There was the rustling of footsteps in the grass outside. Letting in a
flood of moonlight, the door was pushed gently open.
“May we enter?”
Without waiting for a reply, a man padded noiselessly across the
threshold. By his peaked head and the litheness of his body, Hindwood
recognized him as Varensky. Behind him, with the mildness of attendant
angels, Anna and the Little Grandmother followed. Just inside the room
he halted.
“What's this?”
The bound face in the square of window had riveted his attention.
“Her husband.”
“But why--?”
Hindwood spoke again. “He had come to take her to be hanged.”
The pale face smiled contemptuously. “Hanging's only a way of dying. Was
that any reason for making him suffer?”
Without further argument, taking command of the situation, he stepped
quickly to the Major's side. Stooping, he cut the bonds and removed the
gag.
“You're free--free to go where you like and to get us all into trouble.
We shall be here for at least an hour, so you'll have time. I landed
without permission in your England this morning. That's a cause for
police interference. My name's Ivan Varensky.”
The Major rose painfully, blinking at the lean, green-eyed stranger
as though he had discovered in him a jester. “There are still the
handcuffs,” he muttered.
When the handcuffs had been knocked off, Varen-sky repeated, “You're
free to go.”
The Major shook himself and resumed his strutting air, like a brave old
rooster who had all but had his neck wrung. “If it makes no difference,
I'll stay.”
With his left eye shut and his head on one side, Varensky regarded him
comically. “No difference! It may. You're a secret service agent; I'm
a revolutionary. You uphold laws; I defy them. You're the servant of
force; I hate every form of compulsion. What difference it makes depends
on yourself--whether you propose to stay as a spy or as a man of honor.”
“As a sportsman who abides by the rules of the game.”
Varensky shrugged his narrow shoulders. “As a sportsman who hunts
women?” He turned tenderly to Santa. “You're famished. We'll cover up
the window and make a light.”
When candles which they had brought had been kindled and the meal
spread, Santa and Hindwood sat down on the floor, facing each other.
While they ate there was dead silence. Hindwood kept catching glimpses
of her eyes. What was to be the end of her? Her expression was stunned.
They both knew what this silence betokened: when the meal was over, her
fate was to be decided. He was aware of each separate personality, as
though each were making an effort to explain itself. What was to be
hoped for from the verdict of such a jury? Every one in the hut, except
Anna and himself, was a fanatic. He did not try to see their faces; all
he saw was their hands as they ministered to him. The hands of Varensky,
half clown's, half martyr's. The wrinkled hands of the old noblewoman,
worn with service, who had lived with outcasts and spent her years in
exile. The hands of Anna, guilty with yearning.
Varensky spoke without looking up. It was as though he were carrying on
a conversation already started. “We can't restore life, so what right
have we to destroy it? To be merciful--that's the only way.”
His green eyes sought the Major's. “We could have killed you
to-night--but we didn't. Have you wondered why? By letting you go, we've
put ourselves in your power. To-morrow you can drag us all to jail.
You're a hard man. You exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
You came here to-night to exact a life. If we had judged you by your own
standards, we should have been justified in giving you no quarter. If
we had, what good would it have done? You'd only have been dead. And if
you'd managed to capture Santa, what good would that have done? To have
had her executed wouldn't have made her a better woman.”
He reached out and took her unwilling hand, bending back the fingers one
by one. “They're beautiful. See how cleverly they work. There's not a
scientist living can reproduce their mechanism. No one knows how they
grew to be like that.”
His tone became tender. “Santa's been bad. She's been treacherous and
cruel: a faithless wife and a menace. Merely to punish her wouldn't undo
her evil. Only she can do that.”
For the first time the Major spoke. “At what are you driving?”
Varensky made no attempt to answer him. He seemed not to have heard. He
sat cross-legged on the floor, folding and unfolding Santa's fingers,
while his grotesque shadow squatted on the wall behind him. He looked
like a kindly, embarrassed boy, trying to say something to the sulky
girl so that it should not sound too wounding.
“I wonder whether Santa's husband ever saw a woman when she was dead.
There's no light in her eyes. She can't say that she's sorry. Last
week I saw hundreds in the ditches about Kiev. They weren't lovely. We
mustn't let our Santa become like that.”
He turned to the Major with a slow smile. “Must we? You wouldn't like to
think of the woman you had loved--”
The Major took a step into the room and stood biting his lips, glooming
down at Varensky.
“You and I, sir, view our duty from hostile standpoints. I care for this
woman infinitely more than you can ever care. But I care still more for
my country. She's betrayed it a score of times. Shall I, because I am
her husband, stand by and allow her to betray it? Had I accomplished the
purpose that brought me here to-night, my heart would have been broken.
To have put handcuffs on her wrists and to have sworn away her life, do
you think it would have cost me nothing? The very judge who sentenced
her would have shunned me.”
The Little Grandmother looked up. She spoke gruffly. “And what would
have been the use of your suffering? Society would have been revenged.
It would have washed its hands, like Pontius Pilate. It would have
smiled smugly, believing she was wrong and it was right. It would have
gone on its way, manufacturing more criminals like her. The old evils
that have made her what she is would have continued, while she--” She
snapped her fingers furiously. “Like the women in the ditches about
Kiev.”
When the room had grown silent, Varensky covered the Major with his
mocking stare.
“You must excuse our Little Grandmother. She feels these things
intensely. More than half her years have been spent in prison.”
The Major pulled himself together. “She needs no excusing. What is it
that you want of me?”
X
Santa's life. It's of no use to you.” He smiled in the midst of his
earnestness. “I'm a boy begging for a broken watch. You were going to
throw it away. I have dreams that I could repair it.”
The Major twitched irritably. “And you talk like a boy. How can I give
you what doesn't belong to me? At every port in Europe the police are
watching. For me to forgive her wouldn't help. It isn't against me that
she's offended; it's against the laws of civilization.”
“I know.” Varensky nodded soothingly. “You're only one of the many
agents of social vengeance. What I ought to have asked you was to give
me the part of her life that does belong to you. She's in your clutches.
Let her escape. Keep silent and drop your pursuit.”
“And if I do?”
Varensky tucked his legs closer under him and bent forward. “Perhaps I
could turn her into a saint.” A note of passionate pleading crept into
his voice. “She loves children. It was how her wickedness started. She
was blind and mistaken, and all her crimes were committed for children.
A woman who loves children must be good. She's done abominable things.
She could become magnificent if she would do good with an equal
violence.”
The Major glanced at the subject of these prophecies, sitting in their
midst, rebelliously silent. He said wearily: “Mere words! You offer me
no proof!”
The white face seemed to grow till it filled the room. The green eyes
glowed like emeralds. They were uncanny and hypnotic. Language came in a
torrent. “It isn't her body--it's her soul. If she were to die now, what
would happen to her? I tried to save the soul of a nation. Let me do
for Santa what I couldn't do for Russia--prove that mercy restores where
punishment destroys. There's been too much killing. The world grows
worse instead of better. It's been going on for ages, this hanging and
guillotining and bludgeoning. It's reformed nothing. It's the might is
right of the jungle, the justice of apes and cavemen. Revenge, whether
it's carried out by tooth and claw or by law-courts and armies, never
heals anything; it always leaves a bruise. The face of Europe is bruised
beyond recovery by our last display of justice. Its fields are rotten
with corpses. Shall we add one more to the many--a woman's?”
He paused, trembling like a leaf. When the Major only frowned, he sank
back exhausted.
“If you'd seen what I've seen--” His head sagged stupidly. “If you'd
seen what I've seen--miles of men, all slaughtered; women dead of
starvation, children hunting in packs like wolves. And all because
there's no mercy. If you'd seen, you couldn't kill anything.”
The candles ceased to gutter. Shadows huddled motionless. The very
silence seemed accused.
Hindwood rose. He could endure the tension no longer. “I know nothing
about her soul and not much about her guilt. All I know is that she's
a woman at the end of her tether who's been handed one of the rawest of
raw deals. That the world's been hard on her won't excuse her. We
can't alter the world over night. If she's caught, as she may be at any
moment, it'll be all up with her. I don't care what she's done or how
much I lose by it, I'm not going to stand by and see her taken.”
The Major swung round. “Nor am I. But how to avoid it?”
Hindwood showed his suspicion of this sudden conversion. “Tell me,”
he answered cautiously, “have you handed in any reports, I mean
officially--about my knowledge of Santa?”
“Beyond the fact that you crossed on the same boat with her, you've not
been mentioned.”
“And there's no one in your service, besides yourself, who has the least
idea of her whereabouts?”
“No one.”
“Then it can be managed.”
He was dimly conscious of the pale expectancy of the faces lifted up to
him. He felt that he was on the edge of a whirlpool into which he was
being slowly dragged. Even at this last moment he made an effort to
resist it. Then it seemed to him that in the heart of its eddies he saw
a woman. She grew distinct; her face was Anna's.
“Let me explain,” he said. “I'm neither humanitarian nor idealist. I
have no fantastic hopes of turning sinners into saints. I'm head of a
group of American financiers, and I'm in Europe to employ its starving
peoples. Don't misunderstand me. The result of my mission may be
philanthropic, but its purpose is to make a profit. Since the war
Europe's become a bargain-counter where everything's exposed for
sale--everything except food. I can supply food. With food I can
purchase, for a fraction of their value, railroads, factories, labor. I
tell you this so that you may not doubt me when I say that I have it in
my power to protect her. Once out of England, no escaping criminal could
find a safer place of refuge than in my company. I have influence with
all governments; with food I can stop revolution. None of them dares
suspect me. I propose that I should take Santa with me. I travel
on diplomatic passports; with me she'll have no trouble in crossing
frontiers.”
The silence that greeted his offer lengthened. At a loss to account for
it, he glanced from face to face.
“Have I offended?”
It was Santa who replied. Leaping up in their midst, tattered and
disheveled, she threatened them like dogs whom she would beat aside.
“Beasts!” A sob caught her breath. “Is it impossible even for you, who
call yourselves my friends, to believe any good of me? I swear before
heaven he has no love for me.”