The Second Class Passenger Part 6

"Ah," he murmured over his cigar; "the Schottelius, she has the sense of climax!"

And so he duly delivered the note and returned to the hotel and bed, a man content with the conduct of his own world.

Things went well with Truda and Vaucher and all the company for the next two days. Never had she been so amenable to those who charged themselves with her interests, never so generally and mildly amiable to those who had to live at her orders. But none of those who came in contact with her failed to observe a new note in her manner. It was not that she was softer or gentler; rather it seemed that she was more remote, something absent and thoughtful, with a touch of raptness that lent the true air of inspiration to her acting. Her spare time she spent with the baby--she and Marie, her maid, playing with it, making a plaything of it, ministering to it, and obeying it.

It had never cried once since Truda had taken it in her arms, but adapted itself with the soundest skill to its surroundings and companions.

"I found it ten years too late," said Truda once.

Her maid looked at her curiously.

"It is surprising that Madame should not have found one before," she said.

Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of emptiness. But in them Truda did not forget. She was realizing herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be devised to show her talents. She felt that she stood, for the first time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted.

It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with dreams--expectancy and exhilaration.

She was about to be born into the world.

The summons came suddenly on the evening of the second day. Even as she drove to the theatre, Truda had noted how the streets were uneasy, how men stood about in groups and were in the first stages of drunkenness. The play that night was that harrowing thing La Tosca; she was dressed for her part when the word came, written on a sc.r.a.p of paper: "It is to-night. I am waiting at the stage door." She pondered for a few moments over it, then reached for her cloak and drew it on over her brilliant stage dress.

"Find Vaucher," she said to her maid. "Tell him I cannot play to- night. He must put on my understudy. Say I am ill."

The maid, startled out of her composure, threw up her hands.

"But, Madame----!" she cried.

Truda waved her aside. "Lose no time," she ordered. "Tell Vaucher I am ill. And then go back to the baby."

She wasted no more words on the woman, but swept forth from the room and down the draughty ill-lit pa.s.sage to the stage-door. Its guardian, staggered at her appearance, let her out; on the pavement outside, m.u.f.fled to the eyes like a man that evades observation, was the big young Jew. He was gazing out over the square; her fingers on his arm made him look round with a start.

"I am here," she said. "Now tell me."

With eyes that glanced about warily while he spoke, he told her quickly, in low tones of haste.

"There is a mob gathering again at the market," he said. "Two spirit- shops have been broken open. That is how it begins always. Some Jews who were found in the street were beaten to death; soon they will move down to the Jewish streets, and then"--his breath came harsh through set teeth--"then murder and looting--the old programme. Now I have told you; can you do anything?"

"Let us find a droshky," said Truda, "and go to the Jewish quarter."

"A droshky!" He stared at her. "Do you think any driver will take us there to-night?"

"Then we can walk," said Truda; "show the way. If we stay here any longer, I shall be seen and prevented."

He hesitated an instant; then set off sharply, so that now and again she had to run a few paces to keep up with him. He took her round by the back of the theatre and into a muddle of streets that led thence.

The quiet of the night closed about them; Truda was embarked upon her purpose.

"How can you help?" asked the young man again. "Tell me what you will do?"

"Me?" said Truda. "For to-night I can do nothing; I am not an army.

But I think that after to-night there will be no more Judenhetze in this city. That is what I think. For, after all, I am the Schottelius; people know me and set a value on me, and if harm comes to me there will be a reckoning."

He was looking down sideways on her as she spoke.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"All!" cried Truda, and braced herself to subdue his doubts. "All! It is enough, and more than enough. Have I come so far without knowing what will rouse my audience?" She slowed her steps, and he slowed to keep by her side. She lifted her clear face proudly. "I tell you,"

she said, "the part I am to play to-night will move Europe to its core. Paris! Berlin! Vienna! Even cautious prim London! I have them under my hand; even to-morrow they will be asking an account, crying for the heads of the wrongdoers on a charger. And you ask me if that is all!"

"You do not know," he said. "To-night, it is not a play; it is life and death."

"But to-morrow it is life!" she retorted. "Let us go on; we must not be late."

They came by roundabout ways at last to that little groups of streets, beyond the jail and the markets, where the Jews had their homes. Here were tall brick houses overshadowing narrow streets ill- lit by infrequent lamps, little shops closely shuttered, courtyards with barred gates. Over the roofs there rose against the sky the cl.u.s.tered spires and domes of a typical Russian church, flanking the quarter on the south. The streets were empty; they met no one; and the young man led her to a courtyard in which, perhaps, a couple of hundred Jews were gathered, waiting. His knock brought a face to the top of the wall, and after a parley the great gate was opened wide enough to let them slip through. When they were in, Truda touched her companion.

"Would I be here for a fancy?" she whispered. "Believe what I say: after this there shall be no Judenhetze."

The courtyard was a large one, penned between a couple of houses, and separated from the street by the wall which the great gate pierced.

From it half a dozen doors led into the houses, each a possible road of escape when the hour should come. Truda looked about her calmly.

The people were standing about in large groups--men, women, and children--and they spoke in whispers among themselves. But all of them were listening; each sound from without stiffened them to scared attention. From somewhere distant there traveled a dull noise of shouts and singing, a confused blatancy of far voices; and as it swelled and sank and swelled again, a tremor ran over that silent waiting throng like a wind-ripple on standing crops. Overhead the sky shone with pin-point stars; a breath of air stirred about them faintly; all seemed keyed to that tense furtive quiet of the doomed Jews. Not a child cried, not a woman sobbed; they had learned, direfully enough, the piteous art of the oppressed--the knack of silence and concealment.

It was by slow degrees that the distant shoutings came nearer; the mob had yet to unite in purpose and ferocity. Truda, listening, and marking its approach, could almost tell by the violence of its noise how it wound through the streets, staggering drunkenly, waving bludgeons, working itself to the necessary point of brutal fury. And always it grew nearer. Its note changed and deepened, till it sank to a long snarling drone; she, wise in the moods of men in the ma.s.s, a practicer on the minds of mult.i.tudes, knew the moment was at hand; this was the voice of human beings with the pa.s.sions of beasts. The noise dwindled as the mob poured through an alley, and then broke out again, loud and daunting, as it emerged. It was near at hand; now there was added to its voice the drum of its footsteps on cobble- paved streets, and suddenly, brief and agonizing, a wild outcry of shrieks as some wretched creature was found out of hiding and the bludgeons beat it out of human semblance. All round Truda there was a stir among the Jews; a child wrought beyond endurance whimpered and was gagged under an ap.r.o.n; the howl of the mob startled her ears as it poured along the street outside the great gate.

Then came confusion, a chaos of voices, of ringing blows upon the gate, screams and moans, the shrill sound of the glee that goes with open murder, and a sudden light that shot up against the sky from a house on fire. The crowd of Jews in the courtyard thinned as some slipped swiftly into the dark doorways to be ready for flight, startled by a tattoo of blows on the gate that broke out abruptly.

Truda stood fast where she was, listening with a kind of detachment.

The blows on the gate increased; she could even hear, among the other sounds, the heavy breathing of those who strove to break a way in.

Men came running to aid them, and the stout gate bent under their efforts. It was fastened within by an iron bar lying in sockets across it; with an interest that was almost idle she saw how these sockets, one by one, were yielding and let the bar go loose. One broke off with a sharp crack, and sent the rest of the Jews racing to the dark doorways. Truda loosened her cloak and let it fall about her feet, and stood up alone, vivid in the dancing light of the burning house, in saffron and white. She moved deliberate hands over her hair and patted a loose strand into its place. Another rending crash; she set her hand on her hip and stood still. The door yielded and sprang back. There was a raw yell, and the mob was in.

Prince Sarasin was again in his box when Monsieur Vaucher, broken in spirit and looking bleak and old, came before the curtain to announce that owing to circ.u.mstances--unforeseen circ.u.mstances--of a--a peculiar nature, Madame Schottelius would be unable to appear that night, and her place would be taken, etc. The announcement was not well received, and n.o.body was less pleased than the Prince. He knit his heavy brows in a scowl as poor Vaucher sidled back to obscurity, and thought rapidly. His thoughts, and what he knew of the night's programme in the Jewish quarter of his city, carried him round to the stage door, with his surprised aide-de-camp at his heels.

Monsieur Vaucher, tearful and impotent, was at his service.

"Never before has she played me such a trick," he lamented. "Ill!

Why, I have known her go on and make a success when she was ill enough to keep another woman in bed. It is a trick; she is not even at the hotel. No one knows where she is."

The Governor, his last interview with Truda fresh in his recollection, asked curt questions. He was a man of direct mind. In less time than one might have supposed from the condition of poor Vaucher, he had elicited some outstanding facts--the note which Truda had sent to the Jewish quarter among them. The keeper of the stage- door added the little he knew. Prince Sarasin turned to his aide.

"Dragoons," he ordered. "Half a squadron. I shall be at the barracks in ten minutes, when they must be ready. Go at once."

The aide-de-camp, who knew the Prince, recognized that this was an occasion for speed. When the Prince, mounted, arrived at the barracks, the dragoons were drawn up-awaiting him. He moved them off towards the Jewish quarter at the trot. The streets echoed their hoof-beats, and little time elapsed before they were on the skirts of the mob. The Prince spurred alongside a watching police-officer.

"A lady!" repeated the officer, in amazement. "I have seen no lady, your Excellency. But the princ.i.p.al--er--disorder is in the street behind the church. The Jews are making no resistance at all."

The Prince pushed on, and came with his dragoons at the rear of the mob. With a fine Russian callousness he thrust into it, his horses clearing a way for themselves and bowling men to right and left. The street was in darkness and resounded with violence. Standing in his stirrups and peering ahead, the Prince realized that he might ride Truda down without ever seeing her.

He leaned back and caught his aide-de-camp by the arm.

"We must have light," he shouted. "Dismount a dozen men and fire a house."

At the order, men swung from their saddles, and in a few minutes the house was ablaze; its windows, red with fire, cast a dancing glow on the tumult of the street. They pressed on, the fire sparkling on their accoutrements, and on the housetops cowering Jews broke into tremblings at a wild hope that here was salvation. The Prince peered anxiously about, unconcerned at all the savagery that was unloosened to each side of him. He did not pause to aid a woman dragged shrieking from a doorway by the hair, nor look back at that other scream when a dragoon, unmanned and overwrought, reined from the ranks and cut her a.s.sailant down.