Part 9

She turned her head wearily, glancing at him sideways. “You called me the Joan of Russia. I was almost. There was a time when not to be loved and not to be a mother seemed a small price to pay for sainthood. It was my happiness against the happiness of millions. But now----” Her eyes filmed over.

“But now------?” he prompted.

She brushed her tears away with pitiful defiance. “I want to be a woman--to be everything in some man's life.”

“Perhaps you are in his, but he doesn't show it.”

She seemed to listen for laughter. Then, “No,” she said. “When I try to be a woman, I play Satan to him.”

“And that's the wall?”

“Not all of it. There's Santa.”

In the swift march of his emotions he had almost forgotten Santa. As though she had been drowning and he had turned back from rescuing her, the mention of her name stung him with reproach.

“What of Santa?” he asked in a low voice.

VI

She's in love with my husband.”

He let go her hand. “Do you mind if I smoke? Perhaps you'll join me? No?”

He took his time while he lit his cigarette. Then, speaking slowly, “I can't believe all the evil that I've heard about this woman. And yet I ought. Every fresh person has told me something increasingly vile. To make a case against her, I have only to take all the trouble she's caused me. I meet her on a liner and part with her on landing; from that moment I have no peace. I'm pestered by strangers accusing and defending her. My room is entered by spies. I find an anonymous note pinned to my pillow. I'm lured out of London into the heart of the country on the pretext that she's in danger and I can help her. You know the rest. Until the happenings of tonight, the most probable explanation seemed to be that she had taken a secret fancy to me and had turned to me in her distress, when she found herself suspected of a crime. That theory won't hold water any longer.”

“It might.”

“It couldn't. You tell me she's in love with your husband.”

“Santa can be in love with as many men as serve her purpose. The only loyalty to which she's constant is the memory of her dead child.”

He shook himself irritably. “Nothing that you' or any one has told me explains her. She left on me an impression of nobility which absolutely contradicts all this later information. Until I met you, it almost seemed there was a conspiracy on foot to poison my mind. What she is said to have done may all be true, but I can't help searching behind her actions for a higher motive. You'd clear matters up if you'd tell me frankly how it is that you come into the picture.”

“The picture!” She shrank back from him like a timid child.

Controlling himself, he spoke patiently. “Do I need to be explicit? You ought to hate her. She's in love with your husband. When, a few hours ago, it was a case of warning her of the trap she was walking into, you were reluctant to give the signal. 'She wouldn't spare us,' you said; 'so why should you and I----?' And yet you're her accomplice. It was you whom I followed. It was you who, when you'd got me into this room, tried to hold me at the revolver's point.”

She buried her face in the hollow of her arm. Her voice came muffled. “It was I.”

He waited for her to say more. She made no sound--not even of sobbing.

“It was a dangerous game to play,” he reminded her. “You didn't know your man or how he would take it. You must have had some strong motive. You might have killed me without even intending. What a risk you ran, doing a thing like that singlehanded! For a moment, when I first entered, everything was touch and go.”

And still she made no reply.

The fire had burned low. He emptied coals on it. To bridge the embarrassment of her silence, he went over to the window, pulling aside the curtains, and stood gazing out at the glory of the night. The moon rode high. Trees were clumped and motionless. The crooning of waves made a continual lullaby.

She was married, and she was wasted. She was not wanted, and she was not released. She had a husband who refused to live and could not contrive to die. As a substitute for passion she had tried sainthood; it had not satisfied.

He let the curtains fall. Turning, he gazed back at the black-garbed figure bowed in the half-circle of firelight. Her golden hair had broken loose. It poured across her shoulders and gathered at her feet in a pool. At the moment she looked more a Magdalene than a saint. And this was the woman who had made men brave by her purity--to whom a nation had turned in its agony!

A flood of pity swept over him. Poor, narrow shoulders to have borne such a burden! Poor, virgin feet to have come so long a journey! Poor, mortal hands to have given such a blessing! She had been robbed and cast aside.

The cruelty of idealists! She was their victim. What did they attain? Idealists slew happiness on the altar of dreams that a future happiness might result from it. Though their dreams were mistaken, they lost nothing; they snatched their sensation of godlike righteousness. But who could restore the happiness of others which their frenzy had destroyed?

If this time Varensky had had the decency to die, she was free. He himself could take her. But would she want him? He had no attractions. All that he could offer would be to serve her. He couldn't place her back on her pinnacle of fame. Instead of crowds, he would be her only worshiper. Would that satisfy a woman who had been a saint for a day? He could promise her rest and protection. He could take her feet in his hands and guide them over rough places. And if she wanted to be a woman----

Crossing the room on tiptoe, he stood over her. Sinking to his knee, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Won't you look up? I'm not here to hurt you. I wouldn't even judge you. Life's been hard.”

When she gave no sign, he spoke again.

“I'm a man and a stranger. You're a wife. But you've told me so much. You're wounded. You can't go on by yourself.”

She moved. He knew now that she was listening.

“There's that door in the wall we were going to find. Perhaps we've found it. Let me be your friend. It would be foolish and wrong for me to tell you that I----”

She raised her head. Her hair fell back, and her eyes gazed out at him with hungry intensity. “Don't say it,” she implored. “Varensky----”

“But if he's dead? If I can bring you sure proof?”

For answer she pressed his hand against her bosom.

VII

He seated himself at her feet, his arms clasped about his knees as if crouched before a camp-fire. How much meaning had she read into his implied confession? He felt happy; happier than ever before in his life, and yet, if she were the cause of his happiness, the odds were all against him. She had promised him nothing. She could promise him nothing. All he knew of her was what she had told him. His elation might prove to be no more than an emotion that would fade in the chill light of morning.

“It would be foolish and wrong for me to tell you----” The words had risen to his lips unpremeditated. He had not realized that he cared for her until they were uttered. He had merely felt an immense compassion, an overwhelming desire to comfort her. That he should care for her at all was preposterous. It was paying her no compliment. Love that was worth the having required a more permanent incentive than physical beauty. Her mind and her character were a riddle to him. If his passion was no passing mood and she were indeed a widow, it would be her mind and her character that he might one day marry. He ought to have foreseen that something of this sort would be sure to happen between a man and woman left alone after midnight.

But the triumphant self whom she had roused in him grinned impudently at this cautious moralizing. He gloried in the magnificent unwisdom of his indiscretion. He was surprised and delighted at this newly-discovered capacity for recklessness. When experience was growing stale, he had broken through limitations and found himself gazing on an unguessed landscape where adventure commenced afresh. He could still feel the softness of her flesh against his hand. That sudden act of tenderness had altered all their relations.

He glanced up at her shyly. She, too, was dreaming. Her lips were smiling uncertainly; there was a far-away, brooding expression in her eyes. The blackness of her mourning merged with the shadows, making her seem disembodied; all he could see distinctly was the golden torrent of her hair framing the pallor of her face.

“They knelt to you in Petrograd. I don't wonder.”

“Poor people! It did them no good. I never want any one else to do it.”

“But I kneel to you. I crouch at your feet.”

“I would rather be loved than worshiped.” She restrained him gently. “Not yet.”

“Then, until I may love, I kneel to you.”

“You ought to find me repellent. No, let me speak. I own to you that I'm married, and here I sit with you alone, not knowing whether my husband lives or is buried. I must be wicked--more wicked than I guessed. Ivan was right; he used to tell me I played Satan to him. These hands, which look so soft and white, are cruel. This face, which seems so gentle, is a lie. This hair, which makes a pillow for your head, is a snare. One good man has already cast me aside. Rather than love me, he preferred death. And you are good. How near I came to killing you!” She bent over him, taking his face between her hands. “_You!_ Do you understand?” She had drawn his head back against her knees. Her lips all but touched him. He could feel the fanning of her breath. Her voice came pantingly, as though she dreaded her own question: “What can you see in me?”

“Blue eyes, like a glimpse of heaven.”

“Tell me truly.”

“What can I see?” He stared up adoringly. “A woman who's still a child. A woman who's been cheated. A woman whose arms are empty. A woman who sits outside a tomb, dreaming of life.”

“Not of life,” she corrected softly; “of being allowed to live for a man.”

“For me, perhaps?”

She smiled vaguely.

“Without knowing what kind of a man I am?”

“Do you know me?” She sat upright, gazing straight before her. “You don't even know why I brought you.”

“Why?”

“It seems strange to tell you now. It seems like a forgotten sadness, so forgotten that it might belong to some one else. And yet once it hurt. I brought you that I might win back my husband. Don't stiffen. Look up and see how I'm smiling. I was never his in your sense. I was an image in a niche, whose hands he kissed. I was a mascot, bringing him good luck. The woman part of me he postponed superstitiously till his cause should be won. It will never be won now.”

“But he warned you before he married you?”

She shook her head. “He made sure of me. At first I was proud to be included in his sacrifice. Then failure made it all absurd. I was sorry for him. I knew only one way to comfort him. But because he had failed, he became the more determined to deny himself. Instead of comforting him, I became his tempter. Then Santa----”

Hindwood pulled himself together and bent forward, glowering into the fire. “I can't understand all this talk of sacrifice. It sounds so confoundedly unpractical. As far as I can make out, your husband's idea of virtue was to abstain from everything that makes life worth living. He didn't profit any one by abstaining. All he did was to narrow himself. If he'd wanted to be an ascetic, why couldn't he have done the thing thoroughly and played the game? There was no need to drag you into it.”

“There was no need,” she assented quietly, “but to have me and to withstand me made him appear more dedicated. He tantalized himself with the thought of me and used me as a knife with which to gash himself. I was a part of the road to Calvary he was treading in order that Russia might be saved. It gratified his pride to make the road spectacular. Then, when we were in exile and he was no longer a power, Santa came, the ruthless idealist--his very opposite.”

“Ruthless, perhaps! But I shouldn't call her an idealist.”

“She is--an idealist who, to gain her ends, stoops to any baseness. She's an avenging angel, beautiful and sinister. She's one of the few revolutionaries who knows what she wants; because she knows, she gets it. Varensky never knew. His head was in the clouds. He lost sight of his purpose in a mist of words.”

“What does she want?” As he asked the question, he glanced back at her where she gleamed like a phantom.

“She wants----” There was a pause during which the only sound was the struggle of the distant surf. “She wants to make men pay for what they do to children. All her crimes---- She's a mother, robbed of her young; in her own fierce way, she's taken all the children of the world to her breast.”

“But men don't do anything.”

She caught his tone of puzzlement. “Oh yes. Each generation commits ferocious sins against the coming generation that can't protect itself. It's children who pay for wars and every social injustice. Men live like a marauding army, pillaging the land between birth and death. They pass on and leave to children the settlement of their reckless debts. Take this latest war; five million children in Europe alone are dying of starvation at this moment. Santa's marked down the men who are responsible for their suffering; silently, one by one, she drugs them with her beauty and exacts the penalty.”

“Prince Rogovich?”

“Probably. He was raising funds for a new carnage.”

“But where do I come in? You said that you'd brought me here to help you win your husband.”

“She's in love with Ivan. To be loved by Santa is like witnessing the signature to one's death warrant. Perhaps she's a Bolshevik agent--the only people to whom the Bolsheviks are merciful are children. Perhaps she's really in love with him. She plays with him like a cat with a mouse.”

“And he?”

“He's indifferent, as he is to every woman. Yet because she's treacherous and he wants to die, he takes her with him on many of his journeys. I hoped that if I could give you to her, she might spare him. That was before I knew you. I was beside myself with suspense. Ivan has been gone so long; to do her bidding seemed like giving him his last chance of life. She's in danger and in hiding. You're the one person who can prove her guilt. I thought that if I put you in her power, I'd place her under an obligation, so that----”

“And now?”

She covered her face with her hands. “God forgive me, it's your safety that counts--not Ivan's.” He knelt against her, plucking her hands aside. “Look at me,” he commanded. “So long as your husband lives, his safety comes first. In saving me, you might betray him. If, in snatching our happiness, we connived at his death, his shadow would always stand between us. I'm still your prisoner; I've not taken back my parole. Here's your revolver.” He drew it from his pocket and laid it on her knees. “Fulfill your bargain.”

“How?”

“Take me to Santa.”

“But Ivan--already he may be----”

“Until we know, we'll play the game by him.” When she hesitated, he added, “I wouldn't be friends with any woman who couldn't be loyal.”

Her hands groped after the revolver and found it. Forcing back her tears, she answered, “Nor would I with any man.”

Rising to his feet, he helped her to rise. “Take me to her.”

VIII

As they stepped into the garden, the first restlessness of morning was in the air. The moon had vanished. Stars were going out. Along the low level of sea-line dawn cast a sickly shadow. It was as though night were an indigo curtain behind which silver forms were moving.

She led the way across the lawn, through a door in the wall, and out on the short, crisp turf. She had thrown a cloak about her and pulled the hood over her head. It made her look cowled and elfin. It was the hour when everything is fantastic.

He had an oppressive sense of unreality, as though this were all a dream from which he would shortly rouse. He stood aloof from recent happenings and surveyed his share in them in an elderly, derisive fashion. What were all these promises that he had been exchanging like a gallant? He tried to recall his exact words. To what extent had he committed himself? He had crossed the Atlantic that he might multiply his fortune--for no other reason. He was neither an idealist nor a sentimentalist; he had realized the chance that a bankrupt Europe offered and had come to take advantage of it. What would these derelicts of the catastrophe think of him if they guessed his real purpose? They were willfully, even contemptibly, unpractical; yet their perverted unselfishness troubled his conscience. To spend half one's years in exile, like the Little Grandmother, might not correct injustice, but at least it was a brave protest. To plan to die, like Varensky, because he had failed to rescue humanity, was a counsel of despair, but it had its gleam of nobility. To assassinate, like Santa, men whose statesmanship you did not comprehend was the madness of a zealot, but she at least staked her life against theirs. Into none of these undertakings did profit enter. It was disquieting to find himself among people so determined to convert the world to altruism. The world had been like this always; it would be like this to the end. If they were once to sense who he was, they would regard him as their enemy. He was walking into danger with his eyes wide open. His wisest plan would be to sink into the shadows and take the first train back to sanity. To do that he would have to leave her.

And why not? What did he owe her? What was she to him? She belonged to another man. Waiting for him to die, or to make sure of his death, might prove a tedious business--a humiliating one, most certainly. And yet to leave her now----

She had been going on ahead--or was it his steps that had been lagging? She had halted. As he came up, he felt the firm surface of the road beneath his tread.

In the gloom she laid her hand on his arm. “If you've promised too much----”

That determined him. “I keep my promises,” he answered shortly.

Walking side by side, they struggled on against the mass of all-surrounding vagueness. It seemed like a strong, gray tide pressing on their breasts, against which they made no headway.

What was to be the upshot of it? She was guiding him to Santa. His lips twisted. It would take more than Santa to inspire him with terror. England wasn't the jungle. A man couldn't disappear unnoticed. Supposing in the next half-hour Santa were to do away with him, what would she gain by it? She would have silenced his testimony in the Rogo-vich affair, but she would have added to the evidence. If she were the woman she was painted, she would be too wary to do that. No, she would not attempt to kill him. Then what was her urgency?

Gradually night was fading. The paleness from the sea was spreading. It drove like smoke, in billowy banks of vapor, creeping low along the ground. Live things were waking. In separate, plaintive warnings, early-risen birds were calling. Across the road ahead rabbits scurried. Against the formless vacancy of sky the rounded shoulders of the uplands became discernible. He took notice of their direction. She was leading him to the abandoned camp.

“Madame Varensky.”

She started. “Not that.”

“I'm sorry. It was the only name I knew to call you. What do they usually----?”

“Anna.”

She came close like a child and stood gazing up at him.

He stooped and spoke gently. “You're a wild rose. Once more let me look into your eyes. It's so strange that you should care for me.”

“More strange to me,” she said.

He placed his hands on her shoulders. “There's something that I want you to remember. If harm comes to either of us, believe always that it was only good that I intended.”

“Whatever you brought me would be good,” she murmured.

“I wish it might.” He tumbled the hood back so that he could see her hair. “When a man loves a woman who's already married, it doesn't often bring happiness. It wouldn't be right that it should. It isn't our fault that this has happened, but it will be if we misuse it.”

“We shan't misuse it.”

“There's something else.” He groped after his words. “Before I came to you, I'd been foolish. There's no sense in regretting; if I hadn't been foolish, we shouldn't have met. I thought that I was following Santa; you can guess----”

She inclined her head.

“And there's one thing more. If your husband comes back, promise me you'll forget.”

She strained against him, so their lips were nearly touching. “Never.” She spoke fiercely. And again, “Never. Though it's years and you forget.”

His hands slipped from her shoulders, lower and lower, till his arms closed about her. “Rest,” he whispered, “if it's only for a moment, poor, tired little bird.”

Through the ghostly twilight of the autumn dawn they entered the deserted camp. Before one of the hutments she halted and tapped. She tapped again. There was no answer. Cautiously raising the latch, she peered into the room. Beckoning to him, she slipped across the threshold.

IX

The hut was empty. The floor was deep in dust. The ceiling was meshed with cobwebs. Nailed across the window, just as the soldiers had left it, a dingy curtain hung. Striking a match, he held it above his head. At the far end he made out signs of occupancy. On a shelf was a loaf of bread and near by a pitcher. In a corner, spread on the bare boards for a bed, was a wrap. He stooped; it was Santa's cloak of sables.

The match went out. He turned. “How long has she been here?”

“From the time she knew she was suspected.”

“She knew she was suspected at Plymouth. What made her motor all across England to this?” He glanced round with pity at the poverty-stricken forlornness.

“She wanted to be near.”

“What? It would be better to tell me.”

“To the road out.”

He lit a cigarette and considered. “So there are more people in it,” he said at last, “than just the few that I have met! It's an organization. I might have guessed. There are the people who helped the little old lady to visit me undetected. There are the people who entered my room in my absence. There's the foreign gentleman, who couldn't speak English, who called for Santa in his car. But if this hut is on the road out, why was she delaying?”

“For you, perhaps.”

“But she was risking her freedom every second. Why for me, Anna?”

Before he had given her time to answer, his mind had leaped to a new conjecture. “What if she's captured?”

Suddenly the tragedy of this strange woman, temple-dancer, revolutionary, avenger of children, became vivid. Her pain stung him as though he had suffered it himself. He lived again the hunted hours that must have been hers while she had listened in this dusty room. He remembered her fascination, the grayness of her eyes, the fastidiousness of her dress. What a contrast to these surroundings! How often she must have crouched by that window, watching from behind the shabby curtain for the approach of the pursuer! The men she had killed did not matter. Probably they had deserved their death. His pity was reserved for her. She had been the pampered darling of princes. Her whims had been commands to lovers who themselves were rulers.

No present had been too costly to purchase the ecstasy of her complaisance. Her body had been a jewel, guarded, coveted, irrepeatable in its beauty. Crimes had been committed for its possession. And this was her end! He heard in memory the hoarse pleading of her voice, trying vainly to convince him that love could make her good.

The woman at his side was speaking. “We heard no sound. She was armed. If they'd tried to take her, she'd have defended herself.”

His thoughts came back. “Last night. Yes. If they'd taken her in the garden. But they might have known she would be armed. Perhaps they followed her. If they traced her to this hut, they might have waited till she was sleeping----”

She shook her head. “It isn't that. She's grown tired of delaying. She's gone by the road out.”