“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?”