The Second Class Passenger Part 31

"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 embarra.s.sed him like an a.s.sault.

"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 compa.s.s 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 G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.