Soon after the train restarted, Santa rested her hand on his arm. “You
think better of me now. I'm so tired, I should cry if you spoke to me.
Let me sleep on your couch. I'm afraid to be alone.”
He covered her with his rug and did his best to make her comfortable.
She was utterly exhausted. In a few minutes her eyes closed and she was
breathing gently.
Several hours elapsed. She was still sleeping. He was glad not to have
to talk. His mind was filled with a tremendous picture: “There was a
certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared
sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus,
which was laid at his gate full of sores.”
He saw the world that he was leaving, self-satisfied, callous,
well-nourished. He saw the world to which he was going, out of which he
had planned to make a profit--a world picked clean by the crime of
war and peopled by living skeletons. When its pain had passed
beyond endurance, the outcast world would attack the world which was
comfortable. It would come crawling like a beggar to a rich man's door.
When it found the door barred, it would go mad. It had nothing to lose
by violence. With its bare hands it would storm the dwelling.
How would the comfortable world defend itself? The Captain said with
cannon. From a safe distance it would blow the empty bellies into
nothingness. But bread was cheaper than high explosives. Why not fill
the empty bellies instead of shattering them?
He recalled the fields round Amiens, starred with miniature forests of
stiff, protesting crosses. Why had those crosses been planted if it had
not been to teach the living world to share?
A barricade of bread could prevent further bloodshed. It always could
have prevented it. The gray tide of wolf-men could be halted by a
barricade of bread. Strange that no one had ever thought of it! There
had never been a war that a barricade of bread could not have halted.
Back and forth across the Atlantic his food-ships were plying. In
Holland his warehouses were bulging--
He glanced at the sleeping face of Santa--sweet and sad as an avenging
angel's. Her solution of injustice was simple: to slay the wrong-doer
before he could do his wrong. It was her own suffering that had taught
her this cruel mercy. If she, a half-caste, disinherited at birth, could
so risk her soul's salvation for humanity--
He drew himself up sharply. He was turning visionary. At this rate he
would end as a second Varensky. All his plans for capturing power would
be thwarted. He had seen nothing as yet that would corroborate the
Captain's disastrous prophecies.
At Stuttgart he watched the Captain receive another telegram. If the man
had lied to him, what was his purpose? How much did he know? How much
did he infer? Had his discovery that they were not married been an
accident or had he led up to it by strategy? When Vienna was reached, it
would be necessary to throw' him off their track.
They were winding through blue valleys of the Bavarian Tyrol, steeped
in the contentment of autumnal sunshine. Like eagles' nests, built high
above pine-forests, he caught glimpses of _chalets_ perched on narrow
ledges. Here and there they passed villages, mere clusters of dolls'
houses, childish and make-believe as memories of fairyland. He began to
smile at his mood of pessimism. Were Santa to waken, she would refute
the Captain's bogey stories. He bent over her, tempted to rouse her. At
last he shook her shoulder.
“Santa, don't be frightened. I want to ask you a question. What the
Captain said wasn't true?”
She gazed up at him bewildered, dreams still in her eyes; then turned
her face drowsily back to the pillow. “What wasn't true? I don't
understand.”
“The part about Prince Rogovich and blowing those starving wretches back
with cannon.”
She settled herself wearily. “I'm so terribly tired. I don't want to be
reminded.” And then, “It was why I killed him; so that he shouldn't.”