“Precisely. But I must first be convinced that the circumstances warrant it.”
“There's one point you've overlooked.” Varen-sky's green eyes narrowed. “Up to the moment you entered this room, I was fully persuaded that I was the man on whom the privilege of paying the price must fall. I'd coveted the privilege. All my life I'd worked for it. If you rob me of it, have you reckoned the cost?”
“In money?”
“In something more valuable. If I live, you can never be Anna's husband.”
Hindwood hated the man for his subtlety. He was being deliberately tempted. He threw a glance toward the sleeping woman in the corner whose fate, as well as his own, he was deciding. Close to him, drawing nearer, he saw the pleading eyes of Santa. He gave his answer.
“I may be the man who was born for this moment. Play fair by me; tell me what's happened.” Varensky rocked himself slowly back and forth. Suddenly he came to rest.
“I'm the thing that's happened. I'm responsible for everything. I've never learnt to let bad alone; in trying to make things better, I make them worse. It was my hand that shot down the crowd at Vienna. It was I who butchered the women and children at the frontier. I'm the force which drives behind the human lice who crawl westward along a thousand roads. You think me mad; but listen. Every freedom gained entails a new bondage. I helped to free Russia from the Czar; in so doing, I prepared the way for Bolshevism. I've fought Bolshevism with my dreams, my happiness, with everything I possess. Bolshevism is overthrown. What have I produced? Chaos.”
“Overthrown! Then that's the meaning of it.” Santa had half risen.
Varensky turned his death-white face on her, chilling her enthusiasm. “It's collapsed like a pack of cards. With it have vanished the last of the restraints. Every Russian's his own master now to choose his own ditch in which to perish. We've destroyed a vision that turned out to be a nightmare, but we've set up nothing in its stead. We, who are idealists, have worked the final disillusion. We've made two hundred millions hopeless. They're fleeing from the emptiness. The contagion of their despair is spreading. You saw its results in Vienna. It runs ahead of them; they're already on the march. They've broken into Poland. They're drawing nearer. How to stop them——?”
Hindwood's lips had squared themselves. “I can stop them. My food-trains will be here by tomorrow. What hungry men need is not political programs, but bread.” Then he added thoughtfully, “I can stop them, if I'm not prevented. There's some one who's playing a different game; he's some one who wants the world to starve. That's what Austria's refusal meant; that's the meaning of these secret signs of rejoicing. He's bigger than any nation. Who is he?”