Part 19

Having formulated his plan, he whispered it to Santa. “While I tackle him, you grasp the wheel.” Leaning forward, he flung his arm about the man's neck, jerking him backwards. The car swerved and mounted the pavement. Santa turned it into the road again. Taken by surprise, the man offered small resistance; the struggle was short. Hindwood toppled him out, climbed into the front seat and took his place.

“The station. Where is it?” he asked breathlessly. She glanced at him with a revival of her old suspicion. “We're not leaving. Why the station?” He could have laughed. “Still the old, distrustful Santa! Little fool--the food-trains.”

The first streets which they traversed were deserted; yet lamps were lighted and the air was clamorous with belfry-music. As they drew further into the city, they shot past groups and isolated individuals, crawling in the same direction. For the most part they were the kind of persons Santa had offered to show him that morning--people in rags or entirely stark, who hobbled from weakness or dragged themselves on all fours like dogs. It was as though the dead were rising from their graves to follow the Pied Piper of the Resurrection.

They came to a square, where soldiers had been concentrated. Their packs and rifles littered the open space; the soldiers themselves had vanished.

The traffic grew dense. It was all on foot. Hind-wood turned to Santa, “We shall make better time if we leave the car.”

As they mingled with the crowd, he had a nightmare sensation of unreality. He had never rubbed shoulders with so many human beings so nearly naked. They themselves seemed to regard their conditions as normal. It was he who was odd. Their legs were mere poles; their arms laths. Their heads were misshapen like deflated footballs. With panting persistence they padded forward, too frail to be anything but orderly. The air was full of an earthy fragrance. Their bodies were clammy to the touch. He could push them aside like shadows. The hair was brittle as withered moss.

It was the fashionable quarter of Budapest. Great arc-lights shone down on this flowing river of gray flesh. Behind plate-glass windows luxuries were displayed for the temptation of the bargain-snatching foreigner--feathers and furs, jewels and laces. Past them, with eyes enfevered by starvation, stole the noiseless populace. There was a woman whose sole clothing was a rag about her neck; she continued to live in Hindwood's imagination long after the sight of her was gone. And still, with thunderous merriment, the bells above the city pealed on.

At a turn they came to the station. Further progress was blocked. Exerting his strength against the weakness of the mob, Hindwood edged his way forward. When he could go no farther, he swung round on Santa. “Tell them that I own the food-trains and that I'm going to get them bread.”

She had no sooner uttered her translation than a lane was cleared. As he passed, he was aware that parched lips stooped to kiss his hands, his garments, the very ground that he trod. He shuddered. The indecent self-abasement of such necessity inflamed his indignation. Ahead a cordon was drawn across the road. It was composed of Russian refugees. He recognized them by their baggy blouses and by the short-haired women of the Battalions of Death. From the tail of a wagon an orator was speechifying. His head was peaked like a dunce's cap. Beside him stood a woman, white as a lily with hair the color of raw gold.

Hindwood caught Santa's arm. “For heaven's sake, what's he saying?”

“What he always says on such occasions. He's preaching his gospel of non-resistance and promising to die for them.”

“Who cares for whom he dies, when bellies are empty and bodies are naked? Tell them I'll clothe them and give them bread.”

As she translated what he had said, a cry went up which drowned Varensky. He found himself in the open space, clambering up to the wagon and dragging Santa up beside him. There was a deep silence.

“Tell them,” he commanded, “that starvation is ended. I'll feed them on one condition: that they refuse to fight. Tell them I'll drive the Russian menace back without a single shot being fired. Tell them that I promise, on my honor as an American, to feed them all. Though food-trains are exhausted to-night, more will arrive to-morrow. More and more.”

He paused, blinded with emotion at sight of the forest of thin hands strained up to him. Shooting out his fist tremendously, he threatened. “And tell them that I won't feed a jack one of them, if there's another man, woman or child slaughtered, or a hint of rioting.”

VI

He had kept his word; as far as Hungary was concerned, every living soul had been nourished. For seven days and nights, sleeping only at odd intervals, he had sat in the barracks of the Russian refugees with the map of Europe staring down on him from the wall. Wherever a food-train had been despatched, the place had been marked by a little red flag. He had had a wireless-apparatus installed; from that bare room, heavy with mildew, he had sent out his S. O. S. calls to humanity. He had begged, threatened, argued, commanded until at last he knew that he had won his cause. What he did not know was that his own example had proved more convincing than many words. The simple drama of his personal conversion--that he should be giving what he had come to sell--had stirred men's consciences. It had given him the right to talk. Where once troops would have been hurried, food was being pushed forward. It was an experiment alarmingly novel; but his phrase caught on, “The Barricade of Bread.” It had been flashed across five continents. Wherever the printed word had power, it had kindled men's imaginations. By a world war-wrecked, confronted by yet another war, it had been hailed as the strategy that would end all wars.

Loaf by loaf, sack by sack the barricade was rising. Those little red flags, pinned on the map, marked its progress. It was deepening and spreading in a flanking movement, just as formerly army corps had massed for offensives. Soon the barricade would be complete; it would stretch in an unbroken line from the Dardanelles to the Baltic. There would be fighting, probably to the east of Poland, where the Monarchists were marching in a forlorn attempt to defeat the famished hordes. That could not be prevented. But by the time the outcasts struck his main defense, he would be in a position to halt them.

It was only now, when the situation was in hand, that he had leisure to realize what he had been doing. He was filled with depression in his hour of triumph. It was long past midnight. He felt gray and spent. The barracks were as quiet as a morgue. He wondered why; they had been so crowded with derelicts of valiant armies, men and girls, who, having failed to save Russia with the rifle, had been preparing to rescue her with knowledge. Then he recalled. He had sent them all away. They had been the new kind of soldier, by whose sacrifice his ideal had conquered. He saw again their uplifted faces, as he had summoned them one by one and ordered them on their perilous journeys. Wherever a red flag was pinned on the map, one of those derelicts was in command. The “Little Grandmother,” she had been the last. Beside himself and his wireless operators, there could be no one left except Varensky, Santa and Anna.

He glanced at the window. It was a square of jet. During the early days and nights it had framed a heart of fire, where the Palace had smouldered on the heights of Buda. Like a subsided volcano, the Palace had burned itself out. It was as though the fury of his life were ended. He bowed his head in his arms, striving to reconjure what had happened.

Flitting about the room, with his strangely catlike tread, Varensky had been forever entering and exiting. He had been his second self, silent and agile, anticipating his plans without a word spoken. It was Varensky who had marshaled his exiled compatriots and placed their services at his disposal. It was Varensky who had warned him of the strategic points where the barricade must be strengthened. It had been always Varensky to whom he had turned for advice and courage when things were darkest. Without Varensky he could have accomplished nothing. And yet it was Varensky whom he had dethroned. This should have been his moment. He had shouted him down, snatched control from him and earned the credit. The self-effacement of one whom he had despised as an egoist made him humble. In a rush of tenderness he discovered that he loved him. The peaked head was forgotten, and the face scared white as if it had seen a ghost. The timidity of his appearance no longer counted; the thing that mattered was the spirit, resolute and shining as a sword, that hid within the scabbard of the grotesque body.

And now that he remembered, there had been grief in his green eyes--the grief of a man who had been cheated. Once again Varensky had drawn him near to Calvary; the chance to die had been stolen from him.

And Anna--he could not guess how she felt or what she thought. In all those seven days and nights it seemed as though she had never looked at him. She had moved about him like a nun, ministering to his wants with her gaze averted. Vaguely he was aware that to him she was not what she appeared to others. The old legend had been revived; again, as in St. Petersburg after the fall of Czardom, wherever she passed people knelt. To him she was no saint; his desire was too human.

Watching the three of them with sphinxlike wisdom, there had been Santa, her womanhood clamorous and ignored. What had she made of it? Had she found material for humor in their temporary heroism?

And so he came back to his first question--what had he been doing? In constructing the barricade of bread, he had been preventing Varensky from dying; in preventing Varensky from dying, he had been raising a barricade between himself and Anna. Having bankrupted his pocket, he had bankrupted his heart. In spite of warnings, he had gone in search of the vanishing point, where the parallel rails of possibility and desire seem to join--the point at which, to quote Varensky's words, “The safety of the journey ends.” It was the goal of every man who wrecks himself in the hope that he may save a world.

How long had he been sitting there brooding? He was cold. The square of window had turned from jet to gray. Furtively he glanced behind him. Anna was gazing down on him.

VII

She was dressed for a journey, muffled in furs. Her left hand was gloved; her right extended. His heart turned coward. Surely he had earned his reward. He commenced to rise, pushing back his chair. The steady blueness of her eyes held him.

“Good-by,” she said. “I should have left without saying good-by, if I had not known I could trust you.”

“But you can trust me. It's because you can trust me that you must stay.”

“I can't stay.”

“Why not?”

“We made a bargain. Do you remember? That until we were free, we would play the game by him--that we would even guard him against himself. You told me once, 'I wouldn't be friends with a woman who couldn't be loyal.' I'm trying to be loyal.” She caught her breath. “He's gone.”

“Varensky?”

She nodded.

“Where?”

“To die for us.”

In the silence that followed, the heat of his temptation vanished. He felt accused by the quixotic magnanimity of this strange creature, half prophet, half charlatan, whose wife he had coveted.

“Once I'd have been glad that he should die,” he confessed slowly, “but not now. Food has done far more than his sacrifice could have accomplished. Why should he be determined to die now?”

She trusted herself to come closer, standing over him and giving him her hand.

“Perhaps for our sakes. Perhaps for his own. Perhaps in the hope that his appearance may put a stop to what's left of the fighting. There was a wireless last night which he kept to himself. It said that skirmishing was developing between the Poles and the Russian refugees in the No Man's Land beyond Kovel. It was after he had read it that he went out. I waited for him to return--when I guessed. We've all misjudged him. Perhaps we're still misjudging him. Who can say why he's gone? There's nothing gained by attributing motives. He wants to give his life. He's promised he would so often; always he's been thwarted. He owes it to his honor. Kovel may be the world's last battle--his final chance.”

In the bare room the dawn was spreading. Hind-wood rose from his chair, stretching his cramped body and gazing at the map with its safe red line of flags.

“Our work is ended,” he said quietly. “Within the next few hours stronger men will be here to take control--a commission of the best brains, picked from all the nations. God chose us to be His stopgap.” He paused. “After having been His instruments in averting a world-catastrophe to speak of things personal seems paltry. And yet my love for you fills all my thoughts. I leave Budapest a bankrupt. I shall have to start life afresh. Your love is literally my sole possession and I have no right to it.”

She was backing towards the door, retreating from him. He stepped over to the window, widening the distance that separated them.

“Do you feel more secure now? You needn't fear me,” he reproached her. “Was it because I spoke of our love? We have no reason to be ashamed of it. We've played fair. How could we do less when Varensky has played so fair by us? It's for our sakes he's gone, that he may free us.” Then, “You're setting out alone on a journey. Would you mind telling me its object?”

“You know. To prevent him. To catch up with him. To bring him back.”

“And if he refuses?”

“To die with him.”

He smiled whimsically. “The vanishing point! For you, with your high standard of honor, if you were to overtake it, your problem would be solved. But suppose the vanishing point eludes you. Suppose your husband agrees to live, have you thought of that? It means that you and I will never----”

With an imploring gesture she cut him short. “It means that you and I will never learn to despise each other. It means that I shall always remember you at your greatest, as I've seen you in the last seven days, self-sacrificing, brave and noble--so self-forgetting that you could even forget the woman you adored.”

He sank his head. In the gray square of window he looked old and haggard. “It's true, and yet it's incredible: if we were to allow him to die, we should despise each other. In the long years----” He glanced up. “Though you were willing to let him and I won you, do you think I would want you? Not that way. I'd want you so little that I'm coming with you to help you to prevent him.”

VIII

Long lines of neglected tillage! Deserted farms! Broken fences! A gray expanse of sky! Knots of peasants trekking always westward! Panting cattle, nearing the exhaustion point! Creaking carts! Dawn growing whiter; day growing golden; sunlight fading; night becoming flecked with stars! Always the rhythm of the engine, the plunging into the distance, the impatient urgency to thrust forward!

It had been useless to think of traveling by trains; the railways were too congested. Moreover, they had strongly suspected that he had set out by car. If the No Man's Land beyond Kovel were his destination, then Cracow would lie midway on his journey. Cracow was one of the strong-points in the barricade, where a clump of red flags was flying. All the traffic was escaping from the danger. If he had chosen that route, there would be definite news of him. Any one traveling towards the danger could not help but be remarked.

As they inquired of fugitives, they discovered that two cars were ahead of them. The first contained a madman, with eyes green as emeralds and a face white and set as a mask; the second, a dark-haired woman, beautiful as a fallen angel. The woman seemed to be in pursuit of the man. They were, perhaps, thirty miles apart. They had thundered by into the imperiled future as though the self-same devil rode behind them.

What could be Santa's purpose? Anna and he argued the point, sometimes aloud, more often in their unuttered thoughts. All their old doubts concerning her rose up rampant. Was she a Bolshevist agent, hurrying back to sell the last of her secrets? Was her purpose to save or to betray Varensky?

What had she ever wanted from him? Had she found a quality in his self-destroying idealism that had called forth her pitying worship? In her own dark way had she enshrined him in a mysterious corner of her heart? Had she recognized in him a childlike weakness that had compelled her protection? Had he stood in the twilight of her life for a door that might open into ultimate redemption?

Or was it loneliness that had made her follow him--the sure knowledge that everything was ended? In those seven days, whilst they had made history together, had she seen something that had tortured her? That she was not wanted, as he was not wanted? Was it despair that had beckoned her into the chaos through which he hurried to destruction?

When they reached Cracow it was to find the city deserted. The streets by which they entered were deathly silent; the doors wide open; the pavements strewn with furniture which owners had lacked time to rescue. Here and there were carts which had collapsed, and thin horses which had died in harness. Even cats and dogs had departed. Terror peered from behind the blankness of windows. It was like a city pillaged.

Whatever optimisms they had entertained, they knew for certain now that war had started. Out of sight, across gray wastes to the eastward, gray ranks of skeletons, armed with nothing but disease, were approaching. The dread they inspired was so great that outcasts, only a shade less starving, had stampeded before them.

At a turn they came to the railroad. Here their eyes met a different spectacle. From a freight-train on a siding men, white to the eyes with dust, were rolling barrels. They were volunteers recruited from the safer nations--the first of the new kind of army. They were piling flour where once they would have been stacking shells. Hindwood recognized the barrels' markings. His sense of tragedy lightened. Laughing down into his companion's eyes, he shouted, “Mine! Look, Anna. Mine that I meant to sell!”

A short-haired girl, in the tattered uniform of the Battalion of Death, was in charge. Coming up to the car, she saluted smartly. Yes, she had seen Varensky. It was three hours since he had passed. He had filled up with water and gasolene, gasolene having arrived on the supply-train. He had left for Brest-Litovsk, stating that his object was to gain a respite for the barricade-builders. He proposed to put himself at the head of the famine-march and to check the rapidity of its advance. After his departure, the other had panted up--the dark-haired woman--only an hour behind him.

Wasting no time in conversation, Hindwood imitated Varensky's example. He was dazed for want of sleep--almost nodding. But the man he had to save was ahead of him. Having filled his tanks and made sure of his engine, he started forward.

They were throbbing through empty streets again, when a strange sound thrilled the silence--a trumpet-call, which rang out sharply across the housetops and broke off suddenly.

Had they come? He slowed down, prepared to wheel about.

Seeing what was in his thoughts, Anna rested her hand on his arm reassuringly.

“It's from the tower of St. Mary's. How often I've heard it! Ah, there it is again!” Gazing up and bending forward, she listened. Then she spoke, as though addressing some one who walked above the city, “Brave fellow! Though they've all deserted, you've stayed on.”

“To whom are you talking?”

She explained quickly. Centuries ago the Church of St. Mary's had been an outpost of Christendom, used as a watch-tower against the invading Tartar; a soldier had been kept continually stationed there to give warning on a trumpet of the first approach of danger. In the fourteenth century, whilst arousing the city, the trumpeter had been struck in the throat by an arrow. His call had faltered, rallied and sunk. With his dying breath he had sounded a final blast, which had broken off short. The broken call had saved Cracow. Ever since, to commemorate his faithfulness, there had never been an hour, day or night, when his broken trumpet-call, ending abruptly in an abyss of silence, had not been sounded from the tower.

Hindwood leant across the wheel, staring dreamily before him. “It might have been his voice--Varen-sky's. He's like that--a dying trumpeter, sounding a last warning. I almost believe in him. It's too late----”

“It may not be,” she whispered.

Night was falling. Straining his eyes to keep awake, he drove impetuously on, forcing a path through the opposing shadows.

IX

How they had arrived it would have puzzled him to tell. He had vague memories of sunsets and dawns; of times when sleep had drugged him; of unrefreshed awakenings.

They had reached Brest-Litovsk, the city fatal to the Russians, which the Czar had always superstitiously avoided. Like Cracow, it was deserted. Unlike Cracow, it was a pile of ruins. Seven times in seven years it had been bombarded and captured. Beneath an iron sky, it listened for the tramp of the latest conqueror.

Hindwood drew forth his map. It was over a hundred versts to Kovel; he doubted whether his gasolene would take him. There was nowhere where he could replenish his supply. Before him lay a No Man's Land from which everything had perished--behind a silence from which everything had escaped. To continue his pursuit was folly. There was no promise of success to allure him; of Varensky and Santa he had lost all trace. He glanced at his drowsing companion; he had pledged his word to her. Reluctantly he climbed into his seat and started forward.

The suicidal stupidity of war--that was the thought that absorbed him. Every sight that his eyes encountered emphasized its madness. Yet beyond the horizon, where distance seemed to terminate, men were killing one another. He understood at last Varensky's passion to die. When all else had failed, to offer one's body was the only protest.

The landscape was growing featureless. Rivers had overflowed. The labor of centuries was sinking beneath morass. Villages and post-houses had been destroyed; woods torn by shell-fire. Stationed along the route, like buoys guarding a channel, black and white verst-poles gleamed monotonously. On either side stretched a never-ending graveyard, marked by rough crosses or inverted rifles. Down this pitiless straight road had marched the seven invasions--Russian, German, Polish, Bolshevist, each with a dream of glory in its eyes. With the victory lost and the dream forgotten, they moldered companionably.

It was half-way to Kovel that he first noticed what was happening; behind scrub and fallen trees it had probably been happening for some time. It was a gray wolf, grown bold, which first drew his attention. Like a dog, seeking its master, it came trotting down the road. After that they came in packs--not only wolves, but every other kind of untamed animal. It was as though they were fleeing before a drive--the tremendous drive of a famished nation. In their dread they seemed to have postponed their right to prey. Hunter and quarry journeyed side by side, their enmities in abeyance in their common terror of the enmity which stalked behind.

Hindwood had grown used to the spectacle, when suddenly he was startled by another sight--a child. A child so matted and neglected, that he scarcely recognized him as human. His feet were swathed in balls of rags. He limped painfully, walking among the animals and staring straight before him. At shortening intervals others followed, till at last they came in crowds.