_With Especial Reference to a Girl in a Steamer Chair._
"Don't be angry, Colonel,"--no mortal man knows why Mac calls me
"Colonel,"--"but would you mind leaving that red rose you've got in your
button-hole outside in the hall, or some place where I can't smell it?
Red roses have a singular effect on me." I had come in earlier than the
others this afternoon and had found Mac alone.
I looked at Mac in astonishment. Peculiar as he sometimes is, hatred of
flowers is not one of his eccentricities.
"Why, I thought you loved roses!"
"I do--all except red ones."
I unpinned the rose from my button-hole and laid it in a glass on the
shelf over his wash-basin.
"All right; anything to please you, Mac. Now out with it; give me the
name of the girl, and tell me why."
Mac laughed quietly to himself and settled down in his chair. For some
time he did not speak.
"Go on; I'm waiting."
"Oh, it brings up a memory, that's all, Colonel. You heard what Stirling
said about the perfume of violets bringing back to him the little dinner
he had with Christine Levoix at the Bellevue overlooking the Seine,
didn't you?"
"Yes, but he didn't mention the girl's name."
"I know; but it was Christine. I remember that hat and the gloves. In my
day they were black, not gray, and came up to her shoulders, like
Yvette's. The eyes, though, never changed, no matter who sat opposite.
Stirling bought a lot of violets that year; so did some of the others in
the Quartier, until the Russian carried her off to Moscow," and again
Mac laughed softly to himself. "Well, perfumes produce that same effect
on me."
"Of violets?" I asked, twisting my head to look into Mac's eyes.
"No--tarred hemp and roses." Then he added slowly and thoughtfully, as
if he were recalling some incident in his past life: "Quite a different
kind of girl, my boy, from Christine; about as different as--well, there
isn't any comparison. Yes, tarred hemp and red roses; funny combination,
isn't it?--and yet I never catch the odor of one without smelling the
other. And the whole scene comes back, too, every detail: the rolling
ship; the girl as she lay in her chair, the roses in her lap; the tones
of the Captain's voice (I have sometimes heard them in my sleep); the
glare of the overhead light, and then the splash. Queer things, these
memories!"
Mac paused, and smoked on quietly.
I made no answer. If you want Mac at his best, never interrupt him.
When he is in one of his reminiscent moods his philosophy, his knowledge
of life, his wide personal experience, his many adventures by land and
sea make him the most delightful of conversationalists, while his choice
of words and marvellous powers of description--talking as a painter
talks, one who sees and who, therefore, can make you see; using words as
some men do pigments with all the force of their contrasts--make his
descriptions but so many brilliantly colored pictures. Then his voice!
Suddenly, without a moment's warning, your eyes fill up, leaving you
wondering why, until you remember some throat tone that vibrated through
you like the note of a violin.
When he is in one of these moods he rarely looks at me or at anyone who
listens, especially when he is alone with some one of his chums--and we
two were alone this afternoon, it being Varnishing Day, and all of the
men at the Academy. He looks up at the ceiling, lying back in his chair,
talking to some crack or stain in the plastering, or drops his head and
talks to the smouldering coals, his human eyes fixed on the logs. This
habit of talking to whatever is within the reach of his hands or
legs--his brushes, palette, colors, the chair that gets in his way, the
rug he stumbles over--is characteristic of the man; woodsmen have it who
live alone in great forests. Mac's explanation is that he lived so much
alone in his early life that he acquired the habit in self-defence. The
fire, however, seems to understand, never answering back as it does to
me when I try to punch it into life, but simmering away like a
slow-boiling pot, giving out a steady glow for hours as it listens,
nursing its heat until the master has finished or puts on another log.
Mac refilled his pipe, rested the tongs where his hand could grasp them,
and continued, his big shoulders filling the chair, the light of the
blaze on his humorous, kindly face.
"There are great contrasts in life, my boy, that never fail to interest
me--big Rembrandt things that stand out sharp and solid, sudden as the
exit from a foul shaft into a sunny winter's day, white and cold. And
the reverse side--the black side. That is the worst of these contrasts,
the darks always predominate--out of a yacht's warm cabin, for instance,
into a merciless, hungry sea, without a moment's warning. No, nothing to
do with my memory of tarred hemp and red roses; only to make my point
clear to you," and Mac's head sank the lower in his chair. "Did you ever
focus your mind, for one thing, on the contrasts that the two sides of a
nine-inch brick wall of any house in town present? Did you never lie in
your bed, with your head to the plaster, and wonder what was going on
nine inches away from your ears? I have; I do it now. It may be sorrow
or cruelty or death, if we did but know--some girl mourning for her
lover; some woman crouching in fear; some silent body, cold in a sheet.
Not always so, of course; many times the happiness is on their side and
all the misery on ours; but the two atmospheres are never alike. Only
nine inches of wall! Shut it out as we may, cover it with tapestries or
pictures or paint, it is still within that many inches of our ears. What
a blessing we can't see! Life would be a hell for some of us if we saw
both sides of its brick walls at once. I try now and then to get a
glimpse of both sides because of the effects I get of light and
shadow--they always appeal to me. When I do I often get a heart wrench
that upsets me for days, and yet the next opportunity I am at it again."
Once more Mac paused and looked into the fire, as if he were trying to
recall to his mind, among its glowing, heaped-up coals, some picture in
that rich past of his.
"And that old perfume of tarred hemp and roses," I asked, "does that
suggest one of them?"
"Yes, one of the strangest I ever experienced; and yet it was only one
of the things that goes on every day. A steamer's deck was the brick
wall this time: On our side a cloudless sky, fresh air, light, chairs
filling the length of the deck, whisperings in corners, two lovers
hanging over the rail, some in the bow away from intruders. Now and then
a line of song wafted from open cabin windows. Seaward, a stretch of
steely blue dominated by a clear, round moon, its light flooding a
pathway of silver to the very side of the ship, a pathway along which
angels might have stepped--were stepping, if we could have seen.
"This was one of the times when I had both sides of the wall in review;
she did not. Her heart and mind were on other things. No, nothing that
you think, old man; not another Christine--I left all that behind me;
not anybody in particular, really; just a girl I met on board. There
were a dozen others as pretty--prettier. Our steamer chairs happened to
come together, that was all. We were but two days out, and her roses
were still fresh--big red ones that some of her friends had sent her.
They lay in her lap over her steamer rug. I picked them up for her when
they dropped to the deck, and so the acquaintance began.
"Such a happy girl, with a fresh, sunburnt skin, and strong chest, and
capable, earnest eyes; no nonsense about her, no coquetry."
Mac hesitated for an instant and a look of peculiar tenderness came into
his face--one I always remembered. Then he went on:
"Just a plain, straightforward American girl, with a good mother at home
and a matter-of-fact father who had sent her abroad with an aunt who was
flat on her back in her cabin most of the time; she herself looked as if
she had never known a day's sickness in her life. This was her first
trip abroad. Half a dozen young men and as many young girls had come to
see her off, and her share of the flowers sent on board had been the
largest, and she was as happy over it as a child with a new toy--that
kind of a girl. She wanted, of course, to know about Mt. Blanc and the
Rhigi, and whether the Salon would be open, and which pictures she ought
to see, and what at the Luxembourg--all the questions a girl asks when
she finds you can paint. Her joyousness, though, was what appealed to
me. I like happy people. To her the deck of the steamer was the top of a
great hill from which she looked down on sunshine and peace; no clouds,
no dark shadows; only perspectives of greater happiness yet to come.
This was her side of the wall.
"I did not disturb her outlook. What use would it have been? Why tell
her of what was going on, for instance, under her very eyes? Why let her
know that that tightly built young man who seemed to be so devoted to
the pale, hollow-eyed gentleman of sixty, sitting beside him in the
smoking-room or in the steamer chairs--never five feet away from him day
or night--was a Scotland Yard detective, and that the hollow-eyed
invalid would have a pair of handcuffs slipped over his white, trembling
wrists as soon as the gang-plank was fastened to the dock? Or why let
her know that the thoughtful, clean-shaven young man who now spent most
of his time in walking the deck had never entered the smoking-room since
the first night, when the purser took him one side and, calling him by a
name not on the passenger list had informed him in measured tones that
it might interfere with his comfort if he took the wrapper from another
pack of his own or anybody else's cards during the remainder of the
voyage. Neither did I tell her, that third night out, where I had spent
the afternoon, except to say that I had been with Mr. Hunter, the Chief
Engineer, in his room several decks below where we sat--down among the
furnaces and hot steam and plunging pistons--adding that the Chief was a
great friend of mine and had been for years. If you ever get to know him
as I do he may some time, in a burst of confidence, open the drawer of a
locker behind his bunk and show you a little paper box, and inside of it
a small bit of copper about the size of a big cent with a crossbar and a
ribbon, saying that it was for gallant conduct or something like it.
"But that has got nothing to do with my perfume of tarred rope and
roses--quite another affair altogether--an affair that the Chief and I
had had some previous talk about; and so I was not surprised when his
messenger approached my chair and the girl's, and said in a low voice,
bending close to me:
"'Mr. Hunter's compliments, sir, and he would like to see you in his
room, if you don't mind. He says if you can't come it will be at twelve
sharp, and you're not to mention it to any of the passengers, sir.'
"She looked at me curiously, having heard the messenger's words, but I
did not explain, and, rising quickly, left her with the roses in her
lap--her last bunch, she told me.
"Hunter met me at the door; the Second Engineer and the ship's Doctor
were inside his room.
"'That stoker died about an hour ago, wasn't it, Doctor?' Hunter asked,
turning to the ship's surgeon.
"'Yes.'
"These men are accustomed to such incidents; there is hardly a voyage
without one or more of them. To me it was but the opening of another
crack in one of my brick walls.
"'What of?' I asked.
"'Exhaustion; want of food, perhaps, and the heat. The heart gave out,'
answered the Doctor in a perfunctory tone.
"'Do many of them go that way?' I asked.
"'Yes, when they strike the furnaces for the first time. This man was
too old--over fifty, I should say--and should never have been taken on,'
and he glanced reprovingly at Hunter.
"'He begged so hard,' interrupted the Second Engineer, 'I let him on. We
are short of men, too, on account of the strike--'He spoke as if in
defence of his Chief. 'Didn't look to me to be so old till he caved in.
Shall I make a box for him, sir?' and he turned to Hunter.
"'Yes, and paint it.'
"The Chief slipped his arm through mine, led me to a seat on the sofa
beside his desk, and continued:
"'He came aboard the day before we left New York. It was about seven
o'clock at night, and I had changed my clothes and was going uptown to
the theatre. I stood at the end of the gang-plank for a minute looking
up the dock, pretty clean of freight by that time, and this man came
creeping down along the side of the ship, looking about him in a way I
didn't like. As he got nearer he stopped under a dock light, fumbled in
his pocket and brought out a letter. He wasn't ten feet from me, and so
I could see his face. He read it two or three times over, turning the
leaves, and then he slipped it back into his pocket again and looked up
at the ship's side; then he saw me and came straight for me.
"'"I must go home," he said; "can you take me on?"
"'"What at?" I got a look into his eyes then, and saw he was no thief;
seemed more like a carpenter or a bricklayer.
"'"Anything you can give me."
"'"Stoking?"
"'"Yes, if there's nothing else."
"'Then the Second Engineer came down the gang-plank and I turned the man
over to him and went uptown. When I heard he was to be buried I sent for
you, just as I had promised.'
"I had talked with Hunter about a burial at sea--it was one of the
contrasts I had been waiting for. They had occurred often enough in my
many crossings, but I, like the other passengers, was never informed;
such sights are not proper on our side of the wall.
"'What else did he say to you?' This question I addressed to the Second
Engineer.
"'Nothin'. I put him on; we ought to have six or eight more, but we
couldn't get 'em--short now.'
"'Did you find the letter?' I asked.
"'No; Doctor did. He's got it now. He read it.'
"'What did it say?'
"'Well, near as I can remember, somethin' about his comin' home; a woman
wrote it. He'll tell you when he comes back.'
"'I'd like to see where he worked.' I was stretching the crack in my
wall; peering into the next room, finding out how they lived and what
on--all the things you should let alone, not being my business and the
man being beyond hope.
"'Take him down,' said Hunter, 'and show him the furnaces. Here, better
peel off that coat and slip on my overalls and this jacket,' and he
handed me the garments from a rack behind his door. 'Greasy down there;
and look out for those ladders, they're almighty slippery when you ain't
accustomed to 'em.'
"'This way, sir,' said the Second Engineer.
"We made our way along a flat iron ledge--a grating, really, beneath
which lunged huge pistons of steel--down vertical ladders into a cavern
reeking with the smell of hot steam and dripping oil. All about were
stars of electric light illumining the darkness, out of which stood
strange shapes--a canebrake of steel rods, huge sawed-off roots of
pillar-blocks, enormous cylinders rising up like giant trees from out a
jungle of tangled steel.
"At the bottom of this morass a great boa constrictor of a shaft,
smooth-skinned, glistening, turning lazily in its bed of grimy water,
its head and tail lost in the gloom. Beyond this, along a narrow
foot-path, a low open door leading to the mouth of hell. Here were men
stripped to the waist, the sweat from their reeking bodies making
flesh-colored channels down their blackened skins. Some were shielding
their faces from the blistering heat as they wrenched apart the fusing
fires with long steel bars; others dashed into the mouths of a hungry
furnace shovelfuls of coal, blinding the light for an instant, the white
sulphurous breath pouring from its blazing nostrils. On one side before
the row of hot-mouthed beasts opened a smaller cavern, its air choked
with fine black dust; still other men shovelled here, filling iron
barrows which they trundled out to more half-naked men before the
scorching furnaces. A new gang now joined the group, men with clean
faces and hands and half-scoured backs and breasts. This new gang had
had a wash and four hours sleep in an air fouled by dust and dead steam.
At sight of them the old workers dropped their bars and shovels,
disappeared through the door by which we had entered, and rolled into
bunks racked up one above the other like coffins in a catacomb.
"On one side of the door through which the new gang entered was an
inscription in chalk. The leader of the gang stopped and examined it
carefully.
"'Clean stringers inside pocket,' the record said.
"The stringers were the cross-beams tying the ship together, about which
the coal was packed; the pocket was one of the ship's bins. These
instructions showed which death-pit pit was to be worked first.
"The Engineer made no explanatory remarks as I looked about. It was all
there before me. The man with the letter had stood where these men
stood; blistered by the same heat, befouled with the same grime, half
strangled with the same coal-dust; had eaten his meals, drunk his
coffee, staggered to his bunk, been carried insensible to the small
square room on the deck above, laid on a cot, and was now dead and to be
buried at midnight. That was all!
* * * * *
"Up the ladder again to a room the size of a state-room with the berths
out. Inside, on a plank resting on two supports, lay the crude, roughly
hewn outline of a man wrapped in canvas, a flattened hump showing the
feet and a round mass the head. Past this open door men walked carrying
kettles of soup for the steerage. Outside in the corridor were heard
sounds of hammering; the box was being made ready.
"Up a third ladder to Hunter's room. I stopped long enough to replace my
coat and wash the grime from my hands and then sought the deck.
"She was still in her steamer chair, the roses in her lap. Not a cloud
dimmed the sky; a soft, fresh, sweet air blew from the moonlit sea; the
pathway of silver was still clear; souls could go to God straight up
that ladder without missing a step, so bright was it. From the crowded
deck came the sound of voices; some low and muffled, others breaking out
into song and laughter.
"'Where have you been?' she called out. 'What did the Engineer want?
Tell me, please; something had happened; I saw it in your face. Was
anyone ill?'
"'Yes; but he is better now,' and my eye travelled the pathway of
silver.
"'Oh, I am so sorry! Shall you see him again?'
"'Yes, at twelve.'
"'Tell me about it; can I help?'
"'No.'
"'Is anyone with him--anyone he loves?'
"'No, he is quite alone.'
"'Poor, poor fellow! Give him these, please,' and she laid the roses in
my hand.
"Some hours later the messenger again tapped me on the shoulder.
"'All ready, sir, Mr. Hunter says.'
"On the lower deck, close to the sea, a deck slashed with racing waves
in a storm, were grouped a body of sailors and officers; all had their
coats and caps on. Against the wall of the ship stood the Captain, an
open book in his hand. Above his head flared a bull's-eye backed by a
ship's reflector, marking the high light in the composition. Beneath
him, almost under the book, which cast a shadow like the outstretched
wings of a bird, lay a black box, straight-sided and flat-topped. I
edged my way through the encircling crowd and stood nearer, the roses in
my hand.
"The words now fell clear and strong from the Captain's lips, every man
uncovering his head.
"'Man that is born of woman----'
"I reached down to lay the flowers on the lid--loose, as she had given
them to me.
"Hunter tapped me on the arm. He was grave and dignified, and I thought
his voice trembled as he spoke.
"'Better twist a bit of tarred marlin round 'em, sir,' he whispered;
'he'll lose 'em if you don't. Hand me a piece'--this to a sailor.
'That's it, sir; a little tighter--so!'
"'He cometh up and is cut down like a flower----'
"I bent over and laid the roses on the box. The men pressed closer to
look. Roses, on a man like him!
[Illustration: The men pressed closer to look. "Roses, on a man like
him!"]
"Again the Captain's reverent tones rang out:
"'We therefore commit his body to the deep----'
"Two sailors stooped down and raised one end of the box. There came a
grating sound, a splash, and the highway of silver was broken into steps
of light.
"The Captain closed his book, the crowd opening to let him pass; the
crew went back to their tasks--the sailor with tarred marlin to finish
the bight of the cable he was whipping, the men to their furnaces,
Hunter to his desk, I to where the girl reclined in her chair. She
recognized my step and half raised herself toward me, as if eager to
catch my first word.
"'Did he like the roses?' she asked, her voice full of tenderness.
"'Yes.'
"Where did you put them--by his bedside?'
"'No, on his breast.'
"'Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for him! Did you tell him I sent them?'
"'He knows.'
"'What did he say?'
"'Nothing--but he will some day.'
"Her eyes widened.
"'When? Where?'
"'In heaven.'
"The eyelids relaxed again, and a smile lighted up her face. She saw now
that I was not in earnest. Then a sudden thought possessed her.
"'What is his name?' The inquiry came quick and sharp and with an
anxious tone, as if she had been remiss in not asking before.
"'He has none--not aboard ship.'
"'Has no name! Why, I never heard of such a thing. How very strange!'
"'No, not among stokers; stokers never have any names. This one was
called "Number Seven."'"
* * * * *
Mac stopped and leaned toward the fire, his head in his hands, the
fingers covering the eyes. Not once during the long narrative had he
looked at me. He had been speaking like one in a trance, or as one
speaks to himself when alone. That I had been present was of no
consequence; I was no more than the portraits and studies on the walls,
not so much as the andirons and the fire. That I had listened in
complete silence was what pleased him. This, I think, is one reason why
he so often unburdens his heart to me.
Mac straightened his back, rose to his feet and took a turn around the
room, restlessly, as if the tale had stirred other memories which he was
trying to banish; then he dropped again into his chair.
"That's what I mean by the other side of the brick wall, old man. Makes
your blood boil, doesn't it? Did mine."
"And the girl in the chair never knew?"
"No, and never will. He did; he looked back as he mounted the silver
steps, and pointed her out to the angel helping him up the ladder. God
knew what he had suffered, and wiped out whatever there was against
him."
There was a tone now in Mac's voice that thrilled me. For a moment I did
not trust myself to speak.
"And about the letter--did you read it?"
"Yes; it was from his wife. The Doctor gave it to me, and I hunted her
up. Little place outside of London where they make bricks. Only two
rooms; in one a half-starved daughter, white as chalk. She had sent for
him, the wife said. Same old story--told a hundred times a day, if you
will but listen with your ears to some wall. The steerage out to New
York; the landing in a strange city; the weary, hungry hunt for work;
money gone, clothes gone, strength gone--then the inevitable. This one
had made one last effort, even to giving his body to be burned. The
white-faced daughter wanted to know, of course, all about it--they all
want to know; but I didn't tell her--I lied! I said he had had heart
failure, and that they had buried him at sea, and in a coffin like any
other passenger, because we were only three days out; and I described
the service and the roses, and how sorry the passengers were. She knows
the truth now. _He's told her._
"Go get your rose, old man. I ought to have had better sense than to
rake it all up. No use in it. Not your side of the wall, not my side.
Let me smell it. Yes, same perfume. Here, put it back in your
button-hole."