The Second Class Passenger Part 30

"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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 pa.s.sions 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.