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.”