Part 16

The wide avenues down which they drove were deserted. They were still unaware of what had happened. They had not dared to ask, lest any slip of the tongue might lead to trouble. There were no signs of revolution in the thoroughfares. They were hushed and reverent as the aisles of a cathedral. Every few hundred yards a mounted gendarme rode out to challenge them; then, seeing the soldier on the box, backed into the shadows. Only one disquieting incident occurred. The uneasiness which it caused was due to guilty memories rather than to any actual menace. As they were turning towards the Danube, they heard a sharp trotting behind them. A closed brougham swept past, drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses. The equipage was one which must formerly have belonged to the Royal Palace; it was the ghost of a forgotten splendor. Hindwood rose in his seat to watch it vanish. Then he saw something that made him catch his breath. Running between its wheels was a snow-white Russian wolfhound.

Santa heard his commotion. “What's the excitement?”

“Nothing.”

By the time she had raised herself to follow his glance, the hint of peril was gone. The next moment they were drawing up at the hotel.

III

Again as the door swung to behind them, they were greeted by sounds of merriment and dancing, only here the abandon was wilder than at Vienna. Hindwood saw at a glance that this was no assemblage of alien hucksters, drawn from all the world to gather bargains. As regards the men, they were devil-may-care and smart, of the same type as Captain Lajos--the sort who would follow the game to the last throw of the dice. Many of them had made no attempt to disguise their profession; they were clad in gorgeous uniforms of Hungarian regiments long since ordered disbanded by the Allies. Their breasts were ablaze with Imperial decorations. They strode the marble floors with the clink of spurs and the rattling of swords. While they drugged the midnight hours with laughter and debauch, their faces were feverish with listening expectancy--the expectancy of an event for which they waited.

The women looked like captives of a raid. Some hung back timidly; some were bold with wine; all were weary and pinched with hunger. Like the men, they seemed only to be acting a part. In the midst of recklessness they would give way to distaste, as though remorseful of this way of combating starvation.

With the stench of the death train still in his nostrils, Hindwood stared at the spectacle in pity and disgust. “Fiddling while Rome is burning,” he muttered.

His elbow was jogged by a black-coated individual with the appeasing manners of a tailor.

“I understand English. What is it you desire?”

Hindwood swung round. “So much the better. I want what one usually wants at a hotel--accommodation.”

The man rubbed his hands. “Sorry, sir. We're full up. Every room, in fact every lounge is taken.”

“You'll have to find something. I have a military order.”

Having read it the man returned the slip of paper. “That's different. You're here on Government business--for the same purpose as these other gentlemen, I take it?”

Hindwood replied non-committally. “Yes, on Government business.”

“In that case I'll give you a room in the basement--a servant's, my last. It's all I have to offer.”

“But two rooms are necessary. I have my secretary with me--this lady.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “To demand the impossible is useless. To-morrow--who knows? If things happen, I may be able to give you more rooms than you require. For the present...”

Seeing that nothing was to be gained by arguing, Hindwood consented to the arrangement.

“The room will be my secretary's. If you'll lend me blankets, I'll find a place in the passage.”

The room proved to be poor in the extreme--nothing but four bare walls and an iron cot. When he had turned the key he tiptoed over to Santa.

“What's this monstrous thing for which they're waiting--this something that may happen to-morrow?”

She placed her hands in his, as though she felt the need of protection. Her golden face was tragic. “War.”

His common sense revolted. Though everything seemed to prove her guess correct, he refused to accept it. “War! It can't be. What would any one gain by it? It was war that produced all this hideous mess--the death train and all that. Besides, how can people fight who can scarcely crawl? They have one foot in the grave already. Ten well-fed men could defeat a battalion. Whatever's in the wind, it isn't war. To launch a war requires money.”

“With you it's always money. To launch this kind of a war requires nothing but despair.”

Stepping back from him tempestuously, she flung herself full length on the cot. Her face was hidden, buried in the pillow. While she lay there tense, the sound of dance-music, advancing and retreating, tapped dreamily against the walls. It spoke to him of romance, of a woman he could love, and of passion snatched perilously before life ended, in a mysterious city after nightfall.

She had raised herself and was regarding him feverishly. Her red lips were parted as with thirst.

“I know you so well,” she was saying softly; “I know you because I love you. You refuse to believe it's war because you wouldn't be able to sell and bargain. But it is war--the sort of war we saw at the frontier: a war in which weaponless millions will march to the overthrow of embattled thousands.”

“You're unjust.” He spoke patiently. “I'm unwilling to believe it's war because I can't see any reason for it.”

“Any reason!” Her eyes became twin storms. “Would you require a reason if you'd seen your children die for lack of bread? You'd perish gladly, if you could first tear the throat out of one person who was too well nourished.”

He went and stood beside her, stooping over her, placing his hand against her forehead. “You're burning. You've been through too much. Get some rest. To-morrow we'll find Anna and perhaps Var-ensky; it's more than likely they'll be able to tell us.” He paused. “I know what makes you so relentless; it's your own dead child--”

Her arms shot up, dragging him down and nestling his face against her breast. “Oh, my man, it's not that. It's that I'm jealous for you--so afraid you may deceive yourself and miss your chance.” He stumbled back from the temptation of her yielding body and the comfort of her fragrant warmth.

“My chance is yours; we may both have been born for this moment.”

Long after he had stretched himself outside her door, he felt that in the austerity of the four bare walls she still crouched watching from her bed.

IV

He slept restlessly. The music and the dancing rarely halted. Once when he roused, it was with the suffocating sense that a man was bending over him, fumbling at the handle of Santa's door. As he sat up, he was convinced that the man looked back just before he vanished around the corner.

When he finally wakened, it was in the chill of dawn. He was surrounded by a ghostly stillness. Rising softly, he slipped down the passage and out into the public rooms of the hotel. It was as though a wizard had waved his wand. The merry-makers lay strewn about carelessly, wherever sleep had overtaken them. In the pale light of morning, robbed of animation, their faces showed waxlike and wan. Swords, which had clattered martially, sprawled grotesquely by crumpled bodies. Uniforms looked tarnished, dresses shabby. Girls, with their lips parted and their hair disordered, lay with heads stretched back in their lovers' arms. Over all was spread the weariness of folly.

Tiptoeing from group to group, he searched for the man who had tried Santa's door. Nowhere could he find him. Returning to her room, he tapped lightly. He was afraid to make more noise in that atmosphere of menace. Receiving no answer, he pushed the door stealthily and peered across the threshold. He had feared lest he might find her gone; there she lay curled up in her cot, her hair poured across her pillow, her face cushioned against her hollowed arm. Gray light falling from a narrow window clothed her with a lonely pathos. Bending over her, he shook her shoulder. “Santa.”

She sat up with a start.

“Has it happened?”

“Not yet. They're sleeping like the dead.”

“Then why--?”

“There's someone who knows us here. He tried your door. It makes me think we're watched. We can slip out now and hunt up Varensky. If we wait till later, we'll be followed.”

Her pupils dilated, obscuring the grayness of her eyes; they became black pools, mirroring her terror. “To be caught with Varensky would mean death.” He seated himself on the edge of her cot. “I didn't think you knew what fear was. Don't be frightened. I'll protect you.”

“Dear!” All of a sudden she had become intensely calm. “Did you think I was afraid for myself? Before many days, perhaps before to-day is out, it'll be you who'll need protecting. I beg you, don't go near Varensky.”

“But--”

“Let me go myself,” she implored. When he glanced away without replying, she rushed on impetuously. “Some one's got to take risks. I don't count. Your life must be spared.”

With an effort he brought his gaze back. “There's Anna.”

Instead of the explosion he had expected, her voice became gravely tender. “I forgot. You care for her as I care for you. I'm sorry.”

Her feet slipped to the floor; he saw them marble white against the bare, scrubbed boards--beautiful as hands, the feet of a dancer. As he retreated, she smiled bravely, “You shan't wait long.”

V

So far as they were aware, no one had noticed their departure. The deep breathing of the motley throng had been like the beat of a muffled engine. Even the night-porter, who should have been on guard, had collapsed across his desk with his face buried in his arms.

They had stepped out of the hotel into a pulseless street where mists from the Danube hung like cobwebs. Hindwood could not rid himself of the suspicion that they were followed. He glanced back repeatedly, drawing Santa sharply into doorways in attempt after attempt to trap the tracker. If a tracker there was, he never revealed himself. At last Hindwood realized that precautions were profitless. The cessation of their own footsteps gave ample warning. A pursuer had only to halt when they halted, to escape detection behind the fog.

They scarcely dared talk, and then only in brief whispers. It puzzled him how she could keep her direction. It was like tunneling a passage through chalk, which crumbled, yielded, and caved in as one went forward. The whole world dripped sullenly--unseen gutters, unseen trees, treacherous pavements. And there was always the drifting whiteness, pricking one's eyes as with little darts.

She had gone too far and turned back, feeling her way along the wall. Before a large double-door she paused and knocked. She rapped three times peculiarly before a grill was slipped back and a question asked. The answer which she gave appeared to be the countersign. A smaller door in the doubledoor was opened and they entered.

The person who had admitted them was a new type to Hindwood: flat featured, fair-headed, blue-eyed, clad in a loose khaki shirt, which bulged like a blouse, and in a pair of baggy breeches which were tucked into high-boots, roomy as pouches. But it was the expression of the man that was most impressive--his brooding appearance of enormous patience. Santa spoke rapidly in a language which was neither German nor French. The man nodded and led the way across a gloomy courtyard, up stairs rotten with decay, into a stone corridor lined with stout forbidding doors.

“Is it a prison?” Hindwood whispered.

“Little better. It's a barracks inhabited by the brains of outcast Russia--students, for the most part, male and female, who have escaped from the Red Terror. Russia has no use for brains at present. Brains are too dangerous. Wherever the Bolshevist finds them, he blows them out. Many of these exiles are survivors of Denikin's and Kolchak's armies. Having tried to save their country with rifles, they're now preparing themselves to rescue her with knowledge. They're learning to be doctors, engineers and lawyers, so that they may become the soul of the Russia of the future. Meanwhile they live anyhow, sleep anywhere and starve abominably. They're not wanted in Hungary or in any European country. They're suspected and hounded. The only reason they've been allotted this mildewed dwelling is in order that they may be watched.”

The guide had thrown open a door and stood signing to them, trying to catch their attention.

It was a grim sight that met their eyes, similar to the one they had left behind at the hotel only a thousand times more sordid. The windows were locked and heavily barred. The air was poisonous. The room was stripped of furnishings. On bare boards innumerable human beings, without a shred of bedding, sprawled, drugged with sleep, herded together in indecent proximity. There was scarcely space to walk between them. They were of both sexes. Here and there a child lay folded in a parent's arms. The men were of all ages, but for the most part young and still in the tattered uniforms of their defeated armies. The women were scarcely distinguishable from the men. Their heads were cropped. They wore odd garments of mixed masculine and feminine attire, such as could be purchased for next to nothing at any rag-shop. Some retained the soldier-garb of the Battalions of Death. As Hindwood gazed across the pool of mud-colored faces, “Heaven help us, if this is the soul of the future Russia!” he thought.

Suddenly his interest shifted. In the corner remotest from the door, his eye had caught the shining of golden tresses. Their owner's face was turned away from him; they seemed to weigh her down and were piled beneath her head in a cushion. On her left lay an aged peasant woman; on her right a man with a death-white face and a head that was peaked like a dunce's cap. The guide was already stooping over the man, touching him with a strange reverence. The man sat up. His green eyes opened. Hindwood experienced the same sensation of discomfort he had felt, when he had first seen them peering at him above the edge of the cliff at Seafold.

Varensky had risen. With his peculiarly catlike motion, he was picking a path towards them. He held out his hand.

“It was brave of you to come.” And then to Santa, “Of you, too. But of you it was expected.”

Hindwood bristled like a dog. He was distrustful of romantic attitudes. “Let's get down to facts. You know as well as I do that it wasn't any lofty motive that brought me.”

“No?” The eye-brows arched themselves comically. “Then what?”

“Your wife's message.”

“Ah! I understand. She didn't tell me. You see, she thinks I'm going to get myself killed at last; probably she wants you to help stop me. Not that I'm of the least use to her--don't think that. But she's the soul of honor. My death would mean her freedom; because of that she'd do anything in her power to prevent--”

Hindwood drew himself erect. “These are matters which it's not decent for us to discuss.”

The narrow shoulders flew up into a shrug. “Why on earth not? When things are so, there can be nothing indecent in being frank about them. Is it less indecent for you to love my wife than for me to tell that I know you love her? There'd be no sense in your loving her unless you both hoped--I won't finish what I was going to say; your feelings are so sensitive.” He rested his hand not unkindly on Hindwood's arm. “Don't you realize, my dear fellow, that you're to be congratulated? This happening which means catastrophe for countless millions, for you and Anna spells opportunity. Be honest. You would not have risked visiting me, if you had not realized that.”

Hindwood sought for spitefulness in Varensky's tones. All he found was the surge of a quiet happiness.

“One would think that I wanted you to die!” he exclaimed blankly.

“Well, don't you? Why shouldn't you?” Varen-sky smiled sadly. “If I could love Anna or any other woman the way you do---- But no--to me such affections have been denied. I love people only in crowds, by tens of thousands and by nations; in my heart there's no room for more human passions. I'm God's instrument; the hour of my testing is at hand. These mildewed walls inclose my Gethsemane.”

He flung his arms apart grotesquely; they formed with his body the shape of a cross. The fire of fanaticism blazed in his eyes. “To-morrow I shall be crucified.” He drew a shuddering breath.

“A born actor!” was Hindwood's silent comment--“An egoist who craves the lime-light.”

And yet, to his chagrin, he found himself impressed. He was so deeply stirred that he dared not trust himself to speak for a moment; when he did, it was with calculated coldness.

“You think only of yourself. It's not you alone; even those of us who make no claim to be God's instruments, stand more than a sporting chance of being crucified, as you call it. There are Santa and Anna, for instance; there's the collection of wretched down-and-outs gathered in this building; there are the scarecrows I saw in the death train; there are all the teeming swarms of human lice crawling westward along a thousand roads. In the presence of an agony so widespread, I can't muster a tear for your individual tragedy. It's no time for theatrics.”

For an instant Varensky's gaunt face quivered. Making an effort, with an air of mocking courtliness he mastered his injured pride.

“I was mistaken and I ask your pardon. We all have our plans to make ahead. I supposed you were here to ascertain approximately the hour at which I proposed to---- Shall we say, depart?”

“You were badly mistaken,” Hindwood cut in contemptuously. “I'm here to find out if there's any possible way in which we can save the situation.”

“We!”

Varensky stared. He became rigid as though he were carved from marble. “We!” he repeated haughtily.

While Hindwood was searching for a clue to his amazement, his next words supplied it.

“I thought it was I who was to save the world.”

“Splendid! You have a plan?”

Varensky's eyes filmed over. “Yes. But if I were to tell you, you wouldn't understand.” Coming out of the clouds, he placed his hand tolerantly on Hind-wood's shoulder. “Splendid, you said. So you want me to have a plan? Let's sit down and talk more quietly. These people are tired--in sleep they forget. So you also have ambitions to become a saviour?”

It was like the night in the hut all over again, when they had talked of Santa's redemption. There he sat, this discredited dictator, half-saint, half-charlatan, his knees drawn sharply up to his chin, his white face peering over them. The stale air sighed with the breathing of sleepers. A child whimpered and was hugged closer to the breast. In the far corner lay the desired woman. Gazing eagerly into both their eyes was the oriental countenance of the other woman, for whom neither of them cared.

“A saviour! No. I have no ambitions in that direction. But I have a scheme,” Hindwood admitted.

“What is it?”

“Bread. I came to sell bread for trade-concessions. In Austria I found the Government unwilling to purchase. This morning, when I consult with Hungarian officials, I may be met with the same refusal. What's the game? Why should men in control of hungry nations refuse my help? For six months they've been urging me to come to them. Something's happened--the signs of it are everywhere. Trains running westward are packed with women. The last sight we had of Vienna was a street-riot and people brutally shot down. And again at the frontier there were piles of dead--not only men: women and children who had been butchered to prevent them from escaping. Budapest's under military law. By some error, Santa and I on arrival were mistaken for conspirators in an army plot. We're billeted at what appears to be its headquarters--a place jammed with carousing officers of supposedly disbanded regiments. What's in the air? What is this dreadful news which some people rejoice over, from which others flee in panic, but which no one dares to mention? If you can tell me, I shall know how to act.”

“If I can tell you--! Suppose I were to tell you the worst, how would you act then?”

“That depends. I'm no more unselfish than anybody else. At a pinch I could forget my own interests and ruin myself for the public welfare. Here's how I stand. I have enough food at my command to keep Europe for several weeks from actual starvation. If the crisis is genuine, that ought to give time for the conscience of the civilized world to be aroused. But even if the world's conscience should prove too sluggish, I still have a personal fortune which would keep hunger at bay for several months. I'm no philanthropist--I should make myself penniless reluctantly. I'm in no sense your rival for the honors of Calvary. My mission in Europe is to sell at a profit. So if you can do better----”

“What you're telling me,” Varensky interrupted, “is that, if by personal sacrifice you could avert a world disaster, you'd be willing to give something for nothing.”

“Precisely. But I must first be convinced that the circumstances warrant it.”

“There's one point you've overlooked.” Varen-sky's green eyes narrowed. “Up to the moment you entered this room, I was fully persuaded that I was the man on whom the privilege of paying the price must fall. I'd coveted the privilege. All my life I'd worked for it. If you rob me of it, have you reckoned the cost?”

“In money?”

“In something more valuable. If I live, you can never be Anna's husband.”

Hindwood hated the man for his subtlety. He was being deliberately tempted. He threw a glance toward the sleeping woman in the corner whose fate, as well as his own, he was deciding. Close to him, drawing nearer, he saw the pleading eyes of Santa. He gave his answer.

“I may be the man who was born for this moment. Play fair by me; tell me what's happened.” Varensky rocked himself slowly back and forth. Suddenly he came to rest.

“I'm the thing that's happened. I'm responsible for everything. I've never learnt to let bad alone; in trying to make things better, I make them worse. It was my hand that shot down the crowd at Vienna. It was I who butchered the women and children at the frontier. I'm the force which drives behind the human lice who crawl westward along a thousand roads. You think me mad; but listen. Every freedom gained entails a new bondage. I helped to free Russia from the Czar; in so doing, I prepared the way for Bolshevism. I've fought Bolshevism with my dreams, my happiness, with everything I possess. Bolshevism is overthrown. What have I produced? Chaos.”

“Overthrown! Then that's the meaning of it.” Santa had half risen.

Varensky turned his death-white face on her, chilling her enthusiasm. “It's collapsed like a pack of cards. With it have vanished the last of the restraints. Every Russian's his own master now to choose his own ditch in which to perish. We've destroyed a vision that turned out to be a nightmare, but we've set up nothing in its stead. We, who are idealists, have worked the final disillusion. We've made two hundred millions hopeless. They're fleeing from the emptiness. The contagion of their despair is spreading. You saw its results in Vienna. It runs ahead of them; they're already on the march. They've broken into Poland. They're drawing nearer. How to stop them----?”

Hindwood's lips had squared themselves. “I can stop them. My food-trains will be here by tomorrow. What hungry men need is not political programs, but bread.” Then he added thoughtfully, “I can stop them, if I'm not prevented. There's some one who's playing a different game; he's some one who wants the world to starve. That's what Austria's refusal meant; that's the meaning of these secret signs of rejoicing. He's bigger than any nation. Who is he?”

Varensky shook his head. “There was a man.” He looked knowingly at Santa. “He was drowned.”