The Second Class Passenger Part 26

"'Then if you will send for a fiacre,' she suggested to her husband.

He was standing between us, wordless and dull. He gave her a look of inquiry; she returned it with a clear, high gaze, and he went at once."

"'It is a good season for traveling, I believe!' she said, when the door had closed behind him."

"'Captain Bertin could not have chosen a better,' I a.s.sured her."

"Her composure was more than wonderful; by no sign, no hint of weakness or ill ease, did she make any appeal to me. To my sympathy, my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not a hairbreadth from the line of social amenity."

"'But he is hardly likely to have company?' she asked again."

"As for me, I had visions of the kind of company that was due to him --a formal sons-officer with a warrant of arrest, a file of stolid soldiers, with rigid faces and curious eyes."

"But I answered her in her own manner."

"'There is certainly that drawback,' I said, and I thought--I hoped-- I saw grat.i.tude in her answering look."

"Then Bertin returned, with the hat of a civilian and a cloak that covered him to the ears. I saw their farewell--his look of appeal at her, the smile of amus.e.m.e.nt which answered it. And next I was seated beside him in the fiacre and she was framed in the door, looking after us, slender and erect, pale and subtle, smiling still with a manner as of weariness. It is thus that I remember her best."

"It was not till we were out of her sight that Bertin spoke. He lit a cigarette and stared up at the great white stars."

"'She spoilt my luck from the first,' he said."

"I don't know why, but I laughed. At the moment it seemed to be a very droll saying. And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in sympathy. He was a wonderful man. When he was established in the train, he held out his hand to me."

"'Adieu,' he said. 'You have been kind in your way. You didn't do it for me, you know--so adieu!"

"I took his hand. It was a small thing to grant him, and I bad no other answer. As the train moved away, I saw his face at the window of the carriage, full of a kind of sly humor--gross, amiable, and tragic! He waved me a good-bye."

The Colonel paused, staring at his trimly booted toe. Madame la Comtesse looked at him thoughtfully.

"You saw him again? she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "But possibly the tale becomes too painful."

The Comtesse pa.s.sed a hand over her eyes. "I must hear the rest," she said. "You saw her, too, again?"

"Yes," said the Colonel.

"She was very hard," said the Comtesse thoughtfully. "Very hard always. As a girl I remember----"

The Colonel was looking at her intently, as though some thought had suddenly brought him enlightenment. Both he and the Comtesse seemed quite to have forgotten Elsie, listening on her stool in bewilderment and compa.s.sion. She saw them now exchange guarded glances, as though measuring each other's penetration.

The Comtesse leaned back. "I beg you to proceed," she said, with a sigh. Elsie reached over the arm of the chair and took her hand and held it.

The little Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

"Since Madame la Comtesse wishes it," he said. "But some years elapsed before I saw either of them again. Madame Bertin had said nothing which could encourage me to call at the house in the impa.s.se, and there was no message from him to carry thither. I heard--it was said--that she, too, left the city; Bertin's exit from the service was arranged, and thus the matter seemed to close. I preserved certain memories, which I still preserve; I was the richer by them.

Then came active service, expeditions to the interior, some fighting and much occupation. It chanced that I was fortunate; I gained some credit and promotion; and by degrees the affair of Bertin sank to rest in the background of my life. It was a closed incident, and I was reconciled never to have it reopened. But it seems one can never be sure that a thing is ended; possibly Bertin in his hiding-place thought as I did and made the same mistake. I heard the news when I visited Algiers on my way to a post up-country at the edge of the desert. New powers had taken charge of our business; there was a new General, an austere, mirthless man, who knew of Bertin's existence, and resented it. He had been concerned here and there in more than one enterprise of an unpleasant flavor, and it was the General's intention to put a period to him. My friends in barracks told me of it, perfunctorily; and my chief sense was of disgust that Bertin should continue to be noticeable. And then I went away up-country, in a train that carried me beyond the borders of civilization, and set me down at last one dawn at a point where a military line trickled out into the vast yellow distance, against an undulated horizon of sandhills. It was in the chill hour of the morning; a few sentries walked their beats, and beyond them there was a plot of silent tents.

The station was no more than planks laid on the ground beside some locked iron sheds, a tank for the engine, and a flagstaff. It was infinitely forlorn and empty, with an air of staleness and discomfort. At some distance, a single m.u.f.fled figure sat apart on a seat; I thought it was some Arab waiting for the day. Be judge, then, of my amazement when it rose, as I would have pa.s.sed it, and spoke."

"'This, also, is a good season for traveling?' it said, and I spun on my heel to face it. From the hood of a bernouse there looked out at me, pale and delicate still, the face of Madame Bertin."

"In my bewilderment and my--my joy, I caught at both her hands and held them for a moment. She smiled and freed herself gently, and her eyes mocked me. She was the same as ever, impregnably the same; stress of mind, sorrow, exile, loneliness--they could not avail to stir her from her pedestal of composure. That manner--it is the armor of the woman of the world."

"'I came here on a camel,' she told me, in answer to my inquiries.

'On a camel from my home. I understand now why chameau is a word of abuse.'"

"'I am not very sure that the season is good for traveling,' I said."

"She shrugged her shoulders. 'When one is acclimatized, seasons are no longer important.'"

"'And you are acclimatized, Madame?' I asked her."

"She showed me the bernouse. 'Even to this,' she said."

"Across the slopes of sand, one could hear the engine of the little military train grunting and wheezing as it collected its cars, and the strident voice of a man cursing Arab laborers."

"'You go by that train?' she asked me."

"'To Torah,' I answered."

"'I also,' she said, looking at me inquiringly.

"I said I was fortunate to have her company, and it was plain that she was relieved. For I guessed forthwith that it was at Torah that Bertin was, and she knew that if my going thither were to arrest him, I would spare her. I am sure she knew that."

"It was a journey of a day and a night, while that little train rolled at leisure through a world of parched sand, beyond the sandhills to the eye-wearying monotony of the desert. Sometimes it would halt beside a tank and a tent, while a sore-eyed man ran along the train to beg for newspapers. Over us, the sky rose in an arch from horizon to horizon, blue and blinding; the heat was like a hand laid on one's mouth. I had with me my soldier-servant and a provision of food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness.

I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me very sweetly for my aid."

"Another dawn, and we were at Torah. A half-circle of dusty palms leaned away to one side of the place, the common ensign of a well on a caravan route. The post was but a few structures of wood and mud, and, a little way off, the tents of the camp. In the east, the sky was red with foreknowledge of the sun; its light already lay pale over the meanness of all the village. I helped her from the train, and demanded to know whither I should conduct her."

"'I will not give you further trouble,' she said; and though I protested, she was firm. And at last she walked away, alone, to the huddle of little buildings, and I saw her pa.s.s among them and out of my sight. Then I turned and went over to the camp, where my duty lay."

"That was a sorrowful place, that Torah. The troops were chiefly men of the Foreign Legion, of whom three in every four expressed in their eyes only patience and the bitterness of men whose lives are hidden things. With them were some elderly officers, whose only enthusiasms showed themselves in a crazy bravery in action, the callous courage of men who have already died once. From some of these I heard of Bertin. It was a brown, sun-dried man who told me."

"'Yes, we know him,' he said. 'He pa.s.ses under various names, but we know him. A man wasted, thrown away, my friend! He should have joined us.'"

"'You would have accepted him?' I asked."

"'Why not?' was the answer. 'It is not honest men we ask for, nor true men, nor even brave men--only fighting men. And any man can be that.'"

"It made me wonder if it were yet too late for Bertin, 'and whether he might not still find a destiny in the ranks of that regiment where so many do penance. But when I saw him, a week later, I knew that the chance had gone by with his other chances, It was in a cafe in the village, a shed open at one side to the little street of sand, and furnished only with tables and chairs. A great Spahi, in the splendid uniform of his corps, lounged in one corner; a shrouded Arab tended the coffee apparatus in another; in the middle, with a gla.s.s before him, sat Bertin. The sun beat in at the open front of the building and spread the shadows in a tangle on its floor; he was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing before him with the eyes of a dead man. He had always promised to be stout, but he was already fat--a flabby, blue-jowled heap of a man, all thick creases and bulges; and his face had patches of blue and purple in its hollows. He was ponderous, he was huge; and with it there was an aspect of horror, as though all that flesh were diseased."

"I paused by his table and slowly he looked up to me. His features labored with thought, and he recognized me."

"'Saval!' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed hoa.r.s.ely. 'You--you want me?'"

"I sat down at his table. 'I haven't come to arrest you,' I told him.

'But you had better know that the authorities have decided to arrest you.'"