The Second Class Passenger: Fifteen Stories. Gibbon Perceval
paused in its weeping and cowered closer to the body.
"Murder?" said Truda hoarsely. It was a question, and the coachman shuffled uneasily.
"I think," he stammered, while the lamp swayed in his gauntleted hand and its light traveled about them in wild curves—"I think, your Excellency, it is a Jew."
"A Jew!" Truda stared at him. "Yes." He bent to look closer at the dead woman, puffing with the exertion. "Yes," he repeated, "a Jew. That is all, your Excellency."
He seemed relieved at the discovery. Truda was still staring at him, in a cold passion of horror.
"My God!" she breathed; then turned from him with a shudder and knelt beside the child. "Go back to the carriage! Wait!" she bade him, with her back turned, and he was fain to obey her with his best speed. There, ere his conventional torpor claimed him again, he could hear her persuading and comforting the child in a voice of gentle murmurs, and at last she returned, carrying the child in her arms, and bade him drive on. As he went, the murmuring voice still sounded, gentle and very caressing.
Truda paused to make no explanations at all when the hotel was reached, but passed through the hall and up to her own rooms with the frightened child in her arms. But what the coachman had to say, when questioned, presently brought her manager knocking at her door. He was hot and nervous, and Truda met him with the splendid hauteur she could assume upon occasion to quell interference with her actions. Behind her, upon a couch, the child was lying wrapped in a shawl, looking on the pair of them and Truda's hovering maid with great almond eyes set in a little smooth swarthy face.
"Madame, Madame!" cried M. Vaucher. "What is this I hear? How are we to get on in Russia—in Russia of all places—if you go in the face of public opinion like this?"
"I do not know," replied Truda very calmly. She took a chair beside the child, leaving him standing, and put a long white hand on the little tumbled head.
"It is incredible!" he said. "Incredible! And at such a time as this, too. What do you propose to do with the child?"
"I do not know," answered Truda again.
"It will be claimed," he said, biting his nails. "These Jews are never short of relatives."
"If it is claimed by a relative, that will be the end of the matter," replied Truda. "If not—we shall see."
"Then let us hope it will be claimed," he said quickly. He gazed absently at the child, and shook his head. "Ah, Madame," he said, "if only one could cut an actress's heart out! The worst of them is, they are all woman, even the greatest."
Truda smiled a little. "That is inconvenient, no doubt," she suggested.
"Inconvenient!" He hoisted his shoulders in a mighty shrug. "It is devastating, Madame. See now! Here is this city—a beastly place, it is true, but with much money, and very busy exterminating Jews. Which will you, Madame—its money or its Jews? You see the choice! But I will weary you no longer; the child will assuredly be claimed."
He bowed and took his departure; it was not well, he knew, for any manager to push Truda Schottelius too far. Therefore he went to make it known that a Jewish baby of two or thereabouts was to be had for the asking, at the hotel; and Truda went to work to make her newly- found responsibility comfortable. For that night she experienced what a great artist must often miss—something with a flavor more subtle than the realization of a strong role, than passion, than success. It was when the baby was sleeping in her own bed, its combed head dinting one of her own white pillows, that she looked across to her deft, tactful maid.
"I believe I have found a new sensation, Marie," she remarked.
The maid smiled. "I had little sisters," she answered inconsequently.
"Yes?" said Truda. "I had nothing—not even a little sister."
The new sensation remained with her that night, for the baby slumbered peacefully in her arms; and several times she awoke to bend above it and wonder, with happiness and longing, over the miracle of that little dependent life cast away on the shores of the world. By morning its companionship had so wrought in her that she could have given the manager a clear answer if he had come again to ask what she proposed to do with the child in the event of no one claiming it. But he did not come. Instead, there came a big red-haired young Jew, asserting that he was the child's uncle.
Truda was at breakfast in her room when he arrived and was shown in; opposite to her at the table, the baby was making the most of various foods. It greeted him with shouts and open welcome; no further proof was needed to establish his claim. Truda, delicate and fragile in a morning wrapper, a slender vivid exotic of a woman, shaped as though by design to the service of art, looked up to scan him. He stood just within the door, his peaked cap in his hand, great of stature, keen- faced, rugged, with steady eyes that took her in unwinkingly. The pair of them made a contrast not the less grotesque because in each there was strength. For some moments neither spoke, while the baby gurgled happily.
Truda sighed. "She knows you," she said. "She is a dear little thing."
The Jew nodded. "She is dear to us," he said. "And we are very grateful to you, Excellency."
He was still watching her with a shrewd scrutiny, as though he made an estimate of her worth.
"That was her mother?" asked Truda. "The dead woman in the street, I mean?"
"Yes," answered the man. "That was her mother. Her father went the same way six months ago, but in another street."
Truda's lips parted, but she said nothing.
"Ah, perhaps your Excellency does not understand?" suggested the man.
The cynical humor in his face had no resemblance to mirth. "They were
Jews, you see—Jews."
"Judenhetze?" asked Truda. She had heard of old of that strange fever that seizes certain peoples and inflames them with a rabid lust for Jewish blood.
"Yes," answered the Jew. "That is what they call it. But a local variety. Here it is not sudden passion, but a thing suggested to the mob, and guided by police and officers. It is an expedient of politics."
He spoke with a restraint that was more than any, emphasis.
"And therefore," he went on, "the kindness of your Excellency is the greater, since you saved the child not from law-breakers, but from authority itself."
"I have done nothing," said Truda. "The child is a dear little thing.
I—I wish she were mine."
"She, too, is a Jew," said the other.
"I know," answered Truda. The steadiness of his gaze was an embarrassment by now. She flushed a little under it.
"I am wondering," she said, "if nothing can be done. I think—I believe—that the world does not know of this persecution. Perhaps I could say a word—in some high quarter——"
"Why should you concern yourself?" asked the Jew evenly. "Why should you take this trouble?"
"Why?" Truda looked up at him, doubtful of his meaning.
He nodded. "Why?" he repeated. "It cannot be good for Truda
Schottelius to stand on the side of Jews?"
"What do you mean?" demanded Truda.
He continued to look at her steadily, but made no answer. She rose from her chair and took one step towards him; then paused. A tense moment of silence passed, and Truda Schottelius sighed.
"How did you know?" she asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
The big young man smiled. "How did I know that you, too, were a Jew—is that what you mean?" Truda nodded. "Ah, Excellency, there is an instinct in this thing, and, besides, who but a Jew is a great artist nowadays? Believe me, there is not one of us from whom you could hide it."
"Is it as plain as that?" asked Truda.
"As