The Second Class Passenger | Page 3

voices within abated as he knocked, and
there was silence. He hammered again, and he heard bolts being
withdrawn inside. The door opened slowly, and a man looked out.
"I've lost my way," flustered Dawson pitifully. "I'm wet through, and I
don't know where I am." Even as he spoke the rain was cutting through
his clothes like blades. "Please let me in;" he concluded. "Please let me
in."
The man was backed by the light, and Dawson could see nothing of
him save that he was tall and stoutly made. But he laughed, and opened
the door a foot farther to let him pass in.
"Come in," he bade him. His voice was foreign and high. "Come in. All
may come in to-night."
Dawson entered, leading a trail of water over a floor of bare boards. His
face was running wet, and he was newly dazzled with the light. But
when he had wiped his eyes, he drew a deep breath of relief and looked
about him. The room was unfurnished save for a littered table and some
chairs, and a gaudy picture of the Virgin that hung on the wall. On each

side of it was a sconce, in which a slovenly candle guttered. A woman
was perched on a corner of the table, a heavy shawl over her head.
Under it the dark face, propped in the fork of her hand, glowed sullenly,
and her bare, white arm was like a menacing thing. Dawson bowed to
her with an instinct of politeness. In a chair near her a grossly fat man
was huddled, scowling heavily under thick, fair brows, while the other
man, he who had opened the door, stood smiling.
The woman laughed softly as Dawson ducked to her, scanning him
with an amusement that he felt as ignominy. But she pointed to the
image dangling in his hand.
"What is that?" she asked.
Dawson laid it on the floor carefully. "It's a curio," he explained. "I was
fetching it for a lady. An idol, you know."
The fat man burst into a hoarse laugh, and the other man spoke to
Dawson.
"An' you?" he queried. "What you doing 'ere, so late an' so wet?"
"I was trying to take a short cut to the landing-stage," Dawson replied.
"Like a silly fool, I thought I could find my way through here. But I got
lost somehow."
The fat man laughed again.
"You come off the German steamer?" suggested the woman.
Dawson nodded. "I came ashore with some friends," he answered,
"from the second-class. But I left them to go back and fetch this idol,
and here I am."
The tall man who had opened the door turned to the woman.
"So we must wait a leetle longer for your frien's," he said.
She tossed her head sharply.

"Friends!" she exclaimed. "Mother of God! Would you walk about with
your knives for ever? When every day other men are taken, can you ask
to go free? Am I the wife of the Intendente?"
"No, nod the vife!" barked the stout man violently. "But if you gan't tell
us noding better than to stop for der police to dake us, vot's der good of
you?"
The woman shrugged her shoulders, and the shawl slipped, and showed
them bare and white above her bodice.
"I have done all that one could do," she answered sullenly, with defiant
eyes. "Seven months you have done as you would, untouched. That was
through me. Now, fools, you must take your turn--one month, three
months, six months--who knows?--in prison. One carries a knife --one
goes to prison! What would you have?"
"Gif der yong man a chair, Tonio," said the fat man, and his companion
reached Dawson a seat. He sat on it in the middle of the floor, while
they wrangled around him. He gathered that the two men anticipated a
visit from the police very shortly, and that they blamed it on the woman,
who might have averted it. Both the men accused her of their
misfortune, and she faced them dauntlessly. She tried to bring them, it
seemed, to accept it as inevitable, as a thing properly attendant on them;
to show that she, after all, could not change the conditions of existence.
"You stabbed the Greek," she argued once, turning sharply on the tall
man.
"Well," he began, and she flourished her hand as an ergo.
"Life is not spending money," she even philosophized. "One pays for
living, my friend, with work, with pain, with jail. Here you have to pay.
I have paid for you, seven months nearly, with smiles and love. But the
price is risen. It is your turn now."
Dawson gazed at her fascinated. She spoke and gesticulated with a
captivating spirit. Life brimmed in her. As