Long lines of neglected tillage! Deserted farms! Broken fences! A gray
expanse of sky! Knots of peasants trekking always westward! Panting
cattle, nearing the exhaustion point! Creaking carts! Dawn growing
whiter; day growing golden; sunlight fading; night becoming flecked with
stars! Always the rhythm of the engine, the plunging into the distance,
the impatient urgency to thrust forward!
It had been useless to think of traveling by trains; the railways were
too congested. Moreover, they had strongly suspected that he had set
out by car. If the No Man's Land beyond Kovel were his destination,
then Cracow would lie midway on his journey. Cracow was one of the
strong-points in the barricade, where a clump of red flags was flying.
All the traffic was escaping from the danger. If he had chosen that
route, there would be definite news of him. Any one traveling towards
the danger could not help but be remarked.
As they inquired of fugitives, they discovered that two cars were ahead
of them. The first contained a madman, with eyes green as emeralds and a
face white and set as a mask; the second, a dark-haired woman, beautiful
as a fallen angel. The woman seemed to be in pursuit of the man. They
were, perhaps, thirty miles apart. They had thundered by into the
imperiled future as though the self-same devil rode behind them.
What could be Santa's purpose? Anna and he argued the point, sometimes
aloud, more often in their unuttered thoughts. All their old doubts
concerning her rose up rampant. Was she a Bolshevist agent, hurrying
back to sell the last of her secrets? Was her purpose to save or to
betray Varensky?
What had she ever wanted from him? Had she found a quality in his
self-destroying idealism that had called forth her pitying worship? In
her own dark way had she enshrined him in a mysterious corner of her
heart? Had she recognized in him a childlike weakness that had compelled
her protection? Had he stood in the twilight of her life for a door that
might open into ultimate redemption?
Or was it loneliness that had made her follow him--the sure knowledge
that everything was ended? In those seven days, whilst they had made
history together, had she seen something that had tortured her? That she
was not wanted, as he was not wanted? Was it despair that had beckoned
her into the chaos through which he hurried to destruction?
When they reached Cracow it was to find the city deserted. The streets
by which they entered were deathly silent; the doors wide open; the
pavements strewn with furniture which owners had lacked time to rescue.
Here and there were carts which had collapsed, and thin horses which
had died in harness. Even cats and dogs had departed. Terror peered from
behind the blankness of windows. It was like a city pillaged.
Whatever optimisms they had entertained, they knew for certain now that
war had started. Out of sight, across gray wastes to the eastward, gray
ranks of skeletons, armed with nothing but disease, were approaching.
The dread they inspired was so great that outcasts, only a shade less
starving, had stampeded before them.
At a turn they came to the railroad. Here their eyes met a different
spectacle. From a freight-train on a siding men, white to the eyes with
dust, were rolling barrels. They were volunteers recruited from the
safer nations--the first of the new kind of army. They were piling flour
where once they would have been stacking shells. Hindwood recognized the
barrels' markings. His sense of tragedy lightened. Laughing down into
his companion's eyes, he shouted, “Mine! Look, Anna. Mine that I meant
to sell!”
A short-haired girl, in the tattered uniform of the Battalion of Death,
was in charge. Coming up to the car, she saluted smartly. Yes, she had
seen Varensky. It was three hours since he had passed. He had filled up
with water and gasolene, gasolene having arrived on the supply-train.
He had left for Brest-Litovsk, stating that his object was to gain a
respite for the barricade-builders. He proposed to put himself at the
head of the famine-march and to check the rapidity of its advance. After
his departure, the other had panted up--the dark-haired woman--only an
hour behind him.
Wasting no time in conversation, Hindwood imitated Varensky's example.
He was dazed for want of sleep--almost nodding. But the man he had to
save was ahead of him. Having filled his tanks and made sure of his
engine, he started forward.
They were throbbing through empty streets again, when a strange sound
thrilled the silence--a trumpet-call, which rang out sharply across the
housetops and broke off suddenly.
Had they come? He slowed down, prepared to wheel about.
Seeing what was in his thoughts, Anna rested her hand on his arm
reassuringly.
“It's from the tower of St. Mary's. How often I've heard it! Ah, there
it is again!” Gazing up and bending forward, she listened. Then she
spoke, as though addressing some one who walked above the city, “Brave
fellow! Though they've all deserted, you've stayed on.”
“To whom are you talking?”
She explained quickly. Centuries ago the Church of St. Mary's had been
an outpost of Christendom, used as a watch-tower against the invading
Tartar; a soldier had been kept continually stationed there to give
warning on a trumpet of the first approach of danger. In the fourteenth
century, whilst arousing the city, the trumpeter had been struck in the
throat by an arrow. His call had faltered, rallied and sunk. With his
dying breath he had sounded a final blast, which had broken off short.
The broken call had saved Cracow. Ever since, to commemorate his
faithfulness, there had never been an hour, day or night, when his
broken trumpet-call, ending abruptly in an abyss of silence, had not
been sounded from the tower.
Hindwood leant across the wheel, staring dreamily before him. “It might
have been his voice--Varen-sky's. He's like that--a dying trumpeter,
sounding a last warning. I almost believe in him. It's too late----”
“It may not be,” she whispered.
Night was falling. Straining his eyes to keep awake, he drove
impetuously on, forcing a path through the opposing shadows.