Part 12

“You must excuse our Little Grandmother. She feels these things intensely. More than half her years have been spent in prison.”

The Major pulled himself together. “She needs no excusing. What is it that you want of me?”

X

Santa's life. It's of no use to you.” He smiled in the midst of his earnestness. “I'm a boy begging for a broken watch. You were going to throw it away. I have dreams that I could repair it.”

The Major twitched irritably. “And you talk like a boy. How can I give you what doesn't belong to me? At every port in Europe the police are watching. For me to forgive her wouldn't help. It isn't against me that she's offended; it's against the laws of civilization.”

“I know.” Varensky nodded soothingly. “You're only one of the many agents of social vengeance. What I ought to have asked you was to give me the part of her life that does belong to you. She's in your clutches. Let her escape. Keep silent and drop your pursuit.”

“And if I do?”

Varensky tucked his legs closer under him and bent forward. “Perhaps I could turn her into a saint.” A note of passionate pleading crept into his voice. “She loves children. It was how her wickedness started. She was blind and mistaken, and all her crimes were committed for children. A woman who loves children must be good. She's done abominable things. She could become magnificent if she would do good with an equal violence.”

The Major glanced at the subject of these prophecies, sitting in their midst, rebelliously silent. He said wearily: “Mere words! You offer me no proof!”

The white face seemed to grow till it filled the room. The green eyes glowed like emeralds. They were uncanny and hypnotic. Language came in a torrent. “It isn't her body--it's her soul. If she were to die now, what would happen to her? I tried to save the soul of a nation. Let me do for Santa what I couldn't do for Russia--prove that mercy restores where punishment destroys. There's been too much killing. The world grows worse instead of better. It's been going on for ages, this hanging and guillotining and bludgeoning. It's reformed nothing. It's the might is right of the jungle, the justice of apes and cavemen. Revenge, whether it's carried out by tooth and claw or by law-courts and armies, never heals anything; it always leaves a bruise. The face of Europe is bruised beyond recovery by our last display of justice. Its fields are rotten with corpses. Shall we add one more to the many--a woman's?”

He paused, trembling like a leaf. When the Major only frowned, he sank back exhausted.

“If you'd seen what I've seen--” His head sagged stupidly. “If you'd seen what I've seen--miles of men, all slaughtered; women dead of starvation, children hunting in packs like wolves. And all because there's no mercy. If you'd seen, you couldn't kill anything.”

The candles ceased to gutter. Shadows huddled motionless. The very silence seemed accused.

Hindwood rose. He could endure the tension no longer. “I know nothing about her soul and not much about her guilt. All I know is that she's a woman at the end of her tether who's been handed one of the rawest of raw deals. That the world's been hard on her won't excuse her. We can't alter the world over night. If she's caught, as she may be at any moment, it'll be all up with her. I don't care what she's done or how much I lose by it, I'm not going to stand by and see her taken.”

The Major swung round. “Nor am I. But how to avoid it?”

Hindwood showed his suspicion of this sudden conversion. “Tell me,” he answered cautiously, “have you handed in any reports, I mean officially--about my knowledge of Santa?”

“Beyond the fact that you crossed on the same boat with her, you've not been mentioned.”

“And there's no one in your service, besides yourself, who has the least idea of her whereabouts?”

“No one.”

“Then it can be managed.”

He was dimly conscious of the pale expectancy of the faces lifted up to him. He felt that he was on the edge of a whirlpool into which he was being slowly dragged. Even at this last moment he made an effort to resist it. Then it seemed to him that in the heart of its eddies he saw a woman. She grew distinct; her face was Anna's.

“Let me explain,” he said. “I'm neither humanitarian nor idealist. I have no fantastic hopes of turning sinners into saints. I'm head of a group of American financiers, and I'm in Europe to employ its starving peoples. Don't misunderstand me. The result of my mission may be philanthropic, but its purpose is to make a profit. Since the war Europe's become a bargain-counter where everything's exposed for sale--everything except food. I can supply food. With food I can purchase, for a fraction of their value, railroads, factories, labor. I tell you this so that you may not doubt me when I say that I have it in my power to protect her. Once out of England, no escaping criminal could find a safer place of refuge than in my company. I have influence with all governments; with food I can stop revolution. None of them dares suspect me. I propose that I should take Santa with me. I travel on diplomatic passports; with me she'll have no trouble in crossing frontiers.”

The silence that greeted his offer lengthened. At a loss to account for it, he glanced from face to face.

“Have I offended?”

It was Santa who replied. Leaping up in their midst, tattered and disheveled, she threatened them like dogs whom she would beat aside.

“Beasts!” A sob caught her breath. “Is it impossible even for you, who call yourselves my friends, to believe any good of me? I swear before heaven he has no love for me.”

XI

Back in London he lost no time in completing arrangements for departure. Every boat that left for France without him lessened Santa's chance of safety. And yet, though he worked frantically, canceling appointments and clearing up correspondence, he couldn't bring home to himself the reality of the situation. The hut on the downs and all that had happened there seemed something that he had read or imagined. Only the face of Anna stood out in memory, clear-cut and actual. It seemed impossible to believe that he, Philip Hindwood, was in league with revolutionaries. That he was in league was proved to him when he set about procuring the passport and visés necessary for Santa to accompany him. By the time he obtained them, he had abused confidence and perjured himself beyond hope of pardon. They were made out in the name of “Edith Jones, spinster; American-born subject; aged thirty years; confidential secretary to Philip Hindwood, whom she is accompanying.” All her permits were marked _Special_ and _Diplomatic_. It wasn't until the bustle was over and he was seated in the train for Dover, that the true proportions of his entanglement dawned on him.

At Dover she was to meet him. That had been the understanding. From then on, day in, day out, he would never be without her. No matter what strange country he traversed, she would sit beside him, reminding him of his complicity in her crimes. He would have to talk with her, eat with her, pretend to consult with her, just as if she were what he had claimed her to be--his confidential secretary. Would she have the sense to act discreetly? Would she expect him to make love to her? He glowered out of the window at the fleeting landscape. Any folly was possible to a woman with her record.

What made him most furious was the easy way in which he had allowed her to twist him round her fingers. It was the woods of Vincennes all over again. He was going into disordered countries, where governments were toppling and anarchy was rife. When she felt herself beyond the reach of danger, what was to prevent her from getting rid of him? Russia, if he got so far, was the kind of nightmare in which anything might happen. In Russia murder was one of the fine arts. He remembered Anna's suspicion that Santa was a Bolshevist agent. It added nothing to his comfort.

He had given way to idealism. It was the madness of a moment. It was listening to Varensky that had worked the mischief. Varensky had said something about idealism. What was it? That idealism was the vanishing point--the last outpost between Man and Eternity. His words came back.

“When you gaze up a railroad track, there's always a point in the infinite distance where, just before they vanish, the parallel rails seem to join. If a train were ever to reach that point, it would mean death. Life's like that--a track along which we travel on the parallel rails of possibility and desire. The lure of the idealist is to overtake the illusion, where possibility and desire seem to merge, and the safety of the journey ends.”

For him the safety of the journey had ended the moment it had started. If Varensky had meant anything by the vanishing point, he had meant that death is the unconscious goal of all idealists. Hind-wood shrugged his shoulders. It seemed highly probable when you took Santa with you on your travels.

The smell of the sea was in the air. They were slowing down, grinding their way to the docks through the town of Dover.

He didn't want to see her. He would make no effort to find her. She might have been prevented from joining him--perhaps arrested.

After the train had halted, he took his time. No one whom he recognized was on the platform. Directing a porter to attend to his baggage, he went quickly to the embarkation office to get his permit for going aboard. As he was entering, he felt his arm touched timidly, and turned.

“I'm here.”

“I see you are.”

“Didn't you expect me?”

He made an effort to act courteously. “Of course. There are formalities to be gone through. You'd better stick close to me. Don't attract attention. Let me do the talking.”

They fell into line behind a queue of passengers, winding slowly toward a table where officials were receiving and inspecting passports. He stood well in front of her, doing his best to hide her. When his turn came and the official held out his hand, he presented her passport with his own perfunctorily.

“Mine and my secretary's.”

The official was on the point of returning them, when a stockily-built man leaned across his shoulder and whispered something. Both of them looked up, staring hard at Santa.

“Which is Miss Jones?” the official asked.

“This lady at my side.”

“So you're Miss Jones, an American citizen?”

Before she could reply, Hindwood had interposed. “I've already told you she's Miss Jones. If you'll look, you'll see that her passport's marked _Diplomatic_ as well as mine.”

The two men consulted together in lowered tones. Then the passport was O.K.'d and restored.

Picking it up, together with the embarkation permits, Hindwood strolled leisurely towards the gangplank. Directly they were on board he hurried Santa to her cabin and shut the door.

“You'll stay here till we sight France. I'm giving no one else the opportunity for suspecting a likeness.”

CHAPTER THE SIXTH--THE ESCAPE

I

THE steamer had no sooner reached Calais than a new cause for alarm presented itself. During the channel crossing Hindwood had been keyed up to the last point of tension. Every moment he had expected to be tapped on the shoulder and informed that his secretary's identity had been discovered. He had spent most of his time surreptitiously mounting guard in the neighborhood of Santa's cabin. If the same man chanced to pass him twice, he had at once jumped to the conclusion that he was being shadowed.

The hesitancy at Dover over O.K.'ing Santa's passport had robbed him of whatever sense of security he had possessed. It had compelled him to acknowledge the ruin that faced him, should he be exposed while engineering the flight of so notorious a criminal. As the Major had warned him, she was being sought by the police of every country.

If the worst should happen, he would find no apologists. It would be useless for him to plead a chivalrous motive. She had been the lodestar of masculine passions too often. Though he managed to escape a prison sentence, he would emerge from the catastrophe broken in character--a paltry creature, half knave, half fool, who had gambled away his integrity and made himself a laughing stock. Already in imagination he was reading the scare headlines which would advertise his shame to the world. He would be regarded as a malefactor--hustled behind bars and herded for trial with blackmailers and pickpockets.

Dogged by these persistent dreads, when the ship was inside Calais harbor he rapped on her door and having heard her bid him enter, slipped across the threshold, announcing tersely:

“We're there.”

Since she joined him, he had held no conversation with her. She made no attempt to break through his silence. Rising obediently, while she adjusted her hat, she watched him in the mirror with the eyes of a reproachful dog. Without sign or sound, as he turned away impatiently, she followed. No sooner did they appear on deck than the new cause for alarm started.

A handsome and distinguished-looking foreigner began taking immediate notice of her. He was so quick to pick her out in the throng that it seemed he must have been watching for her. Whoever and whatever he was, he was manifestly a man of breeding--the kind of man who might have been her companion in the old, wild days of her triumphant folly. He was about thirty-five, tall, dark, finely-built, and of military bearing. He had a closely-trimmed mustache, bold, black eyes, and a Latin type of countenance. That was all that Hindwood permitted himself to observe; changing his position promptly, he shut Santa out from the stranger's line of vision. But the man was not to be balked. With an air of complete unconcern, he fell into line immediately behind them, treading closely on their heels as they passed up the gangplank. On the way to the Customs he managed to get ahead, so that he could glance back several times at Santa.

After their baggage had been inspected it was necessary for them to file through a stuffy room where passports were examined. It was here that Hindwood was fully prepared to be caught. The officials at Dover had probably cabled a warning; the inquisitive stranger might prove to be their emissary. Quite the contrary occurred. The French official, catching sight of the magic words _Diplomatic_ and _Special_, scrutinized no further and returned the papers with a courteous apology. Making the most of his luck, Hindwood hurried Santa out onto the platform, down the long train labeled Stuttgart, Warsaw, etc., and into the _wagons-lits_ which went express to Vienna.

Before leaving London he had reserved two separate compartments in the name of “Philip Hindwood and party.” Now that he claimed them, he found to his annoyance that they were adjoining and connected by a private door. It was an indiscretion that he had not intended. Having seen Santa safely settled, he set off to superintend the placing on board of their bags.

He was gone perhaps five minutes. As he reentered the corridor of his section, the first sight that met his eyes was the handsome stranger engaged in earnest talk with the _wagon-lits_ conductor. Some money passed. Next thing the stranger's belongings were being transferred from lower down the train to the compartment on the further side from Santa's. Hindwood entered his own compartment, shaded the windows that looked out on the corridor and made fast his door.

What was the game? Was this a fresh example of Santa's irresistible charm? And if it was, was he to be subjected to this kind of impertinence throughout the entire journey? Or was the man a secret service agent in the employ of some foreign Government, who, believing he had recognized her, was keeping her in sight till she should have crossed the frontier into his own country, where he would have power to arrest her?

In his anger he tried to blame Santa; she must have unconsciously exercised her talent for attraction. Strangers didn't follow women unless----

But he had to own himself unjust. She was dressed with the utmost plainness, in a tailored costume, minus furs or any lavishness. There was nothing to complain of in her deportment. It was as modest as could have been expected had she really been “Edith Jones, aged thirty, American-born citizen, confidential secretary.” The fault lay in something beyond her control--her beauty. It refused to be subdued. It shone out the more conspicuously in the absence of adornment. It constituted itself an unforeseen embarrassment, if not a menace. The further he traveled into continental countries, the less he would be believed when he stated that she was Miss Jones and no more than his secretary. Already more people than the obtrusive stranger had stared at her. She had only to appear to make herself the focus of attention. Sooner or later, to-day, to-morrow, a month hence, some one would catch sight of her who had known her in the past. She had been feted in too many cities, her portrait had been too widely published, for her features not to be remembered. These distressing reflections were cut short by the shrill tootings of tin horns which announce the departure of a train in France. When Calais had been left behind and they were rushing past stripped orchards and harvested fields, he unlatched the dividing door. She was sitting lost in thought, staring out of the window with a wistful expression.

“Come into my compartment. I'd like to talk.”

The jerk with which she turned betrayed the strain under which she was laboring. He watched the undulating grace with which she rose, the calculated delicacy of her every movement. Though she had dressed in rags, nothing could have disguised her.

When he had closed the door, she remained standing.

“Please sit down,” he said with cold politeness. “We're safe for the moment. As you see, I've lowered the blinds. No one can spy on us. You've noticed him?”

Drawing off her gloves, she smoothed them out mechanically, maintaining her silence.

“Tell me,” he urged, “what do you make of him?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was flat and toneless. “Wherever I go, it's always the same. You ought to know--on the _Ryndam_ you were like it.”

He passed over the implied accusation. “Then you don't think he's a----?”

“I've not troubled to think.” She glanced drearily aside. “Men are brutes. If you'd left me alone on the cliff--I wish you had. It would have been all ended.”

She said it without spite--almost without reproach. In the presence of her melancholy, he recovered something of his compassion.

“But I didn't leave you, and nothing's gained by recrimination. The point is this fellow next door. What's his purpose? How are we going to manage him?”

“Easily. Fling me to him as you'd toss a dog a bone. You'll be rid of your share of the danger.”

“I don't want to be rid of you.” He passed his hand across his forehead, mastering his impatience.

“I don't pretend I shan't be glad----”

“To be quit of me,” she prompted.

“To be relieved of the risk of you,” he corrected. “But not until I've fulfilled my promise.”

She smiled. “You promised you'd save me. I can't be saved. Varensky's talk about redeeming me was visionary. I was born to be what I am.”

He relaxed and sat forward, exerting himself to make the conversation less unfriendly. “Of course I know why you speak this way: it's because of my recent treatment of you. We were nearly found out at Dover; the anxiety of it's getting on my nerves. I promised to give you your chance; my promise stands. The least I can ask of you as a sportswoman is to play up to me.”

Her whole demeanor changed. The golden face flashed. “I will.”

“Then if this man is only an impudent admirer, how are we to shake him? It's my business for the present to protect you. If this is the sort of thing that always happens, it's possible that it'll occur again. I daren't resent his conduct. Ordinarily I should know what to do with him. How is the repetition of the annoyance to be avoided?”

A slow flush mounted from her throat to her cheeks. “You won't take my suggestion, so I don't think I'll make it.”

“Let's have it.”

Not looking at him, she muttered: “He'll try to scrape acquaintance. When he does, introduce me to him as your wife.”

“But to do that----”

He fell silent. He was thinking of Anna. For the first time he was conscious of his aloneness with this woman.

Not wishing to wound her, he procrastinated.

“To do that might only add to our complications.”

“It might.” Her gray eyes struggled to meet his gaze. “It isn't likely. He won't believe you.”

“Then what would be gained?”

“You'd have told him, without insult, that he wasn't wanted.”

He glanced out of the window at the rushing landscape. At last he spoke. “If there's no other way----”

She rested her thin, fine hand on his gently. “You're generous. If the day ever comes when you despise yourself as I despise myself to-day, remember that once you were able to make a wicked woman believe in goodness--to make her long with all her heart to be like you.” Her eyes became misty. “At this moment I'm not far from redemption.”

Lunch was announced. He gave orders to have it served in his compartment. While they ate, he outlined to her his plans. He had asked her how long she expected to be with him.

Her reply was discomfortingly vague. “As long as you can endure me.”

“Inside of two months,” he told her, “I think I can promise you immunity. At present, according to information, Central Europe's starving. With winter comes the crisis. I've forseen that. For some time I've been shipping food to Holland. It's lying there in warehouses in immense quantities. I have an entire fleet secretly at work, plying back and forth across the Atlantic. When the famine becomes too acute, I'm prepared to strike my bargain. I'll take railroads and concessions in exchange for bread. Other upstarts have carved out kingdoms with armies; I intend to conquer mine with food. There never was a war or any social uprising that wasn't caused by an empty stomach. Within three hours of my terms having been accepted, my trains will be streaming out of Holland. Where they halt, the flames of revolution will be quenched. If I haven't miscalculated, I shall be unofficial President of the United States of Europe.” He paused to watch his effect. “I've nominated myself,” he smiled.

His smile was unreturned. She was regarding him with an expression of horror. Their rôles seemed reversed. It was evident that to her way of thinking it was he who had become the criminal and she who was looking down on him from a higher moral level.

“But they're starving.” Her voice shook passionately. “If you have these stores, why don't you feed them? They're dying. So many of them are children!”

“You don't understand.” He tried to make his tones reasonable. “I've invested all my fortune in the venture. I'm a business man. In business one man's calamity is another's opportunity. The same is true of nations.”

Seeing that she still looked grieved, he patted her shoulder. “Don't worry. We'll rustle through. Your life will be spared.”

“I wasn't thinking of my life.” She spoke contemptuously.

“Then of what?”

“Of the women dead of hunger in the ditches about Kiev.”

As she rose to leave, she glanced back from the doorway. “There was a message I had to deliver to you. Varensky's setting out on his last journey. He hopes to see you in Budapest. He told me to say, 'Soon you can have her.'”

II