Part 15

“Captain Lajos gave them to me. They've been arriving ever since we parted. He waited till you'd gone; then he came to me. He came to tell me why he'd followed me. He was persuaded I was your mistress. This morning he did something noble--very noble for a man of his sort to a woman of mine; he begged me to become his wife.”

“Without knowing anything about you? He must be mad.”

“Don't say that.” She closed her eyes painfully. “I shan't trouble you or any one much longer. I shall soon be so still. When one's sure of that, it's good to be loved just once again, even though--” She turned slowly and faced him. “I don't need to tell you who it is that I love truly. This man--he's nothing. No man ever will---- You see I've lived for men and admiration--for things like--” She pointed to the roses. “It's new to me to be neglected. So it's comforting to know that a man can still desire me, even though I'd rather kill myself than go with him.”

He broke the silence that had settled between them. “You mustn't talk like this. You've years of life before you. I'll get you away safely.”

She smiled. “No.” Then she changed the subject. “What happened to you?”

“You mean at my conference?” He seated himself beside her dressing-table. “The worst that could have happened--nothing. Some change has taken place for which I can't account. When I sent my suggestions from America, they were hailed with enthusiasm. I was a saviour--everything that's splendid and extravagant. But now---- The Government's paralyzed. It isn't a Government; it's a passenger. 'You've let us starve too long. It doesn't matter now--' that's what I was told this morning. The ministers with whom I consulted spoke as if they were sitting on the edge of a volcano, waiting to be blown up. They're so sure that an eruption's inevitable that they don't consider it worth while to make an effort to save themselves. I couldn't rouse them. When I pressed them for the cause of their lethargy, they prophesied a new war, in very much the same words as Captain Lajos--a war in which the well-fed are to be pillaged by the starving.”

“But did you tell them that you could ship food into Austria at once?”

“I told them. I assured them that I could put Austria back on her feet in twelve months. I offered to provision her and to supply coal for her factories, if they'd give me control of the railroads and a per capita percentage on the total increase of national industry. 'Provision us with pleasure' was their attitude; 'we'll raise no official objection.' 'Very kind of you,' I replied; 'but where do I come in. I'm no philanthropist.'” He brought his fist down with a bang on the dressing-table. “There's a nigger in the wood-pile. Upon my soul, I believe those fellows are determined that I shan't prevent their nation from dying. If I shipped them the food as a gift, they'd burn it.”

She came over from the window and stood gazing down at him. “You're right. They would if they dared. Can't you guess?”

“I can't. Their currency's hardly worth the paper it's printed on. People are dropping dead in the streets--I saw them. Their gaols are packed with children turned criminals through hunger. There'll be no crops next year; the grain's consumed that should have been saved for the sowing. They've butchered all their live-stock. The brains of the country are in exile. The intellectual classes have been wiped out. And here I come with my offer to save them, and they reject it. Without the help of some outside force like myself, things can only go from bad to worse.”

“Precisely.”

He glanced up, irritated by the promptitude of her agreement. “Precisely! Why do you say that?”

“It's what they want--things to go from bad to worse. The worse things get, the more certain they are of revolution. They're afraid your food would postpone it.”

“Afraid! Why on earth?”

“Because they hope to snatch more out of the catastrophe of revolution than you can offer them. These ministers with whom you've been dealing are the tools of the exiled monarchists. They belong to the party in all countries which made the last war possible and all wars before it. What do they care for the people? They never have cared. Let the brutes starve,' they say, 'if it suits our purpose. We can always breed more.' They regard the people as their serfs, to be fooled with patriotism when danger threatens and to be kept in chains to toil for them when peace has been restored. If the people go hungry long enough, they'll reason that the loss of their kings is the cause. They'll rise up and recall them. They'll start to die for them afresh. It'll happen in all the outcast countries. In the wholesale scramble, it'll be every nation for itself. The strong will struggle to expand their frontiers, and the weak will go to the wall. The deluge of blood--” She sank to her knees, seizing his hands imploringly. “If you'll sacrifice your stores of food, you can stop it.”

“But if I do that, without guaranties, I'm bankrupt. I get nothing.”

“You'll get more than I got when, to accomplish the same purpose, I murdered Prince Rogovich. I'll get the scaffold. You'll earn the thanks of humanity. You'll go down to the ages....”

He could see only the wide greyness of her eyes, pleading, coercing, unbalancing his judgment.

He jumped to his feet, shaking off their spell. “I'm no dreamer--no Varensky,” he said gruffly. “I have to make a profit.” Then, defending himself from her unspoken accusation, “We're only guessing. We have no facts. There are other famished countries--Hungary and Poland. What Austria refuses, they may accept.” He dug his hand into his pocket. “That reminds me. Here's a telegram from Budapest. I can't understand it. It's in German.”

She was crouched on the floor. As he stooped to give it to her, she caught sight of the signature.

“From Anna. Varensky must be with her. Then the crisis is nearer than I thought.”

“Read it. Tell me what it says,” he urged.

She looked up palely, wilted with disappointment. “'_Come at once. I need you_.' That's all.”

“Does she give no address?”

“She wouldn't risk it. I know where to find her.”

“Then we'll start--”

“But what about--?”

He did not hear her. The blood was hammering in his temples. He left her forgotten, seated among her roses. The music of a wild exultation was maddening his heart.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH--THE CAPTURE

I

SO Anna had turned to him out of all the world!

She had felt so sure of him that she had not even stated the reason for her urgency--only “_Come at once. I need you_.” That she should have relied so implicitly on his compliance put him on his honor not to disappoint her. She must have known that her telegram would find him involved in important business. The earliest she could have counted on seeing him must have been to-morrow. He was determined, if it were humanly possible, to exceed her best expectations; he would see her to-night. Having phoned for the hotel porter to be sent to him, he immediately commenced to pack. He recalled the message that Santa had delivered him: “Varensky's setting out on his last journey. He told me to say, 'Soon you can have her.'” Did Anna's telegram mean that Varensky's final journey was ended?

He was throwing his belongings together when the porter entered.

“You wanted me, sir?”

“Yes. What's the first train--the fastest to Budapest?”

“The first, if it's still running, starts from the Nord-Bahnhof within the hour. But--”

“Then order me a taxi. I'll be ready in ten minutes. Have my bill made up. Send some one to my secretary's room to fetch down her baggage.”

“Certainly. But--”

Hindwood glanced at the man coldly. “I'm in too much of a hurry for conversation.”

A little later, as he was pocketing his change, having settled his account, the cashier addressed him.

He shook his head. “Don't understand.” Then, catching sight of Santa, he beckoned. “The fellow's trying to say something. Find out what's troubling him.”

The cashier repeated more earnestly the words that he had previously uttered.

“He wants to know whether you really think you can leave Vienna,” Santa translated.

“What's to prevent?” Then he caught her arm, lowering his voice. “Perhaps they're on to you.”

The Kârtner-Ring was extraordinarily deserted. Against the curb a wheezing taxi was standing--the only one in sight. Its engine was running. The bags had been piled on the front seat beside the driver, evidently very much to his annoyance; he was doing his best to tumble them back on to the pavement. The hotel porter was vigorously restraining him. An altercation was in progress which threatened any minute to develop into a fight.

“What's the matter?”

The porter replied across his shoulder, still holding the bags in place. “He doesn't want to drive you.”

“Tell him I'll give him five times the legal fare.”

When the offer had been translated, the man seemed mollified.

The porter opened the door. “Quietly. Jump in before he changes his mind. He promises to do his best.”

“His best! I should think so.”

As the cab moved off, Hindwood missed the porter's parting words. He turned to Santa. “Do they always come this hold-up game with foreigners in Vienna?”

“It isn't a hold-up game. He didn't want to drive us. He was afraid. Something's wrong. Look how empty the streets are. Didn't you see how white and scared every one was in the hotel? The cashier would have told us; you wouldn't even let me listen to him.”

“Jealous!” he thought. “It'll be awkward having to take care of both her and Anna.”

They had driven for ten minutes in silence when Santa spoke again. “It's a queer way he's taking us.”

“How queer?”

“So round-about.”

“As long as he keeps going, we don't need to worry.”

“But why should he turn up all the side-streets?”

“I don't know. It'll be time to grow nervous when he stops.”

At that moment he stopped, but it was only for a second. Spinning his cab about, he spurted off in a new direction. Glancing from the window as he turned, they saw that the main thoroughfare ahead was blocked by what appeared to be a procession. Street after street he tried, working round in a circle, never getting any nearer. At last, growing desperate, he took the plunge, tooting his horn and forcing his way through the outskirts of the seething mob. By the time Hindwood had ordered him to turn back it was too late; for a hundred yards behind them, from pavement to pavement, the thoroughfare was packed with pedestrians and vehicles, all headed in the one direction. To get out and walk, even if they had been willing to sacrifice their baggage, was out of the question. The crowd in front was more dense than the crowd behind. The air was full of shrieks of fainting women and the shiver of plate-glass as shop-windows gave way under the pressure. To escape the crush, which was momentarily increasing, people were clambering to the roof of the taxi and standing thick along the running-boards.

Santa was speaking in a torrent to the strangers clinging to the doors.

“Can't you stop long enough to tell me what's happening?” Hindwood interrupted.

She apologized. “I forgot for the moment that you can't speak German. They're as puzzled as we are. All they know is that they're doing what every one else is doing. They don't know the cause. The same thing's happening at every station. A panic's struck Vienna--a foreboding of disaster. It's a case of nerves. In some places looting has started. Every one's escaping--the entire population. It's anything to get westward to France, Switzerland, Germany, away from this nightmare of starvation. They're storming the trains in the Bahnhof, trying to compel the engineers to--”

Turning from him, she commenced to ply more questions in her hurried flow of German.

It was all clear now--the porter's hesitancy, the cashier's earnestness, the driver's reluctance. They had been trying to prevent him from hurrying a woman into danger. He had been too obsessed by the thought of reaching Anna even to pay attention. For confirmation of what Santa had told him, he had only to glance at the surrounding throng. The lean multitude was absurdly prepared for its futile exodus. Irrespective of class, every individual was burdened with whatever he or she had had time to rescue of the household goods. They carried bundles beneath their arms and sacks on their backs. Everything on wheels had been commandeered. Some pushed perambulators, piled high with ill-assorted belongings; others had harnessed themselves to carts. None of them could have considered whether his or her presence would be allowed in a happier country. Obviously over night the half of Vienna could not have procured the necessary permits to travel.

On the outskirts those who were most desperate, because furthest from the station, had begun to charge. Hindwood watched the stampede--how terror was transforming forlorn human beings into animals. They were of all kinds and sorts, mechanics, waiters, slum-dwellers, merchants, shop-girls,' demi-mondaines, with here and there a sprinkling of patrician faces from the palaces of the bankrupt aristocracy. There were lonely men and women, but for the most part they were grouped in families, the children dragging at their mother's skirts and the youngest in the father's arms. They pushed, jostled and fought, trampling the weak in their frenzy to get forward.

Suddenly the madness of self-preservation froze with horror. At the end of the street, far up the pale river of gray faces, horsemen were advancing, standing tall in their stirrups, smiting with their swords. Santa flung herself to the floor. “Down. Keep down. The children--oh, my God!”

Like a volley of hail, bullets commenced to patter. They whipped the street from end to end, hissing in their flight and thudding as they found their target. The taxi tossed and rocked like a rowboat in a mill-race. The mob had given way; like water from a burst dam, it roared between the tall, confining houses. It swept backwards weeping, bleeding, desperate, exhausted, wilder in its retreat than it had been in its advance. Behind it came the cavalry, riding it down, firing and stabbing. In five minutes nothing was in sight, save upset vehicles, scattered belongings, dead lying awkwardly in the October sunshine and wounded crawling weakly in search of refuge.

Reaching through the shattered window, Hindwood tapped the driver's shoulder. “Drive on.”

At the touch the man crumpled. There was a crimson blot in the center of his forehead.

Santa sat up, staring furiously. “If you'd not refused them bread--”

“I didn't.”

“You did. You were only willing to sell.”

Her eyes were blazing. Her hands were clenched. Her tears fell slowly. In the terrific silence which followed so much clamor, the street itself seemed to accuse him. Picking up their bags, he led the way to the station. Scenes such as the one he had witnessed might be happening in Budapest. There was no time to be lost.

“Find out whether it's possible to send a wire.”

“Where to?” she asked suspiciously.

“To Amsterdam.”

“What for?”

“Do you need to ask?”

After a hurried conversation with a scared official, she turned. “If it's to do with food, they'll accept it. The lines may be cut at any moment.”

He dashed off his telegram. “_Crisis sooner than expected. Without delay start food-trains under armed guard for Budapest and Vienna_.”

It might spell bankruptcy for him--the ruin of all his plans. He rebelled against the improvidence of philanthropy, yet dimly he discerned the proportions of his chance. If he would, he could teach the world how wars could be stopped. As he watched the message being dispatched, he wondered why he had sent it. Was he frightened by the sight of bloodshed, or angered, like Varensky, by an unjust display of force? Or had he sent it because this maelstrom of human agony swirled between him and the woman he loved, and food might prove to be the only means by which she could be rescued? He sought to explain his actions by business motives: if his food trains were actually on the spot, he could strike a better bargain with tottering governments.

II

The express for Budapest was several hours late. When at last it got under way, it carried few passengers. It was plunging straight into the heart of the danger, from which all the world which possessed the price of a fare was escaping.

Santa listened to and reported on the conversation of fellow-travelers. They were Hungarian officers returning to their regiments, to whom a fight spelt opportunity; they were husbands and fathers, careless of their own safety in their dread of what might be happening to their families; they were merchants and men of wealth, anxious to be at hand for the defense of their possessions. As the talk went on, the greatness of the risk grew increasingly obvious; it bred an atmosphere of free-masonry. Strangers accosted each other, exchanging views on the hazards; they crowded about the entrance of any compartment where a speaker seemed possessed of accurate information. Most of what was said was no more than conjecture; much of it was utterly contradictory. One man asserted that the Bolsheviks were attacking all along the Russian front; another that Bolshevism had collapsed and the peasants were massacring. Another knew for certain that throughout Central Europe the Reds were rising; yet another that the Monarchists had sprung to arms and were marching. Every rumor or invention was accepted with equal credulity. Anything was possible. No one knew for certain either the magnitude or the cause of the rumored disaster. Only one fact seemed indisputable: somewhere further eastward had occurred a catastrophe of shattering proportions--a catastrophe in the tragedy of which each one of them would shortly be involved.

Hindwood turned away from the babel of voices to the autumn landscape gliding past the windows. It consisted as far as eye could stretch of unboundaried, level fields, gridironed by straight, military roads, marked by avenues of pollarded trees, intersecting always at right angles. The fields were neglected. They told their own story of seed consumed, which should have been saved for sowing, and of cattle slaughtered. Over everything, despite the brilliant blueness of the sky, there hung an atmosphere of melancholy. Down white-penciled highways little groups were trekking, always in the one direction. They appeared crushed and harmless, more like insects, scarcely human. They limped forlornly, dragging carts and carrying children. They were the advance-guard of the army of starvation. Hindwood remembered the Captain's prophecy. “They'll march to the lands of plenty like Death swinging his scythe, like a pestilence, like gaunt wolves.”

At the frontier, where the train crossed from Austria into Hungary, he gained his first lesson in the resistlessness of necessity. There had been an unequal battle, in which only one side had been armed. It appeared that the Austrian guards had tried to turn back the Hungarian fugitives. They had fired their rifles till their ammunition was exhausted; then they had sickened of the slaughter. Opposition had made no difference; the tide of fugitives had still pressed on. Misery had proved more potent than explosives; it had made death, if not desirable, at least negligible. Its meek persistence had conquered. The Austrian soldiery had revolted against their officers and stood with grounded arms, watching the stream of poverty trickling through the barrier of corpses.

“Like water finding its own level,” Hindwood thought. It would be like this the world over, if something were not done at once to check it. The outcast nations lay one behind the other, like terraced avalanches, in an ascending scale of destitution--behind the Austrians the Hungarians, behind the Hungarians the Poles, behind the Poles the Russians, each a degree more agonized in its privation. Now that the movement had started it would go on, sliding, filtering, settling, until the peoples of the earth had regained an economic level. The Dives nations, which had refused to share, would try to hold the Lazarus nations at bay by force. They would spray them with cannon. They would charge them with bayonets. They would bomb them, gas them, dig labyrinths of trenches. In the end, as had happened here, though the pariah portion of humanity was weaponless, the meek persistency of its misery would conquer. Careless of oblivion, it would press on. He alone could give the Dives nations a seventh hour chance; at the price of his financial ruin, he could prevent the deluge of famine from spreading by damming it with a wall of bread.

Darkness had fallen. The carriages were unlighted. The train was moving cautiously, jerking, stopping, starting, like a live thing scenting carnage. Scattered through the night camp-fires were burning. In the gloom conversation dragged on wearily with reiterated guesses.

He felt his hand clasped.

“What is it?” he whispered. “Frightened? You won't be caught now. You're as safe as the rest of us. No one'll have time to remember you.”

“I wasn't thinking of myself.”

“Then--?”

“Of you--that perhaps you were born for such a time as this.”

“Ah!” He drew his breath. The echo of his own thought! “And perhaps you, too,” he suggested.

She twisted herself, leaning her breast against his arm. Glancing down through the darkness, he caught the tenderness in her eyes and the gleaming smoothness of her cheek and throat.

“I wish I could believe it,” she said softly; “to stand beside you, making you strong.... You could never love me; but to stand beside you, when you rescue the world, that would mean redemption.”

“When I rescue the world!” He laughed quietly. “I'm no Varensky. I came here to make money.”

She swept aside his cynicism. “You were born for this moment. And I, an outcast woman whom the world has hunted, will help you. Perhaps I shall give my life for you.” She spoke exultantly. “I, whom you have rejected.”

“You exaggerate. Things may not be as bad as they appear. What we've seen may be no more than a local disturbance.”

She refused to argue. “Be kind to me while we're together.”

On the outskirts of Budapest they came to a halt. The air was tainted with a nauseating odor. Standing on a siding was a long line of freight-cars in process of being shunted. By the light of lanterns swung by men on the tracks, it was possible to see that the freight-cars were inhabited. Figures hung out of them thin as skeletons, entirely naked or clad in flapping rags. The passengers of the express had crowded to the windows, pointing, commenting, gesticulating.

Hindwood turned to Santa. “What is it?”

She answered bitterly. “The death train.”

“But the people aren't dead.”

“Not yet. They're families ruined by the war and by the peace. Some of them saw their homes burned by the Cossacks; others had their farms stolen to pay the Allies' debts. They're nobody's business. When you've reached the end of your tether in Hungary, you join the death train and die by inches. You have no food, no sanitation. Wherever you halt, you spread contagion. When things have grown too bad in one place, you're dragged to another.” She swallowed down a sob. “The train's full of children--and you tell me that you came here to make money.”

On arrival at Budapest they found the station picketed by soldiers. They were immediately conducted under an armed guard to an office where the purpose of their journey was investigated. When Hindwood had explained their errand--that it had to do with the food-supply--he was treated with courtesy and given his choice of hotels. Santa chose the Ritz. A military order was made out for their rooms. A safe-conduct was handed them. A rickety conveyance, with a lean horse between the shafts, was allotted to them. They were launched into a city quenched of lights, with a soldier seated beside the driver for protection.