I should have died if you'd left me.” He was feeling both amused and
annoyed at his surrender; at the same time he was on the alert for
developments. She had extinguished the lamps. The sole illumination was
the firelight. For what reason she had done it, whether as an aid to
confession or as a discouragement to watchers, she allowed him to guess.
Whatever the reason, the precaution was wise, but it increased the
atmosphere of liaison. He had pushed back his chair to the extreme
corner of the hearth, so that he was scarcely discernible. She sat
where the glow from the coals beat up into her face. He saw her profile
against a background of darkness.
“Died!” He pursed his lips in masculine omniscience. “You'd have gone to
your bed and had a good night's rest.”
“I shouldn't. I was in terror. I used to be afraid only by night; now
it's both day and night. You're never afraid. You weren't afraid even
when I----. How do you manage it?”
“By doing things, instead of thinking about the things that can be done
to me. I've learned that what we fear never happens--fear's a waste of
time. Fear's imagination playing tricks by pouncing out of cupboards.
It's the idiot of the intellect, gibbering in the attic after nightfall.
IPs a coward, spreading cowardice with false alarms. It's a liar and a
libeller; life's a thousand times kinder than fear would have us paint
it.”
She sighed happily. “It was kind to me to-night.” He waited for her
confession to commence. She leaned back, her eyes half shut, watching
the red landscape in the dancing flames. Time moved gently. Night seemed
eternal. Her contentment proved contagious. Neither of them spoke.
Nothing mattered save the comfort of her presence. In a hollow of the
coals he invented a dream cottage to which he would take her. It had a
scarlet wood behind it and mountains with ruby-tinted caves. As the fire
settled, the mirage faded.
“Does it strike you as comic,” he questioned, “that you and I should sit
here after midnight and that I shouldn't even know what to call you?”
“Varensky. Anna Varensky.”
“Russian?”
She nodded.
“But are you Russian?”
“I'm Ivan Varensky's wife.”
“You say it proudly, as though I ought to know who Ivan Varensky was.”
She turned her head slowly, wondering at him. “There's only one Ivan
Varensky: the man who wanted to be like Christ.”
Hindwood jerked himself into wakefulness. “I'm afraid I need
enlightenment. I don't----”
“You do,” she contradicted patiently, “or rather, you will when I've
helped you to recall him. How hurt he would be, poor Ivan, that a man of
your standing should so soon have forgotten him! He hoped to make such
a noise in the world. After Czardom had fallen, he aimed to be a savior,
healing men with words. But he wanted to be crucified at once. He
cared more for Calvary than for the road that led up to it. He was an
emotionalist, impatient of Gethsemane; it was the crown of thorns that
he coveted. Having only words with which to save humanity, he dashed
all over Russia in special trains, speechifying at every halting-place,
foretelling his approaching end. He had no time to waste; he believed
his days were numbered. His message was always the same, whether he
was addressing the Duma, armies marching into action, or a handful of
peasants: he was about to die for Russia. Then suddenly Trotzky
and Lenine came. They were men who did things; they overthrew his
government. Worse, still, they refused to fulfill his prophecies;
instead of executing him, they bundled him into exile. To be forced to
live, when he had pledged himself to die, was a more cruel crucifixion
than any he had anticipated. He found himself nailed to the cross of
ridicule with no one to applaud his sacrifice. He was left with nothing
to talk about, for the thing he had talked about had not happened. He
was an idealist, an inspirer, a prophet, but because death had avoided
him, there was no gospel to write. Having climbed the long road to
Calvary, he had the tragedy to survive. Don't think I'm belittling him.
I loved him. It was a proud, but not an easy task to be the wife of a
man who wanted to be like Christ.”
She collapsed into silence, sitting lost in thought, her arms hanging
limply by her sides. He wondered what pictures she was seeing in the
fire--armed men marching, revolution, palaces going up in dame.
Of course he remembered the Varensky she had described--the Varensky
who, in the darkest hour of the war, had hurled himself like a
knight-errant to the rescue of the Allies. It was he who was to have
consolidated Russia, leading its millions in an endless tide to the
defeat of the enemies of righteousness. It was freedom he had promised;
freedom to everybody. He had preached that every man was good in
himself, that the things that made men bad were laws. Therefore he had
swept all laws aside. He had done away with compulsion, repealed death
penalties, thrown prisons wide. For a day and night he had held the
stage, a shining figure, adored by despairing eyes. Then the slaves whom
he had released from restraints had surged over him. He had vanished,
trampled beneath ungrateful feet, and Russia had become a mob.
So this was Varensky's wife! He felt awed. The romantic heroism of her
husband's failure clothed her with a wistful sacredness. Three years ago
he could not have approached her. He would scarcely have dared to have
regarded her as a woman. The hysteria of the moment had canonized
her. Streets through which she drove in Petrograd had been lined with
kneeling throngs. There had been something medieval in the spontaneity
of her worship. It had been rumored that she was a bride immaculate;
that her purity was the secret of her husband's strength. Her face made
the story credible. It had the virgin innocence of a saint's. And here
he was allowed to sit beside her, with three years gone, sharing her
hearth in this obscure place of hiding!
“You were a Russian Joan of Arc,” he declared enthusiastically. “How
well I remember all the legends one read about you. And Varensky----
It doesn't matter that he failed; his was the most gallant figure of the
entire war. When every nation was embittered, he set us an example of
how not to hate. He refused to kill, when all of us were slaying. He
had the courage of meekness; in that at least he followed Christ. What
became of him? There was a report----”
“There have been many reports,” she interrupted sadly. “Lest the latest
be true, I wear mourning. I wear mourning for him always. Before his
fall I was his perpetual bride; since his fall I am his perpetual widow.
He wishes to be dead, so to please him-----”
“Then he's still alive?” Immediately he was conscious of the indecency
of his disappointment.
She gazed into the darkness with a mild surprise. “I do not know. I
never know. That's the torture of it. He was always less a man than a
spirit. I begin to think he can not die.”
“You want him----?”
If she had heard his uncompleted question, she ignored it. With folded
hands she stared into the red heart of the fire. Behind her, across the
walls and ceiling as flames leaped and flickered, shadows took fantastic
shapes. When she spoke, as though she were talking to herself, her words
came softly.
“He was such a child--so dear, so vain, so intense, so sensitive.
Why did he marry me, if it was only to resign me? He treated me as he
treated Russia. We were both waiting for him to take us in his arms.
But it was always ideals--things one can't embrace--that drew out his
affections. Had he loved humanity less and individuals more, he
could have gone so far. There was something monstrous about his
self-abnegations. Perhaps he denied himself the things for which he did
not care. He wanted to seem nobler than any one else. Through egotism
he missed his chance. Had he planned to live, he could have killed his
enemies and prevented revolution. There was a time when he could have
crushed both Lenine and Trotzky. But he had to be too noble. 'No,' he
said, 'if their ideal is more right than mine, it will conquer. Truth
can not be silenced by slaughter.' It was his inhuman magnanimity that
defeated him. So Lenine and Trotzky grew strong and crushed him. Because
he had planned to die, millions are starving, and Russia is in chaos.”
“But he doesn't own it?”
“In his heart--yes. Like a General who has blundered, the vision of lost
battlefields is forever in his eyes--the forests of white crosses! His
egotism is gone. He wants to make atonement; to perish seems the only
way. Any one who would delay him, even though she were a woman who loved
him, is his enemy. In his remorse he hounds death as other men avoid it.
He's head of the counterrevolution and goes continually into Russia for
the overthrow of Bolshevism. Not that he hopes for success, but that he
may be put against a wall and shot.”
“And always he returns?”
“Always until this last time.”
Her voice sank away in a whisper. He eyed her with misgiving. What was
it she desired?
“I read something of this. He's been missing for a long time?”
“A long time.”
Coming out of the shadows, so that she could see his face, he drew his
chair close to hers.
“And what has this to do with your confession?”
V
She flinched, as though he had made a motion to strike her. “My
confession! Ah, yes! I forgot.” She tried to smile. Stretching out her
hand, she touched him in a timid appeal for understanding. Taking it
between his own he held it fast.
“Like that,” he said, “as though it were a bird that's tired. It
isn't its own nest, but it's safe and warm; let it rest till it grows
stronger.”
“You're good,” she faltered. “Most good men are hard.”
“Maybe,” he laughed. “But I'm not good. On the other hand, I don't
suppose I'm bad. I'm simply a man who's always had to fight, so I know
what it's like to be up against it. You're up against it at present. You
can see nothing before you but a high stone wall with no way round it.
I've been there, and I've found that when you can't get round a wall,
there's usually a door. What do you say? Shall we look for a door
together?”
“I have.” She sank her head. “Every day and night in three interminable
years I've looked for it. I'm like a person lost in a fog, standing
still, listening, running, falling.”
“Scared to death?”
She nodded.
“Then don't be scared; stop running. Wait for your fear to catch up with
you. If you face it, it'll shrink to nothing. The feet of a pursuer are
like an army. What's causing your panic? Varensky? The thought that he
may not return?”
“No.”
“That he may?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“That he may go on wasting me forever.”
She waited for him to say something. When he remained silent, she bent
forward staring vacantly into the hearth. “Perhaps I'm a coward and
unfaithful. Perhaps if he'd been successful---- I know what he thinks of
me: that I'm a fair-weather wife. But I'm not. If it would help him, I'd
give my life for him. He doesn't want my life. He doesn't want my body.
He wants the one thing that I can't give him--that I should believe in
him. There are people who still believe in him--the Little Grandmother.
There are others, like Prince Rogovich, who pretended to believe in him
that he might use him as a cat's-paw. He says good-by to me for the last
time and vanishes. I wait in retirement for news of his execution. At
the end of two months, three months, half a year, he comes back. Then
the rehearsing for his martyrdom commences all afresh. If there were
anything I could do! But to be wasted for no purpose!”
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.