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.”
VIII
Darkness had long since gathered when they crossed the starvation-line into Austria. Perhaps it was no more than imagination, but he immediately became conscious of a vague depression. Glancing through the misty panes, he espied no signs of life—only bare fields, pollarded trees like gallows, and the sullen profiles of shrouded houses. No trains flashed by, going in the opposite direction. Wayside stations were shuttered. Night was a stagnant tank. In the all-pervading silence the sound of their own going was the only clamor.
It was not until they were nearing Vienna that any lights broke the monotony of the blackness—even these, like lanterns of lonely grave-diggers, were faint and rare. Shadowy apartment-houses and rotting factories looked less like habitations than monstrous sepulchers. It was difficult to believe that this pulseless carcass had once been the Bacchante among modern metropolises—that even at this moment memories of its rhythm were setting the feet of happier streets to music. He caught the vision of other cities after nightfall; New York, a tall white virgin, sheathed in jewels; London, a grimy smith, striking sparks from a giant anvil; Paris, a wanton goddess, smiling through the dusk, her face lit up by fire-fly constellations. How impossible it would be to approach any one of them without becoming aware of its presence! Yet a man might easily travel through Vienna without suspecting that it lay cowering behind the darkness.
It was after midnight when the train halted in the empty cathedral of the Bahnhof. Directly the doors were opened, lean men poured into the compartments, whining for the privilege of handling the baggage. Hindwood delayed until he had allowed the Captain sufficient time to make his exit, then he thought it safe to assist Santa to the platform. Once again, despite the lateness of the hour, it was necessary to go through tedious formalities. The question asked most pressingly, as at the German frontier, was whether they were possessed of fire-arms.