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Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

P >> Perceval Gibbon >> The Second Class Passenger




"Hard!" He laughed as he drew a chair towards her and seated himself.
"It is death to the intelligence. It is suffocation to one's finer
nature. It has a dullness that turns men into vegetables. I have been
here now for three years, and till to-night I have not felt a
thrill."

"No?" Truda spoke lightly of design. "But you are the Governor, are
you not? You are aloof, far above thrills. Why, it was only last
night, while I was driving home, that I found a dead woman in the
street."

"I know," he said. "And a live baby; I heard all about it. If you had
been an hour later they would have been cleaned away. I am sorry if
you were shocked."

"Shocked?" repeated Truda. "I was not thinking of that." She shivered
a little, and gathered her big cloak more closely about her. "But I
had not heard--I did not know--what the Judenhetze really was. And I
think the world does not know, or it would not tolerate it."

"Eh?" The prince stared at her. "But it has upset you," he said
soothingly. "You must forget it. It is not well to dwell on these
things."

The big mirror against the wall, bright with lights, reflected the
pair of them sitting face to face in the attitude of intimacy. The
Prince, bearded and big, felt protective and paternal, for Truda,
muffled in her great cloak, looked very small and feminine just then.

His tone, so consoling and smooth, roused her; she sat up.

"Prince," she said, "you could stop it."

"The Judenhetze, you mean?" He made a gesture of resignation. "You
are wrong, dear lady. I can do nothing. It does not rest with me."

"You mean, there are higher powers who are responsible?" she
demanded.

"We will not talk politics," suggested the Prince. "But roughly that
is what I mean."

She scanned him seriously. "Yes," she said; "I thought that was so.
And you can do nothing? I see."

"But why," asked the Prince--"why let yourself be troubled, dear
lady? This is a pitiful business, no doubt; it has thrust itself on
you by an accident; you are moved and disturbed. But, after all, the
Jews are not our friends."

The courage to deal forthrightly was not lacking to her. As she sat
up again, the fur cloak slipped, and her bare shoulders gleamed above
it. Her face was grave with the gravity of a serious child.

"I am a Jewess," she said.

"Eh? What?" The Prince smiled uncertainly.

"I am a Jewess," repeated Truda. "The Jews are my friends. And if you
can do nothing, there is something I can do."

He smiled still, but now there was amusement in his smile. He was not
at all disconcerted.

"Do you know," he said, "I had almost guessed it? There is something
in you--I noticed it again to-night, in your great scene--that
suggests it. A sort of ardor, a glow, as it were; something burning
and poignant. Well, if all the Jews were like you there would be no
Judenhetze."

She put the futile compliment from her with a movement of impatience.

"You can still do nothing?" she asked

"My powers are where they were, Madame," he answered.

"Then," she said slowly, "it rests with me." She gathered her cloak
about her again. "I am tired, as you see," she said wearily--"tired
and a little strained. I will beg you to excuse me."

He rose to his feet at once and bowed formally.

"At least," he said, "such a matter is not to interrupt our
friendship, Madame."

"It is for you to say," she answered, smiling faintly. He laughed,
pressed her hand, and bade her good-night, leaving her with more
matter for thought than he could have suspected.

There was real cheering for her that night when she left the theatre.
Truda had been cheered before in many cities; but that night she took
note of it, looking with attention at the thrusting crowd collected
to applaud her. It filled the square, restless as a sea under the
tall lamps; rank upon rank of shadow-barred faces showed themselves,
vociferous and unanimous--a crowd in a good temper. She bowed in
acknowledgment of the shouts, but her face was grave, for she was
taking account of what it meant to be alone amid an alien multitude,
sharing none of its motives and emotions. The fat coachman edged his
horses through the men that blocked the way, till there was space to
go ahead, and the cheers, steady and unflagging, followed her out of
sight.

The baby was in bed when she arrived at her hotel; Truda paid a brief
visit to its side, then ordered that her manager should be summoned,
and sat down to write a note. It was to the big young Jew, the baby's
uncle; she had a shrewd notion that Monsieur Vaucher would be able to
lay hands on him. The note was brief: "I fear there will be more
persecutions. The Governor can do nothing. When there is another
attack on our people send to me. Send to me without fail, for I have
one resource left."

"You can find the man?" she demanded of Vaucher.

The little hardened Frenchman was still under the spell of her
acting.

"Madame," he said grandly, "I can do anything you desire. He shall
have the note to-night."

Poor Monsieur Vaucher, the charred remains of a man of sentiment,
preserving yet a spark or two of the soft fire! Could he have known
the contents of that note and their significance, with what fervor of
refusal he would have cast it back at her! But he knew nothing, save
that Truda's acting restored to him sometimes for an hour or two the
emotions of his youth, and he was very much her servant. It was in
the spirit of devotion and service that he called a droshky, and
fared out to the crooked streets of the Jewish quarter to do his
errand. It was a fine soft night, with a clear sky of stars, and
Monsieur Vaucher enjoyed the drive. And as he went, jolting over the
cobbles of the lesser streets, he suffered himself to recall the
great scene of that night's play--a long slow situation of a woman at
bay, opposing increasing odds with increasing spirit--and experienced
again his thrill.

"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 scrap
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 passage to the stage-door. Its
guardian, staggered at her appearance, let her out; on the pavement
outside, muffled 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
clustered 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 mass, a
practicer on the minds of multitudes, knew the moment was at hand;
this was the voice of human beings with the passions 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 apron; 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 circumstances--unforeseen circumstances--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 nobody 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 principal--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 assailant down.

At one point the crowd was thick about the gate of a walled
courtyard, thundering on it with crowbars and axes; here, again, the
Prince paused to look sharply among them, lest somewhere there might
be a brown head and a pale clear-cut face that he sought. Even as he
tightened his bridle, the gate gave rendingly; he turned his head as
the mob, roaring, poured in. For the space of perhaps a second he sat
motionless and stricken, but it was long enough to see what he never
forgot--a woman, composed, serene, bright against her dark background
in the shifting light of the burning house, gay in saffron and white.
Then the mob surged before her and hid her, and his voice returned to
him.

"Charge!" he roared, and tore his sword out.

The dragoons, eager enough, followed him; the courtyard overflowed
with them as their great horses thundered in at the gate, and the
long swords got to their work on that packed and cornered throng.
There were swift bitter passages as the troopers cleared the place--
episodes such as only Jews knew till then, ghastly killings of men
who crawled among the horses' feet and were hunted out to be
slaughtered. And in the middle of it, the Prince was on his knees,
holding up a brown head in the crook of his arm, seeing nothing of
the butchery at his elbow.

It was when the killing was done, and the dragoons were clearing the
street, that there arrived on tiptoe Monsieur Vaucher, searching
through tears for Madame. When he saw her he ceased to weep, but
stood looking down, with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Dead?" he asked abruptly.

The Prince glanced up. "Yes," he answered.

"Ah!" Monsieur Vaucher pondered. "Who killed her?" he asked
presently.

"Look!" said the Prince, and motioned with one hand to the dragoons'
leavings, the very silent citizens who lay about on the flagstones.

"Ah!" said Vaucher again. "And to-morrow the world will ask for an
account. It is not wise to destroy a great genius like this, here in
a corner of your dirty town. That is what you have to learn."

"Yes," said the Prince. "We shall learn something now. She gave her
life to teach it. There will be no more Judenhetze in this city."

"Her life to teach it," repeated Monsieur Vaucher. "She gave her
life." His composure failed him suddenly, and he fell on his knees on
the other side of what had been Truda Schottelius, weeping openly.

"She never failed," he said. "She never failed. A great artist,
Monsieur, the Schottelius! She--she had the sense of climax!"

From the windows of the houses above them, scared curious Jews looked
down uncomprehendingly.



III

THE TRADER OF LAST NOTCH

In Manicaland, summer wears the livery of the tropics. At the foot of
the hills north of Macequece every yard of earth is vocal with life,
and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as
though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but
amid their delicate green--the long thorns, straight or curved like
claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant
and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom
blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects
fill the world with the noise of their business--spiders,
butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious
entities that crawl nameless under foot. A pea-hen shrieks in the
grass, and a kite whistles aloft. A remote speck in the sky denotes a
watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods,
and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros.
There is a hectic on the face of nature.

The trader of Last Notch went homewards to his store through such a
maze of urgent life, and panted in the heat. He had been out to shoot
guinea-fowl, had shot none and expended all his cartridges, and his
gun, glinting in the strong light as he walked, was heavy to his
shoulder and hot to his hand. His mood was one of patient protest,
for the sun found him an easy prey and he had yet some miles to go.
Where another man would have said: "Damn the heat," and done with it,
John Mills, the trader, tasted the word on his lips, forbore to slip
it, and counted it to himself for virtue. He set a large value on
restraint, which, in view of his strength and resolute daring, was
perhaps not wholly false. He was a large man, more noticeable for a
sturdy solidness of proportion than for height, and his strong face
was won to pleasantness by a brown beard, which he wore "navy fash."
His store, five big huts above the kloof known as Last Notch, was at
the heart of a large Kafir population; and the natives,
agriculturists by convention and warriors between whiles, patronized
him very liberally. The Englishmen and Portuguese of the country
held him in favor, and he enjoyed that esteem which a strong quiet
man, who has proved himself to have reserves of violence, commonly
wins from turbulent neighbors.

He was trying for a short cut home, and purposed to wade the Revue
river wherever he should strike it. Over the low bush about him he
could see his hills yet a couple of hours off, and he sighed for
thirst and extreme discomfort. No one, he knew, lived thereabouts--no
one, at least, who was likely to have whisky at hand, though, for the
matter of that, he would have welcomed a hut and a draught of Kafir
itywala. His surprise was the greater, then, when there appeared from
the growth beside his path as white a man as himself, a tall,
somewhat ragged figure--but rags tell no news at all in Manicaland--
who wore a large black moustache and smiled affably on him.

He noted that the stranger was a fine figure of a man, tall and slim,
with clear dark eyes and tanned face, and he saw, too, that he wore a
heavy Webley on his right hip. The newcomer continued to smile as
Mills scanned him over, and waited for the trader to speak first.

"Hullo!" said Mills at length.

"'Ullo!" replied the stranger, smiling still. He had a capital
smile, and Mills was captivated into smiling in sympathy.

"Who may you be?" he asked agreeably; "didn't expect to meet no white
men about here. Where's your boys?"

The tall man waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the coast, as
though to imply that he had carriers somewhere in that part of the
world.

"Yais," he said pleasantly. "An' you are Jone Mills, eh?"

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