cup of coffee, ma'am."

Miss Gregory turned on him sharply.

"And then?" she asked. "After the coffee, what then?"

He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Well, ma'am," he said; "this hole in
my back is more'n a bit painful. So I thought I'd get along to the
hotel an' have a lie down."

She looked at him thoughtfully. Her head was bare, and the night
breeze from the sea whipped a strand of grey hair across her brow.
She brushed it away a little wearily.

"Unless there's anything more I can do for you," suggested the young
man smoothly.

Anything more he could do for her! She smiled, considering him. The
events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still
mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their
part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided,
governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a
Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member of
Parliament, author of "The Saharan Solitudes," and woman of the
world, saw that she had served her purpose, her work was done.

"Thank you," she said; "there is nothing more. You had better go to
bed at once."

There was a broken fountain in the middle of the square, overgrown
with sickly lichen, and round it ran a stone bench. The acacias
sheltered it, and a dribble of water from the conduit sounded always,
fitting itself to one's thoughts in a murmuring cadence. Here Miss
Gregory disposed herself, and here the dawn found her, a little
disheveled, and looking rather old with the chill of that bleak hour
before the sun rises. But her grey head was erect, her broad back
straight, and the regard of her eyes serene and untroubled always.
She was waiting for the hour when the Consul would be accessible; he
was the son of her dearest friend.

"And I must not forget," she told herself--"I really must not forget
to attend to that hotel man."

VII

THE MASTER

Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which
happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger
from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin
to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never
failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa
Musard had known Corot--or said that he had--and in his capacity of a
model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of
three generations of painters.

The boy who carried the summons sat confidently on the kerb outside
the restaurant at which Rufin was used to lunch, and rose to his feet
as the tall, cloaked figure turned the corner of the street and
approached along the sunlit pavement.

"Monsieur Musard said you would be here at one o'clock," he
explained, presenting the note.

"Then it is very fortunate that I am not late," said Rufin politely,
accepting it. "But how did you know me?"

The boy--he was aged perhaps twelve--gave a sophisticated shrug.

"Monsieur Musard said: 'At one o'clock there will approach an artist
with the airs of a gentleman. That is he.'"

Rufin laughed and opened the note. While he read it the boy watched
him with the admiration which, in Paris, even the rat-like gamin of
the streets pays to distinction such as his. He was a tall man
splendidly blonde, and he affected the cloak, the slouch hat, the
picturesque amplitude of hair which were once the uniform of the
artist. But these, in his final effect, were subordinate to 'a
certain breadth and majesty of brow, a cast of countenance at once
benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both
exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as
he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child
standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged
scrawl of Papa Musard.

"So Musard is very ill again, is he?" he asked of the boy. "Have you
seen him yourself?"

"Oh yes," replied the boy; "I have seen him. He lies in bed and his
temper is frightful."

"He is a very old man, you see," said Rufin. "Old men have much to
suffer. Well, tell him I will come this afternoon to visit him. And
this"--producing a coin from his pocket--"this is for you."

The gamin managed, in some fashion of his own, to combine, in a
single movement, a snatch at the money with a gesture of polite
deprecation. They parted with mutual salutations, two gentlemen who
had carried an honorable transaction to a worthy close. A white-
aproned waiter smiled upon them tolerantly and held open the door
that Rufin might enter to his lunch.

It was in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin
on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets
chirping about him. Two young men, passing near the Opera, saluted
him with the title of "maitre;" and then the Paris of sleek
magnificence lay behind him and the street sloped uphill to the Place
Pigalle and all that region where sober, industrious Parisians work
like beavers to furnish vice for inquiring foreigners. Yet steeper
slopes ascended between high houses toward his destination, and he
came at last to the cobbled courtyard, overlooked by window-dotted
cliffs of building, above which Papa Musard had his habitation.

A fat concierge, whose bulged and gaping clothes gave her the aspect
of an over-ripe fruit, slept stonily in a chair at the doorway. Rufin
was not certain whether Musard lived on the fourth floor or the
fifth, and would have been glad to inquire, but he had not the
courage to prod that slumbering bulk, and was careful to edge past
without touching it. The grimy stair led him upward to find out for
himself.

On the third floor, according to his count, a door looked like what
he remembered of Musard's, but it yielded no answer to his knocking.
A flight higher there was another which stood an inch or so ajar, and
this he ventured to push open that he might look in. It yielded him a
room empty of life, but he remained in the doorway looking.

It was a commonplace, square, ugly room, the counterpart of a hundred
others in that melancholy building; but its window, framing a saw-
edged horizon of roofs and chimneys, faced to the north, and some
one, it was plain, had promoted it to the uses of a studio. An easel
stood in the middle of the floor with a canvas upon it; the walls
were covered with gross caricatures drawn upon the bare plaster with
charcoal. A mattress and some tumbled bedclothes lay in one corner,
and a few humble utensils also testified that the place was a
dwelling as well as a workshop.

Rufin looked back to be sure that no one was coming up the stairs,
and then tiptoed into the room to see what hung on the easel.

"After all," he murmured, "an artist has the right."

The picture on the easel was all but completed; it was a quarter-
length painting of a girl. Stepping cautiously around the easel, he
came upon a full view of it suddenly, and forthwith forgot all his
precautions to be unheard. Here was a thing no man could keep quiet!
With his first glance he saw--he, himself a painter, a creator, a
judge--that he stood in the presence of a great work of art, a
vision, a power.

"But here!" he exclaimed amazedly. "Of all places--here!"

The painted face looked out at him with all the sorrowful wisdom that
is comprised in a life sharpened on the grindstone of a remorseless
civilization. It was a girl such as one might find anywhere in that
neighborhood, she had the hardy prettiness, the alertness, the
predatory quality which belong to wild creatures civilized by force.
It was set on the canvas with a skill that made Rufin smile with
frank pleasure; but the skill, the artifice of the thing, were the
least part of it. What was wonderful was the imagination, the living
insight, that represented not only the shaped product of a harsh
existence, but the womanhood at the root of it. It was miraculous; it
was convincing as life is convincing; it was great.

Rufin, the painter whose fame was secure, upon whom Art had showered
gifts, gazed at it, absorbed and reverent. He realized that in this
picture his age had achieved a masterpiece; he was at least the
contemporary of an immortal.

"Ah!" he said, with an impulse of high indignation. "And while he
paints here and sleeps on the floor, they buy my pictures!"

He stepped back from the easel. He was equal to a great gesture, as
to a great thought. As though he had greeted a living princess, he
swept his hat off in a bow to the work of this unknown fellow.

Papa Musard in his bed, with his comforts--mostly in bottles--
arranged within his reach, found it rather shocking that a
distinguished artist should enter the presence of a dying man like--
as he remarked during his convalescence--a dog going into a pond. He
sat up in astonishment.

"Musard," demanded Rufin abruptly, "who is the artist who lives in
the room below this?"

"Oh, him!" replied Papa Musard, sinking back on his pillow. "M'sieur
Rufin, this is the last time I shall appeal to you. Before long I
shall again be in the presence of the great master, of Corot, of him
who----"

Rufin, it seemed, had lost all respect both for Corot and death. He
waved an imperious arm, over which his cloak flapped like a black
wing.

"Who is the artist in the room below?" repeated Rufin urgently. "Do
you know him?"

"No," replied Papa Musard, with emphasis. "Know him--an Italian, a
ruffian, an apache, a man with hair on his arms like a baboon! I do
not know him. There!"

He was offended; a dying man has his privileges, at least. The face,
gnarled and tempestuously bearded, which had been perpetuated by a
hundred laborious painters, glared from the pillow at Rufin with
indignation and protest.

Rufin suppressed an impulse to speak forcibly, for one has no more
right to strip a man of his pose than of his shirt. He smiled at the
angry invalid conciliatingly.

"See how I forget myself!" he said apologetically. "We artists are
all alike. Show us a picture and our manners go by the board. With
you, Musard, need I say more?"

"You have said a lot," grumbled the ancient of days. "Coming in
roaring like a bull! What picture has upset you?"

"A picture you have not seen," said Rufin, "or you would be grasping
my hand and weeping for joy--you who know pictures better than us
all!" He surveyed the invalid, who was softening. Musard knew no more
of pictures than a frame-maker; but that was a fact one did not
mention in his presence.

"Since Corot," sighed Musard, "I have seen few pictures which were--
en effet--pictures."

"You have great memories," agreed Rufin hastily. "But I have just
seen a picture--ah, but a picture, my friend!"

The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner,
the gentleness of his appeal.

"Not his?" demanded Papa Musard. "Not in the room underneath? Not one
of the daubs of that assassin, that cut-throat, that Italian?"

Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not
strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true,
then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell
me about him, Musard."

He reached himself a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed.

"You are always making a fuss of some worthless creature," grumbled
Musard. "I do not even know the man's name. They speak of him as
Peter the Lucky--it is a nickname he has on the streets, an apache
name. He has been in prison, too, and he bellows insults at his
elders and betters when they pass him on the stairs. He is a man of
no soul!"

"Yes," said Rufin. "But did you say he had been in prison?"

"I did," affirmed Musard. "Ask anyone. It is not that I abuse him; he
is, in fact, a criminal. Once he threw an egg at a gendarme. And yet
you come to me--a dying man--and declare that such a creature can
paint! Bah!"

"Yes," said Rufin, "it is strange."

It was clearly hopeless to try to extract any real information from
Papa Musard; that veteran was fortified with prejudices. Rufin
resigned himself to the inevitable; and, although he was burning with
eagerness to find the painter of the picture he had recently seen, to
welcome him into the sunlight of fame and success, he bent his mind
to the interview with Papa Musard.

"I have had my part in the development of Art," the invalid was
saying at the end of three-quarters of an hour. "Perhaps I have not
had my full share of recognition. Since Corot, no artist has been
magnanimous; they have become tradesmen, shopkeepers."

"You are hard on us, Musard," said Rufin. "We're a bad lot, but we do
our best. Here is a small matter of money that may help to make you
comfortable. I'm sorry you have such an unpleasant neighbor."

"You are going?" demanded Musard.

"I must," said Rufin. "To-morrow I go into the country for some
weeks, and nothing is packed yet."

"Corot would not have left an old man to die in solitude," remarked
Musard thoughtfully.

Rufin smiled regretfully and got away while he could. Papa Musard in
an hour could wear down even his patience.

The painter's room was still unlocked and unoccupied as he descended
the stairs; he entered it for another look at the picture. He needed
to confirm his memory, to be assured that he had not endowed the work
with virtue not its own. The trivial, cheaply pretty face fronted him
again, with its little artificial graces only half-masking the sore,
tormented femininity behind it. Yes, it was the true art, the
poignant vision, a thing belonging to all time.

In the courtyard the fat concierge was awake, in a torpid fashion,
and knitting. She lifted her greedy and tyrannical eyes at the tall
figure of Rufin, with its suggestion of splendors and dignities. But
she was not much more informative than Papa Musard had been.

"Oh, the painter!" she exclaimed, when she understood who was in
question. "Ah, M'sieur, it is two days since I have seen him. He is
not of a punctual habit--no! How often have I waked in the blackness
of night, upon a frightful uproar of the bell, to admit him, and he
making observations at the top of his voice that would cause a fish
to blush! An Italian, M'sieur--yes! But all the same it astonishes no
one when he is away for two days."

"The Italians are like that," generalized Rufin unscrupulously. "His
door is unlocked, Madame, and there is a picture in his room which
is--well, valuable."

"He sold the key," lamented Madame, "and the catches of the window,
and the bell-push, and a bucket of mine which I had neglected to
watch. And he called me a she-camel when I remonstrated."

"In Italian it is a mere jest," Rufin assured her. "See, Madame, this
is my card, which I beg you to give him. I am obliged to leave Paris
to-morrow, but on my return I shall have the honor to call on him.
And this is a five-franc piece!"

The big coin seemed to work on the concierge like a powerful drug.
She choked noisily and was for the while almost enthusiastic.

"He shall have the card," she promised. "I swear it! After all,
artists must have their experiences. Doubtless the monsieur who
resides above is a great painter?"

"A very great painter," replied Rufin.

His work, during the next three weeks, exiled him to a green solitude
of flat land whose horizons were ridged by poplars growing beside
roads laid down as though with a ruler, so straight they were as they
sliced across the rich levels. It was there he effected the vital
work on his great picture, "Promesse," a revelation of earth gravid
with life, of the opulent promise and purpose of spring. It is the
greater for what lodged in his mind of the picture he had seen in the
Montmartre tenement. It was constant in his thought, the while he
noted on his canvas the very texture of the year's early light; it
aided his brush. In honesty and humbleness of heart, as he worked, he
acknowledged a debt to the unknown Italian who stole the key of the
room to sell, and called his concierge a she-camel.

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