I
SO Anna had turned to him out of all the world!
She had felt so sure of him that she had not even stated the reason for
her urgency--only “_Come at once. I need you_.” That she should have
relied so implicitly on his compliance put him on his honor not to
disappoint her. She must have known that her telegram would find him
involved in important business. The earliest she could have counted
on seeing him must have been to-morrow. He was determined, if it were
humanly possible, to exceed her best expectations; he would see her
to-night. Having phoned for the hotel porter to be sent to him, he
immediately commenced to pack. He recalled the message that Santa had
delivered him: “Varensky's setting out on his last journey. He told
me to say, 'Soon you can have her.'” Did Anna's telegram mean that
Varensky's final journey was ended?
He was throwing his belongings together when the porter entered.
“You wanted me, sir?”
“Yes. What's the first train--the fastest to Budapest?”
“The first, if it's still running, starts from the Nord-Bahnhof within
the hour. But--”
“Then order me a taxi. I'll be ready in ten minutes. Have my bill made
up. Send some one to my secretary's room to fetch down her baggage.”
“Certainly. But--”
Hindwood glanced at the man coldly. “I'm in too much of a hurry for
conversation.”
A little later, as he was pocketing his change, having settled his
account, the cashier addressed him.
He shook his head. “Don't understand.” Then, catching sight of Santa,
he beckoned. “The fellow's trying to say something. Find out what's
troubling him.”
The cashier repeated more earnestly the words that he had previously
uttered.
“He wants to know whether you really think you can leave Vienna,” Santa
translated.
“What's to prevent?” Then he caught her arm, lowering his voice.
“Perhaps they're on to you.”
The Kârtner-Ring was extraordinarily deserted. Against the curb a
wheezing taxi was standing--the only one in sight. Its engine was
running. The bags had been piled on the front seat beside the driver,
evidently very much to his annoyance; he was doing his best to
tumble them back on to the pavement. The hotel porter was vigorously
restraining him. An altercation was in progress which threatened any
minute to develop into a fight.
“What's the matter?”
The porter replied across his shoulder, still holding the bags in place.
“He doesn't want to drive you.”
“Tell him I'll give him five times the legal fare.”
When the offer had been translated, the man seemed mollified.
The porter opened the door. “Quietly. Jump in before he changes his
mind. He promises to do his best.”
“His best! I should think so.”
As the cab moved off, Hindwood missed the porter's parting words. He
turned to Santa. “Do they always come this hold-up game with foreigners
in Vienna?”
“It isn't a hold-up game. He didn't want to drive us. He was afraid.
Something's wrong. Look how empty the streets are. Didn't you see how
white and scared every one was in the hotel? The cashier would have told
us; you wouldn't even let me listen to him.”
“Jealous!” he thought. “It'll be awkward having to take care of both her
and Anna.”
They had driven for ten minutes in silence when Santa spoke again. “It's
a queer way he's taking us.”
“How queer?”
“So round-about.”
“As long as he keeps going, we don't need to worry.”
“But why should he turn up all the side-streets?”
“I don't know. It'll be time to grow nervous when he stops.”
At that moment he stopped, but it was only for a second. Spinning his
cab about, he spurted off in a new direction. Glancing from the window
as he turned, they saw that the main thoroughfare ahead was blocked by
what appeared to be a procession. Street after street he tried, working
round in a circle, never getting any nearer. At last, growing desperate,
he took the plunge, tooting his horn and forcing his way through the
outskirts of the seething mob. By the time Hindwood had ordered him
to turn back it was too late; for a hundred yards behind them, from
pavement to pavement, the thoroughfare was packed with pedestrians and
vehicles, all headed in the one direction. To get out and walk, even
if they had been willing to sacrifice their baggage, was out of the
question. The crowd in front was more dense than the crowd behind. The
air was full of shrieks of fainting women and the shiver of plate-glass
as shop-windows gave way under the pressure. To escape the crush, which
was momentarily increasing, people were clambering to the roof of the
taxi and standing thick along the running-boards.
Santa was speaking in a torrent to the strangers clinging to the doors.
“Can't you stop long enough to tell me what's happening?” Hindwood
interrupted.
She apologized. “I forgot for the moment that you can't speak German.
They're as puzzled as we are. All they know is that they're doing what
every one else is doing. They don't know the cause. The same thing's
happening at every station. A panic's struck Vienna--a foreboding of
disaster. It's a case of nerves. In some places looting has started.
Every one's escaping--the entire population. It's anything to get
westward to France, Switzerland, Germany, away from this nightmare of
starvation. They're storming the trains in the Bahnhof, trying to compel
the engineers to--”
Turning from him, she commenced to ply more questions in her hurried
flow of German.
It was all clear now--the porter's hesitancy, the cashier's earnestness,
the driver's reluctance. They had been trying to prevent him from
hurrying a woman into danger. He had been too obsessed by the thought of
reaching Anna even to pay attention. For confirmation of what Santa
had told him, he had only to glance at the surrounding throng. The lean
multitude was absurdly prepared for its futile exodus. Irrespective of
class, every individual was burdened with whatever he or she had had
time to rescue of the household goods. They carried bundles beneath
their arms and sacks on their backs. Everything on wheels had been
commandeered. Some pushed perambulators, piled high with ill-assorted
belongings; others had harnessed themselves to carts. None of them
could have considered whether his or her presence would be allowed in a
happier country. Obviously over night the half of Vienna could not have
procured the necessary permits to travel.
On the outskirts those who were most desperate, because furthest from
the station, had begun to charge. Hindwood watched the stampede--how
terror was transforming forlorn human beings into animals. They were
of all kinds and sorts, mechanics, waiters, slum-dwellers, merchants,
shop-girls,' demi-mondaines, with here and there a sprinkling of
patrician faces from the palaces of the bankrupt aristocracy. There
were lonely men and women, but for the most part they were grouped
in families, the children dragging at their mother's skirts and
the youngest in the father's arms. They pushed, jostled and fought,
trampling the weak in their frenzy to get forward.
Suddenly the madness of self-preservation froze with horror. At the
end of the street, far up the pale river of gray faces, horsemen were
advancing, standing tall in their stirrups, smiting with their swords.
Santa flung herself to the floor. “Down. Keep down. The children--oh, my
God!”
Like a volley of hail, bullets commenced to patter. They whipped the
street from end to end, hissing in their flight and thudding as they
found their target. The taxi tossed and rocked like a rowboat in a
mill-race. The mob had given way; like water from a burst dam, it
roared between the tall, confining houses. It swept backwards weeping,
bleeding, desperate, exhausted, wilder in its retreat than it had been
in its advance. Behind it came the cavalry, riding it down, firing and
stabbing. In five minutes nothing was in sight, save upset vehicles,
scattered belongings, dead lying awkwardly in the October sunshine and
wounded crawling weakly in search of refuge.
Reaching through the shattered window, Hindwood tapped the driver's
shoulder. “Drive on.”
At the touch the man crumpled. There was a crimson blot in the center of
his forehead.
Santa sat up, staring furiously. “If you'd not refused them bread--”
“I didn't.”
“You did. You were only willing to sell.”
Her eyes were blazing. Her hands were clenched. Her tears fell slowly.
In the terrific silence which followed so much clamor, the street itself
seemed to accuse him. Picking up their bags, he led the way to the
station. Scenes such as the one he had witnessed might be happening in
Budapest. There was no time to be lost.
“Find out whether it's possible to send a wire.”
“Where to?” she asked suspiciously.
“To Amsterdam.”
“What for?”
“Do you need to ask?”
After a hurried conversation with a scared official, she turned. “If
it's to do with food, they'll accept it. The lines may be cut at any
moment.”
He dashed off his telegram. “_Crisis sooner than expected. Without delay
start food-trains under armed guard for Budapest and Vienna_.”
It might spell bankruptcy for him--the ruin of all his plans. He
rebelled against the improvidence of philanthropy, yet dimly he
discerned the proportions of his chance. If he would, he could teach
the world how wars could be stopped. As he watched the message being
dispatched, he wondered why he had sent it. Was he frightened by the
sight of bloodshed, or angered, like Varensky, by an unjust display of
force? Or had he sent it because this maelstrom of human agony swirled
between him and the woman he loved, and food might prove to be the only
means by which she could be rescued? He sought to explain his actions by
business motives: if his food trains were actually on the spot, he could
strike a better bargain with tottering governments.