The Second Class Passenger Part 23

"That is why I am afraid of it," replied the Minister. "I am always afraid of a frightened Frenchman. But, sans blague, my friend, I cannot do what you wish."

Rufin put the piled newspapers from him and leaned forward to plead.

It was useless. The old man opposite him had a manner as deft and una.s.suming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of purpose proof against any appeal.

"I cannot do it," was his single answer.

Rufin sighed. "Then it remains to see the President," he suggested.

"There is that," smiled the Minister. "See him by all means. If you are interested in gardening, you will find him charming. Otherwise, perhaps--but an honest man, I a.s.sure you."

"At least," said Rufin, "if everything fails, if the great painter is to be sacrificed to the newspapers and your epigrams--at least you will allow me to visit him before--before the----"

"But certainly!" the Minister bowed. "I am eager to serve you, Monsieur Rufin. When the date is fixed I will write you a permission.

You three shall have an interview; it should be a memorable one."

"We three?" Rufin waited for an explanation.

"Exactly. You two great artists, Monsieur Rufin and Monsieur Giaconi, and also the murderer, Peter the Lucky."

The old man smiled charmingly; he had brought the negotiations to a point with a mot.

"Adieu, cher maitre," he said, rising to shake his visitor's hand across the wide desk.

Rufin seemed to have trodden into a groove of unsuccess. All his efforts were futile; he saw himself wasting time and energy while fate wasted none. The picture came to hang in his studio till the Luxembourg should demand it; daily its tragic wisdom and tenacious femininity goaded him to new endeavors, and daily he knew that he spent himself in vain.

He did not even realize how much of himself he had expended till that raw morning before the dawn when he drove across Paris in a damp and mournful cab, with the silent girl at his side, to a little square like a well shut in by high houses whose every window was lighted.

There was already a crowd waiting ma.s.sed under the care of mounted soldiers, and the cab slowed to a walk to pa.s.s through them. From the window at his side he saw, with unconscious appreciation, the picture it made, an arrangement of somber ma.s.ses with yellow windows s.h.i.+ning, and in the middle the gaunt uprights, the severe simplicity of the guillotine.

Faces looked in at him, strange and sudden, lit abruptly by the carriage-lamps. Somebody--doubtless a student--peered and recognized him. "Good morning, maitre," he said, and was gone. Maitre--master!

Men did him honor in so naming him, gave him rank, deferred to him.

But he acknowledged life for his master, himself for its pupil and servant.

The girl had not spoken since they started; she remained sitting still in her place when the cab halted at a door, and it needed his hand on her arm to rouse her to dismount. She followed him obediently between more men in uniform, and they found themselves in a corridor, where an officer, obviously waiting there for the purpose, greeted Rufin with marked deference.

"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor of receiving them."

"He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin.

"Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is being made." He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl should not overhear. "The hair above the neck, you know--they always shave that off. It might be better that mademoiselle should not see."

"Possibly," agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely, insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessly.

The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the bare pa.s.sage. Suddenly she addressed the officer.

"How long shall I be with him," she inquired, in tones of an almost arrogant composure, "before they cut his head off?"

The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone, seemed to startle the officer.

"Ah, Mademoiselle!" he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an accusation.

"How long?" repeated the girl.

"Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know," directed Rufin.

The officer hesitated. "It does not rest with me," he said uncomfortably. "You see, there is a regular course in these matters, a routine. I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes."

The girl looked at Rufin and made a face. It was as though she had been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note of a trivial imposture. Her manner and gesture had the repressed power of under-expression. He nodded to her in entire comprehension.

"But," began the officer excitedly, "how can I----" Rufin turned on him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.

"Sir," he said, "you are in the presence of a tragedy. I beg you to be silent."

The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled grotesquely up the walls.

A few moments later the summons came that took them along the pa.s.sage to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and containing a number of people. At the farther end of it a table against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the uniformed men. Those by the door parted to make way for them. Rufin saw them salute him, and removed his hat.

Somebody was speaking. "Regret we cannot leave you alone, but----"

"It does not matter," said Rufin. The room was raw and aching with light; the big electrics were pitiless. In the middle of it a man sat on a chair and raised expectant eyes at his arrival. It was Giaconi, the painter, the murderer. There was some disorder of his dress which Rufin noted automatically, but it was not for some minutes that he perceived its cause--the collar of his coat had been shorn away. The man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong constraint upon himself. The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong animal fettered and compelled to tameness.

"Rufin?" he said hesitatingly.

The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin."

The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she said.

He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she stood between him and Rufin.

"Ah," she cried, "do you not need me at all--even now?"

"Oh, what is it?" said the condemned man, with a quick irritation.

"Is this a time! There is not a moment to spare. I must speak to Rufin--I must. Yes, kneel down; that's right!"

She had sunk at his knee and laid her brown head upon it. As though to acknowledge the caress of a dog, he let one hand fall on her bowed shoulders. His eyes traveled across her to Rufin.

"They told me you would come. Say--is it because of my picture?"

"Yes," said Rufin. "I have done all that I could to save you because of that. But----"

"I know," said the other. "They have told me. You like it, then--my poor 'Mona Lisa' of Montmartre?"

Rufin stepped closer. It was not easy to utter all he desired to say under the eyes of those uniformed men, with the sad, attentive priest in the background.

"Monsieur," he said, "your picture is in my studio. Nothing shall ever hang in its place, for nothing will be worthy."

The seated man heard him hungrily. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten where he was and what was to happen to him ere he drew many more breaths.