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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Vultures
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VULTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ALL AT SEA
+
+Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad
+Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall,
+thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls'
+school as “poking.” He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead,
+sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world
+was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin
+first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now
+moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was
+a dry, hard person, who had suffered from nothing but chronic
+dyspepsia--had suffered from it for fifty years or so.
+
+“Fine weather,” he said. “Women will be coming on deck--hang the fine
+weather.”
+
+And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+
+“Joseph,” said Miss Mangles, “growls over his meals like a dog.”
+
+The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
+man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
+large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
+better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
+his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
+characteristics are conducive to hostility.
+
+The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
+feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
+to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
+There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
+When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
+did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+
+There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business
+men--Joseph P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a
+sea of commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four
+days that had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made
+anything, or sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready
+for production at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and
+trade. Neither was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and
+yet both were difficult to get on with. For human confidences must
+be mutual. It is only to God that man can continue telling, telling,
+telling, and getting never a word in return. These two men had nothing
+to tell their fellows about themselves; so the other passengers drifted
+away into those closely linked corporations characteristic of steamer
+life and left them to themselves--to each other.
+
+And they had never said things to each other--had never, as it were, got
+deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+
+Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under
+a strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen
+in the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite straight, and
+cut across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a direct, stern look
+to dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he turned slowly, and
+looked down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance.
+He seemed to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken. And Mangles
+met the glance with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark. But
+Mangles spoke first, after all.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “the women will be on deck soon--and my sister Jooly.
+You don't know Jooly?”
+
+He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+
+“I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon,” said
+Cartoner. “She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was pretty.”
+
+“That wasn't Jooly,” said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+
+“Who was it?” asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who
+have no self-consciousness--who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as
+are the majority of men and women.
+
+“My niece, Netty Cahere.”
+
+“She is pretty,” said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have
+meant much to feminine ears.
+
+“You'll fall in love with her,” said Mangles, lugubriously. “They all
+do. She says she can't help it.”
+
+Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+reply.
+
+“Distresses her very much,” concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his
+cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side
+of his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss
+Netty Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal
+environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more
+especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what there was in
+Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in the present.
+
+The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck.
+She was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven
+young man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He
+was speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an
+expression of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering blue
+eyes and a complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never
+altered. She was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly
+deprecating manner, as if her own opinion of herself were small, and she
+wished the world to accept her at that valuation. She made no sign
+of having perceived her uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth
+officer, who reluctantly mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back
+as he went.
+
+Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+
+“She don't like smoke,” he growled.
+
+Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay,
+when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that
+he was not alone.
+
+“I suppose,” she said, “that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+though he was very young--quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor.”
+
+She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart
+full of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+
+“I wish some of my relations were sailors,” replied Mr. Mangles, in his
+deepest tones. “Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my friend,
+Mr. Cartoner--Miss Cahere.”
+
+He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious wave
+of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it was his
+eyes that turned away first.
+
+“You have not been down to meals,” he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+
+“No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends on
+board?”
+
+“There are very few ladies. I know none of them.”
+
+“But I dare say some of them are nice,” said Miss Cahere, who evidently
+thought well of human nature.
+
+“Very likely.”
+
+And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+thoughtfulness.
+
+Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes--dark
+lashes around blue eyes--with a guileless and wondering admiration. He
+certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air
+which bespeaks good breeding.
+
+“Have you seen the ship on the other side?” she asked, after a pause; “a
+sailing ship. You cannot see it from here.”
+
+As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot
+from whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and Mr.
+Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-case.
+
+“There,” said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+“One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much
+nearer. That ship's officer pointed it out to me.”
+
+Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+
+“I think,” said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice--she had a rather
+confidential manner--“I think sailors are very nice, don't you?
+But . . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?”
+
+“It depends what you were going to say.”
+
+Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had been
+about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself. She
+glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+
+“I think I prefer soldiers,” she said, thoughtfully.
+
+Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the ship
+he had been told to look at.
+
+“Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave
+enough to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most
+people are afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before.”
+
+“No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+each other.”
+
+Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+
+“Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service,” said Miss
+Cahere, carelessly.
+
+For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body
+of amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+
+Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house
+for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather
+side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without
+explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter.
+But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held
+her there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat,
+looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him to come
+to her assistance. The same gust of wind made the steamer lurch so that
+Cartoner had to grasp Miss Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+
+“Thank you,” she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the
+incident had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned notions,
+and was not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met girls who are
+friendly in five minutes with men and women alike.
+
+When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards
+him, and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his returning
+his cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the
+cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
+
+“No,” she said, firmly, “you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner--is it not
+foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not
+care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now.”
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder
+and looked down at him.
+
+“As if it mattered whether I like it or not,” she said. “And I do like
+it--I like the smell of your cigars.”
+
+Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which
+was perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+tenderness.
+
+“As if it mattered what I think,” she said, humbly, again.
+
+“Always like to conciliate a lady,” said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
+
+“Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and
+her frocks,” answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner
+was, nevertheless, able to overhear.
+
+“Where is your aunt Jooly?” inquired the old man, hurriedly. “I thought
+she was coming on deck.”
+
+“So she is,” answered Netty. “I left her in the saloon. She is quite
+well. She was talking to some people.”
+
+“What, already?” exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head
+with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from
+whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+
+“My sister Jooly, sir,” explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, “is no doubt
+known to you--Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City.”
+
+Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived
+in the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible
+to be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
+
+“Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?” suggested Mr.
+Mangles, not unkindly.
+
+“No--I think not.”
+
+“Her line is--at present--prisons.”
+
+“I have never been in prison,” replied Cartoner.
+
+“No doubt you will get experience in course of time,” said Mr. Mangles,
+with his deep, curt laugh. “No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets
+on platforms and talks.”
+
+“What about?” asked Cartoner.
+
+Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
+
+“About most things,” he answered, gravely; “chiefly about women, I take
+it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them.
+And she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick
+there. She had found out what very few women know--namely, that when
+women work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody
+wants. So Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment,
+and pointing out to the public and the administration many ways in which
+women may be profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption
+of the government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice
+berth for which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments
+have no gumption, sir. And--”
+
+“Here is Aunt Julie,” interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+
+As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the
+second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship
+and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty
+Cahere's face--perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes--for
+he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his
+face.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNAL HOUSE
+
+Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet--where the spicy odors of
+chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray
+sky--there stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called
+no one knows and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square
+house of the Jacobean period--presumably because it is so hidden by
+trees, so wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get
+at, that its outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+
+It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of
+the tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is
+haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they
+are never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted
+them shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A
+side gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall,
+up an alley, is labelled “Tradesman's Entrance,” but the tradesmen never
+linger there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin,
+blue milk on that threshold. The butcher's chariot wheels never tarry at
+the corner of that alley. Indeed, the local butcher has no chariot. His
+clients mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them
+wrapped in a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class
+buyers wear a cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of
+hair by a hat-pin.
+
+The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He
+goes slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before
+he tips his measure.
+
+This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he could
+live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of it--a
+noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was once a
+family mansion; later it was described as a riverside residence, then as
+a quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price fell with a crash,
+and an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by her relations to live
+in it, with two servants, who were frequently to be met in Gravesend in
+the evening hours, at which time, it is to be presumed, the elderly lady
+of weak intellect was locked in the Signal House alone. But the house
+never had a ghost. Haunted houses very seldom have. The ghost was the
+mere invention of some kitchen-maid.
+
+Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+foreigner took it--a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and
+the river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was not
+preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He was
+well known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable suburb for
+a desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to make; and he was
+delighted at the cheapness of the house, the greenness of the old lawn,
+the height of the grimy trees within the red brick wall.
+
+He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his throat
+in the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had obviously
+been designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the Signal
+House occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it up
+altogether, and tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years, while
+the Russian banker extended his business and lived virtuously elsewhere.
+Then he suddenly began using the house again as a house of recreation,
+and brought his foreign servants, and his foreign friends and their
+foreign servants, to stay from Saturday till Monday.
+
+And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played
+bowls on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors
+could hear them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the
+grimy trees and the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried
+much about the Signal House; for they were a busy people who lived all
+around, and had to earn their living, in addition to the steady and
+persistent assuagement of a thirst begotten of cement dust and the
+pungent smell of bone manure. One or two local amateurs had made sure
+of the fact that there was nothing in the house that would repay a
+burglarious investigation, which, added to the fact that the police
+station is only a few doors off, tended to allay a natural curiosity as
+to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+
+When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and usually
+told the cabman when his services would again be required. He came
+thus with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and came
+without luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab, carried
+some parcels, presumably of refreshments. These grave gentlemen were,
+it appeared, about to enjoy a picnic at the Signal House--possibly a
+tea-picnic in the Russian fashion.
+
+The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the
+back of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at
+the closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build would
+allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who seemed to
+know his bearings.
+
+“Well, mister,” he said, in a Northern voice, “another of your little
+jobs?”
+
+The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the
+vehicle had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the
+question.
+
+“Yes, my fren',” he said, “another of my little jobs. I hope you are
+well, Captain Cable?”
+
+But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+conventions. He was obviously well--as well as a hard, seafaring life
+will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man,
+with a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a
+little piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His
+eyes were blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart,
+but it was certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick
+coat of blue pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but because
+it was his best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black
+felt. It had perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years
+earlier. He wore no gloves--Captain Cable drew the line there. As for
+the rest, he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig.
+
+“And yourself?” he answered, mechanically.
+
+“I am very well, thank you,” replied the polite banker, who, it will
+have been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the
+reader. The truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously
+Russian that the plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of
+consonants. “It is an affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you,
+but I think they do not speak English, except your colleague, the other
+captain, who speaks a little--a very little.”
+
+As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+awaiting them.
+
+“This is Captain Cable,” he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign
+ways; but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn,
+just to show that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the
+conversation.
+
+“Tell 'em,” he said, “that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+clean.”
+
+He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken
+metaphorically.
+
+The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions,
+rather markedly and with much deference.
+
+“You're speakin' French,” interrupted Captain Cable.
+
+“Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?”
+
+“Not me,” returned Captain Cable, affably. “They're all one to me.
+They're all damn nonsense.”
+
+He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the
+social station of the speaker.
+
+The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He was
+a tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair and
+mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were dark,
+and he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which had been
+placed near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a cedar-tree, and
+his manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in his daily life he
+had always been looked up to and obeyed without question.
+
+“Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands,” he said.
+
+And the banker replied:
+
+“Oui, mon Prince.”
+
+But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the others,
+the youngest of the group--a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy, fair
+mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+
+“My father,” he said, in perfect English, “says that we also are plain
+men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours.”
+
+He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it
+had been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not
+like these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the
+young man.
+
+The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted
+group seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat
+down last, was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown,
+and was mostly hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a
+Northerner, the abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark
+of the other element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable
+looked at him hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they
+sat next to each other at one side of the table, and faced the three
+landsmen. Again Captain Cable spoke first.
+
+“Provided it's nothing underhand,” he said, “I'm ready and willing.
+Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God--them's my risks!
+I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives--”
+
+“There are explosives,” admitted the banker.
+
+“Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my hatches.
+Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face.”
+
+“There are cartridges,” said the young man who had shaken hands.
+
+“That'll do,” said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+towards the banker, added, “Now, mister,” and sat back in his chair.
+
+“It is a very simple matter,” explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+voice. “We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is
+some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters.
+There is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you
+understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost.”
+
+The banker paused for breath.
+
+“I understand,” said Captain Cable. “It's the same with me and my ship.
+There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's
+neck or nothing with me.”
+
+And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+respect, nothing.
+
+“I understand right enough,” he added, with an affable nod to the three
+foreigners.
+
+“You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in
+the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the _Olaf_,
+Captain Petersen--sitting by your side.”
+
+Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+
+“Thought you was a seafaring man,” he said. And Captain Petersen replied
+that he was “Vair pleased.”
+
+“The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable.”
+
+“I don't deny,” replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen
+out of the corner of his eye, “that I have been there before.”
+
+“You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a
+sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber
+waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+captain?”
+
+“To-morrow,” replied the captain. “Ship's lying in the river now, and if
+these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--”
+
+“No, I do not think we shall have time for that!” put in the banker,
+hastily. “And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your
+meeting-place. You have your charts?”
+
+By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years
+he had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain
+sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the
+overhanging trees.
+
+“Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much,” he said,
+apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+
+The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the
+action, looked at him sharply.
+
+“Seafaring man?” he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his
+voice.
+
+“Not by profession, only for fun.”
+
+“Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet
+found out where the fun comes in!”
+
+“This gentleman,” explained the banker, “his Ex--Mr.--” He paused, and
+looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+
+“Mr. Martin.”
+
+“Mr. Martin will be on board the _Olaf_ when you meet Captain Petersen
+in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that Captain
+Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The
+two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson
+undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my
+fren'?”
+
+“My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious
+little of that,” replied Captain Cable.
+
+He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+
+“There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for us
+two--us seafaring men?”
+
+“There is five hundred pounds for each of you,” replied the white-haired
+gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+
+Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+
+“I like to deal with a gentleman,” he said, gruffly.
+
+“And so do I,” replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+
+Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A SPECIALTY
+
+A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the
+breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet
+and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like
+a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad
+daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and
+day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three
+weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is
+ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and
+the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+
+There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill
+is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably
+an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the
+waste-places of the world--a place left clean on sailors' charts; no
+one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have
+earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never
+relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their
+embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp.
+Their story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and
+stored beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle
+the ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on
+these waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea,
+where it blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the
+world is blue and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on
+these coasts.
+
+“Barrin' fogs--always barrin' fogs!” Captain Cable had said as his last
+word on leaving the Signal House. “If ye wait a month, never move in a
+fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!”
+
+And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one
+of those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or
+reason.
+
+At sunset the _Olaf_ had crept cautiously in from the west--a
+high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with
+her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like
+a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who
+moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and
+a little dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every
+current.
+
+Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a
+half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then
+he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he
+rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped
+dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then
+Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high
+forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The _Olaf_ was anchored at
+the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no
+vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went
+down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into
+night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below
+the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its
+winking, wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+
+Here the _Olaf_ rode out the gale that raged all through the night, and
+in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the northwest
+wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to make a
+sea big enough to affect large vessels. The _Olaf_ rode easily enough,
+and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time,
+throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at
+its bath.
+
+Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and
+lively in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of
+the black sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost
+in the ample folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+
+“It remains to be seen,” he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+“whether that little man will come to us in this.”
+
+“He will come,” said Captain Petersen.
+
+Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things--at the timidity
+and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad weather, at
+life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people who find
+life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that it is
+easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells
+that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and
+chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The
+gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the
+happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin
+Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy
+cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim
+pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea,
+and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain
+Petersen on the back.
+
+“Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly
+amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy,
+my friend?”
+
+Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+
+“We are putting our necks within a rope,” he said.
+
+“Not your neck--only mine,” replied Martin. “It is a necktie that one
+gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so
+free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine!
+The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there
+is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his
+life--that old man, eh?”
+
+“It is all very well for you,” said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning
+his gloomy eyes towards his companion. “A prince does not get shot or
+hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas.”
+
+“Ah! you think that,” said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. “One can
+never tell.”
+
+Then he broke into a laugh.
+
+“Come!” he said, “I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come
+on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of a
+man.”
+
+“If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,”
+ grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
+
+“He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness.”
+
+“He is probably afraid--” Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+laboriously on to the rail.
+
+“Of what?” inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+
+“Of a woman.”
+
+And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+aloft.
+
+They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
+breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
+that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
+Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
+horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
+approaching before the wind.
+
+Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the
+water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the
+beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till
+the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He
+disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again
+astern of the _Olaf_, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan
+of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very different
+kind of sailor to the careful captain of the _Olaf_. His low decks were
+clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--green and white.
+As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved
+his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.
+
+Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that
+still broke over the bows. The crew of the _Olaf_, crowding to the rail,
+looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of their
+dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost under
+water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable
+stood swaying on the bridge--a little, square figure in gleaming
+oilskins--and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+
+He passed ahead of the _Olaf_ and anchored there, paying out cable as if
+he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a
+sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port
+of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his
+business was, this seaman knew it well.
+
+No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat,
+and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity.
+“He is going to try and get to us!” he said, pessimistically, and went
+forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this
+Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing
+Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope--cleverly
+thrown--coiled out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's
+face.
+
+A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the _Olaf_ and shook
+hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince Martin,
+who held out his hand.
+
+“Glad to see you, Captain Cable,” he said. Cable finished drying the
+salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook
+hands.
+
+“Suppose you thought I wasn't coming,” he said, suspiciously.
+
+“No, I knew you would.”
+
+“Glad to see me for my own sake?” suggested the captain, grimly smiling.
+
+“Yes, it always does one good to see a man,” answered Prince Martin.
+
+“They tell me you're a prince.”
+
+“That is all.”
+
+The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+
+“Makings of a man as well, perhaps,” he said, doubtfully. Then he turned
+to cast an eye over the _Olaf_.
+
+“Tin-kettle of a thing!” he observed, after a pause.
+
+“My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small.
+Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and
+get our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if
+it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work
+all night?”
+
+“I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is.”
+
+The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+
+“Dammy, you're the right sort!” he muttered, looking aloft at the
+rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the
+privilege of the British sailor.
+
+Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on
+board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle “ship-shape and
+Bristol fashion,” and refused to remain on board the _Olaf_ for
+luncheon.
+
+“We've got a bit of steak,” he said, conclusively, and clambered over
+the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of
+fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small
+steamer to the large one.
+
+The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon--men who,
+as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in
+harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or
+a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+
+There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after
+dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost
+noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's
+crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun
+which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince
+Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.
+
+Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened,
+and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the
+transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out
+of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the
+other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the
+creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three
+men who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee
+together in the cabin of the _Olaf_.
+
+“Likely as not,” said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, “we
+three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they
+did see me.”
+
+“We can never tell,” said Martin, optimistically.
+
+“Of course,” the captain went on, “I can hold me tongue. That's
+agreed--we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely
+to pay for a word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper
+that I could put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has
+had a hand in some queer political pies.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Martin, with his gay laugh, “and kept it clean all the
+same.”
+
+“That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+father for my money in three days' time--barrin' fogs. And I'll tell him
+I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's a
+handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly.”
+
+Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+sea-boots.
+
+Half an hour later the _Olaf_ was alone on that shallow sea, which
+seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a
+room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TWO OF A TRADE
+
+“His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard,” a witty Frenchwoman had
+once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin
+alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French
+have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as
+the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a
+moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+
+The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear
+it--Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker--and made that man Paul
+Deulin's friend for the rest of his life. As there is _point de culte
+sans mystere_, so also there can be no lasting friendship without
+reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of the
+world--although they had in common more languages than may be counted on
+the fingers--they knew but little of each other.
+
+If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
+green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring
+to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole
+harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other
+hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will
+discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.
+
+Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
+they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
+to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his
+own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of
+the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
+opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted
+in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
+represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which
+is the language of diplomacy, and means war.
+
+For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
+it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+
+“The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
+in one place at a time,” Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years
+his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
+rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
+place where their services were urgently needed.
+
+“If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during
+a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are.”
+ Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
+imperturbable smile.
+
+Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
+captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
+vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
+a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
+during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
+remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
+with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
+quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
+fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
+only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
+manufactured their own thoughts.
+
+Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
+was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+
+“I always cross the road,” he said, “when I see Cartoner on the other
+side. If I did not, he would go past.”
+
+This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
+England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
+a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that
+direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.
+Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall,
+avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are
+content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover,
+such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often
+happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.
+
+Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune,
+or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall,
+spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm
+possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of
+a great land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked
+with Cartoner.
+
+“I permit myself a question,” he said. “When did you return from Cuba?”
+
+“I landed at Liverpool last night.”
+
+Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.
+Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried
+behind those smiling eyes.
+
+“I am in London, as you see,” said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+question. “I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may
+suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us
+hope we may have another little . . . errand together--eh?”
+
+As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman
+who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look
+curiously at the two men.
+
+“You are dressed in your best clothes,” said Deulin, after a pause; “you
+are going to pay calls.”
+
+“I am going to call on one of my old chiefs.”
+
+“Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on a
+new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk to
+a clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all your
+old chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment since you
+made your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men--eh?”
+
+“She will be glad to see you,” said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+“Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going. She
+might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy one.”
+
+“I always go to see them when I am in town,” said Cartoner, who usually
+confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily intercourse.
+
+“And he--how is he?”
+
+“He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long in
+many climates. She is always anxious about him.”
+
+“It is the penalty a woman pays,” said Deulin. “To love and to be
+consumed by anxiety--a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should
+have gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want her
+good services--again.”
+
+And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+
+“I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of course,
+you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw.”
+
+“I know the history of Poland,” answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his
+head a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead
+a burden of memories and knowledge of which his brain was always
+conscious--as a man may stand in the centre of a great library, and
+become suddenly aware that he has more books than he can ever open and
+understand.
+
+“Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more history
+that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and Heaven
+knows that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I never look
+into a book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are in London. I
+give you that--to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and son. It is
+not for them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take care of
+themselves--though they will not do that. It does not run in the family,
+as you know, who read history books.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner
+of St. James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been
+passed in London streets. For it must be remembered that English traffic
+is different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+
+“There is a girl,” pursued the Frenchman. “Families like the Bukatys
+should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is
+as gay as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old
+ruffian--and my very dear friend.”
+
+“And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?” inquired
+Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+
+“That I leave to Lady Orlay,” replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who
+abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.
+
+“Yes,” he said, ignoring the incident, “I would not presume to dictate.
+All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who
+has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father
+who is a plotter and an old ruffian--a Polish noble, in fact--and a
+brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I
+should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the
+world, practically alone--on the hard, hard upper-class world--with only
+one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on a
+shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps,
+of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman--and,
+vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.'”
+
+“And my accomplished aunt . . .” suggested Cartoner.
+
+“Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh
+than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of
+common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation.”
+
+As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last
+he broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly
+following the stream of his own thoughts.
+
+“Who is Joseph P. Mangles?” he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+
+“An American gentleman--the word is applicable in its best sense--who
+for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the
+most terrible sister a man ever had.”
+
+“So much I know.”
+
+Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+
+“Then you have met him--that puts another complexion on your question.”
+
+“I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him.”
+
+“And that is all you know about him?”
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+“Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on.”
+
+“What is he?” repeated Cartoner.
+
+“He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor
+devil--like you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time kicking
+his heels in New York, or wherever they kick their heels in America.
+The rest of his time he is risking his health, or possibly his neck,
+wherever it may please the fates to send him. If he had been properly
+trained, he might have done something, that Joseph P. Mangles; for he
+can hold his tongue. But he took to it late, as they all do in America.
+So he has come across, has he? Yes, the storm-birds are congregating, my
+silent friend. There is something in the wind.”
+
+Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed it.
+
+“Was that girl with them?” he inquired presently--“Miss Netty Cahere?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I always make love to Miss Cahere--she likes it best.”
+
+Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare
+that his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not
+speak again until they had walked some distance northward of Piccadilly,
+and stopped before a house with white window-boxes. Several carriages
+stood at the other side of the road against the square railings.
+
+“Is it her day?” inquired Deulin.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+
+“And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since
+we are here, let us go in--with a smile on the countenance, eh? my brave
+Cartoner.”
+
+“And a lie on the tongue.”
+
+“There I will meet you, too,” replied Deulin, looking into his
+card-case.
+
+They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a
+number of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come
+together. It was observable that this was not a congregation of
+fashionable or artistic people; for the women were dressed quietly, and
+the men were mostly old and white-haired. It was also dimly perceptible
+that there was a larger proportion of brain in the room than is allotted
+to the merely fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic
+and pictorial, which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover,
+scraps of conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude
+that the house was in its way a miniature Babel.
+
+The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake
+hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious
+group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived
+Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He
+seemed to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length
+went to meet Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and
+indefinable family resemblances which start up at odd moments became
+visible.
+
+“I want you particularly to-morrow night,” said the lady; “I have some
+people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening.”
+
+And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+Cartoner's elbow again.
+
+“Here,” he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own
+tongue, “I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre
+Bukaty,” he added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy,
+white hair, and the air of a mediaeval chieftain, “allow me to present
+my old friend Cartoner.”
+
+The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin
+still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn
+towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had
+a manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl
+of open air and active tastes.
+
+“Princess Wanda,” said the Frenchman, “my friend Mr. Cartoner.”
+
+The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity
+seemed suddenly reflected in them.
+
+“He is the best linguist in Europe,” said Deulin, in a gay whisper;
+“even Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels.”
+
+And he himself spoke in Polish.
+
+Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place,
+where human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books
+was folded over.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he
+would have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading
+before facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service.
+But he was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been
+bestowed upon the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the
+contempt hurled by his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon
+Commerce as represented in Poland by the thrifty German _emigre_.
+
+The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably
+bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great
+height as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact,
+he had grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild
+early sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething
+in its midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
+
+The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London.
+Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough,
+he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile,
+which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding
+city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
+
+“They do not take me seriously,” he said to his intimate friends; “they
+do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall
+see.”
+
+And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live
+in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact
+that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times,
+when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to
+follow him to the death--which is the way of the world. “You have but to
+hold up your hand,” cries the faithful follower. But wise men know
+that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
+impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
+centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
+off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian,
+as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
+nothing could ever smooth him.
+
+He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
+the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
+said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
+Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+
+“It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but
+English, and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest
+people in the world--you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your
+pardon. Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel in
+Kensington--will you come? That is the address.”
+
+And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner,
+after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which
+was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning
+speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better
+equipments with which to face the world.
+
+“Yes,” he said at length; “it will give me much pleasure.”
+
+The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was
+there to need reflection in such a small question?
+
+“At five o'clock,” he said. “We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea
+you drink in this country.”
+
+And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People whose
+lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the smallest
+jests.
+
+It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted by
+a page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in Kensington.
+The Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black. There is in some
+Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn until Poland is
+reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like her father and her
+brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her being, such as is
+often found in slightly made persons.
+
+“I came as early as I could,” said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the clock
+struck.
+
+The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had
+not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather
+naïve statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and
+glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a
+chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+
+“That is kind of you,” she said, speaking English without the least
+suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her life.
+“My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are not
+only taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a minute. He
+has just been called away.”
+
+“It was very kind of him to ask me to call,” replied Cartoner.
+
+There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite
+new to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a
+man who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going
+straight towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come
+to pay an idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush into
+conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment in it.
+His hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this as
+he took a chair near the window. He was probably ten years older than
+herself, and gave the impression of experience and of a deep knowledge
+of the world. From living much alone he had acquired the habit of
+wondering whether it was worth while to say that which came into his
+mind--which is a habit fatal to social success.
+
+“Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night,” said the princess, following
+the usual instinct that silence between strangers is intolerable. “He
+talked a great deal of you.”
+
+“Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much.”
+
+“He accuses you of talking too little,” said Wanda, with some spirit.
+
+“You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid,
+princess.”
+
+“Which is diplomacy?” she suggested.
+
+“Which is diplomacy.”
+
+“Then I think you are both great artists,” she said, with a laugh, as
+the door opened and her father entered the room.
+
+“I only come to ask you a question--a word,” said the prince. “Heavens!
+your English language! I have a man down-stairs--a question of
+business--and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the meaning of
+the word jettison?”
+
+Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+
+“Ah!” cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, “of course.
+How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will
+excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea.”
+
+And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
+so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
+
+The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had
+found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their
+knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public
+man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his
+advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in him
+that unknown quantity which the world must needs think magnificent.
+
+“I want you to tell me all you know about him,” said the princess in her
+brisk way. “He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
+not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort
+of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love
+and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married
+already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy.
+But I don't. He has no wife--unless he has two.”
+
+“I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career.”
+
+“I do not care about his career,” said the princess, lightly. “I go
+deeper than careers.”
+
+She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay,
+blue eyes.
+
+“A man's career is only the surface of his life.”
+
+“Then some men's lives are all surface,” said Cartoner.
+
+Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+
+“Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse,” she replied.
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
+who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
+decisive views upon it.
+
+“What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping
+when expedient--and avoiding collisions?” he inquired.
+
+“I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally,” she answered,
+“and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness
+lay that way.”
+
+“Yes,” he laughed. “You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as I
+saw you.”
+
+“One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite
+patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness.”
+
+“Now you have come down to a mere career again,” said Cartoner.
+
+“Not necessarily.”
+
+The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+
+“What are you people discussing,” he asked, “so gravely?”
+
+He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for
+he had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+
+“I do not quite know,” answered Cartoner, slowly. “The princess was
+giving me her views.”
+
+“I know,” retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. “They are
+long views, those views of hers.”
+
+Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and
+looked out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which
+caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any
+man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of
+thoughtful attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the _Minnie_, crossing
+the street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business
+acquaintance of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+
+Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.
+He had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and
+out of the _Minnie's_ hatches.
+
+The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.
+The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and
+Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception
+given by the Orlays that evening.
+
+“You're going, of course?” said the prince.
+
+“Yes, I am going.”
+
+“You go to many such entertainments?”
+
+“No, I go to very few,” replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+speculative way.
+
+Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission
+of the usual “Well, I must be off,” or any such catch-word. He certainly
+left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.
+
+He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+vehicle.
+
+“Westminster Bridge,” he said.
+
+He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down
+to the steamboat-landing.
+
+“Where do you want to go to?” inquired the gruff, seafaring
+ticket-clerk.
+
+“As far as I can,” was the reply.
+
+A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over
+the rudder. He must have known that the _Minnie_ was so constructed that
+she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once.
+It was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the passenger
+traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having
+leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was
+natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart
+seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage
+of this affability to make inquiries about the _Minnie_. He knew,
+perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side
+worker.
+
+The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the
+Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of
+steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority
+were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam
+threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+
+In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of
+North Sea fish-carriers, lay the _Minnie_, painted black, with nothing
+brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a
+shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+fish-carrier.
+
+Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to
+take him to the _Minnie_.
+
+“Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir,” he said. “He
+must have come down by the boat before yours.”
+
+A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the _Minnie_, and
+banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+
+The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face
+of a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+
+“It's you, Mr. Cartoner,” he said. “Glad to see you.”
+
+“I was passing in a steamer,” answered Cartoner, quietly, “and
+recognized the _Minnie_.”
+
+“I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time
+you and me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere
+stowed away in a locker.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+“I suppose,” Miss Mangles was saying--“I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?”
+
+“It is possible, Jooly--it is possible,” replied Mr. Joseph P. Mangles,
+looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window of his
+private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.
+
+Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+
+“This invitation,” said the recipient, “accompanied as it is by a
+friendly note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in
+the fact that we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point
+to it, Joseph. It seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me
+a welcome.”
+
+“On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem--just that.”
+
+Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland
+Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr.
+Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a
+capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was
+not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the
+invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance
+owed its origin to an accidental encounter between himself and Lord
+Orlay--a friend of his early senatorial days--in Pall Mall the day
+before.
+
+Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and
+few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts.
+Of what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an
+invitation?
+
+“Jooly,” Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's
+back--“Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries.”
+
+But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black
+cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a
+Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a
+rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which
+so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black
+and shiny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by
+hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown
+baggy by much speaking on public platforms--a fearsome thing in a woman.
+Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long
+ago there must have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P.
+Mangles--moments spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman
+of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she could not be
+beautiful, she could at all events be great.
+
+One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted
+Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed
+it to her greatness.
+
+“Are they abstainers?” she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+over the causes she had championed.
+
+“Nay,” replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland
+Avenue.
+
+“Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction.”
+
+“If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than
+you can chew,” replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into
+the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of
+himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort
+of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
+
+Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and
+no one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+
+“Let us ask them all and be done with them,” she said; and had said it
+for thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no
+other prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain--then plain
+Mr. Orlay. She had never “done with them,” had never secured that
+peaceful domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her
+husband's dream, and would never secure it. For these were two persons,
+now old and white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world,
+and had a supreme contempt for it.
+
+The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of
+rich black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink
+and self-effacing quietness.
+
+“We shall know no one,” she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+
+“Not even the waiters,” replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass,
+glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. “But they will
+soon know us.”
+
+They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote,
+with the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for a
+moment near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually
+did, a little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph
+Mangles. Over the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister he bowed
+in silence.
+
+“I have nothing to say to that great woman,” he sometimes said. “She is
+so elevated that my voice will not reach her.”
+
+Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now
+standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring
+her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+
+“Ah! I expected you had forgotten me,” she said, when Deulin presented
+himself.
+
+“Believe me--I have tried,” he replied, with great earnestness; but the
+complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach
+any deep meaning to his remark.
+
+“You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember
+them all.”
+
+“I do not remember them all, mademoiselle--only a very, very few.”
+
+“Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the
+room?”
+
+“Is there another in the room?” inquired Deulin, looking around him with
+some interest.
+
+“Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black.”
+
+“Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?”
+
+“I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one
+of us, does she?” And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful
+and inexperienced way.
+
+“She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere,” replied Deulin.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess.”
+
+“Oh, then she is married?” exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell
+three semitones on the last word.
+
+“No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole.”
+
+Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+
+“Poor thing,” she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light
+of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+
+“Why do you pity her?” asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+
+“Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they
+not--for convenience, I mean--not from . . . from inclination, like
+other girls?”
+
+And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her
+eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on
+Deulin's lips.
+
+“Ah!” he said, with a sharp sigh--and that was all. He bowed, and
+turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some
+minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special
+to report, for they walked aside together.
+
+It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts
+to get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that unmatched
+hostess at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the arrival of
+the latest and the departure of the earliest.
+
+“I was looking for you,” she said; “you, who always know where everybody
+is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for him a moment
+ago.”
+
+“Mangles is listening to the music in the library--comparatively happy
+by himself behind a barricade of flowers.”
+
+“And that preposterous woman?”
+
+“That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room.”
+
+Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+
+“You have seen the Bukatys?” inquired Lady Orlay. “I called on them the
+moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I have
+never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?”
+
+“I think so,” replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away
+across the room.
+
+Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked
+grave. It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's
+room.
+
+“I like the old man,” she said, with a change of tone. “What is he?”
+
+“He is a rebel.”
+
+“Proscribed?”
+
+“No--they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier--more
+arms than the national government could find men for.”
+
+“Yes, I remember that.”
+
+“That is the man,” said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction
+of the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.
+
+“And the girl--it is very sad--I like her very much. She is gay and
+brave.”
+
+“Ah!” said Deulin, “when a woman is gay and brave--and young--Heaven
+help us.”
+
+“Thank you, Monsieur Deulin.”
+
+“And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady--God keep
+her,” he said with a grave bow.
+
+“I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know.
+She has a great capacity for making friends.”
+
+“She has already made a few--this evening,” put in the Frenchman, with a
+significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual
+enemy--of a pretty girl--that is all.”
+
+He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like
+that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one
+less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some
+hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with
+the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+He laughed--but he laughed uneasily--and spread out his hands in a
+gesture of bewilderment.
+
+“What is what?”
+
+Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+
+“Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly,” she said. “Mr. Mangles
+has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes
+ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook
+hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures
+are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees
+it.”
+
+“Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater--you and
+Orlay--quietly moored beneath the trees.”
+
+“Finally,” continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, “you
+come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once
+or twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like
+it--the Vultures.”
+
+She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+
+“Good-bye,” he said. “You are too discerning. Good-bye.”
+
+“You are going--?”
+
+“Away,” he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. “I
+must go and pack my trunks.”
+
+Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night.
+Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive
+and the world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words
+of thanks.
+
+“We shall hope to see you again,” said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+
+“'Fraid not,” he answered; “we're going to travel on the Continent.”
+
+“When do you start?” asked her ladyship.
+
+“To-morrow morning.”
+
+“Another one,” muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And her
+brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+
+“You have come to say good-bye,” she said to him.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You are going away again?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you will not tell me where you are going.”
+
+“I cannot,” answered Cartoner.
+
+“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said,
+was very experienced and very discerning.
+
+“You are going to Russia, all of you.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AT THE FRONTIER
+
+Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric
+illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw
+Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never
+heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+
+How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train
+just before these electric lights were reached--to take his chance of
+crossing the frontier before morning--history will never tell! How many
+have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station with
+a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of
+the officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing
+Alexandrowo--of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland--but by this
+route. Before the train is at a standstill at the platform each one
+of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white
+trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty
+of Russian law. Here, whatever time of day or night, winter or summer,
+it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity.
+There are always sentries on the outer side of the train. The platform
+is a prison-yard--the waiting rooms are prison-yards.
+
+With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and
+everywhere, with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in
+baggage or demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience
+will see the traveller through. There is no fear of his being left
+in the huge station, or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and
+rightful destination. But with a passport that is old or torn, with a
+visa which bears any but a recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted
+look, the voyager had better take his chance of dropping from the
+footboard at speed, especially if it be a misty night.
+
+Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so
+much as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go
+through, but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned
+within a large room where the luggage is inspected, and they are
+deprived of their passports. When the customs formalities are over they
+are allowed to find the refreshment-room, and there console themselves
+with weak tea in tumblers until such time as they are released.
+
+The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great
+inspection-room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to
+overflowing. The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be
+Germans. There were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the
+others, had the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together--just as
+the women drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who
+hoped against hope that their passports were in order. For the most
+part, no one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested
+with so much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an
+intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and
+feel at their ease.
+
+Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's,
+was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of
+anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin,
+whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left
+it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be
+observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge.
+He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned,
+black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no
+attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and he avoided the
+refreshment-room tea.
+
+Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
+that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him.
+Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
+Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of
+the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or, perhaps, the
+younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
+when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
+chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
+
+He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
+opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
+young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
+high-born Briton.
+
+“Englishman?” he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+
+“Yes,” answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
+oddly stiff.
+
+“Thought you were,” said the other, who, though his clothes were English
+and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
+There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the
+head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence.
+He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who
+was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye
+to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to
+his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.
+
+“All this would be mildly amusing,” he said, “at say any other hour of
+the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
+you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?”
+
+“I can sleep anywhere,” replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
+him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
+talk.
+
+“I know Alexandrowo pretty well,” the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+“and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on
+friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as--the
+multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
+sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere.”
+
+He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but
+for a card.
+
+“I know who you are,” said Cartoner, quietly: “I recognized you from
+your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours
+ago in London.”
+
+“Wanda?” inquired the other, eagerly. “Dear old Wanda! How is she? She
+was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet.”
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+“Tell me,” he said, “all about them. But, first, tell me your name.
+Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their
+friends--the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to
+have made mention of it in her letters.”
+
+“Reginald Cartoner.”
+
+“Ah! I have heard of you--but not from Wanda.”
+
+He paused to reflect.
+
+“No,” he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. “No, she never
+mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known
+out of England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin--you know
+Deulin?--has spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other
+friends in common. We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to
+meet you. You say you know my name--yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that
+you should have recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad
+you think I am like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am,
+you know.”
+
+And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh--not that there was
+anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at
+life from a cheerful standpoint.
+
+Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion
+over the cup. “Cartoner,” Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend,
+“weighs you, and naturally finds you wanting.” It seemed that he was
+weighing Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+
+“I saw your father also,” he said, at length. “He was kind enough to ask
+me to call, which I did.”
+
+“That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London--no one, I
+mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never
+quite understood on the Continent--that if you go to London you must
+speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done
+with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does
+not easily make friends--you must have been very civil to him.”
+
+“According to my lights, I was,” admitted Cartoner.
+
+Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in
+the morning.
+
+“The truth is,” continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way,
+“that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man
+by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a
+tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want,
+and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however,
+to admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated.”
+
+He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod
+an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had
+approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured
+words of politeness.
+
+“Thank you--thank you,” said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+within his pocket.
+
+“It is my passport,” he explained to Cartoner, lightly. “All the rest of
+you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful
+privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they
+are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo
+you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I
+suppose.”
+
+“I always try to,” replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+
+“You see,” went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+environments, “we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there
+was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are
+a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three
+foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent--who make us clean their boots
+and then cast them at our heads.”
+
+The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers
+were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost
+daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a
+fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished,
+giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which
+hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
+
+“I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw,” said Martin, as they
+walked up the platform. “My father and sister will be coming home before
+long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the
+place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for
+you when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as
+any. And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the
+best horses and the worst roads.”
+
+“Thanks, very much,” replied Cartoner. “I, of course, do not know how
+long I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know
+from one day to another what my movements may be.”
+
+“No,” replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears.
+“No, of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you
+will be here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw
+now. But, of course, there are difficulties--even the races present
+difficulties--there is the military element.”
+
+He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+passing to his carriage in front of them.
+
+“They have the best horses,” he explained. “They have more money than we
+have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is.”
+
+He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so
+accustomed to the recognition of his rank that he went first without
+question.
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a laugh, “I had quite forgotten that it is your
+business to know all about us.”
+
+“I have tried to remind you of it several times,” answered Cartoner,
+quietly.
+
+“To shut me up, you mean?” asked the younger man.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned
+away with a laugh.
+
+“Good-night,” he said. “Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet
+again in a few hours.”
+
+He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of
+the station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice--of a rather high
+timbre--in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor. For,
+like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues. The
+Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first,
+his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German,
+or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the
+two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so
+little--England and France.
+
+Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It
+was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was
+green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing
+eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman
+seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable
+man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times
+as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather
+cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost
+insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption
+in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after
+another as occasion seemed to demand.
+
+He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin
+Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the
+compartment, closing the door behind him.
+
+“I have been thinking about it,” he said, in his quick way, “and it
+won't do, you know--it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our
+friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you.
+Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in
+Warsaw.”
+
+“Yes,” said Cartoner, “I understand.”
+
+He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+
+“Good-bye,” he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train
+glided into Warsaw Station.
+
+In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+
+“All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to
+me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as
+a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times.”
+
+He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+
+“She did not know that I was coming,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN A REMOTE CITY
+
+The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which
+for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At
+Cracow--the tomb of many kings--it passes half round the citadel, a
+shallow, sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the
+present capital--Warsaw--it finds its way across the great plain,
+amid the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and
+Masovia.
+
+Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking
+from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In
+Praga--a hundred years ago--the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand
+were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in
+the square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of
+their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired
+upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in
+cold blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for
+three hours in the streets.
+
+Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops,
+with a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in
+the world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street,
+and, like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name--the
+Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel
+de l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where
+kings and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered,
+where the bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were
+carried after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where
+the great light from the West--Miss Julie P. Mangles--alighted one May
+morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+
+“Told you,” said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was
+within almost measurable distance of snappishness--“told you you would
+have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly.”
+
+But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before
+had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame
+of mind--on their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury,
+Massachusetts, when the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters
+for the Truth failed to reach the railway depot because they happened
+on a fire in a straw-hat manufactory on their way, and heard that the
+newest pattern of straw hat was to be had for the picking up in the open
+street.
+
+There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when
+she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble
+position of the prophet--not without honor in his own country--who
+cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+
+“This is even worse than I anticipated,” said Miss Mangles, watching the
+hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+
+“What is worse, Jooly?”
+
+“Poland!” replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+worse countries than Poland in her day.
+
+“I allow,” said Mr. Mangles, slowly, “that at this hour in the morning
+it appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?”
+
+“Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph,” replied Miss Mangles,
+looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a
+bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his
+place.
+
+Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel,
+with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed
+always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult
+still, to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss
+Mangles was conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as
+expert in the lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform
+period, somewhat alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the
+historic staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a
+distinct air of condescension.
+
+“Tell me,” said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep
+depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, “what
+languages you speak.”
+
+“Russian, French, Polish, German, English--”
+
+“That'll do to go on with,” interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue.
+“We'll get along in English. My name is Mangles.”
+
+Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and
+a salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where
+stood a couple of waiters.
+
+Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She
+might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept
+all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance
+of having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the
+surface a little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes
+seemed to conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly
+theories, too, which she often enunciated in her confidential manner;
+and one of these was that one should always, in all places and at all
+times, be neat and tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it
+noted in passing, there have been many successful human careers based
+upon this simple rule.
+
+She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress
+which conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and
+the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs
+she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along
+the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and
+nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it
+appeared, as much at home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+
+“Ah, mademoiselle!” he said, standing hat in hand before her, “who could
+have dreamed of such a pleasure--here and at this moment--in this sad
+town?”
+
+“You seemed gay enough--you were singing,” answered Miss Cahere.
+
+“It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps
+you noticed it?”
+
+“No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear
+for music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+accomplishments, you know,” said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in
+of the shoulders.
+
+“Ah!” said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his
+opinion that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles
+and her brother.
+
+Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable
+to feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She
+shook hands, with her platform bow--from the waist--and passed on.
+
+“Hallo!” said Joseph Mangles. “Got here before us? Thought you'd turn
+up. Dismal place, eh?”
+
+“You have just arrived, I suppose?” said Deulin.
+
+“Oh, please don't laugh at us!” broke in Netty. “Of course you can see
+that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!”
+
+“You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from
+heaven,” answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her
+hair. It was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did
+not seem to hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to
+her uncle. Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long
+one, for the Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+
+“You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know,” she said, turning
+again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation
+of her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who
+blush easily--at the right time. “I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased
+to have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have
+you friends here?”
+
+“Only one,” replied Deulin--“the waiter who serves the Zakuska counter
+down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman, travelling for
+his health in France. He does not recognize me now.”
+
+“Will you stay long?”
+
+“I did not intend to,” replied Deulin, “when I came out of my room this
+morning.”
+
+“But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?” asked
+Netty.
+
+“Not in Warsaw,” was the reply.
+
+“Suppose we shall meet again,” broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number
+on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. “Always welcome,”
+ he said. “Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose.”
+
+“I suppose it does,” answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+
+He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the
+Krakowski Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was
+already astir, while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying
+home from the morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and
+churches on either side. Every palace has its story; two of them were
+confiscated by the Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown
+from the pavement, might possibly have come from one of the windows.
+Every church has rung to the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn--“At
+Thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free
+country.” Into almost all of them the soldiers have forced their way to
+make arrests.
+
+Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The
+clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little
+sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+
+“Just Heaven, forgive me!” he said, with upturned eyes. “I have already
+told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I
+shall find Cartoner out of bed?”
+
+He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned
+to the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower,
+quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna
+are mostly large, with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for
+existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments,
+where quiet people live--professors, lawyers, and other persons,
+who have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the
+passer-by for entertainment.
+
+Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination
+to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second
+floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the
+Frenchman nodded familiarly.
+
+“Is he up yet?” he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+
+“This hour, monsieur,” replied the servant, leading the way along a
+narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass
+into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a
+writing-table.
+
+“Good-morning,” said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a
+book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair.
+“Don't let me disturb you,” he continued. “Finish what you are doing.”
+
+“News?” inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at
+Deulin gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously
+dissimilar--these friends.
+
+“Bah!” returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked
+up--Lelewel's _History of Poland_, in Polish. “I trouble for your
+future, Cartoner. You take life so seriously--you, who need not work
+at all. Even uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a
+position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of
+that!”
+
+He reflected for a moment.
+
+“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I have news of all sorts--news which
+goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead
+of going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning--Mangles
+frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner--” He paused, and
+examined his own boots with a critical air.
+
+“I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?”
+
+“Fifty.”
+
+“All that, mon cher?--all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+fool who excels all other fools.”
+
+Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to
+put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin
+watched him.
+
+“I say,” said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in
+hand--“what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?”
+
+“I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+you,” was the reply.
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in
+love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there
+is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss
+Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?”
+
+“Very nice,” replied Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the
+letter before him.
+
+“What I like about her is her quiet ways,” suggested Deulin,
+tentatively.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares,
+must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose
+and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that
+evening.
+
+Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+
+“More lies!” he murmured, humbly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SAND-WORKERS
+
+At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska--the street running down
+from the Cracow Faubourg to the river--there are always many workers.
+It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here lie the
+steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a trade in
+timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that float from
+the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here, also, are
+loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
+
+A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand
+which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts
+hopefully from the higher parts of the city--the widest, the newest,
+the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard--down the
+hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is
+no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a
+broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts
+from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers
+lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the
+middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that
+render navigation next to impossible--a clean, hard sand, most excellent
+for building purposes.
+
+It was the hour of the mid-day dinner--for Polish hours are the hours of
+the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses
+nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their
+gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was
+late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene
+was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river.
+Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once
+said that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
+
+It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of
+the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach
+within half a mile unperceived.
+
+“Yes,” one of the workmen was saying, “those who know say that there
+will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day,
+why not now? Why not this time?”
+
+His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+oval-faced men--real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that
+comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills;
+others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which
+betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+
+“The third time, they say, is lucky,” answered a white-haired man, at
+length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his
+face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others
+turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the
+river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees.
+Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen
+fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with
+the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish
+with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the
+streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look
+which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed
+a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to
+his horses.
+
+He who had first spoken--a boatman known as Kosmaroff--was a spare man,
+with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard.
+He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward
+appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and
+vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave
+an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His
+smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely,
+a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a
+raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
+watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the
+old man as if hoping that more was coming.
+
+“Yes, it will be the third time,” he said, when the other had lapsed
+into a musing silence, “though few of us have seen it with our own eyes.
+But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of
+our forefathers to guide us--though we cannot say that our forefathers
+have told us--”
+
+He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
+father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+
+“We shall time it better,” he said, “than last time. We have men
+watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as
+an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything
+happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the
+dogs should quarrel among themselves--the three dogs that have torn
+Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was
+coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred
+thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed
+what they thought of us!”
+
+The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
+was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others
+looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board
+of directors--some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed
+to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his
+boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+
+“It is all very well for you,” said one, a little fat man with beady
+eyes. Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity
+to danger of any sort--“you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to
+lose!”
+
+Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that
+a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is
+a part of it running over.
+
+“There are many who can be aristocrats some day--with a little
+good-fortune,” he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+
+“I lost five at Praga,” muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+manner of the toiler. “That is enough for me.”
+
+“It is well to remember Praga,” returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.
+“It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!
+There is much to remember!”
+
+And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff
+glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring
+sullenly across the river.
+
+“I may be an aristocrat by descent,” he said, “but what does that come
+to? I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a
+Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always
+done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a
+hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the
+sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here.
+They will finish by losing everything--the little they have left--or
+else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They will
+win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!”
+
+“And when they have won will they remember?” asked one of the two
+smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+
+“If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.
+You may rely on that. They know what each gives--whether freely or with
+a niggard hand--and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
+freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
+expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!”
+
+The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger,
+with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they
+sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
+instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
+each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance
+by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
+
+Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+number--a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed him
+much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was
+back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name
+hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a
+raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish
+patriotism--a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made
+the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to
+Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in
+the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor,
+and the bread that tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom
+which stood in the forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are
+others who cherish the same belief.
+
+“This time,” he went on, after a pause, “I have news for you. We are a
+little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently
+until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they
+acted at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall
+nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step
+nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is
+never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around
+his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five
+thousand rifles in Poland--”
+
+He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+
+“In Warsaw!” he added, significantly. “So, if there are any who think
+that the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now--and take the
+consequences.” He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+
+No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+
+“And there is ammunition enough,” continued Kosmaroff, “to close the
+account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!”
+
+His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+
+“I tell you this,” he went on, “because I am likely to go to Cracow
+before long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain
+events may be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly--such as
+the death of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the
+declaration of war by any of the great powers. There is always something
+seething on the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake.
+The Warsaw papers will not have the news; but the _Czas_ and the other
+Cracow journals will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the
+Galician papers when you want to, despite their censors and their
+police!”
+
+A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was
+his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+
+At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river
+boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out
+into a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers
+stirred reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+
+Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself--a long, lithe, wiry
+figure.
+
+“Come,” he said. “We must go back to work.”
+
+He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his
+narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have
+realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable
+creation--a strong man.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A WARNING
+
+It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the
+kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in
+Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay
+hands upon--that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in protesting
+against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had broken
+faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent of
+those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was
+permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and
+Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
+having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
+jaw.
+
+The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but
+a few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
+while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed
+to her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this
+lady, who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland
+was yet in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
+
+“Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,”
+ the old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the
+anniversary of his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He
+mentioned it, moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm
+frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration never
+placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking
+country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of
+European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry
+of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to
+mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they
+spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite
+clear to the Moslem understanding.
+
+The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands
+respect in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a
+conciliatory attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without one
+of their kind within her boundaries.
+
+“You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of
+your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he
+happens to be living at the moment!” he had boldly said to a great
+personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in
+the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had actually
+stretched a point or two for the Prince Bukaty on more than one
+occasion. Like many outspoken people, he passed for a barker and not a
+biter.
+
+It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town
+and submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in
+the Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian
+flag, which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from time
+immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see in
+the great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that his
+predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness, which were
+his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+
+“Yes,” he answered to the loquacious curator, “I know. You tell me
+nothing that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince
+Bukaty!”
+
+And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young
+man who had great possessions.
+
+For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment,
+but because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on
+the Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And to
+whom can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+
+Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+sympathy. And that was all!
+
+The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind
+high railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which
+entrance is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality,
+and only unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet
+brougham in which the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is
+just round the corner of the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski
+Gardens--a quiet spot in this most noisy town. The building is a low
+one, with a tiled roof and long windows, heavily framed, of which the
+smaller panes and thick woodwork suggest the early days of window-glass.
+Inside, the house is the house of a poor man. The carpets are worn thin;
+the furniture, of a sumptuous design, is carefully patched and mended.
+The atmosphere has that mournful scent of better days--now dead and
+past. It is the odor of monarchy, slowly fading from the face of a world
+that reeks of cheap democracy.
+
+The air of the rooms--the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+humanity on wood and texture--suggested that older comfort which has
+been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+
+The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had
+acted without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the
+house must have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back
+from the school in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality
+of her own. The difference she brought to the house was a certain
+brightness and a sort of experimental femininity, which reigned supreme
+until her English governess came back again to live as a companion with
+her pupil. Wanda moved the furniture, turned the house round on its
+staid basis, and made a hundred experiments in domestic economy before
+she gave way to her father's habits of life. Then she made that happiest
+of human discoveries, which has the magic power of allaying at one
+stroke the eternal feminine discontent which has made the world uneasy
+since the day that Eve idled in that perfect garden--she found that she
+was wanted in the world!
+
+The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too obvious
+to require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and now that
+old age was coming, that health was failing and wealth had vanished,
+Poland would have none of him.
+
+There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions
+that only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil desires
+and answer questions is the best happiness.
+
+Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called
+a palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and
+rarely stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste; was
+fond of travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning eye upon
+his movements.
+
+There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made
+use of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of the
+house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading round
+from the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office in the
+busier part of Kotzebue Street.
+
+He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are well
+lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only as the
+Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the custom to go
+abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski is more crowded
+after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had walked some distance
+behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin unlocked the gate of the
+garden and passed in, leaving the gate open with the key in the lock. In
+a minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the gate after him, and gave the key
+back to its owner on the steps of the garden door of the house, where
+Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in hand. They did it without comment
+or instruction, as men carry out a plan frequently resorted to.
+
+Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to
+a door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were warmth
+and comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end, beneath the
+lamp and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were sitting. They
+were in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his chair.
+
+“I have brought Kos to see you,” said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with that
+ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He apparently gave
+no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from which the original
+black had long since been washed away by the waters of the Vistula. He
+wore his working-clothes as if they were the best habit for this or
+any other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it in the old-world
+fashion, which has survived to this day in Poland. But the careless
+manner in which he raised her fingers to his lips would have showed
+quite clearly to a competent observer that neither Wanda nor any other
+woman had ever touched his heart.
+
+“You will excuse my getting up,” said the prince. “My gout is bad
+to-night. You will have something to eat?”
+
+“Thank you, I have eaten,” replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+
+Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up, lighting
+with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+
+“He will take a glass of port,” said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had
+his after-dinner wine.
+
+Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with a
+glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he was
+almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related,
+not only in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff
+represented a family long since deemed extinct.
+
+“I have come,” he said, “to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to
+stir them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn.”
+
+“Ah!” laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable
+position, “you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move
+too quickly. That is what I always preach.”
+
+“And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching,” answered
+Kosmaroff. “You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to
+your opinion that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to
+misunderstandings. Plain speaking and clear understanding was the
+message you sent me--the text of your last sermon.”
+
+With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's
+wineglass, which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that he
+drank his health.
+
+“That was not my text--that was Wanda's,” answered the prince.
+
+“Ah!” said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. “Is that so? Then I will
+take it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast experience.”
+
+“I have been to Dresden and to London,” answered Wanda, “and a woman
+always sees much more than a man.”
+
+“Always?” asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+
+“Always.”
+
+But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+
+“By-the-way,” he asked, “what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?”
+
+“Cartoner--the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+London,” answered the prince. “Who is he? Why should he not be here?”
+
+“I will tell you who he is,” answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light in
+his eyes. “He is the man that the English send when they suspect that
+something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has a
+trick of finding things out--that man. Such is his reputation, at all
+events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of yours,
+by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an American
+here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There is either
+something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that something may
+move in Poland before long. These men are here to find out. They must
+find out nothing from us.”
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach much
+importance to these foreigners.
+
+“Of course,” went on Kosmaroff, “they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So
+will Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him
+trouble. He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because
+he knows that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different.
+There are never any surprises for the English in matters that Cartoner
+has in hand. He reports on events before they have happened, which is a
+different story. I merely warn you.”
+
+As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+
+“There are no instructions?”
+
+“None,” answered the prince. “Except the usual one--patience!”
+
+“Ah yes,” replied Kosmaroff, “we shall be patient.”
+
+He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+winter months.
+
+“But be careful,” he added, addressing Martin more particularly, “of
+this man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know--you understand.
+And no one must know!”
+
+He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+
+“You met him in London, you say?” he said to the prince. “What did you
+think of him?”
+
+“I thought him--a quiet man.”
+
+“And Wanda?” continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her--“she who sees
+so much. What did she think of him?”
+
+“I was afraid of him!”
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+
+The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades beneath
+the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across from one
+quarter of the town to another.
+
+Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father
+at such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still
+fresh upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking
+the green turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in
+the morning these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any
+other park in any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the alleys
+mostly to herself.
+
+The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the
+leaves were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the
+brief, uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in
+Northern latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out
+early, and was sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that divides
+the gardens in two from end to end. She was waiting for Martin, who had
+been called back at the door of the palace and had promised to follow
+in a few minutes. He had a hundred engagements during the day, a hundred
+friends among those unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear
+the Russian uniform, who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in
+any form of commerce, and must not accept a government office--who are
+therefore idle, without the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians
+and Spaniards to do nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser
+than Martin. Girls generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But
+the wisdom ceases to grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old
+women. Wanda was, in a sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She
+had, as he himself acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into
+which his natural heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As
+to the discontent in which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes
+and their friends into many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it,
+just as some families are brought up to consumption and the anticipation
+of an early death.
+
+In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda was
+much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger. Debt and
+impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her father
+daily needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his happiness more
+and more upon his port wine and that ease which is only to be enjoyed by
+an easy mind.
+
+Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly
+heeded the passers-by, though--for the feminine instincts were strong in
+her--she looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on the
+Jew who hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the
+richer quarter of the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the
+Franoiszkanska. The latter, perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin and
+his heedlessness; the former made her think of--she knew not what.
+
+She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King of
+Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the garden.
+She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was unlike that
+of the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It was more like
+the gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw wear a uniform.
+That is why they are there. There was a suggestion of determination in
+the walk of this Englishman.
+
+He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived
+her. She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the precise
+moment when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably upon
+experience that Wanda based her theory that women see twice as much as
+men. She saw him turn, without hesitation, away from her down a narrower
+alley leading to the right. It was his intention to avoid her. But the
+only turning he could take was that leading to the corner of Kotzebue
+Street, and Martin was at the other end of it, coming towards him.
+Cartoner was thus caught in the narrow alley. Wanda sat still and
+watched the two men. She suddenly knew in advance what would happen, as
+it is often vouchsafed to the human understanding to know at a moment's
+notice what is coming; and she had a strange, discomforting sense that
+these minutes were preordained--that Martin and Cartoner and herself
+were mere puppets in the hands of Fate, and must say and do that which
+has been assigned to them in an unalterable scheme of succeeding events.
+
+She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to
+continue his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the
+Englishman's arm.
+
+“What does it matter?” Martin was saying. “There is no one to see us
+here, at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda,
+sitting on the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me.”
+
+And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's
+attitude and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner
+yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin--so
+determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned
+and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew
+that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had
+something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave to be
+silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient
+sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty,
+and this sense of powerlessness was new to her.
+
+While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+
+“I saw you,” he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, “and went the
+other way to avoid you.”
+
+And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at
+her. He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+embarrassment.
+
+“Cartoner and I,” Prince Martin hastened to explain, “travelled from
+Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it
+would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would
+naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is
+why he went the other way when he saw you.”
+
+Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have
+been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner
+kept silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit--very rare
+among men and almost unknown in women--of thinking before he spoke.
+Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if
+one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and
+the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
+
+“You see,” said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself,
+“in this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own
+friends.”
+
+“Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the
+best strawberries from a basket,” said Wanda.
+
+“Not a question to be arranged beforehand,” put in Cartoner.
+
+“Not even by the governor-general of Poland?” asked Wanda, looking
+thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+showered round them.
+
+“Not even by the Czar.”
+
+“Who, I am told, means well!” said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. “Poor
+man! It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's
+back that one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me.”
+
+Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+walking-stick.
+
+“Martin and I are going for a tramp,” she said. “We like to get away
+from the noise and the dust--and the uniforms.”
+
+But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+
+“We attract less attention than if we stand,” he explained. And Cartoner
+took the seat offered. “Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us
+to offer you,” commented the young prince, gayly, “a clean stone seat on
+the sunny side of a public garden.”
+
+“But let us understand each other,” put in Wanda, in her practical way,
+and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw
+so much, “since we are conspirators.”
+
+“The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall
+be,” said Cartoner.
+
+“I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'” said Wanda.
+
+“The plot is simple enough,” answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing,
+and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one more than
+the other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of
+all whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette--a little Russian
+affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked
+the ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his
+sister.
+
+“Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The Bukatys
+have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish nationality
+which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to suppress for
+nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria there is still
+a Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the Romanoffs, the
+Hapsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few old Lithuanian
+and Ruthenian families extant. And rightly or wrongly, those in
+authority are kind enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys for these
+survivals. Weeds, it seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are really to
+blame or not is of no consequence. It does not matter to the dog whether
+he deserves his bad name or not--after he is hanged. But it is not good
+to be a Bukaty and live in Poland just now, though some of us manage to
+have a good time despite them all--eh, Wanda?”
+
+And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was
+part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for
+fear some interruption should approach.
+
+“Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand,” he continued, in his airy way, “is a
+most respectable man--in the employ of his country. That is what damns
+Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great
+reputation, to which I take off my hat.”
+
+And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+
+“It would never do,” continued Martin, “for us, the suspects, to be
+avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some
+capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no
+consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember.”
+
+“But what are we to do?” asked Wanda, practically. “Let us have a clear
+understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?”
+
+“No,” answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+without haste--a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+heart of the question. “We must not meet in the streets.”
+
+“That may not be as easy as it sounds,” said Wanda, “in a small city
+like Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of
+avoiding us?”
+
+“I can, at all events, try,” answered Cartoner, simply. After a
+pause (the pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be
+Cartoner's turn to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all
+that the Bukatys could offer him in Warsaw. “I can begin at once,” he
+said, gravely. And he took off his hat and went away.
+
+It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+pillars of that building.
+
+“A man of action, and not of words,” commented Martin, who spoke first.
+“I like him. Come, let us go for our walk.”
+
+And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though
+they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that
+Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+
+He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side
+of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking
+a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met.
+Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which
+could scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+
+“Ah!” said the Frenchman to himself, “there is our friend Reginald. He
+is in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance.”
+
+He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+slowly.
+
+“If any woman ever marries that man,” the Frenchman said to himself,
+“she will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then,
+women are good at that.”
+
+And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+
+Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was
+not an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it
+is well to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the
+post-office. And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not
+to have them sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities
+are kind enough to exercise a parental censorship over the travellers'
+correspondence.
+
+Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It
+was a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him
+was more than he could undertake.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+CARTONER _VERSUS_ FATE
+
+It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It
+is, moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the
+cause of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the
+theory that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled
+by a common sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor
+of that Czar who said to Poland: “Gentlemen--no dreams,” seems in part
+justified by the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves
+brought nearer together on the race-course than in any other social
+function in Warsaw.
+
+“Come,” cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's
+rooms after lunch one day towards the end of October. “Come, and let
+us bury the hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the
+grand-stand at the Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his
+wife, all the authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep
+sideways at each other, and turn up their noses at each other's toilets.
+To such has descended the great strife in eastern Europe.”
+
+“You think so.”
+
+“Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same
+thing, and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in
+it. Come with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where
+the Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where
+these fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too
+ready to take their hearts there and lose them--but the Czar forbids it.
+And, let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than
+a pair of Polish eyes.”
+
+He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a
+speculative glance, and turned away to the window.
+
+“Come,” he said. “It is a fine day--St. Martin's summer. It is Sunday,
+but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording angel
+on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover.”
+
+“Oh, I have no principles,” said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+
+“You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for
+his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“Nor I,” pursued Deulin; “and I am bored. That is why I want you to come
+to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than
+to go--especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the world
+in racing.”
+
+“That is why I am going,” said Cartoner.
+
+“Then you don't like racing?”
+
+“Yes, I am very fond of it,” answered the Englishman, in the same absent
+voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+
+In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found
+at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive
+up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow
+(where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness
+of the land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while
+driving through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is
+a grudge that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland
+had been a kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her
+capital.
+
+The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart
+of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At
+the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles,
+and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare
+among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
+attention.
+
+It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
+in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
+though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across
+a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
+German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
+domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into
+the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
+unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
+management of the course--tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
+and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
+white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold
+lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in
+his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying
+high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a
+gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of
+many races, one of the market-places where men may greet each other who
+come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are
+sons of the empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north,
+the south, the east, and the west.
+
+“France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my
+breath away,” said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many
+races. On all sides one heard different languages--German, the sing-song
+Russian--the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot kill.
+
+“And Germany?” inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+
+“Bores me, my friend.”
+
+He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number
+of men were congregated, but no ladies.
+
+“The Fatherland,” he added, “the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German
+once, when I was in the army of the Loire--a most painful business.”
+
+He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached
+the gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without
+turning towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+
+“Look!” he said, “look!”
+
+There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock,
+and above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey.
+The head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the
+heads of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only
+half in the saddle.
+
+The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before
+a dog--all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move
+above a snail's pace.
+
+Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which
+they knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and
+knocked the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on
+at a gallop now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a
+broken bridle, his two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was
+swearing in English. And he had need to, for through the paddock gate
+the crowd was densely packed and he was charging into it on a maddened
+horse beyond control.
+
+Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head
+was down.
+
+“Let go! let go!” cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. “Let go!
+I'll teach him!”
+
+And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince
+Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a
+moment and saw him open his eyes.
+
+“I am unhurt,” he said. “Help me up. No! sh--h! No, nothing is broken;
+it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box
+No. 18, in the grand-stand.”
+
+He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+
+“Go and tell her,” said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+“Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that
+her father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come
+back.”
+
+So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face of
+all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his memory. As
+he approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She was dressed in
+black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only the Russians and
+the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the surprise on her
+face and in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew that there were
+a hundred eyes watching him, a hundred ears waiting to catch his words
+when he spoke.
+
+“Princess,” he said, “the prince has had a slight accident, and has sent
+me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any report to
+the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and was knocked
+down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the club pavilion.”
+
+He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+understand and repeat.
+
+“Shall we go to him?” asked Wanda, rising.
+
+“Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and
+would come himself were he able to walk.”
+
+Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+
+“Will you take us to him, monsieur?” she said.
+
+And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal
+silence. The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its
+forlorn, autumnal flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked along
+it towards the paddock.
+
+“It was very good of you to come and tell us,” said Martin, in English,
+“with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good, you know,
+to do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was true what you
+said about the prince being unhurt?”
+
+“Almost,” answered Cartoner. “He is rather badly shaken. I think you
+will find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety.”
+
+“Oh no!” exclaimed Martin. “He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come in
+here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in case
+of accidents.”
+
+He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+
+“Wait here,” he said, “with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+minutes.”
+
+So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had
+been successfully accomplished.
+
+Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything to
+say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear understanding
+of which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to be compassed by
+silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind them came nearer
+and nearer as the horses approached the winning-post. The members of the
+club stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some with field-glasses,
+others with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All eyes were turned in
+one direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+
+Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no
+need for anxiety.
+
+“He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely
+to go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit under
+the awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand,” Martin
+said, as he approached.
+
+“See,” he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying to
+gather round the winning horse. “See, it is already a thing of the past.
+And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is no good
+advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad name, eh?
+Thank you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You and Deulin,
+they say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my dear Wanda. It
+is forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I will come back
+to you.”
+
+With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, “I leave her to your care,” he
+turned and left them again.
+
+Then at length Wanda spoke.
+
+“You see,” she said, “you are not so strong as--”
+
+“As what?” he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+
+“As Fate, I suppose,” she answered, and her eyes were grave as she
+looked across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun
+was sinking below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the
+horizon. Sunset over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+
+“Is it Fate?” she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+
+“Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess,” answered
+Cartoner.
+
+“By what?”
+
+“By action. I have written for my recall.”
+
+He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not
+his companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was still
+looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+
+“You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?” she said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then,” she said, after a pause, “it would have been better for you if
+we had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said
+that you had never had a check in your career. This is the first check.
+And it has come through--knowing us.”
+
+Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion
+with patient, thoughtful eyes.
+
+“You cannot deny it,” she said.
+
+And he did not deny it.
+
+Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+keenness.
+
+“Why have you asked for your recall?” she asked, slowly.
+
+And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking.
+And across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes
+of the man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+
+When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next
+box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party
+of foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared
+for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one
+cannot set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those
+depths to which it sometimes descends.
+
+“And this,” she said, when she had settled herself on the chair
+commanding the best view, “this is the turf.”
+
+“That,” corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+umbrella, “is the turf. This is the grand-stand.”
+
+“The whole,” stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible
+to her, the scene in general, “the whole constitutes the turf.”
+
+Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who
+was prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her
+delicate and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself
+of an autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+
+“And these young men are on it,” concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual
+decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside--the privilege
+of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes in the
+direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger; but some of the
+young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in the
+Russian race-card which she could not read.
+
+“It is very sad,” she said.
+
+Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making
+up her mind how best to take them in hand.
+
+“Don't see the worst of 'em here,” muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. “It
+isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief--on the
+turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+reformed--by the young women.”
+
+Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle Joseph
+inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather wistful
+expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men below were
+still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to see them.
+At this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda was
+preoccupied, and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several
+ladies leaned over the low partitions and asked questions, which were
+unintelligible to Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth
+that the Prince Bukaty was not hurt.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+called upon to transmit the information.
+
+“Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this,” said Miss
+Mangles, in an undertone.
+
+“You are right, Jooly.”
+
+But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul Deulin,
+who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the
+feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these
+people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it
+is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger
+for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which
+convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin
+would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good
+might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval
+towards the turf.
+
+“One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin,” she said,
+shaking hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+
+“Since you are here,” he answered, “there can be no harm. It is only a
+garden-party, after all.”
+
+And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he had
+come.
+
+“Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?” inquired Jooly.
+
+“Never, unless I am quite sure,” he answered.
+
+“There is,” observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be
+gracious--“there is perhaps less harm in that.”
+
+“And less risk,” explained Deulin gravely. “But surely,” he said, in a
+lower tone, turning to Netty, “you know the Princess Wanda? Did you not
+meet her at Lady Orlay's?”
+
+Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and he
+was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+
+“Yes,” she replied, “we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does
+not remember--though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she met
+at the same time.”
+
+Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+
+“Be assured,” he answered, “that she has not seen you, or she would not
+fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe. The
+princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has just
+had a slight mishap.”
+
+He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+
+“Wanda,” he said, “this young lady remembers meeting you in London.”
+
+Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that
+divided the two boxes.
+
+“Of course,” she said, “Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down so
+near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else.”
+
+“I hardly expect you to recollect me,” Netty hastened to say. “You must
+have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who were
+at Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Wanda, rather absently. “Are there many?”
+
+“Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we
+three and--Mr. Cartoner.”
+
+She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin Bukaty's
+eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she had much
+animation, and her eyes were bright.
+
+“I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is unmistakable.
+I hope the prince is not hurt?” she said, in her little, friendly,
+confidential way to Wanda.
+
+“No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I introduce
+him? Martin. Miss Cahere--my brother.”
+
+And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty wanted.
+She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk to Wanda.
+
+“It must be so interesting,” she said, “to live in Warsaw and to be able
+to help the poor people who are so down-trodden.”
+
+“But I do nothing of that sort,” replied Wanda. “It is only in books
+that women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can
+do for Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he likes
+for dinner, and to housekeep generally--just as you do when you are at
+home, no doubt.”
+
+“Oh,” protested Netty, “but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I could
+never housekeep.”
+
+And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark,
+made her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin
+saw it. At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather
+vacantly in another direction.
+
+“I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?” said Wanda,
+glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+
+“My dear Wanda,” put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, “you
+surely do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity.
+Miss Mangles is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described in
+a prominent journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care for
+the world, has no time to think of an individual household.”
+
+“Besides,” said Netty, “we have no settled home in America. We live
+differently. We have not the comfort of European life.”
+
+And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop of
+the lips.
+
+At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of the
+use of his field-glasses.
+
+“I can see,” she said, in her confidential way, “well enough for myself
+with my own eyes.”
+
+And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+
+“I am sure,” she said to Wanda, when the race was over, “that I saw Mr.
+Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?”
+
+“I fancy he has,” was the reply.
+
+“He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our
+box. I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on
+board. We crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know.”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite ridiculous.”
+
+Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There
+was in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set
+a machine in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative
+satisfaction.
+
+Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed
+to come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.
+
+“Come, Wanda,” said Martin. “We must not keep him waiting. I can see
+him, with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure.”
+
+“I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse,” said
+Deulin, “and then return to the assistance of these ladies.”
+
+He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching
+the carriages after they had gone.
+
+“The gods forbid,” he said, piously, to himself, “that I should attempt
+to interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda
+should know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she
+knows now, my shrewd princess.”
+
+And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from
+Wanda as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on
+his heel, to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng
+of people moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black,
+and a shower was impending.
+
+“Ah, well!” he muttered, philosophically, “they are capable of taking
+care of themselves.”
+
+And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however,
+that he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along
+by a stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great
+gate, and though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the
+other men, she could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and
+his sister passed out of the large gateway, and waited in the first
+available space beyond it. Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of
+the crowd to the smaller gate, and having passed it, decided to wait
+till her uncle, who undoubtedly must have seen her, should come in
+search of her. She was not uneasy. All through her life she had always
+found people, especially men, ready, nay, anxious, to be kind to her.
+She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a man came towards her. He
+was only a workman in his best suit of working clothes. He had a narrow,
+sunburned face, and there was in his whole being a not unpleasant
+suggestion of the seafaring life.
+
+“I am afraid,” he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, “that
+you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course,
+so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to
+find your father?”
+
+“Thank you,” answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. “I think
+my uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at
+him. Perhaps--”
+
+“Yes,” answered Kosmaroff, “I will show you another way with pleasure.
+Then that tall gentleman is not your father?”
+
+“No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle,” replied Netty, following her companion.
+
+“Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?”
+
+“Yes. We are Americans.”
+
+“A diplomatist?”
+
+“Yes, my uncle is in the service.”
+
+“And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way;
+we can pass through this alley and come to the large gate.”
+
+“But you--you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me,” said
+Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this
+interest, slightly changed his manner.
+
+“Ah! you are looking at my clothes,” he said, rather less formally. “In
+Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a
+Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street,
+just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is
+pleasant in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the
+great honor of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?”
+
+“Yes, I will remember,” answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that
+his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+
+“I knew at once--at once,” he said, “that you were English or American.”
+
+“Ah! Then there is a difference--” said Netty, looking round for her
+uncle.
+
+“There is a difference--yes, assuredly.”
+
+“What is it?” asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her
+voice.
+
+“Your mirror will answer that question,” replied Kosmaroff, with his
+odd, one-sided smile, “more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There
+is your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go.”
+
+Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand
+in his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+
+“No,” said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, “do not give him
+anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English.”
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+SENTENCED
+
+Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
+which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it.
+The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of
+it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
+
+Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
+or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
+growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
+Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
+could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
+any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
+memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
+riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
+uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
+knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.
+
+One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
+shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
+with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
+that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads
+into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
+iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in
+silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large
+iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in
+the Lazienki Park.
+
+Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of
+his horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it
+patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and
+found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with
+the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light
+enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+
+The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From
+the distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long,
+low roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+
+Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that
+the animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened
+first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the
+wind. It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few
+moments there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and
+at the right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it
+started forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts
+of the gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.
+
+Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating
+cranes and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was
+hurriedly bolting the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open
+door, but before he reached it a number of men ran out and fell on
+him like hounds upon a fox. He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and
+striking the first-comer full in the chest with his fist. He charged
+the next and knocked him over; but from the third he retreated, leaping
+quickly to one side.
+
+“Bukaty!” he cried; “don't you know me?”
+
+“You, Cartoner!” replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. “You here!” he said. And there was
+a ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never
+heard there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the
+meaning of it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined
+men in moments when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer
+side of human nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which
+deals in battle and sudden death.
+
+“It is too risky,” said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but
+Cartoner heard it. “We must kill him and be done with it.”
+
+There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy
+feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner
+spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had
+taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had
+disadvantages, but silence meant death.
+
+“This near fore-shoe,” he said in French, turning to his horse, “is
+nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a
+foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about.”
+
+Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there
+was no loop-hole.
+
+Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle
+in front of him were in the dark.
+
+“Good! He's a brave man!” muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's
+ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+
+“Yes,” said Martin, hastily, “this is a foundry. I can get you a
+hammer.”
+
+His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced
+at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and
+he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+
+“You might tell these men,” he said, in French, “of my mishap; perhaps
+one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately
+hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow.”
+
+He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly,
+so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped
+forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.
+
+Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for
+a hammer and some nails--that his horse had nearly lost a shoe. Cartoner
+had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated the
+line of conduct he was to pursue.
+
+“Get a hammer--one of you,” said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak--to say more than was
+discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent.
+Never comment on your own victory.
+
+Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during
+the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost
+shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such
+dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird.
+Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men,
+whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the
+open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw--a dark
+autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical
+way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold
+deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little
+cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial
+characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave
+his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They
+would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other
+Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their
+mistake afterwards. They were Slavs--of the most calculating race the
+world had produced--a little slow in their calculations. So he gave
+them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit
+eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved--long, long
+after reader and writer are dust.
+
+Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors,
+which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked
+inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” said Cartoner to Martin, who went
+towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from
+Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+
+Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+climbed into the saddle.
+
+“Saved your life!” he said, in a whisper.
+
+“I know,” answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to
+the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open
+doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were
+concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in
+the _Minnie_.
+
+“More than I bargained for,” he muttered to himself, as he rode away
+from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and
+presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was
+astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent
+by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the
+chase.
+
+Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much,
+and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle
+was steady.
+
+He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which
+stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate.
+He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without
+weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in
+a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that
+which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
+
+“That Cartoner,” Deulin was in the habit of saying, “takes certain
+things so seriously, and other things--social things, to which I give
+most careful attention--he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end
+by different routes.”
+
+Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic
+race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady
+perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+
+“In a moment of danger give me Cartoner,” Deulin had once said.
+
+On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without
+words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism
+and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering
+attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each
+other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+
+“Got a job in Russia,” he had stolidly told any one who asked him.
+“Cold, unhealthy place.” He seemed to enter upon his duties with the
+casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the
+attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels
+within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree
+affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with
+the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to
+the field of action must know what is going to happen.
+
+Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life--alone
+with his failures and his small successes--content, it would seem, to be
+a good servant in a great service.
+
+He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place
+of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance,
+like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was
+deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The
+concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken
+an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus
+takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all
+through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into
+the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast
+the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by
+the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his
+movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the
+authorities for the good name of the house under his care.
+
+“The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs,” said the door-keeper to
+Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps
+were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the
+letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned
+up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a
+prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+
+It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in
+brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work
+intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid
+verbosity.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TALE HALF TOLD
+
+The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living
+upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to
+such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and
+jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere
+of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived,
+while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall
+quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope
+of alleviation.
+
+The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the
+grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor
+man and read his _Figaro_ quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the
+safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
+
+“He is late,” he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return
+to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced
+towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin,
+whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in
+leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through
+the sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of
+Wielopolski's day--he could reasonably be expected to take care of
+himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's
+lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.
+
+It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in
+riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust,
+looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself
+into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+
+“Had any dinner?” asked his father.
+
+Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There
+was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate,
+fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs
+and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially
+English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a
+firmer stem.
+
+“Something has happened,” said Wanda, quietly.
+
+“Yes,” replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+
+The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland
+was written on those deep-lined features.
+
+“Anything wrong?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing that affects affairs,” replied Martin. “Everything is safe.”
+
+Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the
+identical phrases.
+
+“I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs,” continued
+Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to
+convince himself. “It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid
+fright, I can tell you--especially me, for I was doubly interested.
+Cartoner rode into our midst to-night.”
+
+“Cartoner?” repeated the prince.
+
+“Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened--we were expecting
+some one else--he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe.”
+
+“Who saw him?” asked the prince.
+
+“Every one.”
+
+“Kosmaroff?”
+
+“Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with
+Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing.”
+
+“That would have been a mistake,” said the prince, reflectively. “It was
+the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in
+driblets.”
+
+“That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It
+was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could
+not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all--or
+nothing.”
+
+“He could not have known all,” said the prince. “That is an
+impossibility.”
+
+“Then he must have known nothing,” put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at
+one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+
+“I do not know how much he perceived when he was in--as to his own
+danger, I mean--for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier
+than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong,” said Martin,
+wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand
+shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened.
+“We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The
+man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it.”
+
+“That is more to his own danger than to any one else's,” put in Wanda,
+again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little
+of the incident as possible.
+
+“Then how do matters stand?” inquired the prince.
+
+“It comes to this,” answered Martin, “that Poland is not big enough to
+hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to
+go, or else----”
+
+Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the
+color slowly faded from her face.
+
+“Or else--what?” she inquired.
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles.”
+
+“You mean,” said Wanda, who would have things plainly, “that he would
+assassinate him?”
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous
+national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The
+prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+
+“We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game
+that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be
+allowed to stand in the way of success.”
+
+“It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues,” said Martin,
+uneasily.
+
+“Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened--as it is,
+moreover, not my department--I cannot, personally, act in the matter.”
+
+“Kosmaroff will obey nobody else.”
+
+“Then warn Cartoner,” the prince said, in a final voice. His had always
+been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
+
+“I cannot do it,” said Martin, looking at Wanda. “You know my
+position--how I am watched.”
+
+“There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it,” said Wanda--“Paul
+Deulin.”
+
+“Deulin could do it,” said the prince, thoughtfully. “But I never talk
+to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between
+us.”
+
+“Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+morning,” said Wanda, quietly.
+
+“You?” asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise.
+The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+
+“Remember,” he said, “that you run the risk of making people talk of
+you. They may talk of us--of Martin and me--the world has talked of the
+Bukatys for some centuries--but never of their women.”
+
+“They will not talk of me,” returned Wanda, composedly. “I will see to
+that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say
+that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw.”
+
+The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He
+knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+
+“Well,” he said, rising. “I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us
+go to bed.”
+
+He paused half-way towards the door.
+
+“There is one thing,” he said, “which we should be wise to
+recollect--that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no
+farther. He is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and
+to say nothing.”
+
+“Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!” cried Martin, with his
+reckless laugh.
+
+There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the
+great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the
+court-yard--where Hermani was assassinated--where the people carried
+in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were
+photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side
+door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this
+third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.
+He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of
+it.
+
+“Miss Cahere--the American lady?” she said. And the porter gave her the
+number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her
+thither.
+
+Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's
+room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished.
+At the head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned
+room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this
+room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant,
+a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best
+servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see
+his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room occupied by
+Deulin, who always travelled _en prince_.
+
+“I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend,” he said, in
+defence of his extravagant habits, “and the only people to whom I want
+to give it are those who will not accept it.”
+
+Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
+surprise in his eyes.
+
+“Did Jean show you in?” he said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
+would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
+Wanda. Even plain people have enemies.”
+
+Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+
+“Yes,” he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
+which she was sitting. “Yes! What is the matter?”
+
+“An unfortunate incident,” answered Wanda, “that is all.”
+
+“Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+comes. Your father?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Martin?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Cartoner,” said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
+the necessity of reply.
+
+“Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?”
+
+“He has found out something.”
+
+“Oh, la! la!” exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
+exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
+for a really serious mishap. “I should have thought he knew better.”
+
+“And I cannot tell you what it is.”
+
+“And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man.”
+
+“It came to Martin's knowledge,” explained Wanda, looking at him across
+the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. “Look
+a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie,” Deulin had once said to
+Cartoner, “but not a woman.”
+
+“It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--” Wanda
+paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
+way--“that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
+Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.
+We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My
+father won't--”
+
+Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.
+His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+execution.
+
+“Years ago,” he said, after a pause, “I once took it upon myself to
+advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
+exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it--and
+never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
+and I was wrong.”
+
+He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
+hands.
+
+“Voila!” he said. “I can do nothing, fair princess.”
+
+“But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his
+life,” said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was
+neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.
+
+“My dear Wanda,” he said, “for forty years and more I have watched
+men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite
+ceased to affect my appetite.”
+
+Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+
+“Listen!” he said, as he followed her to the door. “I will give him a
+little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?”
+
+“Thank you,” said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+
+“Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+Englishman.”
+
+Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+
+“There are reasons why I should not accompany you,” said Deulin, opening
+the door. “Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round.”
+
+He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which
+Wanda had just vacated.
+
+“Only the third woman who knows what she wants,” he said, “and yet I
+have known thousands--thousands.”
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MUCH--OR NOTHING
+
+If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference
+to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become
+apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse
+themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a
+long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In
+some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing
+space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
+
+A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will
+then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.
+The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed
+in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all
+interest in him. Thus the gods--with men.
+
+Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers
+good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for
+it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these
+incidents--as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly
+part--with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half
+of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually
+accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is
+necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not
+helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and
+often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic
+goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.
+
+The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
+on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
+crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had
+never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
+apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him
+that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the
+sex of this arbiter of human story.
+
+Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to
+avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two
+days after the meeting at the Mokotow--the morning following the visit
+paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe--Cartoner was early astir. He
+drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
+and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at
+ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of
+peasants--wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in
+gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
+
+This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw
+attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the
+humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some
+parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the
+third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class
+room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades
+of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone.
+There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was
+Wanda. The gods were kind--or cruel.
+
+“You are going away?” she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+Cartoner looked at her in surprise. “You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
+you are going away.”
+
+“No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+again.”
+
+“We are all watched,” said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. “But
+you are going away--that is all that matters.”
+
+“I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
+back this afternoon.”
+
+Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers,
+they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the
+restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the
+platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to
+post a letter.
+
+“You must leave Warsaw,” she said; “it is not safe for you to stay here.
+You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
+for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger.”
+
+She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
+at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could
+not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There
+were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West
+which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely
+bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had
+anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this
+bare railway station the place to say it in.
+
+Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
+He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
+salutation.
+
+“Martin would have warned you,” she went on, “but he did not dare to.
+Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
+had unwittingly run.”
+
+“Not unwittingly,” said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He
+said so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+
+“I cannot tell you much--” she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+
+“Stop,” he said, “you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything--but not from you.”
+
+“Martin hinted at that,” said Wanda, slowly, “but I did not believe
+him.”
+
+And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as
+if there were more in him--more of him--than she had ever expected.
+And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which
+was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes
+from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able
+to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+
+“It is true enough,” he said, “fate has made us enemies, princess.”
+
+“You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
+fate--in Poland. Besides----”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
+your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall.”
+
+And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+
+“It has been refused.”
+
+“But you must go--you must go!” she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
+understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of
+gray in his closely cut hair.
+
+“You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
+world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily--quite gayly--”
+ she broke off with a light laugh, “on a volcano--it is the Bukatys. We
+have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
+window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father
+was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
+times.”
+
+“I know,” said Cartoner, “what it is to be a Bukaty.” And he smiled
+slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her
+manner, in a flash, was different.
+
+“Then you will go?” she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he
+turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them,
+she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of
+hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. “Say you will go!”
+
+And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+
+“I do not think you understand,” she went on, changing her manner
+and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own
+stolid, dumb form of defence. “You do not understand what a danger to
+us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this,” with
+a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred
+marks of a high state of civilization, “is skin deep. That things in
+Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated.
+We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old
+man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to
+look at his face--”
+
+“I know,” admitted Cartoner.
+
+“It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he
+has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so
+happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe.
+That is why I ask you to go.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
+was quite a simple person.
+
+“Besides,” said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
+follow it, call no logic at all, “you can do no good here, if all your
+care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
+have they refused your recall? It is so stupid.”
+
+“I must do the best I can,” replied Cartoner.
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+
+“But we must not quarrel,” she said, gently. “We must not misunderstand
+each other,” she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, “for we have only
+five minutes in all the world.”
+
+“Here and now,” he corrected, with a glance at the clock, “we have only
+five minutes. But the world is large.”
+
+“For you,” she said quickly, “but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+forget I am a Russian subject.”
+
+But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
+his face.
+
+“My presence in Warsaw,” he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+elucidating, “is in reality no source of danger to you--to your father
+and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do
+not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+nobody--nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make
+history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which
+may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If
+nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have
+happened--life is too short to record that. So you see my being in
+Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother.”
+
+“Yes, I see--I see!” answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The
+door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard,
+in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the
+length of the train. “But it was not on account of that that we asked
+Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
+Martin. It is required of them--a sort of family tradition. It is their
+business in life--almost their pleasure.”
+
+“It is my business in life--almost my pleasure,” said Cartoner, with a
+smile.
+
+“But is there no one at home--in England--that you ought to think of?”
+ in an odd, sharp voice.
+
+“Nobody,” he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+respecting himself.
+
+Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her
+stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no
+corridor carriages. Two minutes now.
+
+“We must not be seen together on the platform,” she said. “I am only
+going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old
+servants whom I go to see.”
+
+She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
+
+“Thank you,” he said, “for warning me.”
+
+And that was all.
+
+“You must go,” he added, after a moment's pause.
+
+Still she lingered.
+
+“There is so much to say,” she said, half to herself. “There is so much
+to say.”
+
+The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back.
+He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
+eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right--whether there
+was much to say--or nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+IN THE SENATORSKA
+
+“It is,” said Miss Julie Mangles, “in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+one's hand on the true heart of the people.”
+
+“That's as may be, Jooly,” replied her brother, “but I take it that the
+hearts of the women go to the Senatorska.”
+
+For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
+the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
+their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with
+bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a
+picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to
+and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the
+mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would
+assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could
+possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not
+even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he
+should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a
+choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
+
+“I shall,” said Miss Mangles, “write a paper on the Jewish question in
+this country.”
+
+And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with
+his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on
+the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a
+town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+
+“Seen the Senatorska, Netty?” he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+
+“Go out into the Faubourg,” her uncle explained, “and just turn to the
+left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+are.”
+
+Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
+out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down--as the
+paper itself recorded--the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after
+a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions
+served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to
+accuracy.
+
+Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
+and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
+find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
+Bond Street.
+
+The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
+Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest
+her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--that weak
+dreamer--built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
+shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was
+passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed
+in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of
+surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the
+Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+“I was afraid you did not remember me,” said Martin. “You looked
+straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me.”
+
+“Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+should I?”
+
+And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and
+then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+
+“Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting.”
+
+“Of course,” said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. “One meets
+a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find
+it so?”
+
+“I am glad,” answered Martin, “that you do not meet many people that you
+like.”
+
+“Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people,” urged Netty, in some
+concern; “I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind.
+Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
+kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?”
+
+“I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
+in yours.”
+
+And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
+that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
+
+“Oh no!” she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+descriptive of a shrinking humility. “Why should I? I have done nothing
+to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind--my
+uncle and aunt--everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why
+it is?”
+
+And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell
+her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could--if he dared. He
+had never met anybody quite like Netty--so spontaneous and innocent and
+easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
+little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
+answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had
+a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from
+under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes
+were dark, almost as violets.
+
+“Ought I to be here?” she asked. “Going about the streets alone, I
+mean?”
+
+“You are not alone,” answered Martin, with a laugh.
+
+“No, but--perhaps I ought to be.”
+
+And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+
+“In America, you know,” said the voice from under the parasol, “girls
+are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to
+be careful, is it not?--to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
+France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
+the custom in Warsaw.”
+
+Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+
+“In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
+that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes
+about the streets as they do in England or America.”
+
+As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
+
+“I can show you the best shops,” he said, “such as they are. This is
+Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good
+thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?”
+
+“I love them,” answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
+next shop.
+
+“You would naturally.”
+
+“Why?” asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of
+tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+
+“Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the
+eyes?”
+
+“It is very kind of you to say that,” said Netty, in a voice
+half-afraid, half-reproachful.
+
+“It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes,” answered Martin,
+gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on
+with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
+persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
+this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
+good.
+
+“You know,” said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, “I am much
+interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done
+such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles--and the
+poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?”
+
+“The nobles have come to great grief in Poland--that is all,” replied
+Martin, with a short laugh.
+
+“And it is so sad,” said Netty, with a shake of the head; “but I am
+sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
+interested in Poland--you and your sister and your father.”
+
+“We are supposed to be,” admitted Martin. “But no one cares for Poland
+now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of,
+and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now--and her history,
+which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.”
+
+“But I am sure you are wrong there,” said Netty, earnestly. “I know a
+great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+them.”
+
+“Are you?” asked Martin, looking down at her.
+
+“Yes,” she replied, with downcast eyes. “Come,” she said, after a pause,
+with a sort of effort, “we must not stand in front of this shop any
+longer.”
+
+“Especially,” he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, “as it is a
+Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in
+a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you
+will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in
+Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you
+must go.”
+
+Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+
+“I am quite serious,” he said. “We must fight with what weapons we
+have.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, indicating the shops, “these people, but not you.
+You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
+anything from you.”
+
+“Because there is nothing to take,” laughed Martin, gayly; “we were
+ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when
+my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not
+either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.”
+
+“I am so sorry!” she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
+
+Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her
+short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She
+stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived
+them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had
+just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to
+Martin--his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and
+familiar friend.
+
+“I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?” he said to
+Netty. “I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if
+you will permit it.”
+
+And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not
+the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty
+desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of
+a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the
+flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+
+A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a
+train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without
+speaking. It was against his principles altogether. “Never be silent
+with a woman,” he often said. “She will only misconstrue it.”
+
+“It was odd that I should meet you at that moment,” he said, at length,
+for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the
+initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively
+the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and
+laughed. “I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you
+at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if
+I could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you,
+would it not?”
+
+“It was very kind of you,” said Netty, “to think of me at the
+race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so
+interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely
+hair, and I think her face is so interesting--a face with a history, is
+it not?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Deulin, rather shortly, “Wanda is a nice girl.” He did
+not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+
+“And the prince,” she said, “the old one, I mean--for this one, Prince
+Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?”
+
+“Oh yes--quite a boy,” replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back over
+his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had
+first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+
+“It is so sad that they are ruined--if they are really ruined.”
+
+“There is no doubt whatever about that,” answered Deulin.
+
+“But,” said Netty, who was practical, “could nothing induce him--the
+young prince, I mean--to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates
+and recover his position?”
+
+“You mean,” said Deulin, “the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world
+like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of
+others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden--by
+the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an
+occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady.”
+
+Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+
+“Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever,” she said.
+
+“Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He
+will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory
+life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things
+never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has
+not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities,
+and Siberia--his certain destination--is not a good mise-en-scene for
+your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings
+here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive
+remedy--another privilege of youth.”
+
+“You talk as if you were so very old,” said Netty, reproachfully.
+
+“I am very, very old,” he replied, with a laugh. “And there is no remedy
+for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age.”
+
+“I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,” answered
+Netty, lightly. “I think you are quite capable of taking care of
+yourself.”
+
+“And of evolving my own dreams?” he inquired. But she made no answer,
+and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+
+“I know so little,” she said, after a pause, “so very little of Poland
+or Polish history. I suppose you know everything--you and Mr. Cartoner?”
+
+“Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine
+of knowledge, while I--I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there
+is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not
+prescribe for him?”
+
+Netty smiled gravely.
+
+“I hardly know him sufficiently well,” she said. “Besides, he requires
+no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a
+fortune.”
+
+Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+
+“Ah! is that so?” he inquired. “Who told you that?”
+
+But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+interested in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+JOSEPH'S STORY
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. “It is well,” he
+had said, “to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect
+harmony.” He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at
+the Cukiernia Lourse--a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the
+Cracow Faubourg--which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and
+there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+
+“I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love
+with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In
+her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say.
+But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It
+takes years off one's life,” said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner,
+as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
+
+As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from
+the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some
+chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a
+Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the
+window waiting for the clock to strike.
+
+“I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive,” he said to
+himself, “and we can make our entry together.”
+
+It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows
+was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into
+the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man
+arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following
+Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the
+hotel.
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took
+his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave
+them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is
+to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant.
+When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found
+the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets
+at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were
+talking together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of
+the hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
+
+“You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money,” said Mr. Mangles,
+bluntly.
+
+“I was looking at him with suspicion,” admitted Deulin, “but not on that
+account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not
+I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was
+looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you
+as lively when he came in?”
+
+“Not what I should call a vivacious man,” said Mangles, looking dismally
+across the room. “There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he
+came in perhaps.”
+
+“Yes,” said Deulin, in a low voice. “That is bad. There is usually
+something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+know.”
+
+They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+
+“What beautiful violets,” said he to Netty. “Surely Warsaw did not
+produce those?”
+
+“Yes, they are pretty,” answered Netty, making a little movement to show
+the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her
+waist was very round and slender. “They came from that shop in the
+Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I
+think, was the name.”
+
+And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+
+“Yes,” said Deulin, slowly. “Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+violets?”
+
+“I love them.”
+
+Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when
+dinner was announced.
+
+“It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska,” said Mr.
+Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the
+subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner,
+who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of
+steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted
+theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+
+Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather
+labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times
+as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and
+to enjoy themselves according to their lights.
+
+Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information
+respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+
+“And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?” he said,
+noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+
+“I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+traversed the whole length of the street.”
+
+“And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?”
+ asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+
+“I have.”
+
+And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few
+chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen
+hundred years.
+
+“I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress
+meetings--and I may publish,” she said.
+
+“It would be in the interests of humanity,” murmured Deulin, politely.
+“It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations.”
+
+Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest
+happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be
+described.
+
+“I know,” she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, “that
+you dislike political women.” Heaven knows how she knew it. “But I am
+afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort
+of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the
+people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities.”
+
+“Their chief quality is gameness,” said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+
+“Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think
+the princess is delightful--do you not think so?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+
+“There must be a great many stories,” went on Netty, “connected with
+the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know--of
+people's lives, I mean--of all they have attempted and have failed to
+do.”
+
+Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his
+lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry
+heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was
+listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was
+weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts
+are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was
+talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by
+any means an easy thing to do.
+
+“I always think,” continued Netty, “that the princess has a story.
+There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere
+terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking.”
+
+And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced
+at Cartoner.
+
+“Perhaps,” put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+utterances. “Perhaps she is thinking of her brother--Prince Martin. He
+is always getting into scrapes--ce jeune homme.”
+
+But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
+
+“It is your romantic heart,” said Deulin, “that makes you see so much
+that perhaps does not exist.”
+
+“If you want a story,” put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep
+voice, “I can tell you one.”
+
+And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+
+“Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?” began
+Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
+
+“Which I believe to be the truth,” assented the Frenchman.
+
+“Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story,” continued Joseph, “but
+they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city
+who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country
+could be made a great country again, as it was in the past--dreamed that
+the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into
+human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be
+an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament,
+she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France
+and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the
+treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew,
+would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart.”
+
+And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against
+this danger.
+
+“My country,” he went on, “didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own
+father and whip him.”
+
+And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing
+the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+
+“Ever heard the Polish hymn?” he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and
+across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him
+dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+
+“'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of
+Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise
+our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'”
+
+He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+
+“Jooly--pass the mustard,” he said.
+
+Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with
+a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+
+“'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked
+with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of
+wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to
+restore us, O Lord, our free country!'”
+
+And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of
+the beef.
+
+“That is the first verse, and the last,” he said at length. “And all
+Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.
+They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on
+the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when
+they came out--women and children, old men and maidens.”
+
+Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
+say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman,
+but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal
+acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather
+impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing
+more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite
+herself.
+
+“The dreamer was arrested,” he continued, pushing away his plate, “on
+some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
+warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give
+his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all
+formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great
+difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of
+the family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal
+government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.
+She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of
+bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill
+him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the
+body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen from
+the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and died. The
+wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to
+escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison, and all the
+care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The
+pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that
+prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was
+not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and
+died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but
+his foster-father--that great and parental government.”
+
+Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
+eyes.
+
+“Nice story,” he said, “isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race
+was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is
+a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody
+must keep account of 'em.”
+
+The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
+telling than the reading of it would require.
+
+“Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes,” said the host, “and take
+some yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history.
+Well--after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian
+government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a
+face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word
+with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat
+met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face,
+and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has
+weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half
+a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that
+face if they saw it now.”
+
+Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
+and dogged eyes.
+
+“Man's loose in Poland now,” he added.
+
+And that was the end of the story.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
+so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such men, at
+all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
+
+Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette
+from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible
+reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without
+the asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the
+monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many
+actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going
+counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt
+for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having
+consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.
+
+Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this
+evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over
+their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+
+The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary
+to custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre
+of the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in
+the passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china
+stove opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and
+as she did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung
+to. She was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.
+
+Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the
+room. The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way
+cautiously to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak--to ask
+who was there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in
+books, but it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself
+dumb until now.
+
+Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound.
+Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive
+persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small
+slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the
+door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve.
+Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some
+one infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she
+knew by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one
+hand on the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door.
+The light from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.
+
+It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment
+he was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his
+hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+
+“You, mademoiselle!” he said, in broken English. “Then Heaven is
+kind--Heaven is kind!”
+
+In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing
+first one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and
+Netty was conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all
+her life she had never known what it was to be really carried away until
+that moment. She had never felt anything like it--had never seen a man
+like this--at her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free
+them.
+
+“I came,” he said--and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+see that no one approached--“to see you, because I could not stay away!
+You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can love as
+well as a rich man--and perhaps better!”
+
+“You must go! you must go!” said Netty. And yet she would have been
+sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is
+that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she
+recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if
+he had heard his own story through the door of communication between
+Mangles' bedroom and the dining-room. For the other door, from the salon
+to the bedroom, stood wide open.
+
+“You think I have only seen you once,” said Kosmaroff. “I have not. I
+have seen you often. But the first time I saw you--at the races--was
+enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!”
+
+“You must go--you must go!” whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+
+“I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now--for five
+minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The
+streets are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming
+to these rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is
+the tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I
+won't go till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!”
+
+“Yes!” whispered Netty, hurriedly. “I will come!”
+
+Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment.
+Secondly--it is to be feared--she wanted to go. It was the high-water
+mark. This man carried her there and swept her off her feet--this
+working-man, in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+
+“Go and get a cloak,” he said. “I will meet you by the great fountain.”
+
+And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart
+beating as it had never beaten before.
+
+Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that
+twisted his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the
+chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when
+Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+
+“It was a near thing,” he said to himself in Russian, which language
+he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. “And I
+found the only way out of that hideous danger.”
+
+As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it,
+and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later
+he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his
+arm.
+
+It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
+couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a better
+motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's brief
+summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains
+lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+
+Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was
+one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
+autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+
+“I suppose she will come,” he said in his mind, watching the gate
+through which Netty must enter the gardens. “It matters little if she
+does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must
+leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is
+pretty enough to make it easy.”
+
+In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards
+him--not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first
+clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of
+having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely
+to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.
+
+“I am going back at once,” she said. “It was very wrong to come. But you
+frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
+come, and despise me for it?”
+
+“You promised,” he whispered, eagerly; “you promised me five minutes.
+Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw
+soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the
+memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five minutes
+and that minute--that one minute in the hotel.”
+
+And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
+bench, and raised it to his lips.
+
+“We are going away, too,” she said. She was thinking also of that one
+minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water
+mark. “We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting
+here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is
+engaged.”
+
+“But he is not a business man,” said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.
+“What is he doing here?”
+
+“I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know
+whether he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in
+America, or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that
+we are going on to St. Petersburg.”
+
+“And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without
+seeing you? And the others--Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman,
+Cartoner--are they going to St. Petersburg, too?”
+
+“I do not know,” answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because
+a solitary promenader was passing close by them. “They never tell me
+either. But . . .”
+
+“But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to
+see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see
+into my heart!”
+
+And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+waited for her to answer.
+
+“Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it.”
+
+“Ah!” said Kosmaroff. “Why--tell me why?”
+
+But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly,
+and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill
+which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which
+Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at one
+bound--the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any
+wise man lose himself.
+
+“It is for you that he stays here,” he said. “What a fool I was not to
+see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?”
+
+“I think he has found it quite easy to do it,” answered Netty, with an
+odd laugh. “No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is
+clever and beautiful.”
+
+“There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw.”
+
+And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+
+“You say that to please me,” she said at last. And her voice was quite
+different--it was low and uneven.
+
+“I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than
+you in all the world. Heaven knows it.”
+
+And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had
+no faith.
+
+“But who is there in Warsaw,” he asked, “whom any one could dream of
+comparing with you?”
+
+“I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner
+compares with me--and even you must know that she is prettier than I
+am.”
+
+“I do not know it,” protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. “There
+is no one in all the world.”
+
+“There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty,” said Netty, curtly.
+
+“Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember
+I saw them together at the races.”
+
+“They knew each other in London,” said Netty. “They knew each other when
+I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
+here since.”
+
+Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
+his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
+Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
+salon a few minutes earlier.
+
+“Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires information
+which she alone can give him?” he asked at length. Which was, after all,
+the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment and in
+that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.
+
+Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose
+hastily and drew her cloak round her.
+
+“I must go,” she said; “I have been here much more than five minutes.
+Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?”
+
+And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+
+“You will come again,” he said. “Now that you have come once--you cannot
+be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at the
+foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
+You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair,
+your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak
+French?”
+
+“Yes--and she does not.”
+
+“Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and
+remember that I love you--always, always!”
+
+He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
+side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
+scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+
+“It is all fair--all fair,” said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+convince himself. “Besides--has the world been fair to me?”
+
+Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A LIGHT TOUCH
+
+Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty,
+having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way
+to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions.
+She was not old-fashioned in that respect.
+
+But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first
+time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might
+do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before.
+No one in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That
+which the lenient may call a school-girl escapade--a mere flight to the
+garden for a few minutes--was scarcely sufficient to account for this
+feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some
+wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.
+
+Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although
+Miss Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long,
+innocent-looking Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still
+some views of value to be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+
+Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced
+with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave.
+Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+
+“I will come down to the door with you,” said Deulin, in the passage.
+He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable
+instincts.
+
+At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his
+hat was back again.
+
+“It is a moonlight night,” he said. “I will walk with you part of the
+way.”
+
+He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to
+think it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each
+other too well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin,
+light overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack,
+weighing and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+
+“That is the Madrid Stick,” said the Frenchman. “You were with me when I
+bought it.”
+
+“And when you used it,” added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he
+led the way to the door. “Generally keep your coat in the hall?” he
+inquired, casually, as they descended the steps.
+
+“Sometimes,” replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath
+the brim of his hat.
+
+It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full
+and almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without
+shadow at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the
+river.
+
+“Yes,” said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the right
+instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg,
+which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. “Yes--let
+us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some
+queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense,
+so silent, so unobservant--who sees nothing and knows nothing and never
+laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the
+piece de resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service,
+the typical Frenchman; all shrugs and gesticulations and mustache--of
+politeness that is so insincere--of a heart that is so unstable. Ah!
+these national characteristics of comic journalism--how the stupid world
+trips over them on to its vulgar face!”
+
+As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker,
+with a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was
+unnatural to one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the
+streets whenever he walked there.
+
+Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in
+a narrow street now--between the backs of high houses--and had left the
+life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin turned
+once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street. He
+released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in
+an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand
+in an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening
+for footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing
+the direction from which they had just come.
+
+Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+pavement.
+
+“Any coming from the other side?” asked Deulin.
+
+“No.”
+
+“In the doorway,” whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow
+doorway that had the air of being little used. The long blade of
+his sword-stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's
+sheath-knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the
+moonlight.
+
+“Here,” he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. “But
+you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!”
+
+With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight,
+and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know
+there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal
+life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across
+the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with
+the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like
+a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together,
+and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and
+planted a kick in the small of his adversary's back, sending him
+staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries
+of “Ah!” and “La!” breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the
+fencing-floor--performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a
+marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm,
+hand, head, and leg; forward, back-handed, from above and below. He
+never awaited their attack--but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who
+said that the surest way to defend is to attack?
+
+The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men.
+The sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness,
+from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the
+air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying
+note of steel.
+
+The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to
+the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow.
+Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the
+doorway.
+
+“Even if they are armed,” said Deulin, “they won't fire. They don't want
+the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not
+suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now.”
+
+While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+
+“Both have knives,” he said, “but they cannot get near me. Stay where
+you are.”
+
+“All right,” said Cartoner. “Haven't had a chance yet.”
+
+And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice
+before in all the years that they had known each other.
+
+“That's the best,” he said, half to himself, “of dealing with a man who
+keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner--here they come.”
+
+And he went out to meet them.
+
+But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their
+returning to the attack--thus, with a cold-blooded courage--showed that
+they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran
+forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he
+could not lay aside the little flourish--the quick, stiff pose--of the
+fencer.
+
+His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further,
+as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in
+as if into a cheese.
+
+“Voila, mon ami,” he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had
+made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+
+The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered
+on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck
+eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly
+curling up, and he had no control over them.
+
+“And now,” said Deulin, in Polish, “for you.”
+
+He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round
+towards Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man
+turned and ran, followed closely by his companion.
+
+Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones,
+and came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully
+dropped it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a
+muddy splash.
+
+“He will never use that hand again,” he said. “Poor devil! I only hope
+he was well paid for it.”
+
+“Doubt it.”
+
+Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+
+“Have you an old envelope?” he inquired.
+
+Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of
+the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall.
+And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore
+it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright
+steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt,
+where the government mark and the word “Toledo” were deeply engraved.
+
+“Unless I keep it clean it sticks,” he explained. “And if you want it at
+all, you want it in a hurry--like a woman's heart, eh?”
+
+He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade
+back into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure
+that nothing was left there.
+
+“The light was good,” he said, appreciatively, “and the ground favorable
+for--for the autumn manoeuvres.”
+
+And he broke into a gay laugh.
+
+“Come,” he said. “Let us go back into the more frequented streets.
+This back way was not a success--only proves that it never does to turn
+tail.”
+
+“How did you know,” asked Cartoner, “that this was coming off?”
+
+“Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at
+the Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were
+followed. So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni,
+vidi, vici--you understand?”
+
+And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while
+he made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+
+“I thought we might escape by the quieter streets,” he went on. “For
+it is our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be.
+Neither could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each
+other's business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many
+chances and changes, to be friends.”
+
+They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying
+that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+
+“It was like you, to come like that and take the risk,” he said, “and
+say nothing.”
+
+But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+
+“As to that,” he said, “silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will,
+five years hence--ten years hence--when the time comes. I will tell you
+then why I did it.”
+
+“There can only be one reason why you did it,” muttered the Englishman.
+
+“Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool--the very best sort of
+fool--and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to me as
+I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship.”
+
+And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+
+“I should like to fight some one to-night,” he said. “Some one of
+the very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things
+to-night--and the angels in heaven are talking of me.”
+
+In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky.
+But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were
+sincere.
+
+As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming
+in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately
+behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant,
+alighting quickly, came towards them.
+
+“There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+that,” he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+
+“You!” he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. “You, Cartoner!
+What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?”
+
+“We have been dining with Mangles,” explained Deulin.
+
+“And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,”
+ added Cartoner. “But we think we are going home.”
+
+“You seem to be on the spree,” said Martin, with a laugh in his voice,
+and none in his eyes.
+
+“We are,” answered Deulin.
+
+“Come,” said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. “Come--your
+shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a
+ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them.”
+
+“Do it,” whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+
+And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the
+garden of the Bukaty Palace.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+
+Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and
+passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown
+to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds
+that sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their
+leaves.
+
+A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+
+“Yes,” said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. “You find
+me in sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception--a
+semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an
+appearance. It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till
+midnight. Mind those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course.”
+
+And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+
+“Thank you, for a few minutes,” answered Deulin, and seeing a movement
+of dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+
+“It is better,” he said, in an undertone. “It will put them completely
+off the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it.”
+
+So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the
+first time.
+
+“Come,” said the young prince, “into the drawing-room. I see they have
+left the lights on there.”
+
+He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow
+his guests to pass.
+
+“Holloa!” he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.
+
+At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+
+“Back again already?” asked Martin, in surprise.
+
+“Yes,” answered Wanda. “There were some people there he did not want to
+meet, so we came away again at once.”
+
+“But I thought they could not possibly be there.”
+
+“They got there,” answered Wanda, “by some ill chance, from Petersburg,
+just in time.”
+
+And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+
+“It is not such an ill chance, after all,” said Deulin, “since it gives
+us the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?”
+
+“He is in his study.”
+
+“I rather want to see him,” said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+
+“Come along, then,” was the answer. “He will be glad to see you. It will
+cheer him up.”
+
+And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly
+and simply--so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans
+of Heaven.
+
+Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and
+she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+
+He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look
+at him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with
+quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his
+habit.
+
+“I was wrong,” he said, “when I said that fate could be hampered by
+action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again.”
+
+He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+word “here” he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs
+no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to
+those who have not.
+
+“A clear understanding,” he said abruptly, recalling her own words.
+“That is your creed.”
+
+She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door
+with deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done
+something wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the
+thought, who can!
+
+“I made another mistake,” he said. “Have been acting on it for years.
+I thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an
+embassy--of a viceroyalty, perhaps--when I was quite young, and thought
+the world was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you.
+If it comes, well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake.”
+
+She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+
+“If it doesn't come”--he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that
+hung quiescent at his side--“well and good. I shall have lived. I shall
+have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the happiest man
+in the world.”
+
+He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+been known to say more than he meant.
+
+“There never has been anybody else,” he continued. “All that side of
+life was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it,
+at Lady Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world--you had
+come across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there.
+At first I did not believe. I thought it was a mistake--that we should
+drift apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then
+that you would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it--fought
+against it--tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to.”
+
+She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to
+him since he entered the room.
+
+“There never can be anybody else,” he said. “How could there be?”
+
+And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her
+breath. She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as
+this one fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth--that
+he was thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can
+carry. For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of
+love is infinitely harder.
+
+“I knew from the first,” he continued, “that there is no hope. Whichever
+way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me
+that.”
+
+She turned her eyes to his at last.
+
+“You knew?” she asked, speaking for the first time.
+
+“I know the history of Poland,” he said, quietly. “The country must
+have your father--your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up
+Poland--you know that.”
+
+They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to
+life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which
+raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.
+
+“If you asked me,” said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile--“I
+should do it.”
+
+“And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would
+one day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you.
+There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it--and that would
+be the end.”
+
+“Is it so delicate as that?” she asked.
+
+“It is the frailest thing in the world--and the strongest,” he answered,
+with his thoughtful smile. “It is a very delicate sort of--thought,
+which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
+succeed in keeping it even passably intact--and not one couple in a
+million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from
+the outer world, but from themselves.”
+
+“Where did you learn all that?” she asked, looking at him with her
+shrewd, smiling eyes.
+
+“You taught me.”
+
+“But you have a terribly high ideal.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+She shook her head doubtfully.
+
+“Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+compromises.”
+
+“With its conscience,” said Cartoner. “And look at the result.”
+
+“Then you are good,” she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+gravity, “as well as concise--and rather masterful.”
+
+“It is clear,” he said, “that a man who persuades a woman to marry
+against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is
+seeking her unhappiness and his own.”
+
+“Ah!” she cried. “But you ask for a great deal.”
+
+“I ask for love.”
+
+“And,” she said, going past that question, “no obstacles.”
+
+“No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside.”
+
+“And if one such object--quite a small one--should be found?”
+
+“Then they must be content with love alone.”
+
+Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They
+seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so
+many hasten and such numbers fall.
+
+“You have a way,” she said, “of putting into words--so few words--what
+others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they
+did--there would, perhaps, be no marriages.”
+
+“There would be no unhappy ones,” said Cartoner.
+
+“And it is better to be content with love alone?”
+
+“Content,” was his sole answer.
+
+Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their
+moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten.
+Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour
+earlier, and his life had been in peril--he had been down to the depths
+and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.
+
+“So that is your creed,” she said at length. “And there is no
+compromise?”
+
+“None,” he answered.
+
+And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women
+have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the
+backbone of human nature.
+
+“Ah!” she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+length of the long, lamp-lit room. “You are strong--you are strong for
+two.”
+
+He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine,
+steely strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime
+of which the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of
+seeking always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they
+had left untouched.
+
+“And if two people had between them,” she suggested, wonderingly, “that
+with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure
+they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew
+that they could never have more, could they be happy?”
+
+“They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world,” he
+answered.
+
+“And if they had to go on all their lives--and if one lived in London
+and the other in Warsaw--Warsaw?”
+
+“They could still be happy.”
+
+“If she--alone at one end of Europe--” asked Wanda, with her
+worldly-wise searching into detail--“if she saw slowly vanishing those
+small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care,
+perhaps?”
+
+“She could still be happy.”
+
+“And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some
+misfortune, and felt lonely and disappointed--and there was no one near
+to--to take care of him?”
+
+“He could still be happy--if--”
+
+“If--?”
+
+“If he knew that she loved him,” replied Cartoner, slowly.
+
+Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were
+tears in her eyes.
+
+“Oh! you may know that,” she said, suddenly descending from the
+uncertain heights of generality. “You may be quite sure of that. If that
+is what you want.”
+
+“That is what I want.”
+
+As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She
+looked at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs
+at his temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely
+protecting and dimly maternal.
+
+“I want you to go away from Warsaw,” she said. “I would rather you went
+even if you say--that you are afraid to stay.”
+
+“I cannot say that.”
+
+“Besides,” she added, with her head held high, “they would not believe
+you if you did.”
+
+“I promise you,” he answered, “not to run any risks, to take every care.
+But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing
+you.”
+
+She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in
+that direction.
+
+“I should like,” she said, “to make you a promise in return. It would
+give me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to
+remember it.”
+
+The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be
+speaking unnecessarily loud.
+
+“I promise you,” said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, “never to marry
+anybody else.”
+
+And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the
+clock.
+
+“To your tents, O Israel!” he said.
+
+Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had
+laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.
+
+“Wanda,” he said, “remember me in your prayers to-night!”
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE WHITE FEATHER
+
+It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough
+to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+masses.
+
+Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view,
+it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the
+least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man
+is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat
+without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated,
+who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has
+happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in
+that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must
+ever evoke.
+
+Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men
+and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably
+the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his
+cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious.
+For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long
+into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts
+which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He
+was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there
+came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
+fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
+ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
+perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And
+in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the
+lives of individuals.
+
+Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of
+affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which
+were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other
+do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his
+fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life
+they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small
+feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French
+Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris
+to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The
+western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.
+
+Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop.
+He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which
+Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.
+
+“One likes,” he said to the stout Jewess, “to talk one's own tongue in a
+foreign land.”
+
+And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
+past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the
+day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower
+at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in
+his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
+pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
+
+“Ah!” he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+writing-table. “Ah! if you were only idle, as I am”--he paused, with
+a sharp, little sigh--“if you only could be idle, how much happier you
+would be!”
+
+“A Frenchman,” replied Cartoner, without looking up, “thinks that noise
+means happiness.”
+
+“Then you are happy--you pretend to happiness?” inquired Deulin,
+sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+
+“Yes, thank you,” replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+this morning.
+
+“Don't thank me--thank the gods,” replied Deulin, with a sudden gravity.
+
+“Well,” said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, “what do you
+want?”
+
+Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+
+“What do I want?” he inquired, innocently.
+
+“Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When
+you are most idle you are most occupied.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it
+with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+
+“There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+towards the Column--the shady side, after the street has been
+watered--that my soul desires,” said the Frenchman, at length.
+
+“When are you going?” asked Cartoner, softly.
+
+“I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought
+I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+indefinitely for----”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For the upheaval,” explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+cigarette.
+
+“This morning--” he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside
+his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention
+which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his
+being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+
+“This morning I picked up a scrap of information.” He drew towards him
+a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin.
+The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross,
+Deulin threw the paper across the table.
+
+“You know that man?”
+
+“I do not know his name,” replied Cartoner.
+
+“No; no one knows that,” replied Deulin. “It is one of the very few
+mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up.”
+
+Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking,
+perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was
+still content to be known only by a mark.
+
+“Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,” said Deulin, after
+a pause. “One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an
+upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo
+for many years here. Suppose--suppose, my friend, that they manufacture
+their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as
+to the creating of an opportunity.”
+
+“Anarchy?” inquired Cartoner.
+
+“The ladies of the party call it Nihilism,” replied the Frenchman, with
+an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to
+gainsay a lady.
+
+“Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people.
+They waited thirty years.”
+
+“And struck too hastily, after all,” commented Deulin. “Bukaty would not
+link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But
+there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to
+wait longer, and are therefore less patient--men of a more modern stamp,
+without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough
+in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way--”
+
+“The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to
+his lights,” interrupted Cartoner.
+
+“Ah! since you say so,” returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+“yes.”
+
+“Bon sang,” said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying.
+“He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.”
+
+But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train
+of thought.
+
+“So you know of Kosmaroff?” he said, studying his companion's face. “You
+know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where
+is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that.”
+
+“In Warsaw,” guessed Cartoner.
+
+“Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin--towards London, by the same token.”
+
+Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn
+on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+
+“That parishioner is in London, too,” he said, in his own tongue--and
+the word means more in French.
+
+Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the
+drawing to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+
+“Trying to get me out of Warsaw,” he said. “Giving me a graceful chance
+of showing the white feather.”
+
+Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force
+of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the
+time of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train
+at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of
+Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.
+
+“The white feather,” he said, “is an emblem that neither you nor I need
+trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a
+national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly
+independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the
+tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?”
+
+And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of
+envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+
+“Look here,” he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on
+the table, “here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling--here, in Warsaw.
+Here--in Berlin or in London--is the man with the match that will set
+it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the
+shadow that it casts before it, for the second--no, for the third time
+in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done so
+when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know
+the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since
+your humor is so odd. You stay or you go--but remember that it is in the
+interests of others that you go.”
+
+“Of others?”
+
+“Yes--of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go or
+stay, as you like.”
+
+Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing
+that decision.
+
+“I will go,” he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair
+with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had
+observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important
+business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to
+be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed
+that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have
+thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no
+use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
+
+“I dare say you are right,” he said. “And, at all events, you will see
+the last of this sad city.”
+
+Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
+and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
+this period in European history.
+
+“I smell,” he said, “something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in
+the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret
+which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets.”
+
+He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+
+“Because,” he added, with a sudden gravity, “there is nothing in life
+worth making a secret of--except one's income. There are many reasons
+why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should
+happen--anything--anywhere--we keep each other advised. Is it not so?”
+
+“Usual cipher,” answered Cartoner.
+
+“My salutations to Lady Orlay,” said Deulin, with a reflective nod.
+“That woman who can keep a secret.”
+
+“I thought you had none.”
+
+“She knows the secret--of my income,” answered the Frenchman. “Tell
+her--no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+leave?”
+
+“To-night.”
+
+“And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well,
+do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have
+we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired
+rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael,
+and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away.”
+
+He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing
+but the hired furniture.
+
+“The police will be in here five minutes after you are out,” he said,
+curtly. “You have no message--” He paused to pick up from the floor a
+petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: “No
+message to any one in Warsaw?”
+
+“No,” answered Cartoner.
+
+“No--you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are
+hard, Cartoner--hard as nails.”
+
+Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his
+possessions--already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that
+he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men
+worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality
+may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in
+English public schools.
+
+Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+
+“Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye.”
+
+And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+
+“The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+together.”
+
+And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+COEUR VOLANT
+
+In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central
+European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
+rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
+clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
+done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
+trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
+world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain.
+It had come at last.
+
+In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
+ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices.
+He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing
+that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as
+she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with
+a sort of shock.
+
+“You were dreaming,” she said.
+
+“Heaven forbid!” he answered, fervently. “Dreams and white hairs--No, I
+was listening to the rain.”
+
+He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+daring her to doubt him.
+
+“I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone.”
+
+He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
+the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
+the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
+slow persistency.
+
+“Can you not shut that door?” he said. “Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
+a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
+should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in
+a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw.”
+
+Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
+glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched
+him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she
+knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden
+anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow
+of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew
+that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was
+in reality about his business.
+
+“There,” he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
+her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. “That is
+more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
+see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?”
+
+“I do not know if it will amuse you,” answered Wanda, in her energetic
+way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, “but Mr.
+Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening.”
+
+Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
+to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
+same.
+
+“Separately they are amusing enough,” he said, slowly, “but they do not
+mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles.”
+
+“So has my father,” put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+
+“Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young
+country events move by jerks--that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you are above that sort of thing.”
+
+“I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of
+Poland,” she answered, gravely. “They give everything. I have not much
+to give, you see.”
+
+“I suppose you have what every woman has--to sacrifice upon some altar
+or another--your happiness!”
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at
+him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of
+that, at least, she was sure.
+
+“Happiness, or a hope of happiness,” he went on, reflectively. “Perhaps
+one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If
+you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
+remembered by women, and very seldom by men.”
+
+“Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events.”
+
+“What is common enough?” he asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+“Hope.”
+
+“Hope! connais pas!” he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. “You must ask
+some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is
+why I am so gay.”
+
+And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+
+“The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all,” he went on, as if seeking
+to explain his own humor. “Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
+existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
+fire to sit by. That is why I am here.”
+
+And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
+had something to tell her--that he had come for no other purpose. And,
+that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that it
+was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care showed
+her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his
+character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
+middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness
+of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart
+was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the
+world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long
+and grim a family history as the world has known.
+
+“Do you not feel lonely in this great room?” he asked, looking round at
+the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
+that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+
+“No, I think not,” answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
+room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
+down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the
+first time.
+
+Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
+usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
+feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
+contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
+approach to it.
+
+“The worst of Warsaw,” he said, “is its dulness. The theatres are
+deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
+amuse one's self.”
+
+He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+
+“It was sordid,” he continued. “One wondered how the performers could be
+content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such
+an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
+interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like cracking
+nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was
+so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he
+must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
+was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
+they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
+usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
+had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
+others who received the applause--the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted,
+and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled condescendingly. But
+the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing at all, and quite
+forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression of his patient
+face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one was looking
+at him--which was only the truth. Then, when the applause was over, he
+turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired--his day's
+work done. And, I don't know why, I thought--of Cartoner.”
+
+She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
+have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+
+“Yes,” said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+thoughts, “the world would get on very well without its talkers.
+No great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in
+history?”
+
+Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had
+to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and
+Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his
+monologue.
+
+“I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw.”
+
+Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had
+any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in
+Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to
+know the meaning of that.
+
+“Gone!” she said. “I am very glad.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. “It is
+a good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at
+half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which
+you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution,
+is Cartoner's repose of manner--for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
+not a devout man.”
+
+“Then you have done what I asked you to do,” said Wanda, “some time ago,
+and I am very grateful.”
+
+“Some time ago? It was only yesterday.”
+
+“Was it? It seems more than that,” said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his
+head slowly.
+
+“I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
+quite suddenly,” he explained. “So he packed up and went. He had not
+much to pack. We travel light--he and I. We have no despatch-boxes
+or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember
+and forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets
+anything.”
+
+“And you?” asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+
+“I? Oh! I do my best,” he said, lightly. “But if you desire to forget
+anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+life.”
+
+He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering
+and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that
+he was short-sighted.
+
+“I do not think I will wait for the Mangles,” he said. “Especially
+Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way--” He paused,
+and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. “You never talk politics,
+I know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of
+politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted
+Warsaw--you understand?”
+
+“I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of
+discretion,” said Wanda.
+
+“Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found
+us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her
+Netty--well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion.”
+
+“And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion.”
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. “Have I concealed
+my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+concealment.”
+
+“Perhaps you have overdone the contempt,” suggested Wanda. “She is
+probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+test.”
+
+“You see,” said Deulin, in an explanatory way, “Cartoner may have had
+reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are
+the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people
+in the passport-office--and the others, whose business it is to watch us
+all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought
+it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So
+I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by
+Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw.
+Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so
+he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he
+ignored the little social trammels which the majority of mankind know
+much better than they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He
+was too discreet to call and say good-bye--knowing the ways of servants
+in this country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by
+post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office.”
+
+He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+pleasant laugh.
+
+“You are wondering,” he said, “why I am taking this unusual course. It
+is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his
+back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
+Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also,
+I may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
+to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
+them.”
+
+“At all events,” said Wanda, shaking hands, “you are cautious. You make
+no promises.”
+
+“And therefore we break none,” he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
+
+He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by
+Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous
+and rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles,
+standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting
+was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as
+if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.
+
+“Princess,” he said, “my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to
+take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon
+to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked
+two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to
+show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--that
+she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache.”
+
+And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+
+It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
+sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
+about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
+foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
+more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion
+that they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of
+one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+
+There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
+even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
+on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
+south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
+knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in
+his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
+Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
+Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
+variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
+served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
+
+There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
+it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
+coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
+run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles
+de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is
+also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
+shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite
+a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by
+a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
+sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
+
+There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
+of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
+where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business,
+had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective
+brush, which had last been used for red.
+
+On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
+and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
+respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
+coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
+from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
+in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
+tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
+the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
+American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
+fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
+number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
+use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
+air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
+companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
+and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+
+The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
+is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
+character three words, which, being translated, read: “The Brothers of
+Liberty.” As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the
+Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment
+would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one
+so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
+would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
+suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
+afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain
+that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+
+“That's their lingo,” said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
+numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
+furrier's shop.
+
+He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
+imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
+from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
+of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse
+with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and
+original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
+
+“That's their lingo, right enough,” said the captain, examining the tin
+tablet a second time. “That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman.”
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his
+high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of
+disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he
+had put on what he called his “suit”; a coat and trousers of solid
+pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all
+times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly
+live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the
+state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape,
+such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
+
+The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
+signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on
+the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron,
+who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+
+“Name of Cable,” said the captain, turning to expectorate on the
+pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find
+themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards
+with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+
+“Name of Cable,” repeated the captain. “Dirty!” he added, just by way of
+inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
+which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+
+This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
+aside.
+
+“Heave ahead!” he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English
+he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
+bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And
+he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was
+a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where
+discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a
+sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were
+turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was
+familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the
+Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+
+The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will
+be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
+appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
+man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no
+other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark
+man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something
+magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward
+things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at
+its possessor as if measuring himself against him.
+
+“Take a chair, captain,” said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He was
+clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and
+he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide
+that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim
+strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a
+fighting race.
+
+The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
+to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his “suit.”
+
+“Do you speak German, captain?” inquired Kosmaroff.
+
+And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+
+“Sailed with a crew of Germans,” he answered; “I understand a bit, and I
+know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy words
+like that.”
+
+“Then,” said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, “we had better
+continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+dealing.”
+
+He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+
+“We have not much to say to Captain Cable,” replied the man who seemed
+to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor
+voice, and was what the French call _chetif_ in appearance--a weak man,
+fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
+
+“It is essential in the first place,” he continued, “that we should
+understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered.”
+
+With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the
+smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he
+looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+
+“We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself
+quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
+entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
+understands very little of what we are saying.”
+
+Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
+who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
+
+“Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,”
+ continued the speaker. “Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and
+verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable
+to be affected by circumstances--and should be repeated several times in
+the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
+period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again.”
+
+There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+
+“Yes,” said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+
+“And is only awaiting her opportunity.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body,
+which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a
+penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker
+took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed
+his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been
+justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps
+he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two
+nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history
+is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet
+man had made a little in his day.
+
+“An opportunity is not an easy thing to define,” he said at length.
+“Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
+opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
+would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about
+just yet.”
+
+He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
+worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.
+
+“We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on
+the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
+useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print--and
+ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
+journalism--in England they have too much.”
+
+Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+
+“Another opportunity would be a social upheaval,” said the Russian,
+drumming on the table with his slim fingers. “The time has not come for
+that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and that we
+can offer to you.”
+
+Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+
+“Is that all?” he exclaimed. “I have heard that talk for the last ten
+years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?”
+
+The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
+waited till he had finished speaking.
+
+“Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more
+than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
+five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
+amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have
+her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now.”
+
+He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was
+about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience,
+paused, he knew not why.
+
+“Think,” said the other, in his smooth, even voice--“one month from now,
+after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
+different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
+nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
+party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
+affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
+we seek the approval of no man.”
+
+There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch
+for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the
+judgment of any.
+
+“Five thousand roubles,” he concluded. “And in exchange I give you the
+date--so that Poland may be ready.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly
+as he had lost it. “I decline--for myself and for the whole of Poland.
+We play a cleaner game than that.”
+
+He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+
+“If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights--if
+I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you
+do not give--I should take you by the throat and throw you out into
+the street for daring to make such a proposal to me,” he said, in a low
+voice.
+
+“To a deserter from a Cossack regiment,” suggested the other.
+
+“To me,” repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
+at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
+again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+
+“Captain Cable,” said Kosmaroff, “you and I have met before, and I
+learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for
+you, and these men no company for you. I am going--will you come?”
+
+“I'm agreeable,” said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+
+When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+
+“Who's that man?” he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+
+“I do not know his name,” replied Kosmaroff.
+
+They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
+the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger
+and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+
+“That is who he is,” he said.
+
+Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+
+“I've heard of him,” he said. “And I heard his voice--sort of
+soft-spoken--on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+refused the job and came out with you.”
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+
+More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
+awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
+stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look
+for the unexpected.
+
+It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain
+Cable chartered the _Minnie_ in the coasting trade, and after Christmas
+he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
+Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
+with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
+sudden and untoward end.
+
+Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+cold and wet weather. “If the winter would only set in,” he said, “and
+dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks
+almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would
+perhaps be more endurable.”
+
+Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and
+Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the
+Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never
+reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they
+were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and
+less comes out.
+
+There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+
+“History is assuredly at a stand-still,” said an old traveller one
+evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. “The world must
+be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your
+head off.”
+
+“I am waiting,” replied Cartoner.
+
+“What for?”
+
+“I do not know,” he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+
+Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader,
+and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries
+in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a
+deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It
+came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little
+sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor
+household without surprise or comment.
+
+Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment,
+which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the
+social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until
+at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates,
+while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
+
+“We've always dealt square by each other, you and I,” said the captain,
+when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor,
+and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+
+“If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+wall and shot me, sure as fate,” he said, bringing his hand down on
+his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. “That was ten years ago last
+November, when the _Minnie_ had been out of the builder's yard a matter
+of six months.”
+
+“Yes,” said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind.
+It seemed that the building of the _Minnie_ was not the epoch upon which
+he reckoned his periods.
+
+“She's in Morrison's dry-dock now,” said the captain, who in a certain
+way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
+by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. “You should go down and
+see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in
+the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.”
+
+Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry
+out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the _Minnie's_ new
+boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
+was never carried out after all.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have
+never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I
+believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer
+Deulin--that time, over yonder.”
+
+And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one
+who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know
+which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their
+left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or shout--that
+all men are created equal.
+
+“I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
+hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you
+a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
+turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
+always kept my hands----”
+
+He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+
+“You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years
+and more.”
+
+“Yes, I'll say that for you,” answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+
+“They did me!” cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+down on the table, “with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said
+he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government
+stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government
+official. It was----”
+
+Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
+up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
+
+“Bombs!” he concluded--“bombs!”
+
+Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
+set down here.
+
+“You know me and you know the _Minnie_, Mr. Cartoner!” continued the
+angry sailor. “She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
+and--well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
+man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
+material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me
+out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean
+stuff up to now--plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the
+other. Always honest--revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But
+bombs----”
+
+And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no
+place on a polite page.
+
+“There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,” he
+concluded. “That is what I have got to tell you.”
+
+“How do you know?” asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+
+The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+other.
+
+“Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?”
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+“Know the Seemannshaus there?”
+
+“Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+docks.”
+
+“That's the place,” said Captain Cable. “Well, one night I was up there,
+on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
+day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
+up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
+go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons.
+You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way.
+A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a
+voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and
+we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect,
+with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning.
+He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was
+goin'--well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth.
+Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down
+at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the
+bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as
+I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding
+agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke
+German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't
+rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft
+voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have
+known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a
+match?”
+
+For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for what
+he wanted.
+
+“Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
+an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside
+of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want
+it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man
+said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed.
+We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases
+broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it.
+Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in
+wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides,
+no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the
+moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a
+new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when
+I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the
+stuff away.”
+
+Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
+after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what
+had brought these past events back to his recollection.
+
+“I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge,” said Captain Cable,
+“because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
+square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
+though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
+of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
+and smoke it.”
+
+And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+
+“'Safternoon,” he continued, “I went to see some people about a little
+job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
+forget to come down and see her?”
+
+“I should like to see her,” said Cartoner. “Go on with your story.”
+
+“Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
+been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that
+got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.
+And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark
+night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting
+quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken
+the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten,
+and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still
+going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with
+a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that
+that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the
+man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way
+of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a
+Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had
+been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that
+man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and
+makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a
+hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says.”
+
+Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
+soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and
+after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes
+for eternity were exceedingly small.
+
+“You are too much for me,” he said, after a pause. “You that deal in
+politics and the like.”
+
+“And the other man's name is Kosmaroff,” said Cartoner.
+
+“That's it--a Russian,” answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
+the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He
+carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of
+a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
+outward signs of man and nature.
+
+“It beats me,” he said. “But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that
+you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together
+already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It
+makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_
+hatches.”
+
+“It makes me uneasy, too,” said Cartoner. “Wait a minute till I put on
+another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together.”
+
+He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
+the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+
+“Going to a swarree?” asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+
+“I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
+shall find him, as you say, at a soiree,” answered Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+having dashed up from the club stand.
+
+“By-the-way,” he said, “I shall not be able to come down and see the
+_Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+“Going foreign?” asked the captain.
+
+“Yes, I am going abroad again,” answered Cartoner, and there was a
+sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of
+action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+IN THE SPRING
+
+The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither
+so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one,
+and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady
+would select to pass the cold months in.
+
+“I have my orders,” said Mangles, rather grimly, “and I must stay here
+till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
+Nice if you like.”
+
+And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason
+or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.
+
+“The place is dull for you,” said Mangles, “now that Cartoner seems to
+have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
+any circle.”
+
+And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
+not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
+
+“You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+Atlantic,” she said. “I always found you with your heads close together
+whenever I came on deck.”
+
+“Don't think we sparkled much,” said Joseph, with his under lip well
+forward.
+
+“It is very kind of Uncle Joseph,” said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+Mangles, “to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would
+be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could
+we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should
+not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here.”
+
+Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant
+of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
+particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
+that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came
+forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for
+others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.
+
+Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for
+a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which
+Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate
+coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski
+Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow;
+and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.
+Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her
+steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked
+by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring,
+though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+
+Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he
+came--had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving
+only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had
+raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine
+heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff,
+any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she
+should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was,
+she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she
+naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart
+drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She
+might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no
+doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would
+be.
+
+Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
+people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
+no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
+these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
+uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed
+in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself--and, no
+doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other people do.
+
+Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
+was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
+right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could
+not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
+in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
+supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found
+out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
+
+Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now
+at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked
+much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a
+different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless
+information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies,
+and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To
+Netty he showed a hundred attentions.
+
+“I cannot understand,” she said, “why everybody is so kind to me.”
+
+“It is because you are so kind to everybody,” he answered, with that air
+of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
+Netty.
+
+“I do not understand Mr. Deulin,” said Netty to her uncle one day. “Why
+does he stay here? What is he doing here?”
+
+And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+deepest tones:
+
+“You had better ask him!”
+
+“But he would not tell me.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And Mr. Cartoner,” continued Netty, “I understood he was coming back,
+but he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult
+to get information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course,
+who comes and who goes.”
+
+“Course not,” said Mangles.
+
+After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+
+“Uncle,” she said, “I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+Warsaw.”
+
+“What made you wonder that?”
+
+“I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong.
+Mr. Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so
+odd and quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see
+them exchange glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I
+distrust the quietness of the people, and--uncle--Mr. Deulin's gayety--I
+distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and
+leave you here alone.”
+
+Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+
+“Because it is a dull hole,” he said, “that is why I want you to go
+away. It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a
+conquered country before. All conquered countries are like that.”
+
+Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he
+never again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But
+Netty's curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would
+answer no question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did
+Cartoner stay away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the
+Bukaty Palace. She made an excuse in some illustrated English and
+American magazines which might interest the Princess Wanda. But there
+was no one at home. She understood from the servant, who spoke a little
+German, that they had gone to their country house, a few miles from
+Warsaw.
+
+The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather
+had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip
+of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who
+held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with
+a sort of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really
+broken, or if this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first
+days in March--a month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long
+sleep, and men pull themselves together to new endeavor. The majority
+of great events in the world's history have taken place in the spring
+months. Is not the Ides of March written large in the story of this
+planet?
+
+Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came
+to her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English
+make, which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare,
+like the face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was
+gay and light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his
+admiration for Netty.
+
+“It is three days,” he said, “since I have seen you. And it seems like
+three years.”
+
+Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days
+had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
+
+“My uncle has been pressing us to go away,” said Netty, “to the south of
+France, to Nice, but----”
+
+“But what?”
+
+“Well,” answered Netty, after a pause, “you see for yourself--we have
+not gone.”
+
+“It is a very selfish hope--but I hope you will stay,” said Prince
+Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure
+caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is
+not usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She
+looked, besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at
+that moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was
+only natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew
+Wanda to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which
+is the difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was
+good, and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and
+her was to be treated with scorn.
+
+“I will tell you,” he said, “if at any time there is any reason why you
+cannot stay.”
+
+“But why should there be any reason--” she began, and a quick movement
+that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be within
+hearing, made her stop.
+
+“Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know,” she
+said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her
+horribly.
+
+He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better
+left to men.
+
+“I almost missed,” he said gayly, “an excellent opportunity of holding
+my tongue.”
+
+“Only----” began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest against
+being told anything.
+
+“Only what?”
+
+“Only--be careful,” she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course, that
+brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful, if
+it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake. And
+at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But
+he did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who
+persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they
+will vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be
+cowards. And when the danger is there, and the woman is not--their vow
+is writ in water.
+
+Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears
+to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The
+gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look
+delicate and soft as a peach.
+
+“I will not hear you,” she said. “I will not. I will not.”
+
+Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+
+“No,” he said; “you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to
+hear me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be
+an outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go
+well, and then I should be in a very different position.”
+
+Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or,
+perhaps, she was only putting together recollections which had all been
+thought out before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She
+had only been in Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet.
+But there were terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty,
+that greatest of all drawbacks, was the other.
+
+“I can tell you nothing now,” he said. “But soon, before the summer,
+there may be great changes in Poland.”
+
+Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth
+or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not
+even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
+
+“What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said 'Be careful'? What did you
+mean--tell me?”
+
+His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken
+her hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her
+back. She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear
+nervous often rise to the occasion.
+
+“I do not know what I meant,” she said; “I do not know. You must not ask
+me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and
+do not ask me.”
+
+By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a
+Bukaty to be generous.
+
+“Some day,” he said, “I will ask you.”
+
+And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A SACRIFICE
+
+Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things,
+like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed
+warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
+
+Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+
+So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better
+than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the
+thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field
+a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who
+can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely
+associated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green
+things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to
+drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in
+these countries, where men and women are booted to the knee, and every
+third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
+
+The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left
+them, was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the
+smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for
+it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for
+it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and
+parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula,
+where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim
+solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the
+French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland,
+more frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her
+inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a
+king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that
+great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If
+ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials, he
+was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+
+Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a
+plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt
+had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been
+built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on
+the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a
+meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides,
+while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster
+ornamentation mossy and broken.
+
+Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year.
+They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were
+needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and
+weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only
+remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his
+duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power
+the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity of the
+recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy
+taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the
+village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any money. And
+so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be no reason why
+they ever should.
+
+By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince
+seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world
+to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And,
+though he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and
+not his equals--as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only
+succeeded in proving the contrary--he cared for their bodies as he would
+have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry, and
+he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could
+not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying
+his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers
+who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine
+and comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful
+nurse could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the
+roof of the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed
+upon the front lawn.
+
+Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his
+knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house
+to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical
+advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor
+crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his
+great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these
+Poles, through it all. “Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants,” said
+Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a
+hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it
+is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often
+strengthens it.
+
+Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough
+work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her
+father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being--like him, she was
+intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They
+liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round
+their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather,
+and longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the
+restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who
+had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
+
+Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow
+lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines.
+In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike
+the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking
+beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and
+forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+
+“This frost cannot last,” said the prince. “The spring must come soon,
+and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business.”
+
+But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief
+frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was
+essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went
+the spirit of unrest.
+
+He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on
+foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+
+“And you have had nothing to eat,” said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity;
+a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship.
+He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough
+sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots
+nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his
+eyebrows. He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped
+his face from time to time as the ice melted.
+
+“No,” he answered, “I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of
+the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here.”
+
+“You will not go hungry from this house,” said the prince, with his
+rather fierce laugh.
+
+“I will get you what you want,” said Wanda, lighting a candle. “There
+are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only
+the farmer and his wife--and my maid, who is English, and silent.”
+
+So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in
+the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet
+had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in
+all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at
+any academy.
+
+“When you have finished,” said Wanda, “you can talk of your affairs. I
+shall leave you to yourselves.”
+
+“Oh, there is not much to say,” answered Kosmaroff. “I have done no good
+on my journey. Things make no progress.”
+
+“You expect too much,” said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass
+of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. “You expect
+the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy,
+remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks.
+You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going
+forward for five years, and then falling through, after all.”
+
+Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had
+never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many do, to
+pass the time.
+
+“One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,” he said. “In fact, it
+is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her
+also. But, please, do not stand,” he added, turning to her. “I have
+all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king--or a
+beggar.”
+
+His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+
+“It is,” he said, after a pause, “about that Englishman, Cartoner.”
+
+Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on
+Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.
+
+“Yes,” she said, in a steady voice.
+
+“He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself. One
+evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps,
+that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and
+happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one.
+This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in
+it----” He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+
+“But I have also no power,” he added, “over those whose affair it
+is--you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study
+the attitude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our
+foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to
+us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who are
+our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the
+foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that
+Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow.”
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+
+“In Cracow,” he said, “they are all words.”
+
+“There are certain men, it appears,” continued Kosmaroff, “in the
+service of the governments--in one service it is called 'foreign
+affairs,' in another the 'secret service'--whose mission it is to find
+themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They
+are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would
+conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore,
+the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said--I ask your pardon
+for repeating it--that they know, and that Cartoner knows what he
+knows--through the Bukatys.”
+
+The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak.
+Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was
+looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not
+taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and
+had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment,
+a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than
+any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff
+spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.
+
+“I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a
+brave man. It happens that I know that,” he said. “He knows as well as
+I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left
+London I heard--for we have friends everywhere--that he had got his
+passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back,
+so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these
+suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control
+over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin
+had betrayed anything--”
+
+“I or Martin would be assassinated,” said the prince with his loud
+laugh. “I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the
+methods of the sixties--suspicion and assassination. It has always been
+the ruin of Poland--that method.”
+
+“But you have no feelings with regard to this man?” asked Kosmaroff,
+sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong
+glance, as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him
+untouched.
+
+“None whatever,” answered the prince. “He is a mere passing
+acquaintance. He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him--you can tell
+your friends--it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that
+have been made for Poland.”
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+
+“You know what they are,” broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. “They see
+a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with
+Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to
+have called on you at your hotel in London.”
+
+“It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend,” said the
+prince, “and I tell you, he shall be dropped.”
+
+“It is more than that,” answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+
+“You mean,” said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, “that Martin and
+I are put upon our good behavior--that our lives are safe only so long
+as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having
+any communication with him.”
+
+And Kosmaroff was silent.
+
+He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was
+clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one
+hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and
+had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
+
+“I tell you this,” he said, after a silence, “because no one else dared
+to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you
+have done--all that you are ready to do.”
+
+“Yes--yes. Everything must be done for Poland,” said the prince,
+suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's
+life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck
+ten.
+
+“And the princess says the same?” said Kosmaroff, rising also, and
+raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish
+fashion.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, “I say the same.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN THE PINE-WOODS
+
+The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man,
+and covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
+prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which
+had once owned his ancestor as lord and master--in those days when a
+noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim
+for an injured sheep to-day.
+
+The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a
+noble, he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen,
+perhaps, enough in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him
+that women--and even Polish women--should take no part in politics. He
+believed in a wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is
+better not to know. He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the
+next morning, and Wanda asked no questions. She had not slept until
+nearly morning, and had heard her father bolt the doors after the
+departure of the ex-Cossack. She had heard Kosmaroff's light and quick
+step on the frozen snow as he started on his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.
+
+Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
+the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was
+bright and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow
+from melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous
+evening, and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was
+young and strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that
+had always been “game,” that had always faced the world with unflinching
+eyes, and had never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had
+lived a life of hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and
+witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could
+laugh with the merry, while with the mourner it was his habit to purse
+up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words,
+not of condolence, but of stimulation to endure.
+
+He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt,
+to carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified fight
+against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+
+“If you have a grievance,” he always said to those who brought their
+tales of woe to his ears, “air it as much as you like, but speak up, and
+do not whine.”
+
+He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority
+of grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of
+Poland, and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears
+there is no cure.
+
+“I shall make a long round to-day,” he said to Wanda, when he was in the
+saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots covering
+his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old face
+looking out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. “It may be the last
+time this winter. The spring must come soon.”
+
+And he went away at an easy canter.
+
+Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest
+farm, had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her
+father's departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the
+pine-woods. The trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the
+time of thaw, when the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere,
+gains in weight and breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as
+beneath the tread of some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace the
+trees which in the colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing their
+burden without complaint.
+
+The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence like
+that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living in
+the twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a stealthy
+habit--the smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the beasts of
+prey ever alert for their natural enemy--man. The birds kept for the
+most part to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the crops and
+the few, far cottages.
+
+Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy
+forest-paths were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her.
+In the nursery she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never
+seen them. They might be near or far; they might be watching through the
+avenues of straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it had been
+the delight of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the footprints
+of the wolves--near the house, in the garden, right up to the nursery
+window. They had gradually acquired the indifference of the peasants who
+work in the fields, or the woodmen at their labors amid the trees, who
+are aware that the silent, stealthy eyes are watching them, and work
+on without fear. The prince had taught the children fearlessness, or,
+perhaps, it was in their blood, and needed no education. He had taught
+them to look upon the beasts of the forests not as enemies, but as
+quiet, watching friends.
+
+Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning
+her head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the
+peasants were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all events,
+the Bukatys were free to come and go. In cities they were watched, their
+footsteps dogged by human wolves.
+
+There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and
+of Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right
+angles to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give passage
+to the narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the woodman's
+cottage, and so flat is the face of the earth that the distant trees are
+like the masts of ships half-hidden by the curve of the world. It seems
+as if one could walk on and on forever, or drop from hunger and fatigue
+and lie unheeded for years in some forgotten corner. In the better-kept
+forests the paths are staked and numbered, or else it would be
+impossible to know the way amid such millions of trees--all alike, all
+of the same height. But the prince was too poor to vie with the wealthy
+land-owners of Silesia, and his forests were ill-kept.
+
+In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a
+tree had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the
+open space.
+
+Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was
+taken by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow
+behind her. She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason
+had returned home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed
+her. But it was not the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she had quite
+realized that it was he, he was on his feet leading his horse towards
+her.
+
+She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to them
+a few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes
+vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments stolen from
+heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored
+ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority
+of mankind, never at all.
+
+“Why have you come?” asked Wanda.
+
+“To see you,” replied this man of few words.
+
+And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all
+her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength,
+he had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it
+easily. For he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and
+face every trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief
+that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break
+had he been anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers
+that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand
+reasons why they should not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood
+between them. But it was only for a moment--a moment borrowed from
+eternity.
+
+“Is that the only reason?” she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their
+real world at all.
+
+“Yes,” he answered.
+
+“But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do
+not know--” And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to
+them.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he answered with a short laugh. “I know. I am going away
+to-night--to St. Petersburg.”
+
+He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears
+that she had half expressed.
+
+“I am so glad.” She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile. “I
+am so glad you are going away.”
+
+She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new
+anxiety, which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+
+“I would rather know that you were safe in England,” she said, “even
+if I were never to see you again. But,” and she looked up at him with a
+sort of pride in her eyes--that long-drawn pride of race which is strong
+to endure--“but you must never be hampered by a thought of me. I want
+you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake your head.
+All men say the same of you--they are afraid of you.”
+
+She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+
+“And I am not,” she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness
+was real enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the
+multitude. It lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the
+eager world which, presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never
+recognizes it, but continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches,
+noise and laughter, even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+
+They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind
+to them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such
+moments fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be
+expressed on paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+
+They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid
+of selfishness, and they looked for happiness--not in an immediate
+gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and
+bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword.
+Loyalty to self, to duty, and to each other.
+
+Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that
+should stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore
+duty, which is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres,
+Foresight, Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of
+that madness, a brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her
+lover should be wise, should be careful for the future, should take her
+life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right
+to do so--a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered
+the privilege of that which is called a great passion and admired as
+such--but a right to shape, guard, and keep.
+
+Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps,
+made him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to
+consider the feelings of others and to place them before his own, which,
+of course, is quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which was his
+reading of Love, and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March
+morning and pieced together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive
+way, seemed to content her. She seemed to gather from it that he loved
+her precisely as she wished to be loved, and that, come what might,
+she had already enough to make her life happier than the lives of most
+women.
+
+And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the
+spring was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which
+they could not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had
+become possessed at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff. It
+touched those things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not
+from Wanda.
+
+The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that
+they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.
+
+“You must not go any nearer,” she said. “You are sure no one saw you
+when you came?”
+
+“No one,” answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For
+he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
+again unobserved.
+
+For he knew--indeed, Wanda had told him--the dangers that surrounded
+him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater for Martin
+and the prince.
+
+“It is only what you foresaw,” she said, “when--when we first
+understood.”
+
+“No, it is worse than I foresaw,” he answered.
+
+So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in
+Poland when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They
+could not even write to each other while Wanda should be within the
+circle of the Russian postal service. There was but the one link between
+them--Paul Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin
+had brought about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met
+Cartoner at Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into
+the streets. Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St.
+Petersburg train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and
+go for a ride into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in
+town, but at their country house.
+
+“Go and see them,” he added. “A man living on a volcano may surely play
+with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
+Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
+catastrophe.”
+
+Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
+her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
+for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+
+Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
+waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
+Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
+solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of
+Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees
+most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years
+after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN A BY-WAY
+
+There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
+the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
+of the cemetery.
+
+Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
+away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
+horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
+days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
+white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
+business of killing Germans.
+
+Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the
+direct way to St. Petersburg.
+
+“I hired a horse and rode out to meet you,” he said, gayly--he was
+singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye--“to
+intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the
+streets--and he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine.
+He is not a nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my
+friend.”
+
+He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+Cartoner.
+
+“In the mean time,” he said, “I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What
+are we to do? It is one o'clock--and I have the inside of a Frenchman.
+We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a new
+republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so
+quickly that the world stands breathless--but we always breakfast before
+mid-day.”
+
+He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last
+trump.
+
+“And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not
+show mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got
+accustomed to me there. They think I am a harmless old man--a dentist,
+perhaps.”
+
+“My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three,” said Cartoner.
+“I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a
+close cab with the blinds down.”
+
+And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there
+were matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+
+“Like a monstrosity going to a fair,” he said. “And I shall go with you.
+I will even lunch with you at the station--a station steak and a beery
+table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and
+those who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished
+audience like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am
+with you. But let us be quick--and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?” he
+asked, finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the
+lower parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked
+the higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler sex in dealing with
+certain delicate matters.
+
+“No, I only saw the princess,” replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+silence.
+
+“You know,” said Deulin, at length, gravely, “if that happens which you
+expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for--I shall seek out
+Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty
+or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty
+before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that
+confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things
+are stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets--when friends
+and foes are seeking each other in vain--you need not seek me or think
+about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember
+that. I shall have eloped--with Wanda.”
+
+And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+
+“Bukaty and I,” he went on, after a pause, “do not talk of these things
+together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when
+the first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you
+have only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are--and
+I will tell you where--we are. We are old birds at this sport--you and
+I--and we know how to take care of ourselves.”
+
+They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved
+streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once
+occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the
+Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near
+a market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin. In the
+cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier
+erected between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a
+narrow street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different
+hopes, aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and
+neighbors are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel
+stood between them.
+
+Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe
+from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for
+the men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen
+thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely
+looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles--as
+if there were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no
+beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which
+has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out,
+seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.
+
+“We will go by the back ways,” said Cartoner, “and need never see any of
+our world in Warsaw at all.”
+
+The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in
+an atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little
+used for wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live
+is of so retail a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in
+mysterious cloth bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were
+obliged to go slowly through the groups, who never raised their heads,
+or seemed to speak above a whisper.
+
+“What do they talk of--what do they think--all day?” said Cartoner. And,
+indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of surreptitiousness.
+Even the children are sad, and stand about in melancholy solitude.
+
+“I would sooner be a dog,” answered Deulin, with a shake of the
+shoulders, as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. “Sooner a
+dog.”
+
+By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed
+men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode
+in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor
+and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to
+make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at
+some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective
+eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As
+is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most
+offensive--the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration,
+the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword
+and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the
+other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of
+the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful
+retention of themselves in the background. But these well-intentioned
+efforts were of small avail; for racial things are stronger than human
+endeavor or the careful foresight of statesmen. Here in Warsaw the
+Muscovite, the Pole, the Jew--herding together in the same streets,
+under the same roof, obedient to one law, acknowledging one
+sovereign--were watching each other, hating each other.
+
+At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each
+foot-passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired
+droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath
+the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn.
+On the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense
+of looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the
+Russian-speaking police.
+
+“I do not mind them,” said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+booking-office. “It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are doing
+no harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our passports
+hold out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For they have been
+through my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe--I know when my
+things have been touched--they or some one else. Perhaps Kosmaroff; who
+knows?”
+
+Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings
+as only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord
+half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper
+meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied
+him on the criminal paucity of his menu.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like the
+smell of goat. So give us beef--your railway beef, which has travelled
+so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed and cut up
+by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly failed as a
+stoker.”
+
+He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by
+a doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew
+him so well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his
+indifference. While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to
+time at his companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a
+hundred minute instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+
+“You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?” he said.
+
+“I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been
+here once before,” answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+
+“When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+Paris,” said Deulin. “Yes--I learned Polish when I was young----”
+
+He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot
+from whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with
+large, deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+
+“When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if
+that time is ill-spent,” he said, airily. “That is why the virtuous
+are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the
+others--'nous autres'--it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal
+column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age
+when virtue is almost a necessity.”
+
+Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
+him.
+
+“Do you know,” he said, sharply, “you are devilish absent-minded. It is
+a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your
+mind. And having nothing on its own mind--or no mind to have anything
+on--it hates you for your airs of superiority.”
+
+He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
+front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
+vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air
+or reconciliation to the inevitable.
+
+“When I was a young--a very young diplomatist--an old scoundrel in gold
+spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to appear
+content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule to
+this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt you.
+It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that.”
+
+He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+
+“Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?”
+
+And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into
+the steady, meditating eyes.
+
+“It is not,” he said, “that you assume a reserve which one might think
+unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not
+think worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate,
+that--well--there is nothing left but silence. And silence is sometimes
+dangerous. Not as dangerous as speech, I allow--but dangerous,
+nevertheless.”
+
+Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two
+schools went out to meet each other--the old school of diplomacy, all
+words; the new, all silence.
+
+“Listen,” said the Frenchman. “I once knew a man into whose care
+was given the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater
+responsibility, by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation, even
+of one of the two greatest nations in the world. And that is a care
+which you and I have had upon our shoulders for a brief hour here and
+there. It was the old story; for it was the happiness of a woman. God
+knows the man meant well! But he bungled it. Bon Dieu--how he bungled
+it! He said too little. Ever since he has talked too much. She was a
+Polish woman, by-the-way, and that has left a tenderness, nay, a raw
+place, in my heart, which smarts at the sound of a Polish word. For I
+was the man.”
+
+“Well,” asked Cartoner, “what do you want to know?”
+
+“Nothing,” answered the other, quick as thought. “I only tell you the
+story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said
+that has not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a
+woman--even the strongest--may not be able to bear such a strain as you
+can bear.”
+
+Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be
+serious.
+
+“You know,” went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had
+set before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover
+with a flourish full of promise--“you know that I would give into
+your care unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune,
+or--well--a daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make
+a mistake. And if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive
+you--never.”
+
+And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+companion.
+
+“Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?” he asked, curtly.
+
+“You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do in
+Warsaw,” replied Cartoner.
+
+Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+
+“Not another word--they cost you so much, a few words--I understand
+perfectly.”
+
+Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish
+before him.
+
+“And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake--I tell
+you that.”
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE QUIET CITY
+
+The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He had
+chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least tolerant of
+advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he hated to make
+a change, he had in one or two instances parted with old and trusted
+servants--friends of his boyhood--rather than forgo one item of his
+policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of their long
+friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way of thinking,
+for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+
+“I do not agree with you, but I will serve you,” had answered one of
+these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+needed, accepted such service.
+
+For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by
+looking down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and,
+mingling there on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or
+the clever man--or that rare being, the man who is both.
+
+Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not. Alexander
+II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in a position
+to confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as it were, a
+ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than a board of
+directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely the men he
+wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw them up. How,
+otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual thing. He looked
+round among his relations, and, failing them, the friends of his youth.
+For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the whole world to choose
+from, has no larger a choice than any bourgeois looking round his own
+small world for a satisfactory executor.
+
+Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his
+first task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down
+to the upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a
+useless war in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+
+Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with
+his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand
+aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds
+as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was
+untenable. “Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away,” his
+advisers told him. “With the serf she cannot endure,” he answered And
+twenty-two millions of men were set free. In this act he stood almost
+alone; for hardly a single minister was with him heart and soul, though
+many obeyed him loyally enough against their own convictions. Many
+honestly thought that this must be the end of the Russian Empire.
+
+It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their
+point of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while
+counsel from afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things from
+another stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+
+Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the human
+race, men of different breed and color, of the three great contending
+religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a nervous,
+impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down with the
+weight of his great responsibility. His father died in his arms,
+broken-hearted, bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies of five
+European nations, hated of all the world, despised of all mankind. Even
+to-day there is a sinister sound in the very name of Russian. Men turn
+to look twice at one who comes from that stupendous empire. It is said
+that an hereditary melancholy broods beneath the weightiest earthly
+crown. History tells that none wearing it has ever reached a hale old
+age. Soldiers still hearty, still wearing the sword they have carried
+through half a dozen campaigns, bow to-day in the Winter Palace before
+their sovereign, having taken the oath of allegiance to four successive
+Czars.
+
+Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to
+find that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon
+to prove beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the
+surface of a vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably
+spring up wheat or tares--a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific
+growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of
+his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to
+despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This
+tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time
+came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching
+eye.
+
+“What do you want of me?” he asked, the very moment after he had been
+saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful
+after each attempt upon his life.
+
+The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening--that
+the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in
+history that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was
+full of Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the
+Emperor realized that he must fight--and fight alone, for no nation in
+Europe would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil
+of ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization.
+They had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding
+them.
+
+To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was
+in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his
+own internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European
+difficulties. England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration
+of neutrality, was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the
+dog waiting on the threshold, was ready to side with the winner--for a
+consideration. No wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all
+through his reign he received and despatched telegrams at any hour of
+the night.
+
+No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There
+are many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and
+look twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one
+hand while grasping with the other that which is really the property of
+their neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+
+On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: “Gentlemen, let us
+have no more dreams.” Eleven years later he reminded an influential
+deputation of Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words,
+commending the caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits
+to Warsaw on one excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming
+in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard.
+The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the
+inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No
+one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.
+
+From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
+travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found
+as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of
+the people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few
+years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own
+strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because
+they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had
+followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the
+signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were
+men, and no longer driven beasts.
+
+It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long
+northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was
+reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of
+the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.
+
+The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the
+streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost
+deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the
+drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in
+another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most
+spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the
+inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets
+too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken
+surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with
+rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and
+crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet.
+The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St. Petersburg
+is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest city in the
+world, excepting Venice.
+
+The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The
+river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were
+still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of
+the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and
+leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets
+where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the
+university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges
+facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.
+
+It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
+house like any other in the street--like any other in any other street.
+For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
+world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and
+there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter
+and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St.
+Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.
+
+When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His
+was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this
+time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave
+the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he
+raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman
+asked for was within.
+
+“On the second floor. You will remember the door,” he said, over his
+shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the
+house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+
+Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by
+a clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured
+recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the
+way along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain
+bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened
+the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+
+Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
+brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He
+was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he
+stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+
+“Ah!” he said. “I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got
+other work to do.”
+
+“No, I am at the same work. And you?”
+
+“As you see,” replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
+foot and seating himself again before the fire. “I am here still, where
+you left me”--he paused to make a brief calculation--“five years ago. I
+stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin Congress, when
+it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I stayed. Tallow!
+It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its tallow. And there
+is a simplicity about commerce, you know.”
+
+He gave a short laugh--the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a
+ring of other things.
+
+“Can you put me up?” asked Cartoner. “Only for a few days, perhaps.”
+
+“As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms,” replied the
+other, gravely.
+
+Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each
+other had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has
+lasted since childhood.
+
+“Well?” he inquired.
+
+“Gad!” exclaimed the other, “we are in a queer way. I went to the opera
+the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house
+was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so
+that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him--they'll get
+him! And he knows it.”
+
+“Fools!” said Cartoner.
+
+“They are worse than fools,” answered the other. “The man is down, and
+they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints.
+His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia.
+He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he
+abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth,
+Cartoner!”
+
+“I know,” replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, “students who cannot
+learn--workmen who will not work--women whom no one will marry.”
+
+“Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes
+one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself.”
+
+“Well,” answered Cartoner, “I have had nothing to eat since breakfast.”
+
+“That is all you have to tell me about yourself?”
+
+“That is all.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+THE PAYMENT
+
+It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had
+been arrested.
+
+“It is the beginning of the end,” men said. “They will now catch the
+others. The new reign of terror is over.”
+
+But Jeliaboff himself--a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff
+Station--said that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an
+arrested criminal, was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+
+For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in
+the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics
+no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+stimulated emotion of the platform.
+
+For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+
+In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty,
+had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a
+glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his
+habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If
+it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now
+allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the
+Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach, men
+hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to them.
+He was a leper among his own people.
+
+“Do not go to the opera to-morrow,” one lady would say to another. “I
+have heard that the Czar is to be there.”
+
+“Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia,” men said to one another; “the
+street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it
+is honeycombed by mines.”
+
+The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others
+shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his
+cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties
+he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.
+
+He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the
+world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a
+cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter
+covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates,
+the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was
+planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything largely,
+and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window than the
+coldness of his home would allow.
+
+The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands
+of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving
+even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart
+the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.
+
+Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his
+usual visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her
+palace at two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen
+Cossacks. His officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which
+way he would take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew
+the streets as thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always
+walked in them unattended, unheeded, and unknown--had always mixed with
+his subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven
+above his people. He knew--always had known--what men said to each other
+in the streets.
+
+He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies.
+The road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet
+enough thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen
+canal. The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old
+and soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens
+between the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded
+by a low wall and a railing.
+
+The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg
+are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the
+world. A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along
+and whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly
+glanced at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking
+over the low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the
+bomb thrown and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he
+heard or saw at that minute, for he was dead the next.
+
+The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The
+Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow.
+He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
+afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
+anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead baker-boy. The
+pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some lying quite still,
+others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs. It
+was very cold.
+
+Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been
+weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went
+towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of
+those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the
+terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part
+in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were
+walking in their sleep.
+
+Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+
+“Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!” cried more than one
+voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard
+this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in
+the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound
+to the heights of immortality.
+
+Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a
+crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went
+towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of
+the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+
+The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+
+One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the
+Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to
+the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along
+it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed
+son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones
+between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his
+slavery.
+
+It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt
+took note of it.
+
+A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very
+stones of the pavement were displaced.
+
+The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One
+leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful.
+He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+
+This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a murmur.
+He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise, against
+his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his father's
+teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He had
+done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of Russia.
+And this was the payment!
+
+The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The
+terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke,
+and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize.
+It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer
+in the presence of his Judge.
+
+The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was
+left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could
+to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the
+first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the
+dying man.
+
+The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
+The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
+hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures--the
+instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
+share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+
+His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+killer.
+
+He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the
+second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events
+brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+
+Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to
+be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he
+took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way
+from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the
+slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information
+obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain
+Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's
+opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of
+the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men
+called his luck had brought him within sound of the first explosion by
+the side of the Catherine Canal.
+
+He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the
+zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The
+driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.
+Here was a man who had heard nothing.
+
+Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+heavy leather apron.
+
+“The telegraph office,” he said.
+
+And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
+their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
+Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards
+away.
+
+Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
+his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
+made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
+knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
+great only when we look back at them.
+
+He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
+streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by
+mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand
+things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right
+word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?
+Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him
+living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The
+Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach
+England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to
+combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at
+a given moment.
+
+The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
+uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
+could be despatched from Russia.
+
+Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
+Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
+
+The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
+London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+
+He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
+The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second
+were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He
+walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute
+there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any
+one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried
+up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and
+eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+
+Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by
+persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was
+allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he
+passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The
+two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each
+knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of
+his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding
+a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it
+afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown
+broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.
+
+He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+earthly throne.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A LOVE-LETTER
+
+The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the
+snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the
+garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of
+the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of
+spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
+
+She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
+It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
+Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially,
+perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of
+the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater
+pleasure of the other half.
+
+She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
+to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
+experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
+failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
+an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
+sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to
+what she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
+different from other men.
+
+She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange
+interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a
+conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once
+the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She
+knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might
+come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska to the
+river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.
+
+As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
+It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young
+man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that
+there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked
+a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.
+Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after
+speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It
+was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh
+when she thought of their poverty.
+
+In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
+Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough
+when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad
+walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so
+frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered
+why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually
+resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding,
+if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love
+should be warned that it is a game which never stands still, but must
+move onward or backward. You may play it one day in jest, and find that
+it must be played in earnest next time. You may never take it up just
+where you left it, for the stake must always be either increasing or
+diminishing. And this is what makes it rather an interesting game. For
+you may never tell what it may grow to, and while it is in progress,
+none ever believe that it will have an end.
+
+Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a
+poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it
+is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections
+in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it
+is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens
+with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is
+oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to
+be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is
+in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes
+she does not even go so far as that.
+
+Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning.
+The faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at
+all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is
+leaden-footed in this backward country.
+
+Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she
+felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had
+ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was
+cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other
+occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up
+in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in
+the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
+
+Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate
+of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did
+not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all
+ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
+
+Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old
+palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the
+two principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens,
+near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+
+It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her,
+but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not
+even bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded
+note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+
+There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they
+had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
+unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
+
+
+“I must not speak to you,” Martin wrote, “for there is danger in it--not
+to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is
+for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the
+Europe. I have already provided for your safety. There is great news,
+but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking
+of you, and--no! I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say
+it--who knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but
+I must not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave
+something on the seat that I may keep until I see you again--your glove
+or a flower, to be my talisman.”
+
+
+Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the
+length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes.
+She rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no
+longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between
+two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+covert-coating.
+
+Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
+and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to
+make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling
+her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew
+that events were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of
+the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince
+would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown
+had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
+
+Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She
+thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of
+her--absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first
+in Poland, Prince Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets
+on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.
+She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.
+She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man;
+had found it astonishingly reliable. The honor of women was quite
+a different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day
+of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in other circumstances.
+“Besides--” And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as she
+bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange her furs.
+
+She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of
+snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked
+at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked
+slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting
+beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat
+huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was
+no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now
+going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed
+beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone
+seat and take up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste.
+Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a
+pretty girl.
+
+Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
+Kotzebue gate.
+
+Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty
+had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.
+He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until
+he was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the
+arches of the covered passages of the palace.
+
+After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down
+on the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the
+passers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near
+enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across
+the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which
+Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat and
+spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an
+expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and had
+pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must have been
+a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw waif of the
+public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.
+
+“That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night,” he
+read, and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient
+clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a
+flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he could
+possibly compass.
+
+He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
+Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
+palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
+with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
+
+Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned
+into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
+composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
+Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
+
+“Ah!” he said, “thought I might meet you here.”
+
+He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
+conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
+Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
+he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark
+for some minutes.
+
+“The mail is in,” he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
+the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+
+“Ah!” answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something
+had happened. “Have you had important news?”
+
+“Had nothing by the mail,” he answered, looking straight in front of
+him. And Netty asked no more questions.
+
+“Your aunt Jooly,” he said, after a pause, “has had an interesting mail.
+She has been offered the presidency--”
+
+“Of the United States?” asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+Joseph paused.
+
+“Not yet,” he answered, with deep gravity. “Of the Massachusetts Women
+Bachelors' Federation.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“She'll accept,” opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+
+“Is it a great honor?”
+
+“There are different sorts of greatness,” Joseph replied.
+
+“What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?”
+
+Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road
+to allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school,
+and still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
+themselves in the future.
+
+“Think it is like the blue-ribbon army,” he said, when he returned to
+Netty's side. “The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer
+the abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
+will induce 'em to resign.”
+
+“Is Aunt Julie pleased?” asked Netty.
+
+“Almighty,” was the brief reply. “And she will accept it. She will
+marry the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually
+marries him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms--the men
+that help women to make fools of themselves.”
+
+This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed
+to have a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty
+suspected that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
+Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+
+“She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly,” he said; “she'll give him his
+choice between dismissal and--and earthly paradise.”
+
+Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware
+of. His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a
+way through a crowded world.
+
+And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some
+order; that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THIN ICE
+
+It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+
+“Is the prince in?” he asked. “Is he busy?” he added, when the servant
+had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only
+shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never
+busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a
+German newspaper.
+
+The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each
+other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's
+wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able
+to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other
+side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of
+movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others
+who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly
+bright.
+
+They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the
+glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made,
+with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+
+“Do you know?” said the prince, grimly.
+
+“I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+cipher telegram.”
+
+“Cartoner?” said the prince, interrogatively.
+
+“Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend
+this--pleasing denouement.”
+
+The prince gave a short laugh.
+
+“How well,” he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+reflectively--“how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+telegraph to you?”
+
+“We sometimes do each other a good turn,” explained Deulin, rather
+curtly. “It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope
+that--it was soon over.”
+
+The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+beneath his shaggy brows.
+
+“My friend,” he said, “you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on
+this occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made
+us--plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number
+of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man
+was a thief. He was a great man and in a great position, which only made
+him the greater thief.”
+
+The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+fire.
+
+“He is dead,” he went on, after a pause, “and there is an end to it. I
+do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be
+dead; and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing.”
+
+“You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian,” said Deulin,
+gravely.
+
+“I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
+which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
+happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me
+or to approve of me.”
+
+“My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one
+effective lesson--to judge no man,” put in Deulin.
+
+“Remember,” continued the prince, “I deplore the method. I understand it
+was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy.
+You will see--we shall both see, if we live long enough--that this is a
+mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have not
+even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They have
+approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
+business. But--well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of every
+mishap to one's enemy.”
+
+Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+
+“Thin ice!” he said, warningly.
+
+“Bah!” laughed the other. “You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist--a
+man who is afraid to look over a wall.”
+
+“No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by
+less obvious means,” corrected the Frenchman. “One must not be seen
+looking over one's neighbor's wall--that is the first commandment of
+diplomacy.”
+
+“Then why are you here?” asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough
+laugh.
+
+And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
+flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
+that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+
+“You think I came here to pry into your affairs--to turn our friendship
+into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report to my
+government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid,
+before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?”
+
+“Yes--yes,” answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends glared
+at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in
+other days. “Yes--yes! but why are you here this morning?”
+
+“Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions,
+I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck
+into a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And--who
+knows?--you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
+in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
+cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push
+Wanda into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can
+help it!”
+
+“Wanda!” said the prince, in some surprise--“Wanda!”
+
+“Yes. You forget--you Bukatys always have forgotten--the women. Warsaw
+is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work--to-night's work--is no
+work for Wanda!”
+
+“To-night's work! What do you mean?”
+
+The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+
+“Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing,” was the answer. “But I am
+not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
+as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
+guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
+is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
+think!”
+
+And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+thumb.
+
+The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+
+“If I did not know that you had broken your heart--more than once--long
+ago,” he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+
+“Only once,” he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+
+“Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+Wanda.”
+
+“Ah!” said Deulin, lightly, “that is an old affair. That happened when
+she used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's
+old loves, you know.”
+
+“Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
+time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
+perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
+ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
+through it--”
+
+“Only once,” repeated Deulin. “I propose what any other young lover
+would propose to do--to run away with her from Warsaw.”
+
+“When?”
+
+Deulin looked at his watch.
+
+“In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty--a young girl.”
+
+And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+gained.
+
+“I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take
+her in.”
+
+“Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?”
+
+“If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
+that can make her do it.”
+
+The prince smiled.
+
+“You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend.”
+
+“That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+this thing for me. I come back in half an hour.”
+
+“What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from
+Warsaw to-day?” asked the prince. “What we know others must know now.”
+
+“Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
+will find my way to the door, thank you.”
+
+“If you see Wanda as you go,” called out the prince, as Deulin closed
+the door behind him, “send her to me.”
+
+Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He
+held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+
+“A telegram,” she said, looking at it. “But I cannot make out its
+meaning. I never saw or heard of that word before.”
+
+“Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the
+end of time,” answered Deulin, lightly. “It is from a reliable source.
+Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+wishes to say to you in his study now.”
+
+“Ah!” said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+
+“It is nothing!” put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+“Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question
+of empires and kingdoms.”
+
+With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+could ask him a question.
+
+In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+
+“The man in the street,” he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
+Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go--“the
+man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
+city know nothing.”
+
+“They will know at the frontier,” answered the prince, “and it is there
+that you will have difficulties.”
+
+“Then it is there that we shall overcome them,” he replied, gayly. “It
+is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
+will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I
+have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone.”
+
+For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
+He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
+his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches
+which are nearly always better left unsaid.
+
+“I must ask you,” he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, “to drive
+round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
+up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
+not come back. One never knows.”
+
+And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
+run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
+faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
+to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
+
+In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
+their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races
+always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all
+beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of
+enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than
+usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be
+fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes
+at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.
+
+It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance
+hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between
+twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know
+nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar
+was dead.
+
+As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+first time.
+
+“What will you do about the Mangles?” she asked. “We cannot let them
+remain here unwarned.”
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment.
+
+“I had forgotten them,” he answered. “In times of stress one finds out
+one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+Mangles, if you like.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
+her--“yes, do that.”
+
+“Odd people women are,” said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
+He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
+almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
+
+“I looked into Mangles's salon,” he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+beside her again. “He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
+They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that
+Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.”
+
+At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
+of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men.
+He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+
+“They know,” he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
+Austrian railway carriage. “They all know. Look at their stupid,
+perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
+decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
+what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!”
+
+“Or a grin,” he added, after a long pause, “that passes for one.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+FOR ANOTHER TIME
+
+The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
+the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
+would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
+more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+
+There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
+south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there
+are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
+autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
+under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
+winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+
+Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
+number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
+road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such
+deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on
+either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for
+the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter
+it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used
+at all.
+
+It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary
+hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
+frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
+carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
+
+Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
+his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
+limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
+He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
+have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
+outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
+head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him.
+The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the
+carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
+
+At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into
+the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
+horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
+horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
+horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
+drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
+saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
+
+Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
+man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+
+“You are punctual,” he said. “I was nearly asleep in the saddle.”
+
+And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
+such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he
+leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+
+“You are not cold?” he asked.
+
+“No; I feel as if I should never be cold again.”
+
+“That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
+must take care of yourself.”
+
+“So must you,” answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+
+Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than
+in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
+the French call _camaraderie_, which was not the outcome of a long
+friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
+had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
+with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
+the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
+always reckless.
+
+Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
+for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound
+of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and
+struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded
+hollow, like a drum.
+
+“I suppose you had little sleep last night,” said Kosmaroff when Martin
+yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+
+“I had none.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Kosmaroff. “We may get some--to-morrow.”
+
+The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
+side.
+
+“You know what to do,” said Martin to these in turn. “Come to the
+iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
+you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to
+the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in
+line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the
+river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line,
+dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you
+are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking
+what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them;
+and while they are looking into your carts you must kill them quietly
+with the knife.”
+
+The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
+that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and
+had perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
+promise in his curt hilarity.
+
+Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
+to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
+by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+
+In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
+workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
+rain, no one passed that way.
+
+Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the
+lower lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the
+iron-foundry are on the right.
+
+At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
+at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+
+“What is it?” asked Martin.
+
+“I thought I saw a glint under the wall,” answered Kosmaroff.
+“There--there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the
+gleam of those distant lights on a bayonet.”
+
+“Then let us go forward,” said Martin, “and see who it is.”
+
+And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
+out:
+
+“Who goes there?”
+
+“Who goes there?” echoed Martin. “But this is a high-road.” And he moved
+nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
+gleamed again.
+
+“No matter,” he said; “you cannot pass this way.”
+
+“But, my friend--” began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
+finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
+the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+
+The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
+his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now
+in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
+breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which
+was not Kosmaroff's cough.
+
+After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+
+“First blood,” he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
+hands upon its mane.
+
+“Bah!” he exclaimed, “how he smelled of bad cigarettes!”
+
+Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+mud.
+
+“Oh, he is dead enough,” said Kosmaroff. “I broke his neck. Did you not
+hear it go?”
+
+“Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?”
+
+“That is yet to be found out,” was the reply, in a sharp, strained
+voice. “This is Cartoner's work.”
+
+“I doubt it,” whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
+the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
+
+“What does it mean?” he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
+had always been lucky and successful.
+
+“It means,” answered the man who had never been either, “that the
+place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
+failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
+for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and
+make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they
+have taken me.”
+
+As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
+clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
+
+“Wait a moment,” he said. “I will get over the wall here. Bring your
+horse against the wall.”
+
+Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
+across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+
+“Stand in your stirrups,” said Kosmaroff, “and hold one arm up rigid
+against the wall.”
+
+He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
+on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+
+“Are you ready? I am going to spring.”
+
+He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
+could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+
+“All right,” he whispered, and disappeared.
+
+Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
+he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
+breathless.
+
+“Quick!” he whispered. “Quick!”
+
+And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.
+He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
+gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
+had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder
+they splashed on in the darkness.
+
+“I went right in,” gasped Kosmaroff. “The arms are gone. The place is
+full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
+ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!”
+
+“We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men,” said
+Martin. “We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
+work.”
+
+Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+
+“Ah!” he said. “You are full of hope--you.”
+
+“Yes--I am full of hope--still,” answered Martin. He had more to lose
+than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+
+They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
+these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from
+the city.
+
+Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+
+“I am sure,” he then said, “that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
+me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
+different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know
+who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw
+again.”
+
+“I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere,” said Martin,
+with a laugh.
+
+“I do not know,” went on Kosmaroff, “if they will have arrested your
+father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
+now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night.”
+
+“Oh,” answered Martin gayly, “it does not matter much about that. What I
+am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
+How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?”
+
+And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+
+Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
+the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers;
+for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to
+be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized
+carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.
+They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while
+the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
+the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
+appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
+wild as many that have succeeded.
+
+The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
+away.
+
+“It is for another time--it is for another time!” said Kosmaroff and
+Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+darkness.
+
+In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
+streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
+who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
+streets.
+
+At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
+came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
+shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
+in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
+houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
+
+It was a miserable fiasco.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+
+Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
+and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
+the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
+length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
+alert night and day.
+
+Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
+large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
+and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
+endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
+midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
+The moon above the clouds was almost full.
+
+“There is only one chance of escape,” Kosmaroff had said--“the river.
+Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
+I will get a boat. Have you money?”
+
+“I have a few roubles--I never had many,” answered Martin.
+
+“Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
+make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat.”
+
+And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
+Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.
+He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
+slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the
+soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the
+street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+
+A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
+low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
+voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with
+him two days earlier.
+
+Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
+found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
+filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was
+probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire,
+meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a
+note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.
+Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would
+find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the prince
+himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the days
+when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian
+frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed
+by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day
+or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated
+farm.
+
+Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
+his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
+likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+
+Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
+steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
+this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
+as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
+directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers
+here night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and
+those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get
+their sleep when they can.
+
+To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
+the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
+which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
+sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.
+
+Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
+also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had
+a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
+at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
+coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the
+land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
+
+“The water is running freely,” he said, “through the middle arch. I have
+a boat out there on the ice. Come!”
+
+And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
+river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying
+on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at
+the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it
+flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark
+that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat
+before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity
+of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+
+Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
+and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+
+“Help me,” he said, “to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
+We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will
+come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before
+dawn.”
+
+The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
+for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
+reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+
+“We must lie down in the bottom of the boat,” said Kosmaroff, “and take
+our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel.”
+
+As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
+the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
+which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For
+the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been
+partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
+lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
+trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
+were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up.
+
+“Give me a piece of bread,” he said. “I am famished.”
+
+But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+
+The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
+yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
+Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
+not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
+here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
+horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
+hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
+sea on muddy waters.
+
+Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
+as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
+rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
+down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
+of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.
+
+When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
+prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
+away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
+the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
+and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
+low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
+almost morning.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
+too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
+proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
+
+“Where are we?” he asked.
+
+Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
+pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
+gray and muddy.
+
+“I know where we are,” he answered, after a pause. “We have passed
+Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
+my teeth wouldn't chatter.”
+
+“I have secured mine with a piece of bread,” mumbled Martin.
+
+Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+
+“We cannot travel during the day,” he said, after a long examination of
+the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. “We shall
+not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I
+am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some
+large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must
+wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through
+Thorn.”
+
+Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
+ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
+strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
+the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that
+they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which,
+indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen
+would attempt to cross the river now.
+
+Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
+and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
+prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
+await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their
+escape was being arranged, but they must await further instructions
+before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these
+further orders came by the same sure channel, which was independent of
+the Russian post-offices.
+
+The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through
+that town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would
+find Captain Cable, in the _Minnie_, anchored in the stream ready for
+sea. The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
+whatever. There was no news.
+
+At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there.
+The story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There
+are persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There
+are others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in
+use in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is
+already considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along
+the Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
+building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
+If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from
+the neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
+river-side.
+
+After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to
+wait two days until the weather changed--until the moon, now well on the
+wane, did not rise before midnight.
+
+At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
+by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were
+cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon
+enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them
+into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
+
+The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
+hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
+before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+
+Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
+the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
+by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks,
+the street cries of a town--these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
+
+“We are getting near,” he said, in little more than a whisper. “What is
+the time?”
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes
+at a great pace. It is still of a vast width--one of the largest rivers
+in Europe.
+
+The mist was very thick here.
+
+“Listen!” whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
+thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+
+Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
+They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
+sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have
+come from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this
+time.
+
+“Stop, or we fire!” it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
+which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three
+boats close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
+
+Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a
+suppressed laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+
+Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
+fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin
+lay concealed.
+
+Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward
+and peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the
+officers were calling to each other.
+
+“What was it--a boat or a floating tree?” they heard them ask each
+other.
+
+Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
+the bottom of the boat.
+
+“What is it?” he whispered.
+
+“A bullet,” answered Martin. “It came through the side of the boat, low
+down. It struck me in the back--the spine. I cannot move my legs. But I
+have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole
+the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
+through Thorn.”
+
+He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+
+Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and
+with a jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an
+envelope, closed and doubled over.
+
+“Put that in your pocket,” he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+
+“You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?” asked Martin, suddenly,
+after a pause.
+
+Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
+
+“Yes, I know her.”
+
+“Give her that, or get it to her,” said Martin.
+
+“But--”
+
+“Yes,” said Martin, answering the unasked question, “I am badly hit,
+unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn.”
+
+And his voice was still cheerful.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+
+Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
+from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
+rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
+city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
+pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+
+“I suppose,” wrote Deulin, “that you will soon be on your way home.
+I think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
+on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there.”
+
+This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot.
+The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the
+letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it
+were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go
+to Dantzic and to see Captain Cable there.
+
+He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel.
+He left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke,
+where the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+
+The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
+pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or
+less his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at
+Dantzic quite as easily as at Berlin.
+
+Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
+small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
+versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small
+vessels to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+
+Cartoner knew that he would find the _Minnie_ not in dock, but in one
+of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And
+Captain Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+
+Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the _Minnie_ just
+above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie
+in mid-stream. The _Minnie_ was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
+stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
+sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
+departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
+adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
+cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
+evidence. The _Minnie_ did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
+but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
+minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
+yours.
+
+Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from
+the steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of
+a shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+
+“Come below,” he said, without enthusiasm. “It wasn't you that I was
+expecting. I tell you that.”
+
+Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled
+of petroleum, as usual. The _Minnie_ was a hospitable ship, according
+to her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a
+corner of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench
+at the far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
+
+“Was up the Baltic,” he explained. “Pit props. Got a full cargo on
+board. Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip
+to come to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all
+I'm going to tell you.”
+
+“That's all I want to know,” answered Cartoner.
+
+“But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!” shouted Cable, suddenly, with
+a bang of his little, thick fist on the table. “I've been thinking since
+I lay here--been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself--what
+I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!”
+
+“In what way?” inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+seemed to pacify the captain.
+
+“Of course,” he admitted, “I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
+bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat.”
+
+“I think I can assure you on that point,” said Cartoner. “Nobody who had
+to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But
+I do not know whom you are to take on board here.”
+
+“May be as you can guess,” suggested the captain.
+
+“Yes, I think I can guess,” admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+“But you won't tell me?”
+
+“No. When do you expect them?”
+
+“I'll answer that and ask you another,” said Captain Cable, getting
+a yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. “That's
+port--ship-chandler's port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind.”
+
+For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+
+“I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night.
+They'll likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night.
+And now I'll ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic
+River, Mr. Cartoner?”
+
+“A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do--Paul Deulin. Like
+to read it?”
+
+And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than
+even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+
+“No, I wouldn't,” he answered. He scratched his head reflectively,
+and looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
+ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+
+“Got your luggage in the boat alongside?” he asked, at length.
+
+“No. It's at the station.”
+
+“Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
+come aboard and see this thing through, I hope.”
+
+“Thank you,” answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for
+his luggage.
+
+“Mate's receipt?” inquired the captain.
+
+And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest
+as he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+
+“No stint of the wine,” he said, and went out on deck.
+
+When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself
+to the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For
+the captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
+following night.
+
+“If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb,” he
+said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+sleep.
+
+He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
+watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
+did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
+succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by
+side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the
+same reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+
+Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+
+“Hope he is pleased with himself,” he said, as he stood at the stern
+rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. “For it is
+his doing, you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're
+tricky--the French. He's a tricky man.”
+
+“Yes,” admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, “he
+is a tricky man.”
+
+After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without
+speaking. Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into
+the night.
+
+“There's a boat yonder,” he said, “coming down quiet, under the lee of
+the land.”
+
+They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards
+them. Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of
+the boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide
+with perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+
+“Stand by,” said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+
+Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with two
+turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the steamer as
+a kitten may nestle against its mother.
+
+The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his hand
+on the rail of the _Minnie_. His head came up over the rail, and he
+peered into Cartoner's face.
+
+“You!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Yes,” answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance
+which he never expected.
+
+Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+
+“I want to go to sea this tide,” he said. “Where is the other man?”
+
+“The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty,” was the answer. “Help me to
+lift him on board.”
+
+“Why can't he come on board himself?”
+
+“Because he is dead,” answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice. And
+he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one arm and
+held him up.
+
+“I am so weak!” he murmured, “so weak! I am famished!”
+
+Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat
+that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held
+him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they
+got him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to
+that which was grandly called the captain's state-room. They laid him on
+the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself
+against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+
+The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable
+decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+
+“Here,” he said, “drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done.”
+
+Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+hundred unasked questions in them.
+
+“How did it happen?” asked Cartoner, at length.
+
+“They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not
+me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the
+night before last. He died before the morning.”
+
+“Tut! tut!” muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of
+pity. “There was the makings of a man in him,” he said--“the makings of
+a man!”
+
+And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common
+as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a
+moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid
+of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+
+“I'll take him out to sea and bury him there,” said Cable, at length,
+“if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at
+sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth.”
+
+“That is the only thing to be done,” said Cartoner.
+
+Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “that will do. He will lay quiet enough there.”
+
+And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath
+the sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+
+Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
+
+“I'll turn the hands out,” he said, “and we'll get to sea on the ebb.
+But I'll have to send ashore for a pilot.”
+
+“No,” answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, “you need not
+do that. I can take you out to sea.”
+
+The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and
+Cartoner alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had
+been the friend of both.
+
+“Will you answer me a question?” asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+
+“If I can,” was the reply, economical of words.
+
+“Where were you on the 13th of March?”
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+
+“In St. Petersburg.”
+
+“Then I do not understand you,” said Kosmaroff. “I don't understand how
+we failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?”
+
+“I know nothing,” answered Cartoner. “But I conclude you have failed,
+since you are here--and he is there.”
+
+And he pointed towards Martin.
+
+“Thanks to you.”
+
+“No, I had nothing to do with it,” said Cartoner.
+
+“You cannot expect me to believe that.”
+
+“I do not care,” replied the English diplomat, gently, “whether you
+believe it or not.”
+
+Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+
+“I will tell you one thing,” he said, in a hard, low voice. “It will not
+do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I will
+take any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in
+Poland!”
+
+“If I am sent there I shall go,” replied Cartoner. And there crept to
+one side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him
+pain.
+
+“I believe you will.”
+
+Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck
+giving his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole
+paused on the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin
+again with his hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+
+“Look here,” he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it
+on the cabin-table between them. “A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss
+Cahere. There is no message.”
+
+Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+
+“I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it,” he said.
+
+The dawn was in the sky before the _Minnie_ swept out past the pier-head
+light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed down in
+the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern, jumping
+and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under the
+quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew near
+to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+
+The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to
+be said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered.
+But none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the
+other.
+
+“If you want a passage home,” said Cable, gruffly, “cut your boat
+adrift. You're welcome.”
+
+“Thank you,” was the answer. “I am going back to Poland to try again.”
+
+He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of
+the only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him.
+“Perhaps we shall meet again soon,” he said, “in Poland.”
+
+“Not yet,” replied Cartoner. “I am under orders for Madrid.”
+
+Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat.
+Then he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+
+“Good-bye,” he said.
+
+Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+
+Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+
+“Captain,” he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from
+the shelter of his pocket.
+
+“Good-bye, mister,” he said.
+
+Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift, and
+he sat down to the oars.
+
+There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff
+headed his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the
+promise of a stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging over
+Poland.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a month
+later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace and
+stood his ground.
+
+Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to
+keep their acquaintances in the right place--that is to say, in the
+background of her life. With this object in view, she had an “at home”
+ day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not
+stay too long. To-day was not that day.
+
+“I know I ought not to have come this afternoon,” explained Netty, with
+a rather shy haste, as she shook hands. “But I could not wait until next
+Tuesday, because we sail that day.”
+
+“Then you are going home again?”
+
+Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+
+“Yes,” she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush still
+in her cheeks--“yes, and I am engaged to be married.”
+
+“Ah!” said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes said
+nothing.
+
+“Do we know the--gentleman?” asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in this
+idyl.
+
+“I do not know,” answered Netty. “He is not unknown in London. His name
+is Burris.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lady Orlay, “the comp--” Then she remembered that to call
+a fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. “The
+millionaire?” she concluded, rather lamely.
+
+“I believe he is very rich,” admitted Netty, “though, of course--”
+
+“No, of course not,” Lady Orlay hastened to say. “I congratulate you,
+and wish you every happiness.”
+
+She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word
+to him. He took it promptly.
+
+“And I,” he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading of
+the hands--“I wish you all the happiness--that money can buy.”
+
+Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his shoulder
+turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which was to be
+Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be her father,
+but he was a millionaire twice over--in London and New York. He had,
+moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of which details
+appeared from time to time in the illustrated monthly magazines.
+
+“So I shall hope to be in London every year,” said Netty, “and to see
+all the friends who have been so kind to us--you and Lord Orlay and Mr.
+Deulin.”
+
+“And Reginald Cartoner,” suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes. And
+it came.
+
+“Yes,” she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question, but
+did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner
+was in the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that
+Deulin had brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until Martin
+effected his escape and joined his sister in England. She only knew what
+the world now knew--that Price Martin Bukaty had died and been buried at
+sea. It was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+
+Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be
+interested in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice,
+seeking to recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had taken
+an envelope from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had thrown it
+on the fire, where it was smouldering now on the coals. It was a soiled
+and worn envelope, as if it had passed through vicissitudes; there
+seemed to be something inside it which burned and gave forth an aromatic
+odor.
+
+He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave. When
+the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+
+“What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite
+forgot to be polite?” she said to Deulin. “Is it a letter?”
+
+“It is a love-token,” answered the Frenchman.
+
+“For Netty Cahere?”
+
+“No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be.”
+
+Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was
+still neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the
+fire and was there consumed.
+
+“Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility,” she said.
+
+“I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there.”
+
+“It has a smell of violets,” said Lady Orlay, looking down into the
+fire.
+
+“They are violets--from Warsaw,” admitted Deulin. “Wanda is in?” he
+asked, gravely.
+
+“Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her.”
+
+“I have received a letter from her father,” said Deulin, with his hand
+on the bell.
+
+Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried
+her head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner
+followed her into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's face.
+
+“You have news?”
+
+“I have heard from your father at last.”
+
+The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of
+unfolding it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going to
+give it to Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay walked
+to the other end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was about to
+follow her, when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he stayed.
+
+“The letter begins,” said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+professional preliminary--
+
+“'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given by
+the man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain Cable quite
+well. When we met him at the Signal House, at Northfleet, I little
+thought that he would be called upon to render the last earthly service
+to my son. So it was he who read the last words. And Martin was buried
+in the Baltic. You, my old friend, know all that I have given to Poland.
+The last gift has been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope
+to write to Cartoner, but not now. He is not a man to attach much
+importance to words. He is, I think, a man to understand silence. At
+present I cannot write, as I am virtually a prisoner in my own house.
+From a high quarter I have received a gracious intimation that my
+affairs are under the special attention of a beneficent monarch, and
+that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a sentence of perpetual
+confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be deemed sufficient
+punishment for--not having been found out. But my worst enemies are
+my own party. Nothing can now convince them that Martin and I did not
+betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is freely coupled with ours.
+So they believe. So it will go down to history, and nothing that we
+can say will make any difference. That I find myself in company with
+Cartoner in this error only strengthens the feeling of friendship, of
+which I was conscious when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake,
+never to cross this frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making
+any sign of friendship towards me or mine.'”
+
+
+As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin,
+for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial
+moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause
+for an instant before he could proceed.
+
+“Then follow,” he said, rather uneasily, “certain passages to myself
+which I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health.
+Better, indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough
+old man, and may live to give much trouble yet.'”
+
+Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+alone.
+
+“So, you see, he seems very cheerful,” he said, as if it was the letter
+that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket. “He
+seems to be getting on very well without you, you perceive,” he added,
+smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There was in his voice and
+manner a dim suggestion of the losing game, consciously played.
+
+“May I read the letter for myself?” asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+steady hand.
+
+After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his
+pocket and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group
+standing near the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an
+imperceptible movement of his eyebrows, as of one who had made an
+attempt and failed. They waited in silence while Wanda read the letter,
+and at length she handed it back to him.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “I read it differently. It is not only the world which
+appears differently to two different people, even a letter may have two
+meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon that----”
+
+She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+“--which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a broken-hearted
+man,” she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during which Wanda
+seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even Deulin had
+nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps Cartoner had
+already done so by his own life, without any words at all.
+
+“I shall go to Warsaw to-night,” she said at last to Lady Orlay, “if
+you will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack
+gratitude. But--you understand?”
+
+“Yes, dear, I understand,” replied the woman who had known happiness.
+And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might
+falter.
+
+“It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?” said Wanda. As
+she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none other.
+It was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom she
+submitted the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it before
+these people. As if she took a subtle pride in showing them that he was
+what she knew him to be. She was sure of her lover; which is, perhaps,
+happiness enough for this world.
+
+“Duty is best, is it not?” she repeated.
+
+“It is the only thing,” he answered.
+
+Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic
+and active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+
+“Your mind is made up?” he asked. “You go to-night?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements
+for the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you
+across the frontier, you understand?”
+
+He turned to Cartoner.
+
+“And you? When do you go to Spain?”
+
+“To-night,” was the answer.
+
+“Then good-bye.” The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was
+at the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the door
+behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood and
+looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's eyes.
+But Deulin's smile was sadder.
+
+“And this is the end,” he said--“the end!”
+
+“No,” said Lady Orlay; “it is not. It cannot be. I have never known
+a great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the end,
+Paul. Heaven is kind.”
+
+“Sometimes,” answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused,
+and, facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself,
+commanding her attention to his long life and story. “Sometimes,
+milady.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Vultures
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VULTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ALL AT SEA
+
+Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad
+Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall,
+thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls'
+school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead,
+sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world
+was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin
+first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now
+moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was
+a dry, hard person, who had suffered from nothing but chronic
+dyspepsia--had suffered from it for fifty years or so.
+
+"Fine weather," he said. "Women will be coming on deck--hang the fine
+weather."
+
+And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+
+"Joseph," said Miss Mangles, "growls over his meals like a dog."
+
+The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
+man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
+large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
+better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
+his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
+characteristics are conducive to hostility.
+
+The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
+feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
+to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
+There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
+When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
+did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+
+There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business
+men--Joseph P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a
+sea of commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four
+days that had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made
+anything, or sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready
+for production at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and
+trade. Neither was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and
+yet both were difficult to get on with. For human confidences must
+be mutual. It is only to God that man can continue telling, telling,
+telling, and getting never a word in return. These two men had nothing
+to tell their fellows about themselves; so the other passengers drifted
+away into those closely linked corporations characteristic of steamer
+life and left them to themselves--to each other.
+
+And they had never said things to each other--had never, as it were, got
+deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+
+Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under
+a strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen
+in the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite straight, and
+cut across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a direct, stern look
+to dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he turned slowly, and
+looked down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance.
+He seemed to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken. And Mangles
+met the glance with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark. But
+Mangles spoke first, after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "the women will be on deck soon--and my sister Jooly.
+You don't know Jooly?"
+
+He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+
+"I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon," said
+Cartoner. "She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was pretty."
+
+"That wasn't Jooly," said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+
+"Who was it?" asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who
+have no self-consciousness--who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as
+are the majority of men and women.
+
+"My niece, Netty Cahere."
+
+"She is pretty," said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have
+meant much to feminine ears.
+
+"You'll fall in love with her," said Mangles, lugubriously. "They all
+do. She says she can't help it."
+
+Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+reply.
+
+"Distresses her very much," concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his
+cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side
+of his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss
+Netty Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal
+environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more
+especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what there was in
+Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in the present.
+
+The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck.
+She was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven
+young man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He
+was speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an
+expression of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering blue
+eyes and a complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never
+altered. She was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly
+deprecating manner, as if her own opinion of herself were small, and she
+wished the world to accept her at that valuation. She made no sign
+of having perceived her uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth
+officer, who reluctantly mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back
+as he went.
+
+Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+
+"She don't like smoke," he growled.
+
+Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay,
+when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that
+he was not alone.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+though he was very young--quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor."
+
+She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart
+full of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+
+"I wish some of my relations were sailors," replied Mr. Mangles, in his
+deepest tones. "Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my friend,
+Mr. Cartoner--Miss Cahere."
+
+He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious wave
+of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it was his
+eyes that turned away first.
+
+"You have not been down to meals," he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+
+"No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends on
+board?"
+
+"There are very few ladies. I know none of them."
+
+"But I dare say some of them are nice," said Miss Cahere, who evidently
+thought well of human nature.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+thoughtfulness.
+
+Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes--dark
+lashes around blue eyes--with a guileless and wondering admiration. He
+certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air
+which bespeaks good breeding.
+
+"Have you seen the ship on the other side?" she asked, after a pause; "a
+sailing ship. You cannot see it from here."
+
+As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot
+from whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and Mr.
+Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-case.
+
+"There," said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+"One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much
+nearer. That ship's officer pointed it out to me."
+
+Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+
+"I think," said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice--she had a rather
+confidential manner--"I think sailors are very nice, don't you?
+But . . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?"
+
+"It depends what you were going to say."
+
+Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had been
+about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself. She
+glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+
+"I think I prefer soldiers," she said, thoughtfully.
+
+Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the ship
+he had been told to look at.
+
+"Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave
+enough to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most
+people are afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before."
+
+"No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+each other."
+
+Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+
+"Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service," said Miss
+Cahere, carelessly.
+
+For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body
+of amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+
+Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house
+for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather
+side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without
+explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter.
+But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held
+her there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat,
+looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him to come
+to her assistance. The same gust of wind made the steamer lurch so that
+Cartoner had to grasp Miss Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+
+"Thank you," she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the
+incident had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned notions,
+and was not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met girls who are
+friendly in five minutes with men and women alike.
+
+When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards
+him, and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his returning
+his cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the
+cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
+
+"No," she said, firmly, "you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner--is it not
+foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not
+care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now."
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder
+and looked down at him.
+
+"As if it mattered whether I like it or not," she said. "And I do like
+it--I like the smell of your cigars."
+
+Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which
+was perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+tenderness.
+
+"As if it mattered what I think," she said, humbly, again.
+
+"Always like to conciliate a lady," said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
+
+"Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and
+her frocks," answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner
+was, nevertheless, able to overhear.
+
+"Where is your aunt Jooly?" inquired the old man, hurriedly. "I thought
+she was coming on deck."
+
+"So she is," answered Netty. "I left her in the saloon. She is quite
+well. She was talking to some people."
+
+"What, already?" exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head
+with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from
+whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+
+"My sister Jooly, sir," explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, "is no doubt
+known to you--Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City."
+
+Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived
+in the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible
+to be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
+
+"Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?" suggested Mr.
+Mangles, not unkindly.
+
+"No--I think not."
+
+"Her line is--at present--prisons."
+
+"I have never been in prison," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No doubt you will get experience in course of time," said Mr. Mangles,
+with his deep, curt laugh. "No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets
+on platforms and talks."
+
+"What about?" asked Cartoner.
+
+Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
+
+"About most things," he answered, gravely; "chiefly about women, I take
+it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them.
+And she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick
+there. She had found out what very few women know--namely, that when
+women work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody
+wants. So Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment,
+and pointing out to the public and the administration many ways in which
+women may be profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption
+of the government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice
+berth for which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments
+have no gumption, sir. And--"
+
+"Here is Aunt Julie," interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+
+As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the
+second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship
+and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty
+Cahere's face--perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes--for
+he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his
+face.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNAL HOUSE
+
+Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet--where the spicy odors of
+chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray
+sky--there stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called
+no one knows and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square
+house of the Jacobean period--presumably because it is so hidden by
+trees, so wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get
+at, that its outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+
+It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of
+the tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is
+haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they
+are never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted
+them shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A
+side gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall,
+up an alley, is labelled "Tradesman's Entrance," but the tradesmen never
+linger there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin,
+blue milk on that threshold. The butcher's chariot wheels never tarry at
+the corner of that alley. Indeed, the local butcher has no chariot. His
+clients mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them
+wrapped in a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class
+buyers wear a cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of
+hair by a hat-pin.
+
+The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He
+goes slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before
+he tips his measure.
+
+This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he could
+live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of it--a
+noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was once a
+family mansion; later it was described as a riverside residence, then as
+a quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price fell with a crash,
+and an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by her relations to live
+in it, with two servants, who were frequently to be met in Gravesend in
+the evening hours, at which time, it is to be presumed, the elderly lady
+of weak intellect was locked in the Signal House alone. But the house
+never had a ghost. Haunted houses very seldom have. The ghost was the
+mere invention of some kitchen-maid.
+
+Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+foreigner took it--a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and
+the river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was not
+preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He was
+well known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable suburb for
+a desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to make; and he was
+delighted at the cheapness of the house, the greenness of the old lawn,
+the height of the grimy trees within the red brick wall.
+
+He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his throat
+in the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had obviously
+been designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the Signal
+House occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it up
+altogether, and tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years, while
+the Russian banker extended his business and lived virtuously elsewhere.
+Then he suddenly began using the house again as a house of recreation,
+and brought his foreign servants, and his foreign friends and their
+foreign servants, to stay from Saturday till Monday.
+
+And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played
+bowls on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors
+could hear them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the
+grimy trees and the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried
+much about the Signal House; for they were a busy people who lived all
+around, and had to earn their living, in addition to the steady and
+persistent assuagement of a thirst begotten of cement dust and the
+pungent smell of bone manure. One or two local amateurs had made sure
+of the fact that there was nothing in the house that would repay a
+burglarious investigation, which, added to the fact that the police
+station is only a few doors off, tended to allay a natural curiosity as
+to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+
+When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and usually
+told the cabman when his services would again be required. He came
+thus with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and came
+without luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab, carried
+some parcels, presumably of refreshments. These grave gentlemen were,
+it appeared, about to enjoy a picnic at the Signal House--possibly a
+tea-picnic in the Russian fashion.
+
+The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the
+back of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at
+the closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build would
+allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who seemed to
+know his bearings.
+
+"Well, mister," he said, in a Northern voice, "another of your little
+jobs?"
+
+The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the
+vehicle had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the
+question.
+
+"Yes, my fren'," he said, "another of my little jobs. I hope you are
+well, Captain Cable?"
+
+But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+conventions. He was obviously well--as well as a hard, seafaring life
+will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man,
+with a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a
+little piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His
+eyes were blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart,
+but it was certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick
+coat of blue pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but because
+it was his best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black
+felt. It had perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years
+earlier. He wore no gloves--Captain Cable drew the line there. As for
+the rest, he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig.
+
+"And yourself?" he answered, mechanically.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," replied the polite banker, who, it will
+have been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the
+reader. The truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously
+Russian that the plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of
+consonants. "It is an affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you,
+but I think they do not speak English, except your colleague, the other
+captain, who speaks a little--a very little."
+
+As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+awaiting them.
+
+"This is Captain Cable," he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign
+ways; but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn,
+just to show that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the
+conversation.
+
+"Tell 'em," he said, "that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+clean."
+
+He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken
+metaphorically.
+
+The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions,
+rather markedly and with much deference.
+
+"You're speakin' French," interrupted Captain Cable.
+
+"Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?"
+
+"Not me," returned Captain Cable, affably. "They're all one to me.
+They're all damn nonsense."
+
+He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the
+social station of the speaker.
+
+The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He was
+a tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair and
+mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were dark,
+and he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which had been
+placed near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a cedar-tree, and
+his manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in his daily life he
+had always been looked up to and obeyed without question.
+
+"Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands," he said.
+
+And the banker replied:
+
+"Oui, mon Prince."
+
+But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the others,
+the youngest of the group--a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy, fair
+mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+
+"My father," he said, in perfect English, "says that we also are plain
+men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours."
+
+He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it
+had been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not
+like these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the
+young man.
+
+The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted
+group seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat
+down last, was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown,
+and was mostly hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a
+Northerner, the abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark
+of the other element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable
+looked at him hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they
+sat next to each other at one side of the table, and faced the three
+landsmen. Again Captain Cable spoke first.
+
+"Provided it's nothing underhand," he said, "I'm ready and willing.
+Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God--them's my risks!
+I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives--"
+
+"There are explosives," admitted the banker.
+
+"Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my hatches.
+Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face."
+
+"There are cartridges," said the young man who had shaken hands.
+
+"That'll do," said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+towards the banker, added, "Now, mister," and sat back in his chair.
+
+"It is a very simple matter," explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+voice. "We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is
+some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters.
+There is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you
+understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost."
+
+The banker paused for breath.
+
+"I understand," said Captain Cable. "It's the same with me and my ship.
+There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's
+neck or nothing with me."
+
+And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+respect, nothing.
+
+"I understand right enough," he added, with an affable nod to the three
+foreigners.
+
+"You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in
+the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the _Olaf_,
+Captain Petersen--sitting by your side."
+
+Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+
+"Thought you was a seafaring man," he said. And Captain Petersen replied
+that he was "Vair pleased."
+
+"The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable."
+
+"I don't deny," replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen
+out of the corner of his eye, "that I have been there before."
+
+"You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a
+sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber
+waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+captain?"
+
+"To-morrow," replied the captain. "Ship's lying in the river now, and if
+these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--"
+
+"No, I do not think we shall have time for that!" put in the banker,
+hastily. "And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your
+meeting-place. You have your charts?"
+
+By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years
+he had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain
+sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the
+overhanging trees.
+
+"Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much," he said,
+apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+
+The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the
+action, looked at him sharply.
+
+"Seafaring man?" he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his
+voice.
+
+"Not by profession, only for fun."
+
+"Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet
+found out where the fun comes in!"
+
+"This gentleman," explained the banker, "his Ex--Mr.--" He paused, and
+looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Martin."
+
+"Mr. Martin will be on board the _Olaf_ when you meet Captain Petersen
+in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that Captain
+Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The
+two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson
+undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my
+fren'?"
+
+"My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious
+little of that," replied Captain Cable.
+
+He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for us
+two--us seafaring men?"
+
+"There is five hundred pounds for each of you," replied the white-haired
+gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+
+Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+
+"I like to deal with a gentleman," he said, gruffly.
+
+"And so do I," replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+
+Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A SPECIALTY
+
+A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the
+breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet
+and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like
+a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad
+daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and
+day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three
+weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is
+ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and
+the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+
+There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill
+is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably
+an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the
+waste-places of the world--a place left clean on sailors' charts; no
+one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have
+earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never
+relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their
+embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp.
+Their story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and
+stored beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle
+the ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on
+these waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea,
+where it blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the
+world is blue and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on
+these coasts.
+
+"Barrin' fogs--always barrin' fogs!" Captain Cable had said as his last
+word on leaving the Signal House. "If ye wait a month, never move in a
+fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!"
+
+And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one
+of those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or
+reason.
+
+At sunset the _Olaf_ had crept cautiously in from the west--a
+high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with
+her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like
+a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who
+moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and
+a little dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every
+current.
+
+Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a
+half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then
+he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he
+rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped
+dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then
+Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high
+forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The _Olaf_ was anchored at
+the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no
+vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went
+down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into
+night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below
+the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its
+winking, wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+
+Here the _Olaf_ rode out the gale that raged all through the night, and
+in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the northwest
+wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to make a
+sea big enough to affect large vessels. The _Olaf_ rode easily enough,
+and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time,
+throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at
+its bath.
+
+Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and
+lively in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of
+the black sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost
+in the ample folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+
+"It remains to be seen," he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+"whether that little man will come to us in this."
+
+"He will come," said Captain Petersen.
+
+Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things--at the timidity
+and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad weather, at
+life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people who find
+life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that it is
+easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells
+that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and
+chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The
+gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the
+happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin
+Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy
+cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim
+pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea,
+and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain
+Petersen on the back.
+
+"Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly
+amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy,
+my friend?"
+
+Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+
+"We are putting our necks within a rope," he said.
+
+"Not your neck--only mine," replied Martin. "It is a necktie that one
+gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so
+free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine!
+The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there
+is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his
+life--that old man, eh?"
+
+"It is all very well for you," said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning
+his gloomy eyes towards his companion. "A prince does not get shot or
+hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas."
+
+"Ah! you think that," said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. "One can
+never tell."
+
+Then he broke into a laugh.
+
+"Come!" he said, "I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come
+on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of a
+man."
+
+"If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,"
+grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
+
+"He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness."
+
+"He is probably afraid--" Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+laboriously on to the rail.
+
+"Of what?" inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+
+"Of a woman."
+
+And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+aloft.
+
+They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
+breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
+that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
+Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
+horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
+approaching before the wind.
+
+Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the
+water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the
+beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till
+the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He
+disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again
+astern of the _Olaf_, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan
+of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very different
+kind of sailor to the careful captain of the _Olaf_. His low decks were
+clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--green and white.
+As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved
+his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.
+
+Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that
+still broke over the bows. The crew of the _Olaf_, crowding to the rail,
+looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of their
+dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost under
+water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable
+stood swaying on the bridge--a little, square figure in gleaming
+oilskins--and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+
+He passed ahead of the _Olaf_ and anchored there, paying out cable as if
+he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a
+sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port
+of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his
+business was, this seaman knew it well.
+
+No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat,
+and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity.
+"He is going to try and get to us!" he said, pessimistically, and went
+forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this
+Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing
+Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope--cleverly
+thrown--coiled out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's
+face.
+
+A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the _Olaf_ and shook
+hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince Martin,
+who held out his hand.
+
+"Glad to see you, Captain Cable," he said. Cable finished drying the
+salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook
+hands.
+
+"Suppose you thought I wasn't coming," he said, suspiciously.
+
+"No, I knew you would."
+
+"Glad to see me for my own sake?" suggested the captain, grimly smiling.
+
+"Yes, it always does one good to see a man," answered Prince Martin.
+
+"They tell me you're a prince."
+
+"That is all."
+
+The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+
+"Makings of a man as well, perhaps," he said, doubtfully. Then he turned
+to cast an eye over the _Olaf_.
+
+"Tin-kettle of a thing!" he observed, after a pause.
+
+"My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small.
+Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and
+get our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if
+it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work
+all night?"
+
+"I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is."
+
+The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+
+"Dammy, you're the right sort!" he muttered, looking aloft at the
+rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the
+privilege of the British sailor.
+
+Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on
+board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle "ship-shape and
+Bristol fashion," and refused to remain on board the _Olaf_ for
+luncheon.
+
+"We've got a bit of steak," he said, conclusively, and clambered over
+the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of
+fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small
+steamer to the large one.
+
+The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon--men who,
+as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in
+harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or
+a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+
+There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after
+dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost
+noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's
+crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun
+which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince
+Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.
+
+Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened,
+and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the
+transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out
+of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the
+other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the
+creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three
+men who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee
+together in the cabin of the _Olaf_.
+
+"Likely as not," said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, "we
+three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they
+did see me."
+
+"We can never tell," said Martin, optimistically.
+
+"Of course," the captain went on, "I can hold me tongue. That's
+agreed--we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely
+to pay for a word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper
+that I could put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has
+had a hand in some queer political pies."
+
+"Yes," answered Martin, with his gay laugh, "and kept it clean all the
+same."
+
+"That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+father for my money in three days' time--barrin' fogs. And I'll tell him
+I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's a
+handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly."
+
+Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+sea-boots.
+
+Half an hour later the _Olaf_ was alone on that shallow sea, which
+seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a
+room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TWO OF A TRADE
+
+"His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard," a witty Frenchwoman had
+once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin
+alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French
+have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as
+the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a
+moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+
+The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear
+it--Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker--and made that man Paul
+Deulin's friend for the rest of his life. As there is _point de culte
+sans mystere_, so also there can be no lasting friendship without
+reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of the
+world--although they had in common more languages than may be counted on
+the fingers--they knew but little of each other.
+
+If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
+green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring
+to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole
+harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other
+hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will
+discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.
+
+Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
+they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
+to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his
+own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of
+the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
+opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted
+in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
+represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which
+is the language of diplomacy, and means war.
+
+For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
+it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+
+"The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
+in one place at a time," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years
+his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
+rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
+place where their services were urgently needed.
+
+"If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during
+a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are."
+Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
+imperturbable smile.
+
+Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
+captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
+vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
+a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
+during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
+remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
+with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
+quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
+fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
+only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
+manufactured their own thoughts.
+
+Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
+was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+
+"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
+side. If I did not, he would go past."
+
+This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
+England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
+a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that
+direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.
+Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall,
+avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are
+content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover,
+such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often
+happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.
+
+Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune,
+or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall,
+spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm
+possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of
+a great land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked
+with Cartoner.
+
+"I permit myself a question," he said. "When did you return from Cuba?"
+
+"I landed at Liverpool last night."
+
+Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.
+Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried
+behind those smiling eyes.
+
+"I am in London, as you see," said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+question. "I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may
+suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us
+hope we may have another little . . . errand together--eh?"
+
+As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman
+who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look
+curiously at the two men.
+
+"You are dressed in your best clothes," said Deulin, after a pause; "you
+are going to pay calls."
+
+"I am going to call on one of my old chiefs."
+
+"Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on a
+new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk to
+a clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all your
+old chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment since you
+made your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men--eh?"
+
+"She will be glad to see you," said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going. She
+might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy one."
+
+"I always go to see them when I am in town," said Cartoner, who usually
+confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily intercourse.
+
+"And he--how is he?"
+
+"He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long in
+many climates. She is always anxious about him."
+
+"It is the penalty a woman pays," said Deulin. "To love and to be
+consumed by anxiety--a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should
+have gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want her
+good services--again."
+
+And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+
+"I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of course,
+you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw."
+
+"I know the history of Poland," answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his
+head a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead
+a burden of memories and knowledge of which his brain was always
+conscious--as a man may stand in the centre of a great library, and
+become suddenly aware that he has more books than he can ever open and
+understand.
+
+"Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more history
+that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and Heaven
+knows that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I never look
+into a book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are in London. I
+give you that--to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and son. It is
+not for them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take care of
+themselves--though they will not do that. It does not run in the family,
+as you know, who read history books."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner
+of St. James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been
+passed in London streets. For it must be remembered that English traffic
+is different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+
+"There is a girl," pursued the Frenchman. "Families like the Bukatys
+should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is
+as gay as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old
+ruffian--and my very dear friend."
+
+"And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?" inquired
+Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+
+"That I leave to Lady Orlay," replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who
+abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.
+
+"Yes," he said, ignoring the incident, "I would not presume to dictate.
+All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who
+has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father
+who is a plotter and an old ruffian--a Polish noble, in fact--and a
+brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I
+should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the
+world, practically alone--on the hard, hard upper-class world--with only
+one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on a
+shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps,
+of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman--and,
+vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.'"
+
+"And my accomplished aunt . . ." suggested Cartoner.
+
+"Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh
+than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of
+common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation."
+
+As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last
+he broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly
+following the stream of his own thoughts.
+
+"Who is Joseph P. Mangles?" he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+
+"An American gentleman--the word is applicable in its best sense--who
+for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the
+most terrible sister a man ever had."
+
+"So much I know."
+
+Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+
+"Then you have met him--that puts another complexion on your question."
+
+"I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him."
+
+"And that is all you know about him?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on."
+
+"What is he?" repeated Cartoner.
+
+"He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor
+devil--like you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time kicking
+his heels in New York, or wherever they kick their heels in America.
+The rest of his time he is risking his health, or possibly his neck,
+wherever it may please the fates to send him. If he had been properly
+trained, he might have done something, that Joseph P. Mangles; for he
+can hold his tongue. But he took to it late, as they all do in America.
+So he has come across, has he? Yes, the storm-birds are congregating, my
+silent friend. There is something in the wind."
+
+Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed it.
+
+"Was that girl with them?" he inquired presently--"Miss Netty Cahere?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I always make love to Miss Cahere--she likes it best."
+
+Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare
+that his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not
+speak again until they had walked some distance northward of Piccadilly,
+and stopped before a house with white window-boxes. Several carriages
+stood at the other side of the road against the square railings.
+
+"Is it her day?" inquired Deulin.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+
+"And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since
+we are here, let us go in--with a smile on the countenance, eh? my brave
+Cartoner."
+
+"And a lie on the tongue."
+
+"There I will meet you, too," replied Deulin, looking into his
+card-case.
+
+They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a
+number of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come
+together. It was observable that this was not a congregation of
+fashionable or artistic people; for the women were dressed quietly, and
+the men were mostly old and white-haired. It was also dimly perceptible
+that there was a larger proportion of brain in the room than is allotted
+to the merely fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic
+and pictorial, which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover,
+scraps of conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude
+that the house was in its way a miniature Babel.
+
+The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake
+hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious
+group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived
+Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He
+seemed to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length
+went to meet Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and
+indefinable family resemblances which start up at odd moments became
+visible.
+
+"I want you particularly to-morrow night," said the lady; "I have some
+people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening."
+
+And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+Cartoner's elbow again.
+
+"Here," he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own
+tongue, "I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre
+Bukaty," he added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy,
+white hair, and the air of a mediaeval chieftain, "allow me to present
+my old friend Cartoner."
+
+The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin
+still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn
+towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had
+a manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl
+of open air and active tastes.
+
+"Princess Wanda," said the Frenchman, "my friend Mr. Cartoner."
+
+The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity
+seemed suddenly reflected in them.
+
+"He is the best linguist in Europe," said Deulin, in a gay whisper;
+"even Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels."
+
+And he himself spoke in Polish.
+
+Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place,
+where human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books
+was folded over.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he
+would have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading
+before facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service.
+But he was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been
+bestowed upon the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the
+contempt hurled by his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon
+Commerce as represented in Poland by the thrifty German _emigre_.
+
+The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably
+bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great
+height as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact,
+he had grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild
+early sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething
+in its midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
+
+The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London.
+Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough,
+he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile,
+which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding
+city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
+
+"They do not take me seriously," he said to his intimate friends; "they
+do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall
+see."
+
+And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live
+in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact
+that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times,
+when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to
+follow him to the death--which is the way of the world. "You have but to
+hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But wise men know
+that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
+impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
+centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
+off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian,
+as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
+nothing could ever smooth him.
+
+He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
+the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
+said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
+Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+
+"It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but
+English, and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest
+people in the world--you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your
+pardon. Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel in
+Kensington--will you come? That is the address."
+
+And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner,
+after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which
+was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning
+speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better
+equipments with which to face the world.
+
+"Yes," he said at length; "it will give me much pleasure."
+
+The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was
+there to need reflection in such a small question?
+
+"At five o'clock," he said. "We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea
+you drink in this country."
+
+And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People whose
+lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the smallest
+jests.
+
+It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted by
+a page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in Kensington.
+The Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black. There is in some
+Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn until Poland is
+reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like her father and her
+brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her being, such as is
+often found in slightly made persons.
+
+"I came as early as I could," said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the clock
+struck.
+
+The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had
+not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather
+na�ve statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and
+glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a
+chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+
+"That is kind of you," she said, speaking English without the least
+suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her life.
+"My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are not
+only taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a minute. He
+has just been called away."
+
+"It was very kind of him to ask me to call," replied Cartoner.
+
+There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite
+new to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a
+man who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going
+straight towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come
+to pay an idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush into
+conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment in it.
+His hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this as
+he took a chair near the window. He was probably ten years older than
+herself, and gave the impression of experience and of a deep knowledge
+of the world. From living much alone he had acquired the habit of
+wondering whether it was worth while to say that which came into his
+mind--which is a habit fatal to social success.
+
+"Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night," said the princess, following
+the usual instinct that silence between strangers is intolerable. "He
+talked a great deal of you."
+
+"Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much."
+
+"He accuses you of talking too little," said Wanda, with some spirit.
+
+"You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid,
+princess."
+
+"Which is diplomacy?" she suggested.
+
+"Which is diplomacy."
+
+"Then I think you are both great artists," she said, with a laugh, as
+the door opened and her father entered the room.
+
+"I only come to ask you a question--a word," said the prince. "Heavens!
+your English language! I have a man down-stairs--a question of
+business--and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the meaning of
+the word jettison?"
+
+Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+
+"Ah!" cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, "of course.
+How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will
+excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea."
+
+And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
+so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
+
+The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had
+found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their
+knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public
+man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his
+advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in him
+that unknown quantity which the world must needs think magnificent.
+
+"I want you to tell me all you know about him," said the princess in her
+brisk way. "He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
+not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort
+of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love
+and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married
+already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy.
+But I don't. He has no wife--unless he has two."
+
+"I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career."
+
+"I do not care about his career," said the princess, lightly. "I go
+deeper than careers."
+
+She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay,
+blue eyes.
+
+"A man's career is only the surface of his life."
+
+"Then some men's lives are all surface," said Cartoner.
+
+Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+
+"Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse," she replied.
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
+who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
+decisive views upon it.
+
+"What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping
+when expedient--and avoiding collisions?" he inquired.
+
+"I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally," she answered,
+"and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness
+lay that way."
+
+"Yes," he laughed. "You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as I
+saw you."
+
+"One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite
+patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness."
+
+"Now you have come down to a mere career again," said Cartoner.
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+
+"What are you people discussing," he asked, "so gravely?"
+
+He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for
+he had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+
+"I do not quite know," answered Cartoner, slowly. "The princess was
+giving me her views."
+
+"I know," retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. "They are
+long views, those views of hers."
+
+Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and
+looked out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which
+caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any
+man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of
+thoughtful attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the _Minnie_, crossing
+the street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business
+acquaintance of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+
+Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.
+He had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and
+out of the _Minnie's_ hatches.
+
+The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.
+The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and
+Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception
+given by the Orlays that evening.
+
+"You're going, of course?" said the prince.
+
+"Yes, I am going."
+
+"You go to many such entertainments?"
+
+"No, I go to very few," replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+speculative way.
+
+Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission
+of the usual "Well, I must be off," or any such catch-word. He certainly
+left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.
+
+He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+vehicle.
+
+"Westminster Bridge," he said.
+
+He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down
+to the steamboat-landing.
+
+"Where do you want to go to?" inquired the gruff, seafaring
+ticket-clerk.
+
+"As far as I can," was the reply.
+
+A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over
+the rudder. He must have known that the _Minnie_ was so constructed that
+she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once.
+It was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the passenger
+traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having
+leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was
+natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart
+seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage
+of this affability to make inquiries about the _Minnie_. He knew,
+perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side
+worker.
+
+The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the
+Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of
+steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority
+were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam
+threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+
+In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of
+North Sea fish-carriers, lay the _Minnie_, painted black, with nothing
+brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a
+shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+fish-carrier.
+
+Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to
+take him to the _Minnie_.
+
+"Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir," he said. "He
+must have come down by the boat before yours."
+
+A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the _Minnie_, and
+banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+
+The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face
+of a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+
+"It's you, Mr. Cartoner," he said. "Glad to see you."
+
+"I was passing in a steamer," answered Cartoner, quietly, "and
+recognized the _Minnie_."
+
+"I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time
+you and me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere
+stowed away in a locker."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+"I suppose," Miss Mangles was saying--"I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?"
+
+"It is possible, Jooly--it is possible," replied Mr. Joseph P. Mangles,
+looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window of his
+private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.
+
+Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+
+"This invitation," said the recipient, "accompanied as it is by a
+friendly note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in
+the fact that we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point
+to it, Joseph. It seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me
+a welcome."
+
+"On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem--just that."
+
+Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland
+Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr.
+Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a
+capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was
+not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the
+invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance
+owed its origin to an accidental encounter between himself and Lord
+Orlay--a friend of his early senatorial days--in Pall Mall the day
+before.
+
+Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and
+few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts.
+Of what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an
+invitation?
+
+"Jooly," Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's
+back--"Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries."
+
+But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black
+cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a
+Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a
+rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which
+so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black
+and shiny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by
+hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown
+baggy by much speaking on public platforms--a fearsome thing in a woman.
+Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long
+ago there must have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P.
+Mangles--moments spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman
+of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she could not be
+beautiful, she could at all events be great.
+
+One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted
+Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed
+it to her greatness.
+
+"Are they abstainers?" she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+over the causes she had championed.
+
+"Nay," replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland
+Avenue.
+
+"Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction."
+
+"If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than
+you can chew," replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into
+the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of
+himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort
+of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
+
+Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and
+no one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+
+"Let us ask them all and be done with them," she said; and had said it
+for thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no
+other prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain--then plain
+Mr. Orlay. She had never "done with them," had never secured that
+peaceful domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her
+husband's dream, and would never secure it. For these were two persons,
+now old and white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world,
+and had a supreme contempt for it.
+
+The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of
+rich black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink
+and self-effacing quietness.
+
+"We shall know no one," she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+
+"Not even the waiters," replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass,
+glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. "But they will
+soon know us."
+
+They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote,
+with the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for a
+moment near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually
+did, a little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph
+Mangles. Over the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister he bowed
+in silence.
+
+"I have nothing to say to that great woman," he sometimes said. "She is
+so elevated that my voice will not reach her."
+
+Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now
+standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring
+her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+
+"Ah! I expected you had forgotten me," she said, when Deulin presented
+himself.
+
+"Believe me--I have tried," he replied, with great earnestness; but the
+complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach
+any deep meaning to his remark.
+
+"You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember
+them all."
+
+"I do not remember them all, mademoiselle--only a very, very few."
+
+"Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the
+room?"
+
+"Is there another in the room?" inquired Deulin, looking around him with
+some interest.
+
+"Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black."
+
+"Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?"
+
+"I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one
+of us, does she?" And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful
+and inexperienced way.
+
+"She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere," replied Deulin.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess."
+
+"Oh, then she is married?" exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell
+three semitones on the last word.
+
+"No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole."
+
+Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light
+of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+
+"Why do you pity her?" asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+
+"Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they
+not--for convenience, I mean--not from . . . from inclination, like
+other girls?"
+
+And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her
+eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on
+Deulin's lips.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a sharp sigh--and that was all. He bowed, and
+turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some
+minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special
+to report, for they walked aside together.
+
+It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts
+to get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that unmatched
+hostess at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the arrival of
+the latest and the departure of the earliest.
+
+"I was looking for you," she said; "you, who always know where everybody
+is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for him a moment
+ago."
+
+"Mangles is listening to the music in the library--comparatively happy
+by himself behind a barricade of flowers."
+
+"And that preposterous woman?"
+
+"That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room."
+
+Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+
+"You have seen the Bukatys?" inquired Lady Orlay. "I called on them the
+moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I have
+never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?"
+
+"I think so," replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away
+across the room.
+
+Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked
+grave. It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's
+room.
+
+"I like the old man," she said, with a change of tone. "What is he?"
+
+"He is a rebel."
+
+"Proscribed?"
+
+"No--they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier--more
+arms than the national government could find men for."
+
+"Yes, I remember that."
+
+"That is the man," said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction
+of the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.
+
+"And the girl--it is very sad--I like her very much. She is gay and
+brave."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, "when a woman is gay and brave--and young--Heaven
+help us."
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur Deulin."
+
+"And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady--God keep
+her," he said with a grave bow.
+
+"I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know.
+She has a great capacity for making friends."
+
+"She has already made a few--this evening," put in the Frenchman, with a
+significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual
+enemy--of a pretty girl--that is all."
+
+He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like
+that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one
+less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some
+hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with
+the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He laughed--but he laughed uneasily--and spread out his hands in a
+gesture of bewilderment.
+
+"What is what?"
+
+Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+
+"Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly," she said. "Mr. Mangles
+has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes
+ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook
+hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures
+are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees
+it."
+
+"Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater--you and
+Orlay--quietly moored beneath the trees."
+
+"Finally," continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, "you
+come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once
+or twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like
+it--the Vultures."
+
+She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said. "You are too discerning. Good-bye."
+
+"You are going--?"
+
+"Away," he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. "I
+must go and pack my trunks."
+
+Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night.
+Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive
+and the world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words
+of thanks.
+
+"We shall hope to see you again," said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+
+"'Fraid not," he answered; "we're going to travel on the Continent."
+
+"When do you start?" asked her ladyship.
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"Another one," muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And her
+brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+
+"You have come to say good-bye," she said to him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are going away again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will not tell me where you are going."
+
+"I cannot," answered Cartoner.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said,
+was very experienced and very discerning.
+
+"You are going to Russia, all of you."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AT THE FRONTIER
+
+Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric
+illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw
+Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never
+heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+
+How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train
+just before these electric lights were reached--to take his chance of
+crossing the frontier before morning--history will never tell! How many
+have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station with
+a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of
+the officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing
+Alexandrowo--of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland--but by this
+route. Before the train is at a standstill at the platform each one
+of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white
+trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty
+of Russian law. Here, whatever time of day or night, winter or summer,
+it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity.
+There are always sentries on the outer side of the train. The platform
+is a prison-yard--the waiting rooms are prison-yards.
+
+With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and
+everywhere, with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in
+baggage or demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience
+will see the traveller through. There is no fear of his being left
+in the huge station, or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and
+rightful destination. But with a passport that is old or torn, with a
+visa which bears any but a recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted
+look, the voyager had better take his chance of dropping from the
+footboard at speed, especially if it be a misty night.
+
+Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so
+much as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go
+through, but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned
+within a large room where the luggage is inspected, and they are
+deprived of their passports. When the customs formalities are over they
+are allowed to find the refreshment-room, and there console themselves
+with weak tea in tumblers until such time as they are released.
+
+The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great
+inspection-room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to
+overflowing. The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be
+Germans. There were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the
+others, had the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together--just as
+the women drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who
+hoped against hope that their passports were in order. For the most
+part, no one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested
+with so much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an
+intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and
+feel at their ease.
+
+Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's,
+was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of
+anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin,
+whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left
+it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be
+observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge.
+He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned,
+black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no
+attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and he avoided the
+refreshment-room tea.
+
+Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
+that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him.
+Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
+Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of
+the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or, perhaps, the
+younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
+when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
+chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
+
+He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
+opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
+young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
+high-born Briton.
+
+"Englishman?" he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
+oddly stiff.
+
+"Thought you were," said the other, who, though his clothes were English
+and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
+There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the
+head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence.
+He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who
+was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye
+to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to
+his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.
+
+"All this would be mildly amusing," he said, "at say any other hour of
+the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
+you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?"
+
+"I can sleep anywhere," replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
+him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
+talk.
+
+"I know Alexandrowo pretty well," the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+"and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on
+friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as--the
+multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
+sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere."
+
+He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but
+for a card.
+
+"I know who you are," said Cartoner, quietly: "I recognized you from
+your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours
+ago in London."
+
+"Wanda?" inquired the other, eagerly. "Dear old Wanda! How is she? She
+was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet."
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "all about them. But, first, tell me your name.
+Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their
+friends--the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to
+have made mention of it in her letters."
+
+"Reginald Cartoner."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of you--but not from Wanda."
+
+He paused to reflect.
+
+"No," he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. "No, she never
+mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known
+out of England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin--you know
+Deulin?--has spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other
+friends in common. We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to
+meet you. You say you know my name--yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that
+you should have recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad
+you think I am like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am,
+you know."
+
+And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh--not that there was
+anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at
+life from a cheerful standpoint.
+
+Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion
+over the cup. "Cartoner," Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend,
+"weighs you, and naturally finds you wanting." It seemed that he was
+weighing Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+
+"I saw your father also," he said, at length. "He was kind enough to ask
+me to call, which I did."
+
+"That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London--no one, I
+mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never
+quite understood on the Continent--that if you go to London you must
+speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done
+with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does
+not easily make friends--you must have been very civil to him."
+
+"According to my lights, I was," admitted Cartoner.
+
+Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in
+the morning.
+
+"The truth is," continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way,
+"that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man
+by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a
+tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want,
+and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however,
+to admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated."
+
+He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod
+an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had
+approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured
+words of politeness.
+
+"Thank you--thank you," said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+within his pocket.
+
+"It is my passport," he explained to Cartoner, lightly. "All the rest of
+you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful
+privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they
+are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo
+you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I
+suppose."
+
+"I always try to," replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+
+"You see," went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+environments, "we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there
+was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are
+a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three
+foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent--who make us clean their boots
+and then cast them at our heads."
+
+The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers
+were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost
+daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a
+fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished,
+giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which
+hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
+
+"I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw," said Martin, as they
+walked up the platform. "My father and sister will be coming home before
+long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the
+place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for
+you when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as
+any. And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the
+best horses and the worst roads."
+
+"Thanks, very much," replied Cartoner. "I, of course, do not know how
+long I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know
+from one day to another what my movements may be."
+
+"No," replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears.
+"No, of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you
+will be here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw
+now. But, of course, there are difficulties--even the races present
+difficulties--there is the military element."
+
+He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+passing to his carriage in front of them.
+
+"They have the best horses," he explained. "They have more money than we
+have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is."
+
+He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so
+accustomed to the recognition of his rank that he went first without
+question.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a laugh, "I had quite forgotten that it is your
+business to know all about us."
+
+"I have tried to remind you of it several times," answered Cartoner,
+quietly.
+
+"To shut me up, you mean?" asked the younger man.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned
+away with a laugh.
+
+"Good-night," he said. "Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet
+again in a few hours."
+
+He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of
+the station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice--of a rather high
+timbre--in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor. For,
+like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues. The
+Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first,
+his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German,
+or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the
+two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so
+little--England and France.
+
+Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It
+was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was
+green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing
+eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman
+seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable
+man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times
+as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather
+cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost
+insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption
+in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after
+another as occasion seemed to demand.
+
+He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin
+Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the
+compartment, closing the door behind him.
+
+"I have been thinking about it," he said, in his quick way, "and it
+won't do, you know--it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our
+friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you.
+Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in
+Warsaw."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, "I understand."
+
+He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train
+glided into Warsaw Station.
+
+In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+
+"All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to
+me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as
+a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times."
+
+He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+
+"She did not know that I was coming," he said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN A REMOTE CITY
+
+The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which
+for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At
+Cracow--the tomb of many kings--it passes half round the citadel, a
+shallow, sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the
+present capital--Warsaw--it finds its way across the great plain,
+amid the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and
+Masovia.
+
+Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking
+from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In
+Praga--a hundred years ago--the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand
+were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in
+the square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of
+their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired
+upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in
+cold blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for
+three hours in the streets.
+
+Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops,
+with a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in
+the world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street,
+and, like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name--the
+Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel
+de l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where
+kings and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered,
+where the bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were
+carried after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where
+the great light from the West--Miss Julie P. Mangles--alighted one May
+morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+
+"Told you," said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was
+within almost measurable distance of snappishness--"told you you would
+have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before
+had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame
+of mind--on their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury,
+Massachusetts, when the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters
+for the Truth failed to reach the railway depot because they happened
+on a fire in a straw-hat manufactory on their way, and heard that the
+newest pattern of straw hat was to be had for the picking up in the open
+street.
+
+There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when
+she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble
+position of the prophet--not without honor in his own country--who
+cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+
+"This is even worse than I anticipated," said Miss Mangles, watching the
+hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+
+"What is worse, Jooly?"
+
+"Poland!" replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+worse countries than Poland in her day.
+
+"I allow," said Mr. Mangles, slowly, "that at this hour in the morning
+it appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?"
+
+"Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph," replied Miss Mangles,
+looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a
+bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his
+place.
+
+Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel,
+with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed
+always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult
+still, to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss
+Mangles was conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as
+expert in the lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform
+period, somewhat alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the
+historic staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a
+distinct air of condescension.
+
+"Tell me," said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep
+depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, "what
+languages you speak."
+
+"Russian, French, Polish, German, English--"
+
+"That'll do to go on with," interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue.
+"We'll get along in English. My name is Mangles."
+
+Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and
+a salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where
+stood a couple of waiters.
+
+Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She
+might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept
+all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance
+of having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the
+surface a little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes
+seemed to conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly
+theories, too, which she often enunciated in her confidential manner;
+and one of these was that one should always, in all places and at all
+times, be neat and tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it
+noted in passing, there have been many successful human careers based
+upon this simple rule.
+
+She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress
+which conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and
+the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs
+she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along
+the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and
+nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it
+appeared, as much at home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" he said, standing hat in hand before her, "who could
+have dreamed of such a pleasure--here and at this moment--in this sad
+town?"
+
+"You seemed gay enough--you were singing," answered Miss Cahere.
+
+"It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps
+you noticed it?"
+
+"No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear
+for music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+accomplishments, you know," said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in
+of the shoulders.
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his
+opinion that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles
+and her brother.
+
+Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable
+to feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She
+shook hands, with her platform bow--from the waist--and passed on.
+
+"Hallo!" said Joseph Mangles. "Got here before us? Thought you'd turn
+up. Dismal place, eh?"
+
+"You have just arrived, I suppose?" said Deulin.
+
+"Oh, please don't laugh at us!" broke in Netty. "Of course you can see
+that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!"
+
+"You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from
+heaven," answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her
+hair. It was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did
+not seem to hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to
+her uncle. Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long
+one, for the Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+
+"You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know," she said, turning
+again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation
+of her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who
+blush easily--at the right time. "I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased
+to have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have
+you friends here?"
+
+"Only one," replied Deulin--"the waiter who serves the Zakuska counter
+down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman, travelling for
+his health in France. He does not recognize me now."
+
+"Will you stay long?"
+
+"I did not intend to," replied Deulin, "when I came out of my room this
+morning."
+
+"But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?" asked
+Netty.
+
+"Not in Warsaw," was the reply.
+
+"Suppose we shall meet again," broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number
+on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. "Always welcome,"
+he said. "Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose it does," answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+
+He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the
+Krakowski Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was
+already astir, while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying
+home from the morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and
+churches on either side. Every palace has its story; two of them were
+confiscated by the Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown
+from the pavement, might possibly have come from one of the windows.
+Every church has rung to the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn--"At
+Thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free
+country." Into almost all of them the soldiers have forced their way to
+make arrests.
+
+Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The
+clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little
+sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+
+"Just Heaven, forgive me!" he said, with upturned eyes. "I have already
+told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I
+shall find Cartoner out of bed?"
+
+He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned
+to the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower,
+quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna
+are mostly large, with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for
+existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments,
+where quiet people live--professors, lawyers, and other persons,
+who have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the
+passer-by for entertainment.
+
+Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination
+to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second
+floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the
+Frenchman nodded familiarly.
+
+"Is he up yet?" he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+
+"This hour, monsieur," replied the servant, leading the way along a
+narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass
+into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a
+writing-table.
+
+"Good-morning," said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a
+book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair.
+"Don't let me disturb you," he continued. "Finish what you are doing."
+
+"News?" inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at
+Deulin gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously
+dissimilar--these friends.
+
+"Bah!" returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked
+up--Lelewel's _History of Poland_, in Polish. "I trouble for your
+future, Cartoner. You take life so seriously--you, who need not work
+at all. Even uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a
+position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of
+that!"
+
+He reflected for a moment.
+
+"Yes," he said, after a pause, "I have news of all sorts--news which
+goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead
+of going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning--Mangles
+frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner--" He paused, and
+examined his own boots with a critical air.
+
+"I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?"
+
+"Fifty."
+
+"All that, mon cher?--all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+fool who excels all other fools."
+
+Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to
+put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin
+watched him.
+
+"I say," said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in
+hand--"what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?"
+
+"I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+you," was the reply.
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in
+love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there
+is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss
+Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?"
+
+"Very nice," replied Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the
+letter before him.
+
+"What I like about her is her quiet ways," suggested Deulin,
+tentatively.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares,
+must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose
+and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that
+evening.
+
+Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+
+"More lies!" he murmured, humbly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SAND-WORKERS
+
+At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska--the street running down
+from the Cracow Faubourg to the river--there are always many workers.
+It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here lie the
+steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a trade in
+timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that float from
+the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here, also, are
+loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
+
+A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand
+which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts
+hopefully from the higher parts of the city--the widest, the newest,
+the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard--down the
+hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is
+no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a
+broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts
+from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers
+lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the
+middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that
+render navigation next to impossible--a clean, hard sand, most excellent
+for building purposes.
+
+It was the hour of the mid-day dinner--for Polish hours are the hours of
+the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses
+nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their
+gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was
+late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene
+was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river.
+Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once
+said that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
+
+It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of
+the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach
+within half a mile unperceived.
+
+"Yes," one of the workmen was saying, "those who know say that there
+will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day,
+why not now? Why not this time?"
+
+His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+oval-faced men--real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that
+comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills;
+others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which
+betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+
+"The third time, they say, is lucky," answered a white-haired man, at
+length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his
+face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others
+turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the
+river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees.
+Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen
+fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with
+the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish
+with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the
+streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look
+which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed
+a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to
+his horses.
+
+He who had first spoken--a boatman known as Kosmaroff--was a spare man,
+with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard.
+He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward
+appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and
+vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave
+an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His
+smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely,
+a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a
+raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
+watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the
+old man as if hoping that more was coming.
+
+"Yes, it will be the third time," he said, when the other had lapsed
+into a musing silence, "though few of us have seen it with our own eyes.
+But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of
+our forefathers to guide us--though we cannot say that our forefathers
+have told us--"
+
+He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
+father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+
+"We shall time it better," he said, "than last time. We have men
+watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as
+an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything
+happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the
+dogs should quarrel among themselves--the three dogs that have torn
+Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was
+coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred
+thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed
+what they thought of us!"
+
+The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
+was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others
+looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board
+of directors--some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed
+to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his
+boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+
+"It is all very well for you," said one, a little fat man with beady
+eyes. Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity
+to danger of any sort--"you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to
+lose!"
+
+Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that
+a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is
+a part of it running over.
+
+"There are many who can be aristocrats some day--with a little
+good-fortune," he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+
+"I lost five at Praga," muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+manner of the toiler. "That is enough for me."
+
+"It is well to remember Praga," returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.
+"It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!
+There is much to remember!"
+
+And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff
+glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring
+sullenly across the river.
+
+"I may be an aristocrat by descent," he said, "but what does that come
+to? I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a
+Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always
+done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a
+hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the
+sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here.
+They will finish by losing everything--the little they have left--or
+else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They will
+win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!"
+
+"And when they have won will they remember?" asked one of the two
+smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+
+"If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.
+You may rely on that. They know what each gives--whether freely or with
+a niggard hand--and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
+freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
+expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!"
+
+The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger,
+with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they
+sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
+instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
+each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance
+by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
+
+Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+number--a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed him
+much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was
+back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name
+hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a
+raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish
+patriotism--a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made
+the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to
+Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in
+the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor,
+and the bread that tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom
+which stood in the forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are
+others who cherish the same belief.
+
+"This time," he went on, after a pause, "I have news for you. We are a
+little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently
+until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they
+acted at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall
+nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step
+nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is
+never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around
+his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five
+thousand rifles in Poland--"
+
+He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+
+"In Warsaw!" he added, significantly. "So, if there are any who think
+that the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now--and take the
+consequences." He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+
+No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+
+"And there is ammunition enough," continued Kosmaroff, "to close the
+account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!"
+
+His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+
+"I tell you this," he went on, "because I am likely to go to Cracow
+before long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain
+events may be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly--such as
+the death of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the
+declaration of war by any of the great powers. There is always something
+seething on the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake.
+The Warsaw papers will not have the news; but the _Czas_ and the other
+Cracow journals will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the
+Galician papers when you want to, despite their censors and their
+police!"
+
+A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was
+his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+
+At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river
+boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out
+into a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers
+stirred reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+
+Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself--a long, lithe, wiry
+figure.
+
+"Come," he said. "We must go back to work."
+
+He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his
+narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have
+realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable
+creation--a strong man.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A WARNING
+
+It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the
+kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in
+Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay
+hands upon--that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in protesting
+against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had broken
+faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent of
+those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was
+permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and
+Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
+having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
+jaw.
+
+The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but
+a few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
+while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed
+to her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this
+lady, who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland
+was yet in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
+
+"Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,"
+the old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the
+anniversary of his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He
+mentioned it, moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm
+frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration never
+placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking
+country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of
+European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry
+of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to
+mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they
+spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite
+clear to the Moslem understanding.
+
+The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands
+respect in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a
+conciliatory attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without one
+of their kind within her boundaries.
+
+"You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of
+your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he
+happens to be living at the moment!" he had boldly said to a great
+personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in
+the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had actually
+stretched a point or two for the Prince Bukaty on more than one
+occasion. Like many outspoken people, he passed for a barker and not a
+biter.
+
+It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town
+and submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in
+the Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian
+flag, which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from time
+immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see in
+the great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that his
+predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness, which were
+his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+
+"Yes," he answered to the loquacious curator, "I know. You tell me
+nothing that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince
+Bukaty!"
+
+And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young
+man who had great possessions.
+
+For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment,
+but because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on
+the Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And to
+whom can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+
+Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+sympathy. And that was all!
+
+The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind
+high railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which
+entrance is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality,
+and only unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet
+brougham in which the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is
+just round the corner of the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski
+Gardens--a quiet spot in this most noisy town. The building is a low
+one, with a tiled roof and long windows, heavily framed, of which the
+smaller panes and thick woodwork suggest the early days of window-glass.
+Inside, the house is the house of a poor man. The carpets are worn thin;
+the furniture, of a sumptuous design, is carefully patched and mended.
+The atmosphere has that mournful scent of better days--now dead and
+past. It is the odor of monarchy, slowly fading from the face of a world
+that reeks of cheap democracy.
+
+The air of the rooms--the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+humanity on wood and texture--suggested that older comfort which has
+been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+
+The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had
+acted without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the
+house must have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back
+from the school in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality
+of her own. The difference she brought to the house was a certain
+brightness and a sort of experimental femininity, which reigned supreme
+until her English governess came back again to live as a companion with
+her pupil. Wanda moved the furniture, turned the house round on its
+staid basis, and made a hundred experiments in domestic economy before
+she gave way to her father's habits of life. Then she made that happiest
+of human discoveries, which has the magic power of allaying at one
+stroke the eternal feminine discontent which has made the world uneasy
+since the day that Eve idled in that perfect garden--she found that she
+was wanted in the world!
+
+The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too obvious
+to require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and now that
+old age was coming, that health was failing and wealth had vanished,
+Poland would have none of him.
+
+There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions
+that only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil desires
+and answer questions is the best happiness.
+
+Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called
+a palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and
+rarely stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste; was
+fond of travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning eye upon
+his movements.
+
+There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made
+use of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of the
+house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading round
+from the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office in the
+busier part of Kotzebue Street.
+
+He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are well
+lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only as the
+Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the custom to go
+abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski is more crowded
+after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had walked some distance
+behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin unlocked the gate of the
+garden and passed in, leaving the gate open with the key in the lock. In
+a minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the gate after him, and gave the key
+back to its owner on the steps of the garden door of the house, where
+Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in hand. They did it without comment
+or instruction, as men carry out a plan frequently resorted to.
+
+Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to
+a door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were warmth
+and comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end, beneath the
+lamp and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were sitting. They
+were in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his chair.
+
+"I have brought Kos to see you," said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with that
+ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He apparently gave
+no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from which the original
+black had long since been washed away by the waters of the Vistula. He
+wore his working-clothes as if they were the best habit for this or
+any other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it in the old-world
+fashion, which has survived to this day in Poland. But the careless
+manner in which he raised her fingers to his lips would have showed
+quite clearly to a competent observer that neither Wanda nor any other
+woman had ever touched his heart.
+
+"You will excuse my getting up," said the prince. "My gout is bad
+to-night. You will have something to eat?"
+
+"Thank you, I have eaten," replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+
+Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up, lighting
+with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+
+"He will take a glass of port," said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had
+his after-dinner wine.
+
+Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with a
+glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he was
+almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related,
+not only in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff
+represented a family long since deemed extinct.
+
+"I have come," he said, "to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to
+stir them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn."
+
+"Ah!" laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable
+position, "you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move
+too quickly. That is what I always preach."
+
+"And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching," answered
+Kosmaroff. "You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to
+your opinion that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to
+misunderstandings. Plain speaking and clear understanding was the
+message you sent me--the text of your last sermon."
+
+With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's
+wineglass, which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that he
+drank his health.
+
+"That was not my text--that was Wanda's," answered the prince.
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. "Is that so? Then I will
+take it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast experience."
+
+"I have been to Dresden and to London," answered Wanda, "and a woman
+always sees much more than a man."
+
+"Always?" asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+
+"Always."
+
+But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+
+"By-the-way," he asked, "what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?"
+
+"Cartoner--the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+London," answered the prince. "Who is he? Why should he not be here?"
+
+"I will tell you who he is," answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light in
+his eyes. "He is the man that the English send when they suspect that
+something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has a
+trick of finding things out--that man. Such is his reputation, at all
+events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of yours,
+by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an American
+here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There is either
+something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that something may
+move in Poland before long. These men are here to find out. They must
+find out nothing from us."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach much
+importance to these foreigners.
+
+"Of course," went on Kosmaroff, "they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So
+will Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him
+trouble. He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because
+he knows that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different.
+There are never any surprises for the English in matters that Cartoner
+has in hand. He reports on events before they have happened, which is a
+different story. I merely warn you."
+
+As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+
+"There are no instructions?"
+
+"None," answered the prince. "Except the usual one--patience!"
+
+"Ah yes," replied Kosmaroff, "we shall be patient."
+
+He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+winter months.
+
+"But be careful," he added, addressing Martin more particularly, "of
+this man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know--you understand.
+And no one must know!"
+
+He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+
+"You met him in London, you say?" he said to the prince. "What did you
+think of him?"
+
+"I thought him--a quiet man."
+
+"And Wanda?" continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her--"she who sees
+so much. What did she think of him?"
+
+"I was afraid of him!"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+
+The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades beneath
+the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across from one
+quarter of the town to another.
+
+Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father
+at such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still
+fresh upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking
+the green turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in
+the morning these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any
+other park in any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the alleys
+mostly to herself.
+
+The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the
+leaves were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the
+brief, uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in
+Northern latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out
+early, and was sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that divides
+the gardens in two from end to end. She was waiting for Martin, who had
+been called back at the door of the palace and had promised to follow
+in a few minutes. He had a hundred engagements during the day, a hundred
+friends among those unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear
+the Russian uniform, who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in
+any form of commerce, and must not accept a government office--who are
+therefore idle, without the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians
+and Spaniards to do nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser
+than Martin. Girls generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But
+the wisdom ceases to grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old
+women. Wanda was, in a sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She
+had, as he himself acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into
+which his natural heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As
+to the discontent in which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes
+and their friends into many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it,
+just as some families are brought up to consumption and the anticipation
+of an early death.
+
+In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda was
+much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger. Debt and
+impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her father
+daily needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his happiness more
+and more upon his port wine and that ease which is only to be enjoyed by
+an easy mind.
+
+Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly
+heeded the passers-by, though--for the feminine instincts were strong in
+her--she looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on the
+Jew who hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the
+richer quarter of the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the
+Franoiszkanska. The latter, perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin and
+his heedlessness; the former made her think of--she knew not what.
+
+She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King of
+Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the garden.
+She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was unlike that
+of the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It was more like
+the gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw wear a uniform.
+That is why they are there. There was a suggestion of determination in
+the walk of this Englishman.
+
+He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived
+her. She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the precise
+moment when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably upon
+experience that Wanda based her theory that women see twice as much as
+men. She saw him turn, without hesitation, away from her down a narrower
+alley leading to the right. It was his intention to avoid her. But the
+only turning he could take was that leading to the corner of Kotzebue
+Street, and Martin was at the other end of it, coming towards him.
+Cartoner was thus caught in the narrow alley. Wanda sat still and
+watched the two men. She suddenly knew in advance what would happen, as
+it is often vouchsafed to the human understanding to know at a moment's
+notice what is coming; and she had a strange, discomforting sense that
+these minutes were preordained--that Martin and Cartoner and herself
+were mere puppets in the hands of Fate, and must say and do that which
+has been assigned to them in an unalterable scheme of succeeding events.
+
+She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to
+continue his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the
+Englishman's arm.
+
+"What does it matter?" Martin was saying. "There is no one to see us
+here, at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda,
+sitting on the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me."
+
+And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's
+attitude and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner
+yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin--so
+determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned
+and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew
+that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had
+something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave to be
+silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient
+sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty,
+and this sense of powerlessness was new to her.
+
+While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+
+"I saw you," he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, "and went the
+other way to avoid you."
+
+And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at
+her. He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+embarrassment.
+
+"Cartoner and I," Prince Martin hastened to explain, "travelled from
+Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it
+would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would
+naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is
+why he went the other way when he saw you."
+
+Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have
+been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner
+kept silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit--very rare
+among men and almost unknown in women--of thinking before he spoke.
+Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if
+one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and
+the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
+
+"You see," said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself,
+"in this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own
+friends."
+
+"Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the
+best strawberries from a basket," said Wanda.
+
+"Not a question to be arranged beforehand," put in Cartoner.
+
+"Not even by the governor-general of Poland?" asked Wanda, looking
+thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+showered round them.
+
+"Not even by the Czar."
+
+"Who, I am told, means well!" said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. "Poor
+man! It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's
+back that one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me."
+
+Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+walking-stick.
+
+"Martin and I are going for a tramp," she said. "We like to get away
+from the noise and the dust--and the uniforms."
+
+But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+
+"We attract less attention than if we stand," he explained. And Cartoner
+took the seat offered. "Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us
+to offer you," commented the young prince, gayly, "a clean stone seat on
+the sunny side of a public garden."
+
+"But let us understand each other," put in Wanda, in her practical way,
+and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw
+so much, "since we are conspirators."
+
+"The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall
+be," said Cartoner.
+
+"I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'" said Wanda.
+
+"The plot is simple enough," answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing,
+and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one more than
+the other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of
+all whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette--a little Russian
+affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked
+the ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his
+sister.
+
+"Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The Bukatys
+have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish nationality
+which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to suppress for
+nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria there is still
+a Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the Romanoffs, the
+Hapsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few old Lithuanian
+and Ruthenian families extant. And rightly or wrongly, those in
+authority are kind enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys for these
+survivals. Weeds, it seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are really to
+blame or not is of no consequence. It does not matter to the dog whether
+he deserves his bad name or not--after he is hanged. But it is not good
+to be a Bukaty and live in Poland just now, though some of us manage to
+have a good time despite them all--eh, Wanda?"
+
+And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was
+part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for
+fear some interruption should approach.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand," he continued, in his airy way, "is a
+most respectable man--in the employ of his country. That is what damns
+Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great
+reputation, to which I take off my hat."
+
+And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+
+"It would never do," continued Martin, "for us, the suspects, to be
+avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some
+capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no
+consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember."
+
+"But what are we to do?" asked Wanda, practically. "Let us have a clear
+understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+without haste--a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+heart of the question. "We must not meet in the streets."
+
+"That may not be as easy as it sounds," said Wanda, "in a small city
+like Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of
+avoiding us?"
+
+"I can, at all events, try," answered Cartoner, simply. After a
+pause (the pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be
+Cartoner's turn to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all
+that the Bukatys could offer him in Warsaw. "I can begin at once," he
+said, gravely. And he took off his hat and went away.
+
+It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+pillars of that building.
+
+"A man of action, and not of words," commented Martin, who spoke first.
+"I like him. Come, let us go for our walk."
+
+And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though
+they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that
+Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+
+He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side
+of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking
+a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met.
+Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which
+could scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+
+"Ah!" said the Frenchman to himself, "there is our friend Reginald. He
+is in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance."
+
+He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+slowly.
+
+"If any woman ever marries that man," the Frenchman said to himself,
+"she will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then,
+women are good at that."
+
+And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+
+Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was
+not an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it
+is well to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the
+post-office. And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not
+to have them sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities
+are kind enough to exercise a parental censorship over the travellers'
+correspondence.
+
+Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It
+was a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him
+was more than he could undertake.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+CARTONER _VERSUS_ FATE
+
+It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It
+is, moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the
+cause of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the
+theory that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled
+by a common sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor
+of that Czar who said to Poland: "Gentlemen--no dreams," seems in part
+justified by the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves
+brought nearer together on the race-course than in any other social
+function in Warsaw.
+
+"Come," cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's
+rooms after lunch one day towards the end of October. "Come, and let
+us bury the hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the
+grand-stand at the Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his
+wife, all the authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep
+sideways at each other, and turn up their noses at each other's toilets.
+To such has descended the great strife in eastern Europe."
+
+"You think so."
+
+"Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same
+thing, and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in
+it. Come with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where
+the Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where
+these fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too
+ready to take their hearts there and lose them--but the Czar forbids it.
+And, let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than
+a pair of Polish eyes."
+
+He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a
+speculative glance, and turned away to the window.
+
+"Come," he said. "It is a fine day--St. Martin's summer. It is Sunday,
+but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording angel
+on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover."
+
+"Oh, I have no principles," said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+
+"You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for
+his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nor I," pursued Deulin; "and I am bored. That is why I want you to come
+to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than
+to go--especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the world
+in racing."
+
+"That is why I am going," said Cartoner.
+
+"Then you don't like racing?"
+
+"Yes, I am very fond of it," answered the Englishman, in the same absent
+voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+
+In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found
+at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive
+up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow
+(where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness
+of the land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while
+driving through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is
+a grudge that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland
+had been a kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her
+capital.
+
+The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart
+of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At
+the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles,
+and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare
+among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
+attention.
+
+It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
+in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
+though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across
+a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
+German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
+domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into
+the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
+unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
+management of the course--tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
+and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
+white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold
+lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in
+his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying
+high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a
+gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of
+many races, one of the market-places where men may greet each other who
+come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are
+sons of the empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north,
+the south, the east, and the west.
+
+"France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my
+breath away," said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many
+races. On all sides one heard different languages--German, the sing-song
+Russian--the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot kill.
+
+"And Germany?" inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+
+"Bores me, my friend."
+
+He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number
+of men were congregated, but no ladies.
+
+"The Fatherland," he added, "the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German
+once, when I was in the army of the Loire--a most painful business."
+
+He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached
+the gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without
+turning towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+
+"Look!" he said, "look!"
+
+There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock,
+and above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey.
+The head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the
+heads of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only
+half in the saddle.
+
+The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before
+a dog--all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move
+above a snail's pace.
+
+Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which
+they knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and
+knocked the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on
+at a gallop now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a
+broken bridle, his two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was
+swearing in English. And he had need to, for through the paddock gate
+the crowd was densely packed and he was charging into it on a maddened
+horse beyond control.
+
+Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head
+was down.
+
+"Let go! let go!" cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. "Let go!
+I'll teach him!"
+
+And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince
+Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a
+moment and saw him open his eyes.
+
+"I am unhurt," he said. "Help me up. No! sh--h! No, nothing is broken;
+it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box
+No. 18, in the grand-stand."
+
+He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+
+"Go and tell her," said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+"Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that
+her father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come
+back."
+
+So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face of
+all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his memory. As
+he approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She was dressed in
+black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only the Russians and
+the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the surprise on her
+face and in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew that there were
+a hundred eyes watching him, a hundred ears waiting to catch his words
+when he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "the prince has had a slight accident, and has sent
+me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any report to
+the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and was knocked
+down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the club pavilion."
+
+He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+understand and repeat.
+
+"Shall we go to him?" asked Wanda, rising.
+
+"Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and
+would come himself were he able to walk."
+
+Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+
+"Will you take us to him, monsieur?" she said.
+
+And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal
+silence. The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its
+forlorn, autumnal flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked along
+it towards the paddock.
+
+"It was very good of you to come and tell us," said Martin, in English,
+"with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good, you know,
+to do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was true what you
+said about the prince being unhurt?"
+
+"Almost," answered Cartoner. "He is rather badly shaken. I think you
+will find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety."
+
+"Oh no!" exclaimed Martin. "He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come in
+here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in case
+of accidents."
+
+He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+
+"Wait here," he said, "with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+minutes."
+
+So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had
+been successfully accomplished.
+
+Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything to
+say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear understanding
+of which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to be compassed by
+silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind them came nearer
+and nearer as the horses approached the winning-post. The members of the
+club stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some with field-glasses,
+others with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All eyes were turned in
+one direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+
+Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no
+need for anxiety.
+
+"He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely
+to go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit under
+the awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand," Martin
+said, as he approached.
+
+"See," he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying to
+gather round the winning horse. "See, it is already a thing of the past.
+And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is no good
+advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad name, eh?
+Thank you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You and Deulin,
+they say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my dear Wanda. It
+is forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I will come back
+to you."
+
+With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, "I leave her to your care," he
+turned and left them again.
+
+Then at length Wanda spoke.
+
+"You see," she said, "you are not so strong as--"
+
+"As what?" he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+
+"As Fate, I suppose," she answered, and her eyes were grave as she
+looked across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun
+was sinking below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the
+horizon. Sunset over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+
+"Is it Fate?" she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+
+"Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess," answered
+Cartoner.
+
+"By what?"
+
+"By action. I have written for my recall."
+
+He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not
+his companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was still
+looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+
+"You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," she said, after a pause, "it would have been better for you if
+we had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said
+that you had never had a check in your career. This is the first check.
+And it has come through--knowing us."
+
+Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion
+with patient, thoughtful eyes.
+
+"You cannot deny it," she said.
+
+And he did not deny it.
+
+Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+keenness.
+
+"Why have you asked for your recall?" she asked, slowly.
+
+And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking.
+And across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes
+of the man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+
+When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next
+box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party
+of foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared
+for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one
+cannot set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those
+depths to which it sometimes descends.
+
+"And this," she said, when she had settled herself on the chair
+commanding the best view, "this is the turf."
+
+"That," corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+umbrella, "is the turf. This is the grand-stand."
+
+"The whole," stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible
+to her, the scene in general, "the whole constitutes the turf."
+
+Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who
+was prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her
+delicate and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself
+of an autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+
+"And these young men are on it," concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual
+decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside--the privilege
+of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes in the
+direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger; but some of the
+young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in the
+Russian race-card which she could not read.
+
+"It is very sad," she said.
+
+Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making
+up her mind how best to take them in hand.
+
+"Don't see the worst of 'em here," muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. "It
+isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief--on the
+turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+reformed--by the young women."
+
+Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle Joseph
+inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather wistful
+expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men below were
+still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to see them.
+At this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda was
+preoccupied, and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several
+ladies leaned over the low partitions and asked questions, which were
+unintelligible to Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth
+that the Prince Bukaty was not hurt.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+called upon to transmit the information.
+
+"Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this," said Miss
+Mangles, in an undertone.
+
+"You are right, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul Deulin,
+who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the
+feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these
+people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it
+is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger
+for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which
+convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin
+would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good
+might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval
+towards the turf.
+
+"One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin," she said,
+shaking hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+
+"Since you are here," he answered, "there can be no harm. It is only a
+garden-party, after all."
+
+And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he had
+come.
+
+"Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?" inquired Jooly.
+
+"Never, unless I am quite sure," he answered.
+
+"There is," observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be
+gracious--"there is perhaps less harm in that."
+
+"And less risk," explained Deulin gravely. "But surely," he said, in a
+lower tone, turning to Netty, "you know the Princess Wanda? Did you not
+meet her at Lady Orlay's?"
+
+Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and he
+was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does
+not remember--though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she met
+at the same time."
+
+Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+
+"Be assured," he answered, "that she has not seen you, or she would not
+fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe. The
+princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has just
+had a slight mishap."
+
+He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "this young lady remembers meeting you in London."
+
+Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that
+divided the two boxes.
+
+"Of course," she said, "Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down so
+near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else."
+
+"I hardly expect you to recollect me," Netty hastened to say. "You must
+have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who were
+at Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?"
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, rather absently. "Are there many?"
+
+"Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we
+three and--Mr. Cartoner."
+
+She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin Bukaty's
+eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she had much
+animation, and her eyes were bright.
+
+"I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is unmistakable.
+I hope the prince is not hurt?" she said, in her little, friendly,
+confidential way to Wanda.
+
+"No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I introduce
+him? Martin. Miss Cahere--my brother."
+
+And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty wanted.
+She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk to Wanda.
+
+"It must be so interesting," she said, "to live in Warsaw and to be able
+to help the poor people who are so down-trodden."
+
+"But I do nothing of that sort," replied Wanda. "It is only in books
+that women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can
+do for Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he likes
+for dinner, and to housekeep generally--just as you do when you are at
+home, no doubt."
+
+"Oh," protested Netty, "but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I could
+never housekeep."
+
+And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark,
+made her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin
+saw it. At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather
+vacantly in another direction.
+
+"I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?" said Wanda,
+glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+
+"My dear Wanda," put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, "you
+surely do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity.
+Miss Mangles is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described in
+a prominent journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care for
+the world, has no time to think of an individual household."
+
+"Besides," said Netty, "we have no settled home in America. We live
+differently. We have not the comfort of European life."
+
+And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop of
+the lips.
+
+At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of the
+use of his field-glasses.
+
+"I can see," she said, in her confidential way, "well enough for myself
+with my own eyes."
+
+And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+
+"I am sure," she said to Wanda, when the race was over, "that I saw Mr.
+Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?"
+
+"I fancy he has," was the reply.
+
+"He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our
+box. I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on
+board. We crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite ridiculous."
+
+Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There
+was in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set
+a machine in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative
+satisfaction.
+
+Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed
+to come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.
+
+"Come, Wanda," said Martin. "We must not keep him waiting. I can see
+him, with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure."
+
+"I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse," said
+Deulin, "and then return to the assistance of these ladies."
+
+He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching
+the carriages after they had gone.
+
+"The gods forbid," he said, piously, to himself, "that I should attempt
+to interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda
+should know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she
+knows now, my shrewd princess."
+
+And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from
+Wanda as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on
+his heel, to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng
+of people moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black,
+and a shower was impending.
+
+"Ah, well!" he muttered, philosophically, "they are capable of taking
+care of themselves."
+
+And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however,
+that he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along
+by a stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great
+gate, and though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the
+other men, she could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and
+his sister passed out of the large gateway, and waited in the first
+available space beyond it. Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of
+the crowd to the smaller gate, and having passed it, decided to wait
+till her uncle, who undoubtedly must have seen her, should come in
+search of her. She was not uneasy. All through her life she had always
+found people, especially men, ready, nay, anxious, to be kind to her.
+She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a man came towards her. He
+was only a workman in his best suit of working clothes. He had a narrow,
+sunburned face, and there was in his whole being a not unpleasant
+suggestion of the seafaring life.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, "that
+you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course,
+so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to
+find your father?"
+
+"Thank you," answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. "I think
+my uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at
+him. Perhaps--"
+
+"Yes," answered Kosmaroff, "I will show you another way with pleasure.
+Then that tall gentleman is not your father?"
+
+"No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle," replied Netty, following her companion.
+
+"Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?"
+
+"Yes. We are Americans."
+
+"A diplomatist?"
+
+"Yes, my uncle is in the service."
+
+"And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way;
+we can pass through this alley and come to the large gate."
+
+"But you--you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me," said
+Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this
+interest, slightly changed his manner.
+
+"Ah! you are looking at my clothes," he said, rather less formally. "In
+Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a
+Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street,
+just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is
+pleasant in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the
+great honor of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes, I will remember," answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that
+his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+
+"I knew at once--at once," he said, "that you were English or American."
+
+"Ah! Then there is a difference--" said Netty, looking round for her
+uncle.
+
+"There is a difference--yes, assuredly."
+
+"What is it?" asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her
+voice.
+
+"Your mirror will answer that question," replied Kosmaroff, with his
+odd, one-sided smile, "more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There
+is your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go."
+
+Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand
+in his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+
+"No," said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, "do not give him
+anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+SENTENCED
+
+Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
+which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it.
+The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of
+it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
+
+Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
+or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
+growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
+Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
+could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
+any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
+memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
+riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
+uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
+knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.
+
+One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
+shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
+with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
+that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads
+into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
+iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in
+silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large
+iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in
+the Lazienki Park.
+
+Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of
+his horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it
+patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and
+found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with
+the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light
+enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+
+The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From
+the distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long,
+low roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+
+Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that
+the animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened
+first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the
+wind. It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few
+moments there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and
+at the right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it
+started forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts
+of the gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.
+
+Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating
+cranes and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was
+hurriedly bolting the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open
+door, but before he reached it a number of men ran out and fell on
+him like hounds upon a fox. He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and
+striking the first-comer full in the chest with his fist. He charged
+the next and knocked him over; but from the third he retreated, leaping
+quickly to one side.
+
+"Bukaty!" he cried; "don't you know me?"
+
+"You, Cartoner!" replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. "You here!" he said. And there was
+a ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never
+heard there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the
+meaning of it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined
+men in moments when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer
+side of human nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which
+deals in battle and sudden death.
+
+"It is too risky," said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but
+Cartoner heard it. "We must kill him and be done with it."
+
+There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy
+feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner
+spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had
+taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had
+disadvantages, but silence meant death.
+
+"This near fore-shoe," he said in French, turning to his horse, "is
+nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a
+foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about."
+
+Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there
+was no loop-hole.
+
+Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle
+in front of him were in the dark.
+
+"Good! He's a brave man!" muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's
+ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, hastily, "this is a foundry. I can get you a
+hammer."
+
+His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced
+at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and
+he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+
+"You might tell these men," he said, in French, "of my mishap; perhaps
+one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately
+hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow."
+
+He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly,
+so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped
+forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.
+
+Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for
+a hammer and some nails--that his horse had nearly lost a shoe. Cartoner
+had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated the
+line of conduct he was to pursue.
+
+"Get a hammer--one of you," said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak--to say more than was
+discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent.
+Never comment on your own victory.
+
+Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during
+the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost
+shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such
+dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird.
+Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men,
+whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the
+open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw--a dark
+autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical
+way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold
+deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little
+cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial
+characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave
+his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They
+would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other
+Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their
+mistake afterwards. They were Slavs--of the most calculating race the
+world had produced--a little slow in their calculations. So he gave
+them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit
+eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved--long, long
+after reader and writer are dust.
+
+Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors,
+which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked
+inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Cartoner to Martin, who went
+towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from
+Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+
+Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+climbed into the saddle.
+
+"Saved your life!" he said, in a whisper.
+
+"I know," answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to
+the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open
+doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were
+concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in
+the _Minnie_.
+
+"More than I bargained for," he muttered to himself, as he rode away
+from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and
+presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was
+astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent
+by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the
+chase.
+
+Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much,
+and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle
+was steady.
+
+He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which
+stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate.
+He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without
+weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in
+a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that
+which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
+
+"That Cartoner," Deulin was in the habit of saying, "takes certain
+things so seriously, and other things--social things, to which I give
+most careful attention--he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end
+by different routes."
+
+Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic
+race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady
+perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+
+"In a moment of danger give me Cartoner," Deulin had once said.
+
+On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without
+words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism
+and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering
+attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each
+other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+
+"Got a job in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him.
+"Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the
+casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the
+attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels
+within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree
+affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with
+the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to
+the field of action must know what is going to happen.
+
+Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life--alone
+with his failures and his small successes--content, it would seem, to be
+a good servant in a great service.
+
+He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place
+of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance,
+like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was
+deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The
+concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken
+an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus
+takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all
+through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into
+the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast
+the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by
+the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his
+movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the
+authorities for the good name of the house under his care.
+
+"The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs," said the door-keeper to
+Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps
+were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the
+letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned
+up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a
+prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+
+It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in
+brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work
+intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid
+verbosity.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TALE HALF TOLD
+
+The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living
+upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to
+such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and
+jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere
+of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived,
+while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall
+quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope
+of alleviation.
+
+The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the
+grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor
+man and read his _Figaro_ quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the
+safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
+
+"He is late," he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return
+to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced
+towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin,
+whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in
+leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through
+the sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of
+Wielopolski's day--he could reasonably be expected to take care of
+himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's
+lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.
+
+It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in
+riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust,
+looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself
+into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+
+"Had any dinner?" asked his father.
+
+Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There
+was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate,
+fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs
+and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially
+English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a
+firmer stem.
+
+"Something has happened," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"Yes," replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+
+The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland
+was written on those deep-lined features.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing that affects affairs," replied Martin. "Everything is safe."
+
+Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the
+identical phrases.
+
+"I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs," continued
+Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to
+convince himself. "It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid
+fright, I can tell you--especially me, for I was doubly interested.
+Cartoner rode into our midst to-night."
+
+"Cartoner?" repeated the prince.
+
+"Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened--we were expecting
+some one else--he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe."
+
+"Who saw him?" asked the prince.
+
+"Every one."
+
+"Kosmaroff?"
+
+"Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with
+Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing."
+
+"That would have been a mistake," said the prince, reflectively. "It was
+the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in
+driblets."
+
+"That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It
+was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could
+not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all--or
+nothing."
+
+"He could not have known all," said the prince. "That is an
+impossibility."
+
+"Then he must have known nothing," put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at
+one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+
+"I do not know how much he perceived when he was in--as to his own
+danger, I mean--for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier
+than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong," said Martin,
+wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand
+shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened.
+"We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The
+man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it."
+
+"That is more to his own danger than to any one else's," put in Wanda,
+again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little
+of the incident as possible.
+
+"Then how do matters stand?" inquired the prince.
+
+"It comes to this," answered Martin, "that Poland is not big enough to
+hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to
+go, or else----"
+
+Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the
+color slowly faded from her face.
+
+"Or else--what?" she inquired.
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles."
+
+"You mean," said Wanda, who would have things plainly, "that he would
+assassinate him?"
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous
+national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The
+prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+
+"We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game
+that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be
+allowed to stand in the way of success."
+
+"It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues," said Martin,
+uneasily.
+
+"Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened--as it is,
+moreover, not my department--I cannot, personally, act in the matter."
+
+"Kosmaroff will obey nobody else."
+
+"Then warn Cartoner," the prince said, in a final voice. His had always
+been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
+
+"I cannot do it," said Martin, looking at Wanda. "You know my
+position--how I am watched."
+
+"There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it," said Wanda--"Paul
+Deulin."
+
+"Deulin could do it," said the prince, thoughtfully. "But I never talk
+to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between
+us."
+
+"Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+morning," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"You?" asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise.
+The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+
+"Remember," he said, "that you run the risk of making people talk of
+you. They may talk of us--of Martin and me--the world has talked of the
+Bukatys for some centuries--but never of their women."
+
+"They will not talk of me," returned Wanda, composedly. "I will see to
+that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say
+that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw."
+
+The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He
+knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+
+"Well," he said, rising. "I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us
+go to bed."
+
+He paused half-way towards the door.
+
+"There is one thing," he said, "which we should be wise to
+recollect--that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no
+farther. He is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and
+to say nothing."
+
+"Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!" cried Martin, with his
+reckless laugh.
+
+There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the
+great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the
+court-yard--where Hermani was assassinated--where the people carried
+in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were
+photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side
+door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this
+third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.
+He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of
+it.
+
+"Miss Cahere--the American lady?" she said. And the porter gave her the
+number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her
+thither.
+
+Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's
+room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished.
+At the head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned
+room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this
+room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant,
+a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best
+servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see
+his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room occupied by
+Deulin, who always travelled _en prince_.
+
+"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in
+defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want
+to give it are those who will not accept it."
+
+Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
+surprise in his eyes.
+
+"Did Jean show you in?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
+would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
+Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."
+
+Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+
+"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
+which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"
+
+"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."
+
+"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+comes. Your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Martin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
+the necessity of reply.
+
+"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"
+
+"He has found out something."
+
+"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
+exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
+for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."
+
+"And I cannot tell you what it is."
+
+"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across
+the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look
+a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to
+Cartoner, "but not a woman."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda
+paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
+way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
+Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.
+We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My
+father won't--"
+
+Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.
+His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+execution.
+
+"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to
+advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
+exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it--and
+never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
+and I was wrong."
+
+He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
+hands.
+
+"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."
+
+"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his
+life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was
+neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.
+
+"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched
+men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite
+ceased to affect my appetite."
+
+Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+
+"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a
+little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?"
+
+"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+
+"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+Englishman."
+
+Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+
+"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin, opening
+the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round."
+
+He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which
+Wanda had just vacated.
+
+"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I
+have known thousands--thousands."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MUCH--OR NOTHING
+
+If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference
+to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become
+apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse
+themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a
+long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In
+some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing
+space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
+
+A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will
+then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.
+The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed
+in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all
+interest in him. Thus the gods--with men.
+
+Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers
+good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for
+it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these
+incidents--as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly
+part--with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half
+of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually
+accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is
+necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not
+helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and
+often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic
+goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.
+
+The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
+on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
+crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had
+never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
+apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him
+that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the
+sex of this arbiter of human story.
+
+Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to
+avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two
+days after the meeting at the Mokotow--the morning following the visit
+paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe--Cartoner was early astir. He
+drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
+and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at
+ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of
+peasants--wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in
+gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
+
+This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw
+attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the
+humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some
+parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the
+third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class
+room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades
+of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone.
+There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was
+Wanda. The gods were kind--or cruel.
+
+"You are going away?" she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+Cartoner looked at her in surprise. "You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
+you are going away."
+
+"No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+again."
+
+"We are all watched," said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. "But
+you are going away--that is all that matters."
+
+"I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
+back this afternoon."
+
+Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers,
+they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the
+restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the
+platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to
+post a letter.
+
+"You must leave Warsaw," she said; "it is not safe for you to stay here.
+You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
+for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger."
+
+She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
+at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could
+not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There
+were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West
+which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely
+bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had
+anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this
+bare railway station the place to say it in.
+
+Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
+He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
+salutation.
+
+"Martin would have warned you," she went on, "but he did not dare to.
+Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
+had unwittingly run."
+
+"Not unwittingly," said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He
+said so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+
+"I cannot tell you much--" she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+
+"Stop," he said, "you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything--but not from you."
+
+"Martin hinted at that," said Wanda, slowly, "but I did not believe
+him."
+
+And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as
+if there were more in him--more of him--than she had ever expected.
+And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which
+was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes
+from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able
+to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+
+"It is true enough," he said, "fate has made us enemies, princess."
+
+"You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
+fate--in Poland. Besides----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
+your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall."
+
+And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+
+"It has been refused."
+
+"But you must go--you must go!" she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
+understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of
+gray in his closely cut hair.
+
+"You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
+world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily--quite gayly--"
+she broke off with a light laugh, "on a volcano--it is the Bukatys. We
+have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
+window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father
+was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
+times."
+
+"I know," said Cartoner, "what it is to be a Bukaty." And he smiled
+slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her
+manner, in a flash, was different.
+
+"Then you will go?" she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he
+turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them,
+she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of
+hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. "Say you will go!"
+
+And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+
+"I do not think you understand," she went on, changing her manner
+and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own
+stolid, dumb form of defence. "You do not understand what a danger to
+us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this," with
+a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred
+marks of a high state of civilization, "is skin deep. That things in
+Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated.
+We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old
+man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to
+look at his face--"
+
+"I know," admitted Cartoner.
+
+"It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he
+has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so
+happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe.
+That is why I ask you to go."
+
+"Yes, I know," answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
+was quite a simple person.
+
+"Besides," said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
+follow it, call no logic at all, "you can do no good here, if all your
+care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
+have they refused your recall? It is so stupid."
+
+"I must do the best I can," replied Cartoner.
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+
+"But we must not quarrel," she said, gently. "We must not misunderstand
+each other," she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, "for we have only
+five minutes in all the world."
+
+"Here and now," he corrected, with a glance at the clock, "we have only
+five minutes. But the world is large."
+
+"For you," she said quickly, "but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+forget I am a Russian subject."
+
+But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
+his face.
+
+"My presence in Warsaw," he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+elucidating, "is in reality no source of danger to you--to your father
+and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do
+not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+nobody--nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make
+history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which
+may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If
+nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have
+happened--life is too short to record that. So you see my being in
+Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother."
+
+"Yes, I see--I see!" answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The
+door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard,
+in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the
+length of the train. "But it was not on account of that that we asked
+Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
+Martin. It is required of them--a sort of family tradition. It is their
+business in life--almost their pleasure."
+
+"It is my business in life--almost my pleasure," said Cartoner, with a
+smile.
+
+"But is there no one at home--in England--that you ought to think of?"
+in an odd, sharp voice.
+
+"Nobody," he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+respecting himself.
+
+Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her
+stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no
+corridor carriages. Two minutes now.
+
+"We must not be seen together on the platform," she said. "I am only
+going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old
+servants whom I go to see."
+
+She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "for warning me."
+
+And that was all.
+
+"You must go," he added, after a moment's pause.
+
+Still she lingered.
+
+"There is so much to say," she said, half to herself. "There is so much
+to say."
+
+The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back.
+He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
+eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right--whether there
+was much to say--or nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+IN THE SENATORSKA
+
+"It is," said Miss Julie Mangles, "in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+one's hand on the true heart of the people."
+
+"That's as may be, Jooly," replied her brother, "but I take it that the
+hearts of the women go to the Senatorska."
+
+For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
+the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
+their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with
+bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a
+picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to
+and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the
+mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would
+assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could
+possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not
+even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he
+should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a
+choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
+
+"I shall," said Miss Mangles, "write a paper on the Jewish question in
+this country."
+
+And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with
+his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on
+the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a
+town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+
+"Seen the Senatorska, Netty?" he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+
+"Go out into the Faubourg," her uncle explained, "and just turn to the
+left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+are."
+
+Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
+out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down--as the
+paper itself recorded--the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after
+a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions
+served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to
+accuracy.
+
+Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
+and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
+find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
+Bond Street.
+
+The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
+Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest
+her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--that weak
+dreamer--built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
+shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was
+passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed
+in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of
+surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the
+Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+"I was afraid you did not remember me," said Martin. "You looked
+straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me."
+
+"Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+should I?"
+
+And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and
+then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+
+"Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting."
+
+"Of course," said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. "One meets
+a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find
+it so?"
+
+"I am glad," answered Martin, "that you do not meet many people that you
+like."
+
+"Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people," urged Netty, in some
+concern; "I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind.
+Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
+kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?"
+
+"I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
+in yours."
+
+And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
+that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
+
+"Oh no!" she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+descriptive of a shrinking humility. "Why should I? I have done nothing
+to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind--my
+uncle and aunt--everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why
+it is?"
+
+And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell
+her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could--if he dared. He
+had never met anybody quite like Netty--so spontaneous and innocent and
+easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
+little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
+answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had
+a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from
+under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes
+were dark, almost as violets.
+
+"Ought I to be here?" she asked. "Going about the streets alone, I
+mean?"
+
+"You are not alone," answered Martin, with a laugh.
+
+"No, but--perhaps I ought to be."
+
+And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+
+"In America, you know," said the voice from under the parasol, "girls
+are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to
+be careful, is it not?--to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
+France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
+the custom in Warsaw."
+
+Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+
+"In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
+that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes
+about the streets as they do in England or America."
+
+As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
+
+"I can show you the best shops," he said, "such as they are. This is
+Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good
+thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?"
+
+"I love them," answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
+next shop.
+
+"You would naturally."
+
+"Why?" asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of
+tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+
+"Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the
+eyes?"
+
+"It is very kind of you to say that," said Netty, in a voice
+half-afraid, half-reproachful.
+
+"It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes," answered Martin,
+gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on
+with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
+persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
+this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
+good.
+
+"You know," said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, "I am much
+interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done
+such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles--and the
+poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?"
+
+"The nobles have come to great grief in Poland--that is all," replied
+Martin, with a short laugh.
+
+"And it is so sad," said Netty, with a shake of the head; "but I am
+sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
+interested in Poland--you and your sister and your father."
+
+"We are supposed to be," admitted Martin. "But no one cares for Poland
+now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of,
+and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now--and her history,
+which is the saddest history of any nation in the world."
+
+"But I am sure you are wrong there," said Netty, earnestly. "I know a
+great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+them."
+
+"Are you?" asked Martin, looking down at her.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with downcast eyes. "Come," she said, after a pause,
+with a sort of effort, "we must not stand in front of this shop any
+longer."
+
+"Especially," he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, "as it is a
+Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in
+a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you
+will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in
+Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you
+must go."
+
+Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+
+"I am quite serious," he said. "We must fight with what weapons we
+have."
+
+"Yes," she answered, indicating the shops, "these people, but not you.
+You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
+anything from you."
+
+"Because there is nothing to take," laughed Martin, gayly; "we were
+ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when
+my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not
+either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own."
+
+"I am so sorry!" she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
+
+Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her
+short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She
+stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived
+them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had
+just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to
+Martin--his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and
+familiar friend.
+
+"I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?" he said to
+Netty. "I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if
+you will permit it."
+
+And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not
+the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty
+desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of
+a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the
+flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+
+A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a
+train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without
+speaking. It was against his principles altogether. "Never be silent
+with a woman," he often said. "She will only misconstrue it."
+
+"It was odd that I should meet you at that moment," he said, at length,
+for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the
+initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively
+the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and
+laughed. "I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you
+at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if
+I could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you,
+would it not?"
+
+"It was very kind of you," said Netty, "to think of me at the
+race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so
+interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely
+hair, and I think her face is so interesting--a face with a history, is
+it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, rather shortly, "Wanda is a nice girl." He did
+not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+
+"And the prince," she said, "the old one, I mean--for this one, Prince
+Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?"
+
+"Oh yes--quite a boy," replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back over
+his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had
+first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+
+"It is so sad that they are ruined--if they are really ruined."
+
+"There is no doubt whatever about that," answered Deulin.
+
+"But," said Netty, who was practical, "could nothing induce him--the
+young prince, I mean--to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates
+and recover his position?"
+
+"You mean," said Deulin, "the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world
+like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of
+others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden--by
+the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an
+occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady."
+
+Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+
+"Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He
+will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory
+life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things
+never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has
+not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities,
+and Siberia--his certain destination--is not a good mise-en-scene for
+your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings
+here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive
+remedy--another privilege of youth."
+
+"You talk as if you were so very old," said Netty, reproachfully.
+
+"I am very, very old," he replied, with a laugh. "And there is no remedy
+for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age."
+
+"I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases," answered
+Netty, lightly. "I think you are quite capable of taking care of
+yourself."
+
+"And of evolving my own dreams?" he inquired. But she made no answer,
+and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+
+"I know so little," she said, after a pause, "so very little of Poland
+or Polish history. I suppose you know everything--you and Mr. Cartoner?"
+
+"Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine
+of knowledge, while I--I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there
+is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not
+prescribe for him?"
+
+Netty smiled gravely.
+
+"I hardly know him sufficiently well," she said. "Besides, he requires
+no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a
+fortune."
+
+Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+
+"Ah! is that so?" he inquired. "Who told you that?"
+
+But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+interested in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+JOSEPH'S STORY
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. "It is well," he
+had said, "to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect
+harmony." He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at
+the Cukiernia Lourse--a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the
+Cracow Faubourg--which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and
+there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+
+"I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love
+with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In
+her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say.
+But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It
+takes years off one's life," said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner,
+as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
+
+As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from
+the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some
+chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a
+Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the
+window waiting for the clock to strike.
+
+"I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive," he said to
+himself, "and we can make our entry together."
+
+It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows
+was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into
+the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man
+arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following
+Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the
+hotel.
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took
+his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave
+them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is
+to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant.
+When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found
+the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets
+at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were
+talking together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of
+the hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
+
+"You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money," said Mr. Mangles,
+bluntly.
+
+"I was looking at him with suspicion," admitted Deulin, "but not on that
+account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not
+I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was
+looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you
+as lively when he came in?"
+
+"Not what I should call a vivacious man," said Mangles, looking dismally
+across the room. "There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he
+came in perhaps."
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, in a low voice. "That is bad. There is usually
+something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+know."
+
+They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+
+"What beautiful violets," said he to Netty. "Surely Warsaw did not
+produce those?"
+
+"Yes, they are pretty," answered Netty, making a little movement to show
+the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her
+waist was very round and slender. "They came from that shop in the
+Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I
+think, was the name."
+
+And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, slowly. "Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+violets?"
+
+"I love them."
+
+Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when
+dinner was announced.
+
+"It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska," said Mr.
+Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the
+subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner,
+who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of
+steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted
+theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+
+Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather
+labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times
+as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and
+to enjoy themselves according to their lights.
+
+Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information
+respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+
+"And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?" he said,
+noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+
+"I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+traversed the whole length of the street."
+
+"And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?"
+asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+
+"I have."
+
+And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few
+chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen
+hundred years.
+
+"I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress
+meetings--and I may publish," she said.
+
+"It would be in the interests of humanity," murmured Deulin, politely.
+"It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations."
+
+Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest
+happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be
+described.
+
+"I know," she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, "that
+you dislike political women." Heaven knows how she knew it. "But I am
+afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort
+of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the
+people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities."
+
+"Their chief quality is gameness," said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think
+the princess is delightful--do you not think so?"
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+
+"There must be a great many stories," went on Netty, "connected with
+the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know--of
+people's lives, I mean--of all they have attempted and have failed to
+do."
+
+Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his
+lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry
+heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was
+listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was
+weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts
+are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was
+talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by
+any means an easy thing to do.
+
+"I always think," continued Netty, "that the princess has a story.
+There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere
+terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking."
+
+And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced
+at Cartoner.
+
+"Perhaps," put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+utterances. "Perhaps she is thinking of her brother--Prince Martin. He
+is always getting into scrapes--ce jeune homme."
+
+But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
+
+"It is your romantic heart," said Deulin, "that makes you see so much
+that perhaps does not exist."
+
+"If you want a story," put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep
+voice, "I can tell you one."
+
+And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+
+"Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?" began
+Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
+
+"Which I believe to be the truth," assented the Frenchman.
+
+"Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story," continued Joseph, "but
+they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city
+who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country
+could be made a great country again, as it was in the past--dreamed that
+the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into
+human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be
+an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament,
+she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France
+and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the
+treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew,
+would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart."
+
+And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against
+this danger.
+
+"My country," he went on, "didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own
+father and whip him."
+
+And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing
+the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+
+"Ever heard the Polish hymn?" he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and
+across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him
+dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+
+"'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of
+Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise
+our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+
+"Jooly--pass the mustard," he said.
+
+Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with
+a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+
+"'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked
+with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of
+wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to
+restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of
+the beef.
+
+"That is the first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all
+Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.
+They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on
+the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when
+they came out--women and children, old men and maidens."
+
+Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
+say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman,
+but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal
+acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather
+impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing
+more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite
+herself.
+
+"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pushing away his plate, "on
+some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
+warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give
+his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all
+formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great
+difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of
+the family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal
+government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.
+She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of
+bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill
+him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the
+body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen from
+the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and died. The
+wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to
+escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison, and all the
+care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The
+pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that
+prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was
+not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and
+died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but
+his foster-father--that great and parental government."
+
+Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
+eyes.
+
+"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race
+was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is
+a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody
+must keep account of 'em."
+
+The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
+telling than the reading of it would require.
+
+"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take
+some yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history.
+Well--after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian
+government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a
+face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word
+with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat
+met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face,
+and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has
+weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half
+a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that
+face if they saw it now."
+
+Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
+and dogged eyes.
+
+"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.
+
+And that was the end of the story.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
+so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such men, at
+all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
+
+Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette
+from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible
+reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without
+the asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the
+monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many
+actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going
+counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt
+for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having
+consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.
+
+Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this
+evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over
+their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+
+The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary
+to custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre
+of the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in
+the passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china
+stove opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and
+as she did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung
+to. She was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.
+
+Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the
+room. The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way
+cautiously to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak--to ask
+who was there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in
+books, but it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself
+dumb until now.
+
+Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound.
+Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive
+persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small
+slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the
+door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve.
+Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some
+one infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she
+knew by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one
+hand on the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door.
+The light from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.
+
+It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment
+he was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his
+hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+
+"You, mademoiselle!" he said, in broken English. "Then Heaven is
+kind--Heaven is kind!"
+
+In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing
+first one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and
+Netty was conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all
+her life she had never known what it was to be really carried away until
+that moment. She had never felt anything like it--had never seen a man
+like this--at her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free
+them.
+
+"I came," he said--and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+see that no one approached--"to see you, because I could not stay away!
+You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can love as
+well as a rich man--and perhaps better!"
+
+"You must go! you must go!" said Netty. And yet she would have been
+sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is
+that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she
+recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if
+he had heard his own story through the door of communication between
+Mangles' bedroom and the dining-room. For the other door, from the salon
+to the bedroom, stood wide open.
+
+"You think I have only seen you once," said Kosmaroff. "I have not. I
+have seen you often. But the first time I saw you--at the races--was
+enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!"
+
+"You must go--you must go!" whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+
+"I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now--for five
+minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The
+streets are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming
+to these rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is
+the tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I
+won't go till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes!" whispered Netty, hurriedly. "I will come!"
+
+Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment.
+Secondly--it is to be feared--she wanted to go. It was the high-water
+mark. This man carried her there and swept her off her feet--this
+working-man, in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+
+"Go and get a cloak," he said. "I will meet you by the great fountain."
+
+And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart
+beating as it had never beaten before.
+
+Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that
+twisted his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the
+chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when
+Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+
+"It was a near thing," he said to himself in Russian, which language
+he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. "And I
+found the only way out of that hideous danger."
+
+As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it,
+and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later
+he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his
+arm.
+
+It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
+couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a better
+motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's brief
+summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains
+lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+
+Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was
+one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
+autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+
+"I suppose she will come," he said in his mind, watching the gate
+through which Netty must enter the gardens. "It matters little if she
+does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must
+leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is
+pretty enough to make it easy."
+
+In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards
+him--not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first
+clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of
+having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely
+to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.
+
+"I am going back at once," she said. "It was very wrong to come. But you
+frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
+come, and despise me for it?"
+
+"You promised," he whispered, eagerly; "you promised me five minutes.
+Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw
+soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the
+memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five minutes
+and that minute--that one minute in the hotel."
+
+And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
+bench, and raised it to his lips.
+
+"We are going away, too," she said. She was thinking also of that one
+minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water
+mark. "We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting
+here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is
+engaged."
+
+"But he is not a business man," said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.
+"What is he doing here?"
+
+"I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know
+whether he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in
+America, or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that
+we are going on to St. Petersburg."
+
+"And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without
+seeing you? And the others--Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman,
+Cartoner--are they going to St. Petersburg, too?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because
+a solitary promenader was passing close by them. "They never tell me
+either. But . . ."
+
+"But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to
+see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see
+into my heart!"
+
+And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+waited for her to answer.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it."
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff. "Why--tell me why?"
+
+But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly,
+and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill
+which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which
+Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at one
+bound--the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any
+wise man lose himself.
+
+"It is for you that he stays here," he said. "What a fool I was not to
+see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?"
+
+"I think he has found it quite easy to do it," answered Netty, with an
+odd laugh. "No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is
+clever and beautiful."
+
+"There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw."
+
+And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+
+"You say that to please me," she said at last. And her voice was quite
+different--it was low and uneven.
+
+"I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than
+you in all the world. Heaven knows it."
+
+And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had
+no faith.
+
+"But who is there in Warsaw," he asked, "whom any one could dream of
+comparing with you?"
+
+"I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner
+compares with me--and even you must know that she is prettier than I
+am."
+
+"I do not know it," protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. "There
+is no one in all the world."
+
+"There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty," said Netty, curtly.
+
+"Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember
+I saw them together at the races."
+
+"They knew each other in London," said Netty. "They knew each other when
+I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
+here since."
+
+Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
+his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
+Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
+salon a few minutes earlier.
+
+"Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires information
+which she alone can give him?" he asked at length. Which was, after all,
+the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment and in
+that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.
+
+Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose
+hastily and drew her cloak round her.
+
+"I must go," she said; "I have been here much more than five minutes.
+Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?"
+
+And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+
+"You will come again," he said. "Now that you have come once--you cannot
+be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at the
+foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
+You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair,
+your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak
+French?"
+
+"Yes--and she does not."
+
+"Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and
+remember that I love you--always, always!"
+
+He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
+side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
+scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+
+"It is all fair--all fair," said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+convince himself. "Besides--has the world been fair to me?"
+
+Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A LIGHT TOUCH
+
+Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty,
+having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way
+to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions.
+She was not old-fashioned in that respect.
+
+But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first
+time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might
+do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before.
+No one in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That
+which the lenient may call a school-girl escapade--a mere flight to the
+garden for a few minutes--was scarcely sufficient to account for this
+feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some
+wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.
+
+Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although
+Miss Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long,
+innocent-looking Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still
+some views of value to be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+
+Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced
+with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave.
+Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+
+"I will come down to the door with you," said Deulin, in the passage.
+He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable
+instincts.
+
+At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his
+hat was back again.
+
+"It is a moonlight night," he said. "I will walk with you part of the
+way."
+
+He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to
+think it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each
+other too well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin,
+light overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack,
+weighing and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+
+"That is the Madrid Stick," said the Frenchman. "You were with me when I
+bought it."
+
+"And when you used it," added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he
+led the way to the door. "Generally keep your coat in the hall?" he
+inquired, casually, as they descended the steps.
+
+"Sometimes," replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath
+the brim of his hat.
+
+It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full
+and almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without
+shadow at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the
+river.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the right
+instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg,
+which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. "Yes--let
+us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some
+queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense,
+so silent, so unobservant--who sees nothing and knows nothing and never
+laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the
+piece de resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service,
+the typical Frenchman; all shrugs and gesticulations and mustache--of
+politeness that is so insincere--of a heart that is so unstable. Ah!
+these national characteristics of comic journalism--how the stupid world
+trips over them on to its vulgar face!"
+
+As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker,
+with a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was
+unnatural to one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the
+streets whenever he walked there.
+
+Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in
+a narrow street now--between the backs of high houses--and had left the
+life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin turned
+once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street. He
+released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in
+an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand
+in an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening
+for footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing
+the direction from which they had just come.
+
+Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+pavement.
+
+"Any coming from the other side?" asked Deulin.
+
+"No."
+
+"In the doorway," whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow
+doorway that had the air of being little used. The long blade of
+his sword-stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's
+sheath-knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the
+moonlight.
+
+"Here," he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. "But
+you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!"
+
+With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight,
+and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know
+there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal
+life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across
+the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with
+the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like
+a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together,
+and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and
+planted a kick in the small of his adversary's back, sending him
+staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries
+of "Ah!" and "La!" breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the
+fencing-floor--performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a
+marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm,
+hand, head, and leg; forward, back-handed, from above and below. He
+never awaited their attack--but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who
+said that the surest way to defend is to attack?
+
+The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men.
+The sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness,
+from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the
+air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying
+note of steel.
+
+The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to
+the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow.
+Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the
+doorway.
+
+"Even if they are armed," said Deulin, "they won't fire. They don't want
+the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not
+suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now."
+
+While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+
+"Both have knives," he said, "but they cannot get near me. Stay where
+you are."
+
+"All right," said Cartoner. "Haven't had a chance yet."
+
+And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice
+before in all the years that they had known each other.
+
+"That's the best," he said, half to himself, "of dealing with a man who
+keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner--here they come."
+
+And he went out to meet them.
+
+But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their
+returning to the attack--thus, with a cold-blooded courage--showed that
+they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran
+forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he
+could not lay aside the little flourish--the quick, stiff pose--of the
+fencer.
+
+His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further,
+as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in
+as if into a cheese.
+
+"Voila, mon ami," he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had
+made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+
+The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered
+on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck
+eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly
+curling up, and he had no control over them.
+
+"And now," said Deulin, in Polish, "for you."
+
+He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round
+towards Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man
+turned and ran, followed closely by his companion.
+
+Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones,
+and came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully
+dropped it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a
+muddy splash.
+
+"He will never use that hand again," he said. "Poor devil! I only hope
+he was well paid for it."
+
+"Doubt it."
+
+Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+
+"Have you an old envelope?" he inquired.
+
+Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of
+the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall.
+And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore
+it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright
+steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt,
+where the government mark and the word "Toledo" were deeply engraved.
+
+"Unless I keep it clean it sticks," he explained. "And if you want it at
+all, you want it in a hurry--like a woman's heart, eh?"
+
+He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade
+back into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure
+that nothing was left there.
+
+"The light was good," he said, appreciatively, "and the ground favorable
+for--for the autumn manoeuvres."
+
+And he broke into a gay laugh.
+
+"Come," he said. "Let us go back into the more frequented streets.
+This back way was not a success--only proves that it never does to turn
+tail."
+
+"How did you know," asked Cartoner, "that this was coming off?"
+
+"Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at
+the Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were
+followed. So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni,
+vidi, vici--you understand?"
+
+And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while
+he made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+
+"I thought we might escape by the quieter streets," he went on. "For
+it is our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be.
+Neither could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each
+other's business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many
+chances and changes, to be friends."
+
+They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying
+that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+
+"It was like you, to come like that and take the risk," he said, "and
+say nothing."
+
+But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+
+"As to that," he said, "silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will,
+five years hence--ten years hence--when the time comes. I will tell you
+then why I did it."
+
+"There can only be one reason why you did it," muttered the Englishman.
+
+"Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool--the very best sort of
+fool--and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to me as
+I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship."
+
+And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+
+"I should like to fight some one to-night," he said. "Some one of
+the very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things
+to-night--and the angels in heaven are talking of me."
+
+In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky.
+But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were
+sincere.
+
+As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming
+in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately
+behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant,
+alighting quickly, came towards them.
+
+"There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+that," he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+
+"You!" he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. "You, Cartoner!
+What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?"
+
+"We have been dining with Mangles," explained Deulin.
+
+"And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,"
+added Cartoner. "But we think we are going home."
+
+"You seem to be on the spree," said Martin, with a laugh in his voice,
+and none in his eyes.
+
+"We are," answered Deulin.
+
+"Come," said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. "Come--your
+shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a
+ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them."
+
+"Do it," whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+
+And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the
+garden of the Bukaty Palace.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+
+Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and
+passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown
+to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds
+that sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their
+leaves.
+
+A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. "You find
+me in sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception--a
+semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an
+appearance. It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till
+midnight. Mind those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course."
+
+And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+
+"Thank you, for a few minutes," answered Deulin, and seeing a movement
+of dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+
+"It is better," he said, in an undertone. "It will put them completely
+off the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it."
+
+So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the
+first time.
+
+"Come," said the young prince, "into the drawing-room. I see they have
+left the lights on there."
+
+He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow
+his guests to pass.
+
+"Holloa!" he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.
+
+At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+
+"Back again already?" asked Martin, in surprise.
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda. "There were some people there he did not want to
+meet, so we came away again at once."
+
+"But I thought they could not possibly be there."
+
+"They got there," answered Wanda, "by some ill chance, from Petersburg,
+just in time."
+
+And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+
+"It is not such an ill chance, after all," said Deulin, "since it gives
+us the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?"
+
+"He is in his study."
+
+"I rather want to see him," said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+
+"Come along, then," was the answer. "He will be glad to see you. It will
+cheer him up."
+
+And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly
+and simply--so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans
+of Heaven.
+
+Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and
+she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+
+He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look
+at him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with
+quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his
+habit.
+
+"I was wrong," he said, "when I said that fate could be hampered by
+action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again."
+
+He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+word "here" he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs
+no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to
+those who have not.
+
+"A clear understanding," he said abruptly, recalling her own words.
+"That is your creed."
+
+She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door
+with deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done
+something wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the
+thought, who can!
+
+"I made another mistake," he said. "Have been acting on it for years.
+I thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an
+embassy--of a viceroyalty, perhaps--when I was quite young, and thought
+the world was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you.
+If it comes, well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake."
+
+She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+
+"If it doesn't come"--he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that
+hung quiescent at his side--"well and good. I shall have lived. I shall
+have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the happiest man
+in the world."
+
+He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+been known to say more than he meant.
+
+"There never has been anybody else," he continued. "All that side of
+life was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it,
+at Lady Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world--you had
+come across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there.
+At first I did not believe. I thought it was a mistake--that we should
+drift apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then
+that you would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it--fought
+against it--tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to."
+
+She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to
+him since he entered the room.
+
+"There never can be anybody else," he said. "How could there be?"
+
+And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her
+breath. She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as
+this one fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth--that
+he was thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can
+carry. For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of
+love is infinitely harder.
+
+"I knew from the first," he continued, "that there is no hope. Whichever
+way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me
+that."
+
+She turned her eyes to his at last.
+
+"You knew?" she asked, speaking for the first time.
+
+"I know the history of Poland," he said, quietly. "The country must
+have your father--your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up
+Poland--you know that."
+
+They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to
+life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which
+raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.
+
+"If you asked me," said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile--"I
+should do it."
+
+"And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would
+one day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you.
+There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it--and that would
+be the end."
+
+"Is it so delicate as that?" she asked.
+
+"It is the frailest thing in the world--and the strongest," he answered,
+with his thoughtful smile. "It is a very delicate sort of--thought,
+which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
+succeed in keeping it even passably intact--and not one couple in a
+million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from
+the outer world, but from themselves."
+
+"Where did you learn all that?" she asked, looking at him with her
+shrewd, smiling eyes.
+
+"You taught me."
+
+"But you have a terribly high ideal."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+She shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+compromises."
+
+"With its conscience," said Cartoner. "And look at the result."
+
+"Then you are good," she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+gravity, "as well as concise--and rather masterful."
+
+"It is clear," he said, "that a man who persuades a woman to marry
+against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is
+seeking her unhappiness and his own."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "But you ask for a great deal."
+
+"I ask for love."
+
+"And," she said, going past that question, "no obstacles."
+
+"No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside."
+
+"And if one such object--quite a small one--should be found?"
+
+"Then they must be content with love alone."
+
+Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They
+seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so
+many hasten and such numbers fall.
+
+"You have a way," she said, "of putting into words--so few words--what
+others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they
+did--there would, perhaps, be no marriages."
+
+"There would be no unhappy ones," said Cartoner.
+
+"And it is better to be content with love alone?"
+
+"Content," was his sole answer.
+
+Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their
+moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten.
+Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour
+earlier, and his life had been in peril--he had been down to the depths
+and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.
+
+"So that is your creed," she said at length. "And there is no
+compromise?"
+
+"None," he answered.
+
+And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women
+have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the
+backbone of human nature.
+
+"Ah!" she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+length of the long, lamp-lit room. "You are strong--you are strong for
+two."
+
+He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine,
+steely strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime
+of which the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of
+seeking always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they
+had left untouched.
+
+"And if two people had between them," she suggested, wonderingly, "that
+with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure
+they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew
+that they could never have more, could they be happy?"
+
+"They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world," he
+answered.
+
+"And if they had to go on all their lives--and if one lived in London
+and the other in Warsaw--Warsaw?"
+
+"They could still be happy."
+
+"If she--alone at one end of Europe--" asked Wanda, with her
+worldly-wise searching into detail--"if she saw slowly vanishing those
+small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care,
+perhaps?"
+
+"She could still be happy."
+
+"And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some
+misfortune, and felt lonely and disappointed--and there was no one near
+to--to take care of him?"
+
+"He could still be happy--if--"
+
+"If--?"
+
+"If he knew that she loved him," replied Cartoner, slowly.
+
+Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were
+tears in her eyes.
+
+"Oh! you may know that," she said, suddenly descending from the
+uncertain heights of generality. "You may be quite sure of that. If that
+is what you want."
+
+"That is what I want."
+
+As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She
+looked at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs
+at his temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely
+protecting and dimly maternal.
+
+"I want you to go away from Warsaw," she said. "I would rather you went
+even if you say--that you are afraid to stay."
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"Besides," she added, with her head held high, "they would not believe
+you if you did."
+
+"I promise you," he answered, "not to run any risks, to take every care.
+But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing
+you."
+
+She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in
+that direction.
+
+"I should like," she said, "to make you a promise in return. It would
+give me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to
+remember it."
+
+The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be
+speaking unnecessarily loud.
+
+"I promise you," said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, "never to marry
+anybody else."
+
+And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the
+clock.
+
+"To your tents, O Israel!" he said.
+
+Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had
+laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "remember me in your prayers to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE WHITE FEATHER
+
+It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough
+to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+masses.
+
+Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view,
+it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the
+least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man
+is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat
+without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated,
+who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has
+happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in
+that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must
+ever evoke.
+
+Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men
+and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably
+the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his
+cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious.
+For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long
+into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts
+which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He
+was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there
+came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
+fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
+ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
+perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And
+in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the
+lives of individuals.
+
+Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of
+affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which
+were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other
+do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his
+fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life
+they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small
+feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French
+Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris
+to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The
+western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.
+
+Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop.
+He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which
+Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.
+
+"One likes," he said to the stout Jewess, "to talk one's own tongue in a
+foreign land."
+
+And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
+past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the
+day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower
+at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in
+his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
+pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+writing-table. "Ah! if you were only idle, as I am"--he paused, with
+a sharp, little sigh--"if you only could be idle, how much happier you
+would be!"
+
+"A Frenchman," replied Cartoner, without looking up, "thinks that noise
+means happiness."
+
+"Then you are happy--you pretend to happiness?" inquired Deulin,
+sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+
+"Yes, thank you," replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+this morning.
+
+"Don't thank me--thank the gods," replied Deulin, with a sudden gravity.
+
+"Well," said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, "what do you
+want?"
+
+Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+
+"What do I want?" he inquired, innocently.
+
+"Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When
+you are most idle you are most occupied."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it
+with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+
+"There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+towards the Column--the shady side, after the street has been
+watered--that my soul desires," said the Frenchman, at length.
+
+"When are you going?" asked Cartoner, softly.
+
+"I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought
+I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+indefinitely for----"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the upheaval," explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+cigarette.
+
+"This morning--" he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside
+his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention
+which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his
+being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+
+"This morning I picked up a scrap of information." He drew towards him
+a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin.
+The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross,
+Deulin threw the paper across the table.
+
+"You know that man?"
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No; no one knows that," replied Deulin. "It is one of the very few
+mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up."
+
+Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking,
+perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was
+still content to be known only by a mark.
+
+"Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+which, happily, have never reached the newspaper," said Deulin, after
+a pause. "One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an
+upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo
+for many years here. Suppose--suppose, my friend, that they manufacture
+their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as
+to the creating of an opportunity."
+
+"Anarchy?" inquired Cartoner.
+
+"The ladies of the party call it Nihilism," replied the Frenchman, with
+an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to
+gainsay a lady.
+
+"Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people.
+They waited thirty years."
+
+"And struck too hastily, after all," commented Deulin. "Bukaty would not
+link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But
+there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to
+wait longer, and are therefore less patient--men of a more modern stamp,
+without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough
+in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way--"
+
+"The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to
+his lights," interrupted Cartoner.
+
+"Ah! since you say so," returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+"yes."
+
+"Bon sang," said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying.
+"He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists."
+
+But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train
+of thought.
+
+"So you know of Kosmaroff?" he said, studying his companion's face. "You
+know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where
+is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that."
+
+"In Warsaw," guessed Cartoner.
+
+"Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin--towards London, by the same token."
+
+Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn
+on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+
+"That parishioner is in London, too," he said, in his own tongue--and
+the word means more in French.
+
+Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the
+drawing to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+
+"Trying to get me out of Warsaw," he said. "Giving me a graceful chance
+of showing the white feather."
+
+Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force
+of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the
+time of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train
+at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of
+Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.
+
+"The white feather," he said, "is an emblem that neither you nor I need
+trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a
+national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly
+independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the
+tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?"
+
+And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of
+envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+
+"Look here," he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on
+the table, "here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling--here, in Warsaw.
+Here--in Berlin or in London--is the man with the match that will set
+it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the
+shadow that it casts before it, for the second--no, for the third time
+in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done so
+when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know
+the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since
+your humor is so odd. You stay or you go--but remember that it is in the
+interests of others that you go."
+
+"Of others?"
+
+"Yes--of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go or
+stay, as you like."
+
+Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing
+that decision.
+
+"I will go," he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair
+with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had
+observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important
+business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to
+be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed
+that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have
+thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no
+use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
+
+"I dare say you are right," he said. "And, at all events, you will see
+the last of this sad city."
+
+Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
+and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
+this period in European history.
+
+"I smell," he said, "something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in
+the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret
+which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets."
+
+He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+
+"Because," he added, with a sudden gravity, "there is nothing in life
+worth making a secret of--except one's income. There are many reasons
+why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should
+happen--anything--anywhere--we keep each other advised. Is it not so?"
+
+"Usual cipher," answered Cartoner.
+
+"My salutations to Lady Orlay," said Deulin, with a reflective nod.
+"That woman who can keep a secret."
+
+"I thought you had none."
+
+"She knows the secret--of my income," answered the Frenchman. "Tell
+her--no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+leave?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well,
+do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have
+we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired
+rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael,
+and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away."
+
+He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing
+but the hired furniture.
+
+"The police will be in here five minutes after you are out," he said,
+curtly. "You have no message--" He paused to pick up from the floor a
+petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No
+message to any one in Warsaw?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner.
+
+"No--you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are
+hard, Cartoner--hard as nails."
+
+Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his
+possessions--already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that
+he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men
+worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality
+may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in
+English public schools.
+
+Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+
+"Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye."
+
+And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+
+"The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+together."
+
+And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+COEUR VOLANT
+
+In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central
+European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
+rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
+clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
+done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
+trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
+world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain.
+It had come at last.
+
+In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
+ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices.
+He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing
+that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as
+she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with
+a sort of shock.
+
+"You were dreaming," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "Dreams and white hairs--No, I
+was listening to the rain."
+
+He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+daring her to doubt him.
+
+"I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone."
+
+He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
+the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
+the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
+slow persistency.
+
+"Can you not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
+a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
+should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in
+a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw."
+
+Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
+glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched
+him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she
+knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden
+anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow
+of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew
+that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was
+in reality about his business.
+
+"There," he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
+her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. "That is
+more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
+see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?"
+
+"I do not know if it will amuse you," answered Wanda, in her energetic
+way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, "but Mr.
+Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening."
+
+Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
+to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
+same.
+
+"Separately they are amusing enough," he said, slowly, "but they do not
+mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles."
+
+"So has my father," put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+
+"Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young
+country events move by jerks--that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you are above that sort of thing."
+
+"I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of
+Poland," she answered, gravely. "They give everything. I have not much
+to give, you see."
+
+"I suppose you have what every woman has--to sacrifice upon some altar
+or another--your happiness!"
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at
+him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of
+that, at least, she was sure.
+
+"Happiness, or a hope of happiness," he went on, reflectively. "Perhaps
+one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If
+you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
+remembered by women, and very seldom by men."
+
+"Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events."
+
+"What is common enough?" he asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+"Hope."
+
+"Hope! connais pas!" he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. "You must ask
+some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is
+why I am so gay."
+
+And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+
+"The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all," he went on, as if seeking
+to explain his own humor. "Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
+existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
+fire to sit by. That is why I am here."
+
+And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
+had something to tell her--that he had come for no other purpose. And,
+that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that it
+was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care showed
+her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his
+character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
+middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness
+of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart
+was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the
+world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long
+and grim a family history as the world has known.
+
+"Do you not feel lonely in this great room?" he asked, looking round at
+the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
+that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+
+"No, I think not," answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
+room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
+down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the
+first time.
+
+Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
+usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
+feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
+contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
+approach to it.
+
+"The worst of Warsaw," he said, "is its dulness. The theatres are
+deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
+amuse one's self."
+
+He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+
+"It was sordid," he continued. "One wondered how the performers could be
+content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such
+an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
+interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like cracking
+nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was
+so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he
+must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
+was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
+they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
+usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
+had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
+others who received the applause--the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted,
+and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled condescendingly. But
+the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing at all, and quite
+forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression of his patient
+face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one was looking
+at him--which was only the truth. Then, when the applause was over, he
+turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired--his day's
+work done. And, I don't know why, I thought--of Cartoner."
+
+She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
+have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+thoughts, "the world would get on very well without its talkers.
+No great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in
+history?"
+
+Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had
+to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and
+Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his
+monologue.
+
+"I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw."
+
+Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had
+any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in
+Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to
+know the meaning of that.
+
+"Gone!" she said. "I am very glad."
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. "It is
+a good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at
+half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which
+you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution,
+is Cartoner's repose of manner--for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
+not a devout man."
+
+"Then you have done what I asked you to do," said Wanda, "some time ago,
+and I am very grateful."
+
+"Some time ago? It was only yesterday."
+
+"Was it? It seems more than that," said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his
+head slowly.
+
+"I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
+quite suddenly," he explained. "So he packed up and went. He had not
+much to pack. We travel light--he and I. We have no despatch-boxes
+or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember
+and forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets
+anything."
+
+"And you?" asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+
+"I? Oh! I do my best," he said, lightly. "But if you desire to forget
+anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+life."
+
+He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering
+and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that
+he was short-sighted.
+
+"I do not think I will wait for the Mangles," he said. "Especially
+Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way--" He paused,
+and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. "You never talk politics,
+I know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of
+politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted
+Warsaw--you understand?"
+
+"I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of
+discretion," said Wanda.
+
+"Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found
+us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her
+Netty--well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion."
+
+"And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. "Have I concealed
+my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+concealment."
+
+"Perhaps you have overdone the contempt," suggested Wanda. "She is
+probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+test."
+
+"You see," said Deulin, in an explanatory way, "Cartoner may have had
+reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are
+the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people
+in the passport-office--and the others, whose business it is to watch us
+all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought
+it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So
+I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by
+Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw.
+Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so
+he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he
+ignored the little social trammels which the majority of mankind know
+much better than they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He
+was too discreet to call and say good-bye--knowing the ways of servants
+in this country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by
+post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office."
+
+He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+pleasant laugh.
+
+"You are wondering," he said, "why I am taking this unusual course. It
+is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his
+back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
+Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also,
+I may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
+to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
+them."
+
+"At all events," said Wanda, shaking hands, "you are cautious. You make
+no promises."
+
+"And therefore we break none," he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
+
+He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by
+Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous
+and rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles,
+standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting
+was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as
+if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to
+take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon
+to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked
+two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to
+show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--that
+she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache."
+
+And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+
+It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
+sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
+about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
+foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
+more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion
+that they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of
+one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+
+There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
+even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
+on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
+south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
+knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in
+his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
+Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
+Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
+variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
+served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
+
+There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
+it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
+coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
+run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles
+de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is
+also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
+shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite
+a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by
+a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
+sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
+
+There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
+of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
+where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business,
+had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective
+brush, which had last been used for red.
+
+On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
+and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
+respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
+coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
+from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
+in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
+tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
+the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
+American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
+fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
+number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
+use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
+air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
+companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
+and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+
+The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
+is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
+character three words, which, being translated, read: "The Brothers of
+Liberty." As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the
+Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment
+would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one
+so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
+would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
+suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
+afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain
+that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+
+"That's their lingo," said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
+numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
+furrier's shop.
+
+He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
+imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
+from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
+of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse
+with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and
+original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
+
+"That's their lingo, right enough," said the captain, examining the tin
+tablet a second time. "That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman."
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his
+high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of
+disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he
+had put on what he called his "suit"; a coat and trousers of solid
+pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all
+times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly
+live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the
+state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape,
+such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
+
+The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
+signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on
+the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron,
+who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+
+"Name of Cable," said the captain, turning to expectorate on the
+pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find
+themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards
+with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+
+"Name of Cable," repeated the captain. "Dirty!" he added, just by way of
+inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
+which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+
+This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
+aside.
+
+"Heave ahead!" he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English
+he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
+bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And
+he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was
+a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where
+discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a
+sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were
+turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was
+familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the
+Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+
+The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will
+be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
+appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
+man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no
+other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark
+man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something
+magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward
+things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at
+its possessor as if measuring himself against him.
+
+"Take a chair, captain," said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He was
+clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and
+he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide
+that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim
+strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a
+fighting race.
+
+The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
+to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his "suit."
+
+"Do you speak German, captain?" inquired Kosmaroff.
+
+And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+
+"Sailed with a crew of Germans," he answered; "I understand a bit, and I
+know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy words
+like that."
+
+"Then," said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, "we had better
+continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+dealing."
+
+He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+
+"We have not much to say to Captain Cable," replied the man who seemed
+to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor
+voice, and was what the French call _chetif_ in appearance--a weak man,
+fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
+
+"It is essential in the first place," he continued, "that we should
+understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered."
+
+With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the
+smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he
+looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+
+"We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself
+quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
+entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
+understands very little of what we are saying."
+
+Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
+who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
+
+"Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,"
+continued the speaker. "Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and
+verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable
+to be affected by circumstances--and should be repeated several times in
+the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
+period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again."
+
+There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+
+"Yes," said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+
+"And is only awaiting her opportunity."
+
+"Yes."
+
+One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body,
+which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a
+penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker
+took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed
+his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been
+justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps
+he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two
+nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history
+is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet
+man had made a little in his day.
+
+"An opportunity is not an easy thing to define," he said at length.
+"Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
+opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
+would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about
+just yet."
+
+He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
+worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.
+
+"We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on
+the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
+useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print--and
+ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
+journalism--in England they have too much."
+
+Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+
+"Another opportunity would be a social upheaval," said the Russian,
+drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come for
+that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and that we
+can offer to you."
+
+Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+
+"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "I have heard that talk for the last ten
+years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?"
+
+The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
+waited till he had finished speaking.
+
+"Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more
+than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
+five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
+amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have
+her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now."
+
+He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was
+about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience,
+paused, he knew not why.
+
+"Think," said the other, in his smooth, even voice--"one month from now,
+after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
+different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
+nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
+party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
+affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
+we seek the approval of no man."
+
+There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch
+for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the
+judgment of any.
+
+"Five thousand roubles," he concluded. "And in exchange I give you the
+date--so that Poland may be ready."
+
+"Thank you," said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly
+as he had lost it. "I decline--for myself and for the whole of Poland.
+We play a cleaner game than that."
+
+He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+
+"If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights--if
+I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you
+do not give--I should take you by the throat and throw you out into
+the street for daring to make such a proposal to me," he said, in a low
+voice.
+
+"To a deserter from a Cossack regiment," suggested the other.
+
+"To me," repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
+at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
+again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+
+"Captain Cable," said Kosmaroff, "you and I have met before, and I
+learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for
+you, and these men no company for you. I am going--will you come?"
+
+"I'm agreeable," said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+
+When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+
+"Who's that man?" he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Kosmaroff.
+
+They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
+the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger
+and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+
+"That is who he is," he said.
+
+Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+
+"I've heard of him," he said. "And I heard his voice--sort of
+soft-spoken--on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+refused the job and came out with you."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+
+More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
+awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
+stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look
+for the unexpected.
+
+It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain
+Cable chartered the _Minnie_ in the coasting trade, and after Christmas
+he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
+Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
+with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
+sudden and untoward end.
+
+Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+cold and wet weather. "If the winter would only set in," he said, "and
+dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks
+almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would
+perhaps be more endurable."
+
+Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and
+Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the
+Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never
+reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they
+were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and
+less comes out.
+
+There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+
+"History is assuredly at a stand-still," said an old traveller one
+evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. "The world must
+be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your
+head off."
+
+"I am waiting," replied Cartoner.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I do not know," he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+
+Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader,
+and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries
+in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a
+deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It
+came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little
+sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor
+household without surprise or comment.
+
+Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment,
+which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the
+social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until
+at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates,
+while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
+
+"We've always dealt square by each other, you and I," said the captain,
+when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor,
+and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+wall and shot me, sure as fate," he said, bringing his hand down on
+his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. "That was ten years ago last
+November, when the _Minnie_ had been out of the builder's yard a matter
+of six months."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind.
+It seemed that the building of the _Minnie_ was not the epoch upon which
+he reckoned his periods.
+
+"She's in Morrison's dry-dock now," said the captain, who in a certain
+way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
+by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. "You should go down and
+see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in
+the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely."
+
+Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry
+out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the _Minnie's_ new
+boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
+was never carried out after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have
+never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I
+believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer
+Deulin--that time, over yonder."
+
+And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one
+who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know
+which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their
+left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or shout--that
+all men are created equal.
+
+"I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
+hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you
+a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
+turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
+always kept my hands----"
+
+He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+
+"You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years
+and more."
+
+"Yes, I'll say that for you," answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+
+"They did me!" cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+down on the table, "with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said
+he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government
+stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government
+official. It was----"
+
+Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
+up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
+
+"Bombs!" he concluded--"bombs!"
+
+Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
+set down here.
+
+"You know me and you know the _Minnie_, Mr. Cartoner!" continued the
+angry sailor. "She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
+and--well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
+man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
+material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me
+out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean
+stuff up to now--plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the
+other. Always honest--revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But
+bombs----"
+
+And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no
+place on a polite page.
+
+"There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them," he
+concluded. "That is what I have got to tell you."
+
+"How do you know?" asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+
+The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+other.
+
+"Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Know the Seemannshaus there?"
+
+"Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+docks."
+
+"That's the place," said Captain Cable. "Well, one night I was up there,
+on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
+day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
+up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
+go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons.
+You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way.
+A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a
+voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and
+we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect,
+with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning.
+He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was
+goin'--well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth.
+Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down
+at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the
+bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as
+I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding
+agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke
+German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't
+rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft
+voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have
+known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a
+match?"
+
+For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for what
+he wanted.
+
+"Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
+an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside
+of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want
+it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man
+said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed.
+We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases
+broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it.
+Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in
+wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides,
+no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the
+moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a
+new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when
+I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the
+stuff away."
+
+Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
+after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what
+had brought these past events back to his recollection.
+
+"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable,
+"because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
+square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
+though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
+of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
+and smoke it."
+
+And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+
+"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little
+job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
+forget to come down and see her?"
+
+"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."
+
+"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
+been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that
+got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.
+And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark
+night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting
+quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken
+the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten,
+and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still
+going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with
+a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that
+that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the
+man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way
+of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a
+Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had
+been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that
+man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and
+makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a
+hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says."
+
+Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
+soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and
+after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes
+for eternity were exceedingly small.
+
+"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in
+politics and the like."
+
+"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.
+
+"That's it--a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
+the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He
+carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of
+a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
+outward signs of man and nature.
+
+"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that
+you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together
+already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It
+makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_
+hatches."
+
+"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on
+another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."
+
+He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
+the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+
+"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+
+"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
+shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+having dashed up from the club stand.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the
+_Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Going foreign?" asked the captain.
+
+"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a
+sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of
+action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+IN THE SPRING
+
+The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither
+so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one,
+and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady
+would select to pass the cold months in.
+
+"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here
+till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
+Nice if you like."
+
+And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason
+or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.
+
+"The place is dull for you," said Mangles, "now that Cartoner seems to
+have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
+any circle."
+
+And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
+not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
+
+"You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+Atlantic," she said. "I always found you with your heads close together
+whenever I came on deck."
+
+"Don't think we sparkled much," said Joseph, with his under lip well
+forward.
+
+"It is very kind of Uncle Joseph," said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+Mangles, "to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would
+be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could
+we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should
+not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here."
+
+Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant
+of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
+particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
+that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came
+forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for
+others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.
+
+Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for
+a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which
+Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate
+coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski
+Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow;
+and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.
+Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her
+steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked
+by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring,
+though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+
+Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he
+came--had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving
+only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had
+raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine
+heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff,
+any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she
+should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was,
+she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she
+naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart
+drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She
+might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no
+doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would
+be.
+
+Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
+people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
+no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
+these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
+uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed
+in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself--and, no
+doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other people do.
+
+Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
+was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
+right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could
+not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
+in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
+supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found
+out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
+
+Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now
+at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked
+much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a
+different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless
+information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies,
+and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To
+Netty he showed a hundred attentions.
+
+"I cannot understand," she said, "why everybody is so kind to me."
+
+"It is because you are so kind to everybody," he answered, with that air
+of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
+Netty.
+
+"I do not understand Mr. Deulin," said Netty to her uncle one day. "Why
+does he stay here? What is he doing here?"
+
+And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+deepest tones:
+
+"You had better ask him!"
+
+"But he would not tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"And Mr. Cartoner," continued Netty, "I understood he was coming back,
+but he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult
+to get information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course,
+who comes and who goes."
+
+"Course not," said Mangles.
+
+After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+
+"Uncle," she said, "I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+Warsaw."
+
+"What made you wonder that?"
+
+"I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong.
+Mr. Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so
+odd and quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see
+them exchange glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I
+distrust the quietness of the people, and--uncle--Mr. Deulin's gayety--I
+distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and
+leave you here alone."
+
+Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+
+"Because it is a dull hole," he said, "that is why I want you to go
+away. It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a
+conquered country before. All conquered countries are like that."
+
+Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he
+never again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But
+Netty's curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would
+answer no question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did
+Cartoner stay away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the
+Bukaty Palace. She made an excuse in some illustrated English and
+American magazines which might interest the Princess Wanda. But there
+was no one at home. She understood from the servant, who spoke a little
+German, that they had gone to their country house, a few miles from
+Warsaw.
+
+The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather
+had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip
+of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who
+held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with
+a sort of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really
+broken, or if this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first
+days in March--a month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long
+sleep, and men pull themselves together to new endeavor. The majority
+of great events in the world's history have taken place in the spring
+months. Is not the Ides of March written large in the story of this
+planet?
+
+Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came
+to her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English
+make, which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare,
+like the face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was
+gay and light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his
+admiration for Netty.
+
+"It is three days," he said, "since I have seen you. And it seems like
+three years."
+
+Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days
+had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
+
+"My uncle has been pressing us to go away," said Netty, "to the south of
+France, to Nice, but----"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Well," answered Netty, after a pause, "you see for yourself--we have
+not gone."
+
+"It is a very selfish hope--but I hope you will stay," said Prince
+Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure
+caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is
+not usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She
+looked, besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at
+that moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was
+only natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew
+Wanda to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which
+is the difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was
+good, and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and
+her was to be treated with scorn.
+
+"I will tell you," he said, "if at any time there is any reason why you
+cannot stay."
+
+"But why should there be any reason--" she began, and a quick movement
+that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be within
+hearing, made her stop.
+
+"Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know," she
+said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her
+horribly.
+
+He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better
+left to men.
+
+"I almost missed," he said gayly, "an excellent opportunity of holding
+my tongue."
+
+"Only----" began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest against
+being told anything.
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"Only--be careful," she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course, that
+brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful, if
+it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake. And
+at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But
+he did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who
+persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they
+will vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be
+cowards. And when the danger is there, and the woman is not--their vow
+is writ in water.
+
+Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears
+to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The
+gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look
+delicate and soft as a peach.
+
+"I will not hear you," she said. "I will not. I will not."
+
+Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+
+"No," he said; "you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to
+hear me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be
+an outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go
+well, and then I should be in a very different position."
+
+Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or,
+perhaps, she was only putting together recollections which had all been
+thought out before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She
+had only been in Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet.
+But there were terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty,
+that greatest of all drawbacks, was the other.
+
+"I can tell you nothing now," he said. "But soon, before the summer,
+there may be great changes in Poland."
+
+Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth
+or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not
+even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
+
+"What did you mean," he asked, "when you said 'Be careful'? What did you
+mean--tell me?"
+
+His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken
+her hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her
+back. She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear
+nervous often rise to the occasion.
+
+"I do not know what I meant," she said; "I do not know. You must not ask
+me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and
+do not ask me."
+
+By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a
+Bukaty to be generous.
+
+"Some day," he said, "I will ask you."
+
+And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A SACRIFICE
+
+Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things,
+like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed
+warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
+
+Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+
+So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better
+than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the
+thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field
+a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who
+can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely
+associated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green
+things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to
+drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in
+these countries, where men and women are booted to the knee, and every
+third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
+
+The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left
+them, was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the
+smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for
+it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for
+it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and
+parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula,
+where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim
+solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the
+French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland,
+more frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her
+inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a
+king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that
+great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If
+ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials, he
+was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+
+Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a
+plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt
+had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been
+built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on
+the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a
+meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides,
+while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster
+ornamentation mossy and broken.
+
+Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year.
+They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were
+needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and
+weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only
+remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his
+duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power
+the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity of the
+recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy
+taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the
+village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any money. And
+so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be no reason why
+they ever should.
+
+By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince
+seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world
+to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And,
+though he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and
+not his equals--as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only
+succeeded in proving the contrary--he cared for their bodies as he would
+have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry, and
+he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could
+not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying
+his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers
+who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine
+and comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful
+nurse could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the
+roof of the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed
+upon the front lawn.
+
+Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his
+knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house
+to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical
+advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor
+crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his
+great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these
+Poles, through it all. "Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants," said
+Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a
+hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it
+is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often
+strengthens it.
+
+Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough
+work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her
+father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being--like him, she was
+intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They
+liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round
+their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather,
+and longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the
+restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who
+had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
+
+Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow
+lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines.
+In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike
+the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking
+beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and
+forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+
+"This frost cannot last," said the prince. "The spring must come soon,
+and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business."
+
+But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief
+frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was
+essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went
+the spirit of unrest.
+
+He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on
+foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+
+"And you have had nothing to eat," said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity;
+a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship.
+He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough
+sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots
+nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his
+eyebrows. He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped
+his face from time to time as the ice melted.
+
+"No," he answered, "I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of
+the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here."
+
+"You will not go hungry from this house," said the prince, with his
+rather fierce laugh.
+
+"I will get you what you want," said Wanda, lighting a candle. "There
+are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only
+the farmer and his wife--and my maid, who is English, and silent."
+
+So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in
+the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet
+had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in
+all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at
+any academy.
+
+"When you have finished," said Wanda, "you can talk of your affairs. I
+shall leave you to yourselves."
+
+"Oh, there is not much to say," answered Kosmaroff. "I have done no good
+on my journey. Things make no progress."
+
+"You expect too much," said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass
+of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. "You expect
+the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy,
+remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks.
+You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going
+forward for five years, and then falling through, after all."
+
+Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had
+never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many do, to
+pass the time.
+
+"One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now," he said. "In fact, it
+is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her
+also. But, please, do not stand," he added, turning to her. "I have
+all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king--or a
+beggar."
+
+His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+
+"It is," he said, after a pause, "about that Englishman, Cartoner."
+
+Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on
+Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.
+
+"Yes," she said, in a steady voice.
+
+"He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself. One
+evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps,
+that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and
+happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one.
+This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in
+it----" He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+
+"But I have also no power," he added, "over those whose affair it
+is--you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study
+the attitude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our
+foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to
+us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who are
+our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the
+foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that
+Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+
+"In Cracow," he said, "they are all words."
+
+"There are certain men, it appears," continued Kosmaroff, "in the
+service of the governments--in one service it is called 'foreign
+affairs,' in another the 'secret service'--whose mission it is to find
+themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They
+are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would
+conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore,
+the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said--I ask your pardon
+for repeating it--that they know, and that Cartoner knows what he
+knows--through the Bukatys."
+
+The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak.
+Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was
+looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not
+taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and
+had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment,
+a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than
+any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff
+spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.
+
+"I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a
+brave man. It happens that I know that," he said. "He knows as well as
+I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left
+London I heard--for we have friends everywhere--that he had got his
+passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back,
+so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these
+suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control
+over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin
+had betrayed anything--"
+
+"I or Martin would be assassinated," said the prince with his loud
+laugh. "I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the
+methods of the sixties--suspicion and assassination. It has always been
+the ruin of Poland--that method."
+
+"But you have no feelings with regard to this man?" asked Kosmaroff,
+sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong
+glance, as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him
+untouched.
+
+"None whatever," answered the prince. "He is a mere passing
+acquaintance. He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him--you can tell
+your friends--it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that
+have been made for Poland."
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+
+"You know what they are," broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. "They see
+a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with
+Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to
+have called on you at your hotel in London."
+
+"It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend," said the
+prince, "and I tell you, he shall be dropped."
+
+"It is more than that," answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+
+"You mean," said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, "that Martin and
+I are put upon our good behavior--that our lives are safe only so long
+as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having
+any communication with him."
+
+And Kosmaroff was silent.
+
+He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was
+clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one
+hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and
+had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
+
+"I tell you this," he said, after a silence, "because no one else dared
+to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you
+have done--all that you are ready to do."
+
+"Yes--yes. Everything must be done for Poland," said the prince,
+suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's
+life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck
+ten.
+
+"And the princess says the same?" said Kosmaroff, rising also, and
+raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish
+fashion.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I say the same."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN THE PINE-WOODS
+
+The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man,
+and covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
+prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which
+had once owned his ancestor as lord and master--in those days when a
+noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim
+for an injured sheep to-day.
+
+The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a
+noble, he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen,
+perhaps, enough in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him
+that women--and even Polish women--should take no part in politics. He
+believed in a wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is
+better not to know. He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the
+next morning, and Wanda asked no questions. She had not slept until
+nearly morning, and had heard her father bolt the doors after the
+departure of the ex-Cossack. She had heard Kosmaroff's light and quick
+step on the frozen snow as he started on his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.
+
+Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
+the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was
+bright and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow
+from melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous
+evening, and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was
+young and strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that
+had always been "game," that had always faced the world with unflinching
+eyes, and had never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had
+lived a life of hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and
+witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could
+laugh with the merry, while with the mourner it was his habit to purse
+up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words,
+not of condolence, but of stimulation to endure.
+
+He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt,
+to carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified fight
+against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+
+"If you have a grievance," he always said to those who brought their
+tales of woe to his ears, "air it as much as you like, but speak up, and
+do not whine."
+
+He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority
+of grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of
+Poland, and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears
+there is no cure.
+
+"I shall make a long round to-day," he said to Wanda, when he was in the
+saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots covering
+his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old face
+looking out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. "It may be the last
+time this winter. The spring must come soon."
+
+And he went away at an easy canter.
+
+Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest
+farm, had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her
+father's departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the
+pine-woods. The trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the
+time of thaw, when the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere,
+gains in weight and breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as
+beneath the tread of some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace the
+trees which in the colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing their
+burden without complaint.
+
+The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence like
+that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living in
+the twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a stealthy
+habit--the smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the beasts of
+prey ever alert for their natural enemy--man. The birds kept for the
+most part to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the crops and
+the few, far cottages.
+
+Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy
+forest-paths were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her.
+In the nursery she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never
+seen them. They might be near or far; they might be watching through the
+avenues of straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it had been
+the delight of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the footprints
+of the wolves--near the house, in the garden, right up to the nursery
+window. They had gradually acquired the indifference of the peasants who
+work in the fields, or the woodmen at their labors amid the trees, who
+are aware that the silent, stealthy eyes are watching them, and work
+on without fear. The prince had taught the children fearlessness, or,
+perhaps, it was in their blood, and needed no education. He had taught
+them to look upon the beasts of the forests not as enemies, but as
+quiet, watching friends.
+
+Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning
+her head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the
+peasants were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all events,
+the Bukatys were free to come and go. In cities they were watched, their
+footsteps dogged by human wolves.
+
+There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and
+of Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right
+angles to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give passage
+to the narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the woodman's
+cottage, and so flat is the face of the earth that the distant trees are
+like the masts of ships half-hidden by the curve of the world. It seems
+as if one could walk on and on forever, or drop from hunger and fatigue
+and lie unheeded for years in some forgotten corner. In the better-kept
+forests the paths are staked and numbered, or else it would be
+impossible to know the way amid such millions of trees--all alike, all
+of the same height. But the prince was too poor to vie with the wealthy
+land-owners of Silesia, and his forests were ill-kept.
+
+In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a
+tree had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the
+open space.
+
+Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was
+taken by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow
+behind her. She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason
+had returned home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed
+her. But it was not the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she had quite
+realized that it was he, he was on his feet leading his horse towards
+her.
+
+She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to them
+a few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes
+vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments stolen from
+heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored
+ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority
+of mankind, never at all.
+
+"Why have you come?" asked Wanda.
+
+"To see you," replied this man of few words.
+
+And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all
+her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength,
+he had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it
+easily. For he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and
+face every trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief
+that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break
+had he been anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers
+that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand
+reasons why they should not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood
+between them. But it was only for a moment--a moment borrowed from
+eternity.
+
+"Is that the only reason?" she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their
+real world at all.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do
+not know--" And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to
+them.
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered with a short laugh. "I know. I am going away
+to-night--to St. Petersburg."
+
+He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears
+that she had half expressed.
+
+"I am so glad." She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile. "I
+am so glad you are going away."
+
+She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new
+anxiety, which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+
+"I would rather know that you were safe in England," she said, "even
+if I were never to see you again. But," and she looked up at him with a
+sort of pride in her eyes--that long-drawn pride of race which is strong
+to endure--"but you must never be hampered by a thought of me. I want
+you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake your head.
+All men say the same of you--they are afraid of you."
+
+She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+
+"And I am not," she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness
+was real enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the
+multitude. It lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the
+eager world which, presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never
+recognizes it, but continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches,
+noise and laughter, even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+
+They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind
+to them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such
+moments fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be
+expressed on paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+
+They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid
+of selfishness, and they looked for happiness--not in an immediate
+gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and
+bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword.
+Loyalty to self, to duty, and to each other.
+
+Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that
+should stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore
+duty, which is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres,
+Foresight, Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of
+that madness, a brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her
+lover should be wise, should be careful for the future, should take her
+life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right
+to do so--a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered
+the privilege of that which is called a great passion and admired as
+such--but a right to shape, guard, and keep.
+
+Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps,
+made him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to
+consider the feelings of others and to place them before his own, which,
+of course, is quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which was his
+reading of Love, and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March
+morning and pieced together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive
+way, seemed to content her. She seemed to gather from it that he loved
+her precisely as she wished to be loved, and that, come what might,
+she had already enough to make her life happier than the lives of most
+women.
+
+And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the
+spring was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which
+they could not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had
+become possessed at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff. It
+touched those things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not
+from Wanda.
+
+The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that
+they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.
+
+"You must not go any nearer," she said. "You are sure no one saw you
+when you came?"
+
+"No one," answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For
+he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
+again unobserved.
+
+For he knew--indeed, Wanda had told him--the dangers that surrounded
+him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater for Martin
+and the prince.
+
+"It is only what you foresaw," she said, "when--when we first
+understood."
+
+"No, it is worse than I foresaw," he answered.
+
+So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in
+Poland when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They
+could not even write to each other while Wanda should be within the
+circle of the Russian postal service. There was but the one link between
+them--Paul Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin
+had brought about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met
+Cartoner at Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into
+the streets. Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St.
+Petersburg train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and
+go for a ride into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in
+town, but at their country house.
+
+"Go and see them," he added. "A man living on a volcano may surely play
+with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
+Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
+catastrophe."
+
+Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
+her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
+for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+
+Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
+waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
+Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
+solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of
+Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees
+most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years
+after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN A BY-WAY
+
+There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
+the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
+of the cemetery.
+
+Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
+away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
+horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
+days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
+white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
+business of killing Germans.
+
+Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the
+direct way to St. Petersburg.
+
+"I hired a horse and rode out to meet you," he said, gayly--he was
+singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye--"to
+intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the
+streets--and he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine.
+He is not a nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my
+friend."
+
+He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+Cartoner.
+
+"In the mean time," he said, "I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What
+are we to do? It is one o'clock--and I have the inside of a Frenchman.
+We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a new
+republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so
+quickly that the world stands breathless--but we always breakfast before
+mid-day."
+
+He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last
+trump.
+
+"And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not
+show mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got
+accustomed to me there. They think I am a harmless old man--a dentist,
+perhaps."
+
+"My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three," said Cartoner.
+"I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a
+close cab with the blinds down."
+
+And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there
+were matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+
+"Like a monstrosity going to a fair," he said. "And I shall go with you.
+I will even lunch with you at the station--a station steak and a beery
+table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and
+those who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished
+audience like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am
+with you. But let us be quick--and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?" he
+asked, finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the
+lower parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked
+the higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler sex in dealing with
+certain delicate matters.
+
+"No, I only saw the princess," replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+silence.
+
+"You know," said Deulin, at length, gravely, "if that happens which you
+expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for--I shall seek out
+Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty
+or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty
+before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that
+confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things
+are stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets--when friends
+and foes are seeking each other in vain--you need not seek me or think
+about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember
+that. I shall have eloped--with Wanda."
+
+And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+
+"Bukaty and I," he went on, after a pause, "do not talk of these things
+together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when
+the first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you
+have only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are--and
+I will tell you where--we are. We are old birds at this sport--you and
+I--and we know how to take care of ourselves."
+
+They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved
+streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once
+occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the
+Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near
+a market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin. In the
+cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier
+erected between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a
+narrow street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different
+hopes, aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and
+neighbors are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel
+stood between them.
+
+Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe
+from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for
+the men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen
+thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely
+looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles--as
+if there were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no
+beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which
+has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out,
+seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.
+
+"We will go by the back ways," said Cartoner, "and need never see any of
+our world in Warsaw at all."
+
+The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in
+an atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little
+used for wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live
+is of so retail a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in
+mysterious cloth bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were
+obliged to go slowly through the groups, who never raised their heads,
+or seemed to speak above a whisper.
+
+"What do they talk of--what do they think--all day?" said Cartoner. And,
+indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of surreptitiousness.
+Even the children are sad, and stand about in melancholy solitude.
+
+"I would sooner be a dog," answered Deulin, with a shake of the
+shoulders, as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. "Sooner a
+dog."
+
+By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed
+men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode
+in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor
+and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to
+make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at
+some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective
+eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As
+is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most
+offensive--the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration,
+the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword
+and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the
+other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of
+the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful
+retention of themselves in the background. But these well-intentioned
+efforts were of small avail; for racial things are stronger than human
+endeavor or the careful foresight of statesmen. Here in Warsaw the
+Muscovite, the Pole, the Jew--herding together in the same streets,
+under the same roof, obedient to one law, acknowledging one
+sovereign--were watching each other, hating each other.
+
+At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each
+foot-passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired
+droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath
+the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn.
+On the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense
+of looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the
+Russian-speaking police.
+
+"I do not mind them," said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+booking-office. "It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are doing
+no harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our passports
+hold out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For they have been
+through my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe--I know when my
+things have been touched--they or some one else. Perhaps Kosmaroff; who
+knows?"
+
+Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings
+as only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord
+half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper
+meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied
+him on the criminal paucity of his menu.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like the
+smell of goat. So give us beef--your railway beef, which has travelled
+so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed and cut up
+by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly failed as a
+stoker."
+
+He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by
+a doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew
+him so well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his
+indifference. While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to
+time at his companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a
+hundred minute instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+
+"You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?" he said.
+
+"I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been
+here once before," answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+
+"When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+Paris," said Deulin. "Yes--I learned Polish when I was young----"
+
+He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot
+from whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with
+large, deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+
+"When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if
+that time is ill-spent," he said, airily. "That is why the virtuous
+are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the
+others--'nous autres'--it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal
+column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age
+when virtue is almost a necessity."
+
+Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
+him.
+
+"Do you know," he said, sharply, "you are devilish absent-minded. It is
+a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your
+mind. And having nothing on its own mind--or no mind to have anything
+on--it hates you for your airs of superiority."
+
+He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
+front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
+vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air
+or reconciliation to the inevitable.
+
+"When I was a young--a very young diplomatist--an old scoundrel in gold
+spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to appear
+content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule to
+this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt you.
+It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that."
+
+He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+
+"Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?"
+
+And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into
+the steady, meditating eyes.
+
+"It is not," he said, "that you assume a reserve which one might think
+unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not
+think worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate,
+that--well--there is nothing left but silence. And silence is sometimes
+dangerous. Not as dangerous as speech, I allow--but dangerous,
+nevertheless."
+
+Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two
+schools went out to meet each other--the old school of diplomacy, all
+words; the new, all silence.
+
+"Listen," said the Frenchman. "I once knew a man into whose care
+was given the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater
+responsibility, by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation, even
+of one of the two greatest nations in the world. And that is a care
+which you and I have had upon our shoulders for a brief hour here and
+there. It was the old story; for it was the happiness of a woman. God
+knows the man meant well! But he bungled it. Bon Dieu--how he bungled
+it! He said too little. Ever since he has talked too much. She was a
+Polish woman, by-the-way, and that has left a tenderness, nay, a raw
+place, in my heart, which smarts at the sound of a Polish word. For I
+was the man."
+
+"Well," asked Cartoner, "what do you want to know?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the other, quick as thought. "I only tell you the
+story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said
+that has not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a
+woman--even the strongest--may not be able to bear such a strain as you
+can bear."
+
+Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be
+serious.
+
+"You know," went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had
+set before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover
+with a flourish full of promise--"you know that I would give into
+your care unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune,
+or--well--a daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make
+a mistake. And if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive
+you--never."
+
+And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+companion.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?" he asked, curtly.
+
+"You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do in
+Warsaw," replied Cartoner.
+
+Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+
+"Not another word--they cost you so much, a few words--I understand
+perfectly."
+
+Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish
+before him.
+
+"And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake--I tell
+you that."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE QUIET CITY
+
+The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He had
+chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least tolerant of
+advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he hated to make
+a change, he had in one or two instances parted with old and trusted
+servants--friends of his boyhood--rather than forgo one item of his
+policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of their long
+friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way of thinking,
+for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+
+"I do not agree with you, but I will serve you," had answered one of
+these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+needed, accepted such service.
+
+For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by
+looking down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and,
+mingling there on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or
+the clever man--or that rare being, the man who is both.
+
+Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not. Alexander
+II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in a position
+to confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as it were, a
+ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than a board of
+directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely the men he
+wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw them up. How,
+otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual thing. He looked
+round among his relations, and, failing them, the friends of his youth.
+For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the whole world to choose
+from, has no larger a choice than any bourgeois looking round his own
+small world for a satisfactory executor.
+
+Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his
+first task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down
+to the upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a
+useless war in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+
+Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with
+his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand
+aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds
+as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was
+untenable. "Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away," his
+advisers told him. "With the serf she cannot endure," he answered And
+twenty-two millions of men were set free. In this act he stood almost
+alone; for hardly a single minister was with him heart and soul, though
+many obeyed him loyally enough against their own convictions. Many
+honestly thought that this must be the end of the Russian Empire.
+
+It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their
+point of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while
+counsel from afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things from
+another stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+
+Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the human
+race, men of different breed and color, of the three great contending
+religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a nervous,
+impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down with the
+weight of his great responsibility. His father died in his arms,
+broken-hearted, bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies of five
+European nations, hated of all the world, despised of all mankind. Even
+to-day there is a sinister sound in the very name of Russian. Men turn
+to look twice at one who comes from that stupendous empire. It is said
+that an hereditary melancholy broods beneath the weightiest earthly
+crown. History tells that none wearing it has ever reached a hale old
+age. Soldiers still hearty, still wearing the sword they have carried
+through half a dozen campaigns, bow to-day in the Winter Palace before
+their sovereign, having taken the oath of allegiance to four successive
+Czars.
+
+Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to
+find that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon
+to prove beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the
+surface of a vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably
+spring up wheat or tares--a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific
+growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of
+his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to
+despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This
+tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time
+came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching
+eye.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked, the very moment after he had been
+saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful
+after each attempt upon his life.
+
+The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening--that
+the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in
+history that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was
+full of Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the
+Emperor realized that he must fight--and fight alone, for no nation in
+Europe would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil
+of ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization.
+They had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding
+them.
+
+To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was
+in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his
+own internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European
+difficulties. England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration
+of neutrality, was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the
+dog waiting on the threshold, was ready to side with the winner--for a
+consideration. No wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all
+through his reign he received and despatched telegrams at any hour of
+the night.
+
+No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There
+are many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and
+look twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one
+hand while grasping with the other that which is really the property of
+their neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+
+On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: "Gentlemen, let us
+have no more dreams." Eleven years later he reminded an influential
+deputation of Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words,
+commending the caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits
+to Warsaw on one excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming
+in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard.
+The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the
+inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No
+one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.
+
+From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
+travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found
+as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of
+the people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few
+years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own
+strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because
+they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had
+followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the
+signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were
+men, and no longer driven beasts.
+
+It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long
+northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was
+reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of
+the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.
+
+The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the
+streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost
+deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the
+drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in
+another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most
+spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the
+inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets
+too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken
+surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with
+rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and
+crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet.
+The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St. Petersburg
+is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest city in the
+world, excepting Venice.
+
+The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The
+river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were
+still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of
+the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and
+leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets
+where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the
+university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges
+facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.
+
+It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
+house like any other in the street--like any other in any other street.
+For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
+world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and
+there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter
+and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St.
+Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.
+
+When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His
+was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this
+time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave
+the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he
+raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman
+asked for was within.
+
+"On the second floor. You will remember the door," he said, over his
+shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the
+house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+
+Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by
+a clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured
+recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the
+way along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain
+bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened
+the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+
+Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
+brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He
+was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he
+stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got
+other work to do."
+
+"No, I am at the same work. And you?"
+
+"As you see," replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
+foot and seating himself again before the fire. "I am here still, where
+you left me"--he paused to make a brief calculation--"five years ago. I
+stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin Congress, when
+it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I stayed. Tallow!
+It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its tallow. And there
+is a simplicity about commerce, you know."
+
+He gave a short laugh--the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a
+ring of other things.
+
+"Can you put me up?" asked Cartoner. "Only for a few days, perhaps."
+
+"As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms," replied the
+other, gravely.
+
+Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each
+other had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has
+lasted since childhood.
+
+"Well?" he inquired.
+
+"Gad!" exclaimed the other, "we are in a queer way. I went to the opera
+the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house
+was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so
+that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him--they'll get
+him! And he knows it."
+
+"Fools!" said Cartoner.
+
+"They are worse than fools," answered the other. "The man is down, and
+they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints.
+His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia.
+He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he
+abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth,
+Cartoner!"
+
+"I know," replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, "students who cannot
+learn--workmen who will not work--women whom no one will marry."
+
+"Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes
+one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself."
+
+"Well," answered Cartoner, "I have had nothing to eat since breakfast."
+
+"That is all you have to tell me about yourself?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+THE PAYMENT
+
+It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had
+been arrested.
+
+"It is the beginning of the end," men said. "They will now catch the
+others. The new reign of terror is over."
+
+But Jeliaboff himself--a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff
+Station--said that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an
+arrested criminal, was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+
+For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in
+the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics
+no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+stimulated emotion of the platform.
+
+For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+
+In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty,
+had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a
+glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his
+habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If
+it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now
+allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the
+Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach, men
+hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to them.
+He was a leper among his own people.
+
+"Do not go to the opera to-morrow," one lady would say to another. "I
+have heard that the Czar is to be there."
+
+"Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia," men said to one another; "the
+street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it
+is honeycombed by mines."
+
+The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others
+shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his
+cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties
+he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.
+
+He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the
+world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a
+cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter
+covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates,
+the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was
+planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything largely,
+and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window than the
+coldness of his home would allow.
+
+The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands
+of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving
+even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart
+the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.
+
+Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his
+usual visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her
+palace at two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen
+Cossacks. His officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which
+way he would take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew
+the streets as thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always
+walked in them unattended, unheeded, and unknown--had always mixed with
+his subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven
+above his people. He knew--always had known--what men said to each other
+in the streets.
+
+He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies.
+The road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet
+enough thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen
+canal. The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old
+and soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens
+between the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded
+by a low wall and a railing.
+
+The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg
+are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the
+world. A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along
+and whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly
+glanced at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking
+over the low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the
+bomb thrown and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he
+heard or saw at that minute, for he was dead the next.
+
+The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The
+Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow.
+He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
+afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
+anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead baker-boy. The
+pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some lying quite still,
+others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs. It
+was very cold.
+
+Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been
+weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went
+towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of
+those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the
+terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part
+in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were
+walking in their sleep.
+
+Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+
+"Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!" cried more than one
+voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard
+this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in
+the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound
+to the heights of immortality.
+
+Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a
+crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went
+towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of
+the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+
+The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+
+One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the
+Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to
+the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along
+it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed
+son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones
+between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his
+slavery.
+
+It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt
+took note of it.
+
+A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very
+stones of the pavement were displaced.
+
+The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One
+leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful.
+He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+
+This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a murmur.
+He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise, against
+his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his father's
+teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He had
+done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of Russia.
+And this was the payment!
+
+The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The
+terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke,
+and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize.
+It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer
+in the presence of his Judge.
+
+The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was
+left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could
+to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the
+first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the
+dying man.
+
+The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
+The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
+hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures--the
+instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
+share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+
+His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+killer.
+
+He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the
+second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events
+brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+
+Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to
+be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he
+took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way
+from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the
+slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information
+obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain
+Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's
+opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of
+the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men
+called his luck had brought him within sound of the first explosion by
+the side of the Catherine Canal.
+
+He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the
+zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The
+driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.
+Here was a man who had heard nothing.
+
+Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+heavy leather apron.
+
+"The telegraph office," he said.
+
+And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
+their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
+Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards
+away.
+
+Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
+his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
+made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
+knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
+great only when we look back at them.
+
+He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
+streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by
+mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand
+things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right
+word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?
+Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him
+living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The
+Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach
+England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to
+combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at
+a given moment.
+
+The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
+uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
+could be despatched from Russia.
+
+Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
+Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
+
+The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
+London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+
+He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
+The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second
+were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He
+walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute
+there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any
+one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried
+up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and
+eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+
+Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by
+persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was
+allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he
+passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The
+two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each
+knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of
+his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding
+a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it
+afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown
+broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.
+
+He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+earthly throne.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A LOVE-LETTER
+
+The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the
+snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the
+garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of
+the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of
+spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
+
+She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
+It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
+Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially,
+perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of
+the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater
+pleasure of the other half.
+
+She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
+to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
+experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
+failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
+an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
+sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to
+what she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
+different from other men.
+
+She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange
+interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a
+conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once
+the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She
+knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might
+come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska to the
+river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.
+
+As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
+It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young
+man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that
+there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked
+a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.
+Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after
+speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It
+was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh
+when she thought of their poverty.
+
+In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
+Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough
+when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad
+walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so
+frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered
+why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually
+resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding,
+if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love
+should be warned that it is a game which never stands still, but must
+move onward or backward. You may play it one day in jest, and find that
+it must be played in earnest next time. You may never take it up just
+where you left it, for the stake must always be either increasing or
+diminishing. And this is what makes it rather an interesting game. For
+you may never tell what it may grow to, and while it is in progress,
+none ever believe that it will have an end.
+
+Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a
+poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it
+is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections
+in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it
+is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens
+with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is
+oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to
+be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is
+in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes
+she does not even go so far as that.
+
+Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning.
+The faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at
+all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is
+leaden-footed in this backward country.
+
+Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she
+felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had
+ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was
+cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other
+occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up
+in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in
+the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
+
+Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate
+of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did
+not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all
+ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
+
+Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old
+palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the
+two principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens,
+near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+
+It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her,
+but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not
+even bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded
+note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+
+There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they
+had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
+unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
+
+
+"I must not speak to you," Martin wrote, "for there is danger in it--not
+to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is
+for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the
+Europe. I have already provided for your safety. There is great news,
+but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking
+of you, and--no! I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say
+it--who knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but
+I must not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave
+something on the seat that I may keep until I see you again--your glove
+or a flower, to be my talisman."
+
+
+Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the
+length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes.
+She rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no
+longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between
+two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+covert-coating.
+
+Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
+and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to
+make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling
+her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew
+that events were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of
+the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince
+would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown
+had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
+
+Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She
+thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of
+her--absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first
+in Poland, Prince Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets
+on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.
+She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.
+She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man;
+had found it astonishingly reliable. The honor of women was quite
+a different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day
+of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in other circumstances.
+"Besides--" And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as she
+bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange her furs.
+
+She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of
+snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked
+at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked
+slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting
+beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat
+huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was
+no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now
+going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed
+beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone
+seat and take up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste.
+Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a
+pretty girl.
+
+Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
+Kotzebue gate.
+
+Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty
+had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.
+He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until
+he was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the
+arches of the covered passages of the palace.
+
+After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down
+on the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the
+passers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near
+enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across
+the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which
+Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat and
+spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an
+expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and had
+pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must have been
+a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw waif of the
+public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.
+
+"That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night," he
+read, and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient
+clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a
+flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he could
+possibly compass.
+
+He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
+Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
+palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
+with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
+
+Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned
+into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
+composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
+Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "thought I might meet you here."
+
+He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
+conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
+Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
+he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark
+for some minutes.
+
+"The mail is in," he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
+the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+
+"Ah!" answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something
+had happened. "Have you had important news?"
+
+"Had nothing by the mail," he answered, looking straight in front of
+him. And Netty asked no more questions.
+
+"Your aunt Jooly," he said, after a pause, "has had an interesting mail.
+She has been offered the presidency--"
+
+"Of the United States?" asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+Joseph paused.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, with deep gravity. "Of the Massachusetts Women
+Bachelors' Federation."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She'll accept," opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+
+"Is it a great honor?"
+
+"There are different sorts of greatness," Joseph replied.
+
+"What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?"
+
+Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road
+to allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school,
+and still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
+themselves in the future.
+
+"Think it is like the blue-ribbon army," he said, when he returned to
+Netty's side. "The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer
+the abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
+will induce 'em to resign."
+
+"Is Aunt Julie pleased?" asked Netty.
+
+"Almighty," was the brief reply. "And she will accept it. She will
+marry the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually
+marries him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms--the men
+that help women to make fools of themselves."
+
+This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed
+to have a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty
+suspected that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
+Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+
+"She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly," he said; "she'll give him his
+choice between dismissal and--and earthly paradise."
+
+Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware
+of. His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a
+way through a crowded world.
+
+And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some
+order; that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THIN ICE
+
+It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+
+"Is the prince in?" he asked. "Is he busy?" he added, when the servant
+had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only
+shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never
+busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a
+German newspaper.
+
+The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each
+other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's
+wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able
+to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other
+side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of
+movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others
+who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly
+bright.
+
+They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the
+glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made,
+with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+
+"Do you know?" said the prince, grimly.
+
+"I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+cipher telegram."
+
+"Cartoner?" said the prince, interrogatively.
+
+"Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend
+this--pleasing denouement."
+
+The prince gave a short laugh.
+
+"How well," he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+reflectively--"how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+telegraph to you?"
+
+"We sometimes do each other a good turn," explained Deulin, rather
+curtly. "It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope
+that--it was soon over."
+
+The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+beneath his shaggy brows.
+
+"My friend," he said, "you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on
+this occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made
+us--plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number
+of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man
+was a thief. He was a great man and in a great position, which only made
+him the greater thief."
+
+The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+fire.
+
+"He is dead," he went on, after a pause, "and there is an end to it. I
+do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be
+dead; and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing."
+
+"You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian," said Deulin,
+gravely.
+
+"I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
+which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
+happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me
+or to approve of me."
+
+"My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one
+effective lesson--to judge no man," put in Deulin.
+
+"Remember," continued the prince, "I deplore the method. I understand it
+was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy.
+You will see--we shall both see, if we live long enough--that this is a
+mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have not
+even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They have
+approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
+business. But--well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of every
+mishap to one's enemy."
+
+Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+
+"Thin ice!" he said, warningly.
+
+"Bah!" laughed the other. "You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist--a
+man who is afraid to look over a wall."
+
+"No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by
+less obvious means," corrected the Frenchman. "One must not be seen
+looking over one's neighbor's wall--that is the first commandment of
+diplomacy."
+
+"Then why are you here?" asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough
+laugh.
+
+And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
+flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
+that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+
+"You think I came here to pry into your affairs--to turn our friendship
+into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report to my
+government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid,
+before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?"
+
+"Yes--yes," answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends glared
+at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in
+other days. "Yes--yes! but why are you here this morning?"
+
+"Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions,
+I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck
+into a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And--who
+knows?--you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
+in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
+cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push
+Wanda into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can
+help it!"
+
+"Wanda!" said the prince, in some surprise--"Wanda!"
+
+"Yes. You forget--you Bukatys always have forgotten--the women. Warsaw
+is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work--to-night's work--is no
+work for Wanda!"
+
+"To-night's work! What do you mean?"
+
+The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+
+"Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing," was the answer. "But I am
+not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
+as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
+guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
+is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
+think!"
+
+And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+thumb.
+
+The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+
+"If I did not know that you had broken your heart--more than once--long
+ago," he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+
+"Only once," he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+
+"Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+Wanda."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, lightly, "that is an old affair. That happened when
+she used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's
+old loves, you know."
+
+"Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
+time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
+perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
+ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
+through it--"
+
+"Only once," repeated Deulin. "I propose what any other young lover
+would propose to do--to run away with her from Warsaw."
+
+"When?"
+
+Deulin looked at his watch.
+
+"In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty--a young girl."
+
+And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+gained.
+
+"I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take
+her in."
+
+"Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?"
+
+"If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
+that can make her do it."
+
+The prince smiled.
+
+"You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend."
+
+"That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+this thing for me. I come back in half an hour."
+
+"What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from
+Warsaw to-day?" asked the prince. "What we know others must know now."
+
+"Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
+will find my way to the door, thank you."
+
+"If you see Wanda as you go," called out the prince, as Deulin closed
+the door behind him, "send her to me."
+
+Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He
+held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+
+"A telegram," she said, looking at it. "But I cannot make out its
+meaning. I never saw or heard of that word before."
+
+"Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the
+end of time," answered Deulin, lightly. "It is from a reliable source.
+Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+wishes to say to you in his study now."
+
+"Ah!" said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+
+"It is nothing!" put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+"Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question
+of empires and kingdoms."
+
+With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+could ask him a question.
+
+In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+
+"The man in the street," he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
+Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go--"the
+man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
+city know nothing."
+
+"They will know at the frontier," answered the prince, "and it is there
+that you will have difficulties."
+
+"Then it is there that we shall overcome them," he replied, gayly. "It
+is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
+will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I
+have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone."
+
+For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
+He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
+his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches
+which are nearly always better left unsaid.
+
+"I must ask you," he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, "to drive
+round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
+up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
+not come back. One never knows."
+
+And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
+run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
+faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
+to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
+
+In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
+their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races
+always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all
+beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of
+enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than
+usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be
+fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes
+at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.
+
+It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance
+hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between
+twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know
+nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar
+was dead.
+
+As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+first time.
+
+"What will you do about the Mangles?" she asked. "We cannot let them
+remain here unwarned."
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment.
+
+"I had forgotten them," he answered. "In times of stress one finds out
+one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+Mangles, if you like."
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
+her--"yes, do that."
+
+"Odd people women are," said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
+He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
+almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
+
+"I looked into Mangles's salon," he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+beside her again. "He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
+They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that
+Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing."
+
+At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
+of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men.
+He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+
+"They know," he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
+Austrian railway carriage. "They all know. Look at their stupid,
+perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
+decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
+what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!"
+
+"Or a grin," he added, after a long pause, "that passes for one."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+FOR ANOTHER TIME
+
+The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
+the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
+would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
+more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+
+There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
+south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there
+are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
+autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
+under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
+winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+
+Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
+number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
+road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such
+deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on
+either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for
+the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter
+it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used
+at all.
+
+It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary
+hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
+frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
+carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
+
+Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
+his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
+limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
+He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
+have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
+outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
+head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him.
+The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the
+carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
+
+At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into
+the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
+horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
+horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
+horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
+drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
+saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
+
+Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
+man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+
+"You are punctual," he said. "I was nearly asleep in the saddle."
+
+And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
+such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he
+leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+
+"You are not cold?" he asked.
+
+"No; I feel as if I should never be cold again."
+
+"That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
+must take care of yourself."
+
+"So must you," answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+
+Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than
+in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
+the French call _camaraderie_, which was not the outcome of a long
+friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
+had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
+with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
+the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
+always reckless.
+
+Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
+for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound
+of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and
+struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded
+hollow, like a drum.
+
+"I suppose you had little sleep last night," said Kosmaroff when Martin
+yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+
+"I had none."
+
+"Nor I," said Kosmaroff. "We may get some--to-morrow."
+
+The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
+side.
+
+"You know what to do," said Martin to these in turn. "Come to the
+iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
+you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to
+the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in
+line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the
+river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line,
+dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you
+are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking
+what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them;
+and while they are looking into your carts you must kill them quietly
+with the knife."
+
+The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
+that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and
+had perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
+promise in his curt hilarity.
+
+Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
+to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
+by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+
+In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
+workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
+rain, no one passed that way.
+
+Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the
+lower lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the
+iron-foundry are on the right.
+
+At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
+at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+
+"What is it?" asked Martin.
+
+"I thought I saw a glint under the wall," answered Kosmaroff.
+"There--there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the
+gleam of those distant lights on a bayonet."
+
+"Then let us go forward," said Martin, "and see who it is."
+
+And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
+out:
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Who goes there?" echoed Martin. "But this is a high-road." And he moved
+nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
+gleamed again.
+
+"No matter," he said; "you cannot pass this way."
+
+"But, my friend--" began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
+finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
+the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+
+The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
+his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now
+in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
+breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which
+was not Kosmaroff's cough.
+
+After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+
+"First blood," he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
+hands upon its mane.
+
+"Bah!" he exclaimed, "how he smelled of bad cigarettes!"
+
+Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+mud.
+
+"Oh, he is dead enough," said Kosmaroff. "I broke his neck. Did you not
+hear it go?"
+
+"Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?"
+
+"That is yet to be found out," was the reply, in a sharp, strained
+voice. "This is Cartoner's work."
+
+"I doubt it," whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
+the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
+
+"What does it mean?" he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
+had always been lucky and successful.
+
+"It means," answered the man who had never been either, "that the
+place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
+failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
+for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and
+make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they
+have taken me."
+
+As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
+clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
+
+"Wait a moment," he said. "I will get over the wall here. Bring your
+horse against the wall."
+
+Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
+across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+
+"Stand in your stirrups," said Kosmaroff, "and hold one arm up rigid
+against the wall."
+
+He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
+on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+
+"Are you ready? I am going to spring."
+
+He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
+could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+
+"All right," he whispered, and disappeared.
+
+Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
+he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
+breathless.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered. "Quick!"
+
+And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.
+He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
+gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
+had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder
+they splashed on in the darkness.
+
+"I went right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is
+full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
+ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!"
+
+"We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men," said
+Martin. "We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
+work."
+
+Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "You are full of hope--you."
+
+"Yes--I am full of hope--still," answered Martin. He had more to lose
+than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+
+They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
+these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from
+the city.
+
+Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+
+"I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
+me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
+different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know
+who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw
+again."
+
+"I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere," said Martin,
+with a laugh.
+
+"I do not know," went on Kosmaroff, "if they will have arrested your
+father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
+now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night."
+
+"Oh," answered Martin gayly, "it does not matter much about that. What I
+am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
+How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?"
+
+And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+
+Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
+the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers;
+for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to
+be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized
+carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.
+They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while
+the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
+the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
+appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
+wild as many that have succeeded.
+
+The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
+away.
+
+"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and
+Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+darkness.
+
+In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
+streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
+who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
+streets.
+
+At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
+came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
+shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
+in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
+houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
+
+It was a miserable fiasco.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+
+Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
+and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
+the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
+length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
+alert night and day.
+
+Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
+large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
+and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
+endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
+midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
+The moon above the clouds was almost full.
+
+"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.
+Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
+I will get a boat. Have you money?"
+
+"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.
+
+"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
+make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."
+
+And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
+Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.
+He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
+slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the
+soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the
+street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+
+A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
+low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
+voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with
+him two days earlier.
+
+Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
+found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
+filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was
+probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire,
+meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a
+note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.
+Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would
+find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the prince
+himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the days
+when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian
+frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed
+by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day
+or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated
+farm.
+
+Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
+his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
+likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+
+Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
+steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
+this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
+as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
+directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers
+here night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and
+those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get
+their sleep when they can.
+
+To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
+the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
+which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
+sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.
+
+Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
+also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had
+a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
+at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
+coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the
+land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
+
+"The water is running freely," he said, "through the middle arch. I have
+a boat out there on the ice. Come!"
+
+And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
+river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying
+on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at
+the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it
+flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark
+that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat
+before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity
+of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+
+Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
+and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+
+"Help me," he said, "to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
+We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will
+come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before
+dawn."
+
+The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
+for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
+reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+
+"We must lie down in the bottom of the boat," said Kosmaroff, "and take
+our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel."
+
+As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
+the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
+which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For
+the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been
+partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
+lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
+trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
+were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up.
+
+"Give me a piece of bread," he said. "I am famished."
+
+But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+
+The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
+yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
+Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
+not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
+here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
+horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
+hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
+sea on muddy waters.
+
+Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
+as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
+rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
+down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
+of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.
+
+When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
+prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
+away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
+the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
+and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
+low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
+almost morning.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
+too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
+proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
+
+"Where are we?" he asked.
+
+Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
+pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
+gray and muddy.
+
+"I know where we are," he answered, after a pause. "We have passed
+Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
+my teeth wouldn't chatter."
+
+"I have secured mine with a piece of bread," mumbled Martin.
+
+Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+
+"We cannot travel during the day," he said, after a long examination of
+the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. "We shall
+not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I
+am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some
+large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must
+wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through
+Thorn."
+
+Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
+ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
+strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
+the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that
+they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which,
+indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen
+would attempt to cross the river now.
+
+Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
+and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
+prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
+await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their
+escape was being arranged, but they must await further instructions
+before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these
+further orders came by the same sure channel, which was independent of
+the Russian post-offices.
+
+The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through
+that town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would
+find Captain Cable, in the _Minnie_, anchored in the stream ready for
+sea. The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
+whatever. There was no news.
+
+At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there.
+The story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There
+are persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There
+are others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in
+use in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is
+already considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along
+the Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
+building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
+If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from
+the neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
+river-side.
+
+After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to
+wait two days until the weather changed--until the moon, now well on the
+wane, did not rise before midnight.
+
+At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
+by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were
+cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon
+enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them
+into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
+
+The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
+hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
+before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+
+Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
+the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
+by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks,
+the street cries of a town--these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
+
+"We are getting near," he said, in little more than a whisper. "What is
+the time?"
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes
+at a great pace. It is still of a vast width--one of the largest rivers
+in Europe.
+
+The mist was very thick here.
+
+"Listen!" whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
+thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+
+Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
+They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
+sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have
+come from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this
+time.
+
+"Stop, or we fire!" it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
+which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three
+boats close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
+
+Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a
+suppressed laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+
+Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
+fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin
+lay concealed.
+
+Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward
+and peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the
+officers were calling to each other.
+
+"What was it--a boat or a floating tree?" they heard them ask each
+other.
+
+Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
+the bottom of the boat.
+
+"What is it?" he whispered.
+
+"A bullet," answered Martin. "It came through the side of the boat, low
+down. It struck me in the back--the spine. I cannot move my legs. But I
+have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole
+the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
+through Thorn."
+
+He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+
+Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and
+with a jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an
+envelope, closed and doubled over.
+
+"Put that in your pocket," he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+
+"You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?" asked Martin, suddenly,
+after a pause.
+
+Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
+
+"Yes, I know her."
+
+"Give her that, or get it to her," said Martin.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Yes," said Martin, answering the unasked question, "I am badly hit,
+unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn."
+
+And his voice was still cheerful.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+
+Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
+from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
+rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
+city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
+pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+
+"I suppose," wrote Deulin, "that you will soon be on your way home.
+I think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
+on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there."
+
+This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot.
+The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the
+letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it
+were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go
+to Dantzic and to see Captain Cable there.
+
+He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel.
+He left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke,
+where the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+
+The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
+pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or
+less his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at
+Dantzic quite as easily as at Berlin.
+
+Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
+small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
+versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small
+vessels to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+
+Cartoner knew that he would find the _Minnie_ not in dock, but in one
+of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And
+Captain Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+
+Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the _Minnie_ just
+above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie
+in mid-stream. The _Minnie_ was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
+stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
+sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
+departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
+adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
+cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
+evidence. The _Minnie_ did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
+but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
+minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
+yours.
+
+Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from
+the steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of
+a shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+
+"Come below," he said, without enthusiasm. "It wasn't you that I was
+expecting. I tell you that."
+
+Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled
+of petroleum, as usual. The _Minnie_ was a hospitable ship, according
+to her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a
+corner of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench
+at the far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
+
+"Was up the Baltic," he explained. "Pit props. Got a full cargo on
+board. Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip
+to come to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all
+I'm going to tell you."
+
+"That's all I want to know," answered Cartoner.
+
+"But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!" shouted Cable, suddenly, with
+a bang of his little, thick fist on the table. "I've been thinking since
+I lay here--been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself--what
+I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!"
+
+"In what way?" inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+seemed to pacify the captain.
+
+"Of course," he admitted, "I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
+bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat."
+
+"I think I can assure you on that point," said Cartoner. "Nobody who had
+to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But
+I do not know whom you are to take on board here."
+
+"May be as you can guess," suggested the captain.
+
+"Yes, I think I can guess," admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"But you won't tell me?"
+
+"No. When do you expect them?"
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another," said Captain Cable, getting
+a yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. "That's
+port--ship-chandler's port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind."
+
+For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night.
+They'll likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night.
+And now I'll ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic
+River, Mr. Cartoner?"
+
+"A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do--Paul Deulin. Like
+to read it?"
+
+And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than
+even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," he answered. He scratched his head reflectively,
+and looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
+ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+
+"Got your luggage in the boat alongside?" he asked, at length.
+
+"No. It's at the station."
+
+"Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
+come aboard and see this thing through, I hope."
+
+"Thank you," answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for
+his luggage.
+
+"Mate's receipt?" inquired the captain.
+
+And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest
+as he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+
+"No stint of the wine," he said, and went out on deck.
+
+When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself
+to the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For
+the captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
+following night.
+
+"If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb," he
+said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+sleep.
+
+He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
+watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
+did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
+succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by
+side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the
+same reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+
+Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+
+"Hope he is pleased with himself," he said, as he stood at the stern
+rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. "For it is
+his doing, you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're
+tricky--the French. He's a tricky man."
+
+"Yes," admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, "he
+is a tricky man."
+
+After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without
+speaking. Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into
+the night.
+
+"There's a boat yonder," he said, "coming down quiet, under the lee of
+the land."
+
+They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards
+them. Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of
+the boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide
+with perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+
+"Stand by," said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+
+Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with two
+turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the steamer as
+a kitten may nestle against its mother.
+
+The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his hand
+on the rail of the _Minnie_. His head came up over the rail, and he
+peered into Cartoner's face.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance
+which he never expected.
+
+Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+
+"I want to go to sea this tide," he said. "Where is the other man?"
+
+"The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty," was the answer. "Help me to
+lift him on board."
+
+"Why can't he come on board himself?"
+
+"Because he is dead," answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice. And
+he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one arm and
+held him up.
+
+"I am so weak!" he murmured, "so weak! I am famished!"
+
+Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat
+that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held
+him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they
+got him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to
+that which was grandly called the captain's state-room. They laid him on
+the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself
+against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+
+The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable
+decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+
+"Here," he said, "drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done."
+
+Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+hundred unasked questions in them.
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Cartoner, at length.
+
+"They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not
+me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the
+night before last. He died before the morning."
+
+"Tut! tut!" muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of
+pity. "There was the makings of a man in him," he said--"the makings of
+a man!"
+
+And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common
+as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a
+moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid
+of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+
+"I'll take him out to sea and bury him there," said Cable, at length,
+"if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at
+sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth."
+
+"That is the only thing to be done," said Cartoner.
+
+Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that will do. He will lay quiet enough there."
+
+And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath
+the sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+
+Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
+
+"I'll turn the hands out," he said, "and we'll get to sea on the ebb.
+But I'll have to send ashore for a pilot."
+
+"No," answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, "you need not
+do that. I can take you out to sea."
+
+The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and
+Cartoner alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had
+been the friend of both.
+
+"Will you answer me a question?" asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+
+"If I can," was the reply, economical of words.
+
+"Where were you on the 13th of March?"
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+
+"In St. Petersburg."
+
+"Then I do not understand you," said Kosmaroff. "I don't understand how
+we failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?"
+
+"I know nothing," answered Cartoner. "But I conclude you have failed,
+since you are here--and he is there."
+
+And he pointed towards Martin.
+
+"Thanks to you."
+
+"No, I had nothing to do with it," said Cartoner.
+
+"You cannot expect me to believe that."
+
+"I do not care," replied the English diplomat, gently, "whether you
+believe it or not."
+
+Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+
+"I will tell you one thing," he said, in a hard, low voice. "It will not
+do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I will
+take any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in
+Poland!"
+
+"If I am sent there I shall go," replied Cartoner. And there crept to
+one side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him
+pain.
+
+"I believe you will."
+
+Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck
+giving his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole
+paused on the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin
+again with his hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+
+"Look here," he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it
+on the cabin-table between them. "A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss
+Cahere. There is no message."
+
+Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+
+"I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it," he said.
+
+The dawn was in the sky before the _Minnie_ swept out past the pier-head
+light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed down in
+the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern, jumping
+and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under the
+quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew near
+to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+
+The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to
+be said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered.
+But none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the
+other.
+
+"If you want a passage home," said Cable, gruffly, "cut your boat
+adrift. You're welcome."
+
+"Thank you," was the answer. "I am going back to Poland to try again."
+
+He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of
+the only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him.
+"Perhaps we shall meet again soon," he said, "in Poland."
+
+"Not yet," replied Cartoner. "I am under orders for Madrid."
+
+Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat.
+Then he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.
+
+Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+
+Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+
+"Captain," he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from
+the shelter of his pocket.
+
+"Good-bye, mister," he said.
+
+Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift, and
+he sat down to the oars.
+
+There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff
+headed his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the
+promise of a stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging over
+Poland.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a month
+later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace and
+stood his ground.
+
+Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to
+keep their acquaintances in the right place--that is to say, in the
+background of her life. With this object in view, she had an "at home"
+day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not
+stay too long. To-day was not that day.
+
+"I know I ought not to have come this afternoon," explained Netty, with
+a rather shy haste, as she shook hands. "But I could not wait until next
+Tuesday, because we sail that day."
+
+"Then you are going home again?"
+
+Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush still
+in her cheeks--"yes, and I am engaged to be married."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes said
+nothing.
+
+"Do we know the--gentleman?" asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in this
+idyl.
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty. "He is not unknown in London. His name
+is Burris."
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Orlay, "the comp--" Then she remembered that to call
+a fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. "The
+millionaire?" she concluded, rather lamely.
+
+"I believe he is very rich," admitted Netty, "though, of course--"
+
+"No, of course not," Lady Orlay hastened to say. "I congratulate you,
+and wish you every happiness."
+
+She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word
+to him. He took it promptly.
+
+"And I," he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading of
+the hands--"I wish you all the happiness--that money can buy."
+
+Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his shoulder
+turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which was to be
+Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be her father,
+but he was a millionaire twice over--in London and New York. He had,
+moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of which details
+appeared from time to time in the illustrated monthly magazines.
+
+"So I shall hope to be in London every year," said Netty, "and to see
+all the friends who have been so kind to us--you and Lord Orlay and Mr.
+Deulin."
+
+"And Reginald Cartoner," suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes. And
+it came.
+
+"Yes," she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question, but
+did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner
+was in the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that
+Deulin had brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until Martin
+effected his escape and joined his sister in England. She only knew what
+the world now knew--that Price Martin Bukaty had died and been buried at
+sea. It was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+
+Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be
+interested in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice,
+seeking to recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had taken
+an envelope from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had thrown it
+on the fire, where it was smouldering now on the coals. It was a soiled
+and worn envelope, as if it had passed through vicissitudes; there
+seemed to be something inside it which burned and gave forth an aromatic
+odor.
+
+He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave. When
+the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+
+"What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite
+forgot to be polite?" she said to Deulin. "Is it a letter?"
+
+"It is a love-token," answered the Frenchman.
+
+"For Netty Cahere?"
+
+"No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be."
+
+Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was
+still neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the
+fire and was there consumed.
+
+"Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility," she said.
+
+"I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there."
+
+"It has a smell of violets," said Lady Orlay, looking down into the
+fire.
+
+"They are violets--from Warsaw," admitted Deulin. "Wanda is in?" he
+asked, gravely.
+
+"Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her."
+
+"I have received a letter from her father," said Deulin, with his hand
+on the bell.
+
+Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried
+her head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner
+followed her into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's face.
+
+"You have news?"
+
+"I have heard from your father at last."
+
+The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of
+unfolding it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going to
+give it to Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay walked
+to the other end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was about to
+follow her, when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he stayed.
+
+"The letter begins," said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+professional preliminary--
+
+"'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given by
+the man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain Cable quite
+well. When we met him at the Signal House, at Northfleet, I little
+thought that he would be called upon to render the last earthly service
+to my son. So it was he who read the last words. And Martin was buried
+in the Baltic. You, my old friend, know all that I have given to Poland.
+The last gift has been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope
+to write to Cartoner, but not now. He is not a man to attach much
+importance to words. He is, I think, a man to understand silence. At
+present I cannot write, as I am virtually a prisoner in my own house.
+From a high quarter I have received a gracious intimation that my
+affairs are under the special attention of a beneficent monarch, and
+that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a sentence of perpetual
+confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be deemed sufficient
+punishment for--not having been found out. But my worst enemies are
+my own party. Nothing can now convince them that Martin and I did not
+betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is freely coupled with ours.
+So they believe. So it will go down to history, and nothing that we
+can say will make any difference. That I find myself in company with
+Cartoner in this error only strengthens the feeling of friendship, of
+which I was conscious when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake,
+never to cross this frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making
+any sign of friendship towards me or mine.'"
+
+
+As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin,
+for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial
+moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause
+for an instant before he could proceed.
+
+"Then follow," he said, rather uneasily, "certain passages to myself
+which I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health.
+Better, indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough
+old man, and may live to give much trouble yet.'"
+
+Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+alone.
+
+"So, you see, he seems very cheerful," he said, as if it was the letter
+that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket. "He
+seems to be getting on very well without you, you perceive," he added,
+smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There was in his voice and
+manner a dim suggestion of the losing game, consciously played.
+
+"May I read the letter for myself?" asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+steady hand.
+
+After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his
+pocket and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group
+standing near the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an
+imperceptible movement of his eyebrows, as of one who had made an
+attempt and failed. They waited in silence while Wanda read the letter,
+and at length she handed it back to him.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I read it differently. It is not only the world which
+appears differently to two different people, even a letter may have two
+meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon that----"
+
+She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"--which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a broken-hearted
+man," she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during which Wanda
+seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even Deulin had
+nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps Cartoner had
+already done so by his own life, without any words at all.
+
+"I shall go to Warsaw to-night," she said at last to Lady Orlay, "if
+you will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack
+gratitude. But--you understand?"
+
+"Yes, dear, I understand," replied the woman who had known happiness.
+And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might
+falter.
+
+"It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?" said Wanda. As
+she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none other.
+It was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom she
+submitted the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it before
+these people. As if she took a subtle pride in showing them that he was
+what she knew him to be. She was sure of her lover; which is, perhaps,
+happiness enough for this world.
+
+"Duty is best, is it not?" she repeated.
+
+"It is the only thing," he answered.
+
+Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic
+and active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+
+"Your mind is made up?" he asked. "You go to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements
+for the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you
+across the frontier, you understand?"
+
+He turned to Cartoner.
+
+"And you? When do you go to Spain?"
+
+"To-night," was the answer.
+
+"Then good-bye." The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was
+at the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the door
+behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood and
+looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's eyes.
+But Deulin's smile was sadder.
+
+"And this is the end," he said--"the end!"
+
+"No," said Lady Orlay; "it is not. It cannot be. I have never known
+a great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the end,
+Paul. Heaven is kind."
+
+"Sometimes," answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused,
+and, facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself,
+commanding her attention to his long life and story. "Sometimes,
+milady."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Vultures
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VULTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE VULTURES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NOVEL <br /> <br /> By Henry Seton Merriman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALL AT SEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad Atlantic,
+      was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall, thin man, who
+      carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls' school as
+      &ldquo;poking.&rdquo; He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead, sunken cheeks,
+      and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world was one of patient
+      disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin first, doggedly through
+      life. The weather had been bad, and was now moderating. But Mr. Mangles
+      had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was a dry, hard person, who had
+      suffered from nothing but chronic dyspepsia&mdash;had suffered from it for
+      fifty years or so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine weather,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Women will be coming on deck&mdash;hang the fine
+      weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joseph,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, &ldquo;growls over his meals like a dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+      leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near&mdash;and the
+      man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+      Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The large
+      majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no better; so it
+      must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at his worst, only
+      comically French&mdash;a matter of a smile; but Teutonic characteristics
+      are conducive to hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six feet
+      high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed to take
+      up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world. There was
+      nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet. When he spoke
+      he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he did, with patience,
+      in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business men&mdash;Joseph
+      P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a sea of
+      commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four days that
+      had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made anything, or
+      sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready for production
+      at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and trade. Neither
+      was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and yet both were
+      difficult to get on with. For human confidences must be mutual. It is only
+      to God that man can continue telling, telling, telling, and getting never
+      a word in return. These two men had nothing to tell their fellows about
+      themselves; so the other passengers drifted away into those closely linked
+      corporations characteristic of steamer life and left them to themselves&mdash;to
+      each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they had never said things to each other&mdash;had never, as it were,
+      got deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under a
+      strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen in
+      the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite straight, and cut
+      across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a direct, stern look to
+      dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he turned slowly, and looked
+      down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance. He seemed
+      to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken. And Mangles met the glance
+      with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark. But Mangles spoke first,
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the women will be on deck soon&mdash;and my sister Jooly.
+      You don't know Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon,&rdquo; said
+      Cartoner. &ldquo;She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't Jooly,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who have
+      no self-consciousness&mdash;who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as
+      are the majority of men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My niece, Netty Cahere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is pretty,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have meant
+      much to feminine ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll fall in love with her,&rdquo; said Mangles, lugubriously. &ldquo;They all do.
+      She says she can't help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Distresses her very much,&rdquo; concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his
+      cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side of
+      his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss Netty
+      Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal
+      environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more
+      especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what there was in
+      Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck. She
+      was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven young
+      man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He was
+      speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an expression
+      of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering blue eyes and a
+      complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never altered. She
+      was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly deprecating manner, as
+      if her own opinion of herself were small, and she wished the world to
+      accept her at that valuation. She made no sign of having perceived her
+      uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth officer, who reluctantly
+      mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back as he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don't like smoke,&rdquo; he growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+      after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay,
+      when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that he
+      was not alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+      though he was very young&mdash;quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+      mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart full
+      of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish some of my relations were sailors,&rdquo; replied Mr. Mangles, in his
+      deepest tones. &ldquo;Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my friend, Mr.
+      Cartoner&mdash;Miss Cahere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious wave
+      of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it was his
+      eyes that turned away first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not been down to meals,&rdquo; he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends on
+      board?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are very few ladies. I know none of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I dare say some of them are nice,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, who evidently
+      thought well of human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+      thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes&mdash;dark
+      lashes around blue eyes&mdash;with a guileless and wondering admiration.
+      He certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air
+      which bespeaks good breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen the ship on the other side?&rdquo; she asked, after a pause; &ldquo;a
+      sailing ship. You cannot see it from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot from
+      whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and Mr.
+      Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+      &ldquo;One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much nearer.
+      That ship's officer pointed it out to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice&mdash;she had a rather
+      confidential manner&mdash;&ldquo;I think sailors are very nice, don't you? But .
+      . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends what you were going to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+      however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had been
+      about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself. She
+      glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I prefer soldiers,&rdquo; she said, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the ship
+      he had been told to look at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave enough
+      to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most people are
+      afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+      hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+      each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Cahere, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+      Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+      mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body of
+      amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house for
+      his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather side,
+      where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without
+      explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter. But
+      at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held her
+      there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat,
+      looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him to come
+      to her assistance. The same gust of wind made the steamer lurch so that
+      Cartoner had to grasp Miss Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the incident
+      had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned notions, and was
+      not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met girls who are friendly
+      in five minutes with men and women alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards him,
+      and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his returning his
+      cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the
+      cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, firmly, &ldquo;you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+      think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner&mdash;is it not
+      foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not
+      care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder
+      and looked down at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if it mattered whether I like it or not,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And I do like it&mdash;I
+      like the smell of your cigars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which was
+      perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+      tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if it mattered what I think,&rdquo; she said, humbly, again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always like to conciliate a lady,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and her
+      frocks,&rdquo; answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner was,
+      nevertheless, able to overhear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is your aunt Jooly?&rdquo; inquired the old man, hurriedly. &ldquo;I thought
+      she was coming on deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she is,&rdquo; answered Netty. &ldquo;I left her in the saloon. She is quite well.
+      She was talking to some people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, already?&rdquo; exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head
+      with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from
+      whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sister Jooly, sir,&rdquo; explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, &ldquo;is no doubt
+      known to you&mdash;Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived in
+      the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible to
+      be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?&rdquo; suggested Mr.
+      Mangles, not unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I think not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her line is&mdash;at present&mdash;prisons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never been in prison,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt you will get experience in course of time,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles,
+      with his deep, curt laugh. &ldquo;No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets on
+      platforms and talks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo; asked Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About most things,&rdquo; he answered, gravely; &ldquo;chiefly about women, I take
+      it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them. And
+      she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick there.
+      She had found out what very few women know&mdash;namely, that when women
+      work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody wants. So
+      Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment, and pointing
+      out to the public and the administration many ways in which women may be
+      profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption of the
+      government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice berth for
+      which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments have no
+      gumption, sir. And&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Aunt Julie,&rdquo; interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the
+      second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship
+      and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty
+      Cahere's face&mdash;perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes&mdash;for
+      he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SIGNAL HOUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet&mdash;where the spicy odors of
+      chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+      manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray sky&mdash;there
+      stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called no one knows
+      and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square house of the
+      Jacobean period&mdash;presumably because it is so hidden by trees, so
+      wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get at, that its
+      outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of the
+      tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is
+      haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they are
+      never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted them
+      shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A side
+      gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall, up an
+      alley, is labelled &ldquo;Tradesman's Entrance,&rdquo; but the tradesmen never linger
+      there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin, blue milk
+      on that threshold. The butcher's chariot wheels never tarry at the corner
+      of that alley. Indeed, the local butcher has no chariot. His clients
+      mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them wrapped in
+      a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class buyers wear a
+      cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of hair by a
+      hat-pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He goes
+      slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before he tips
+      his measure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he could
+      live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of it&mdash;a
+      noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was once a
+      family mansion; later it was described as a riverside residence, then as a
+      quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price fell with a crash, and
+      an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by her relations to live in it,
+      with two servants, who were frequently to be met in Gravesend in the
+      evening hours, at which time, it is to be presumed, the elderly lady of
+      weak intellect was locked in the Signal House alone. But the house never
+      had a ghost. Haunted houses very seldom have. The ghost was the mere
+      invention of some kitchen-maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+      foreigner took it&mdash;a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+      pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and the
+      river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was not
+      preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He was well
+      known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable suburb for a
+      desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to make; and he was
+      delighted at the cheapness of the house, the greenness of the old lawn,
+      the height of the grimy trees within the red brick wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his throat in
+      the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had obviously been
+      designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the Signal House
+      occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it up altogether, and
+      tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years, while the Russian banker
+      extended his business and lived virtuously elsewhere. Then he suddenly
+      began using the house again as a house of recreation, and brought his
+      foreign servants, and his foreign friends and their foreign servants, to
+      stay from Saturday till Monday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played bowls
+      on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors could hear
+      them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the grimy trees and
+      the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried much about the Signal
+      House; for they were a busy people who lived all around, and had to earn
+      their living, in addition to the steady and persistent assuagement of a
+      thirst begotten of cement dust and the pungent smell of bone manure. One
+      or two local amateurs had made sure of the fact that there was nothing in
+      the house that would repay a burglarious investigation, which, added to
+      the fact that the police station is only a few doors off, tended to allay
+      a natural curiosity as to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and usually
+      told the cabman when his services would again be required. He came thus
+      with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and came without
+      luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab, carried some parcels,
+      presumably of refreshments. These grave gentlemen were, it appeared, about
+      to enjoy a picnic at the Signal House&mdash;possibly a tea-picnic in the
+      Russian fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the back
+      of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at the
+      closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build would
+      allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who seemed to know
+      his bearings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mister,&rdquo; he said, in a Northern voice, &ldquo;another of your little
+      jobs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the vehicle
+      had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my fren',&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;another of my little jobs. I hope you are well,
+      Captain Cable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+      conventions. He was obviously well&mdash;as well as a hard, seafaring life
+      will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man, with
+      a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a little
+      piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His eyes were
+      blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart, but it was
+      certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick coat of blue
+      pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but because it was his
+      best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black felt. It had
+      perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years earlier. He
+      wore no gloves&mdash;Captain Cable drew the line there. As for the rest,
+      he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yourself?&rdquo; he answered, mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very well, thank you,&rdquo; replied the polite banker, who, it will have
+      been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the reader. The
+      truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously Russian that the
+      plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of consonants. &ldquo;It is an
+      affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you, but I think they do not
+      speak English, except your colleague, the other captain, who speaks a
+      little&mdash;a very little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+      awaiting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Captain Cable,&rdquo; he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+      hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign ways;
+      but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn, just to show
+      that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell 'em,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+      speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+      clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken metaphorically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions, rather
+      markedly and with much deference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're speakin' French,&rdquo; interrupted Captain Cable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; returned Captain Cable, affably. &ldquo;They're all one to me. They're
+      all damn nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+      patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the social
+      station of the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He was a
+      tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair and
+      mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were dark, and
+      he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which had been placed
+      near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a cedar-tree, and his
+      manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in his daily life he had
+      always been looked up to and obeyed without question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the banker replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oui, mon Prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the others,
+      the youngest of the group&mdash;a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy, fair
+      mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said, in perfect English, &ldquo;says that we also are plain
+      men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it had
+      been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not like
+      these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the young
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted group
+      seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat down last,
+      was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown, and was mostly
+      hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a Northerner, the
+      abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark of the other
+      element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable looked at him
+      hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they sat next to each
+      other at one side of the table, and faced the three landsmen. Again
+      Captain Cable spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Provided it's nothing underhand,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'm ready and willing.
+      Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God&mdash;them's my
+      risks! I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are explosives,&rdquo; admitted the banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my hatches.
+      Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are cartridges,&rdquo; said the young man who had shaken hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do,&rdquo; said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+      towards the banker, added, &ldquo;Now, mister,&rdquo; and sat back in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very simple matter,&rdquo; explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+      voice. &ldquo;We have a cargo&mdash;a greater part of it weight, though there is
+      some measurement&mdash;a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+      will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters. There is
+      nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you understand.
+      What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker paused for breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said Captain Cable. &ldquo;It's the same with me and my ship.
+      There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's
+      neck or nothing with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+      respect, nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand right enough,&rdquo; he added, with an affable nod to the three
+      foreigners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+      Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in
+      the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the <i>Olaf</i>,
+      Captain Petersen&mdash;sitting by your side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you was a seafaring man,&rdquo; he said. And Captain Petersen replied
+      that he was &ldquo;Vair pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+      lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't deny,&rdquo; replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen
+      out of the corner of his eye, &ldquo;that I have been there before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port&mdash;just a
+      sawmill, at the head of a fjord&mdash;where I shall have a cargo of timber
+      waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+      captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; replied the captain. &ldquo;Ship's lying in the river now, and if
+      these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not think we shall have time for that!&rdquo; put in the banker,
+      hastily. &ldquo;And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your
+      meeting-place. You have your charts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+      papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years he had
+      been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain sections of
+      the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the overhanging
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much,&rdquo; he said,
+      apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the
+      action, looked at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seafaring man?&rdquo; he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by profession, only for fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet found
+      out where the fun comes in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gentleman,&rdquo; explained the banker, &ldquo;his Ex&mdash;Mr.&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      paused, and looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Martin will be on board the <i>Olaf</i> when you meet Captain
+      Petersen in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that
+      Captain Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The
+      two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson
+      undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my
+      fren'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious
+      little of that,&rdquo; replied Captain Cable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+      bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing&mdash;I'm a plain-spoken man myself&mdash;what is there
+      for us two&mdash;us seafaring men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is five hundred pounds for each of you,&rdquo; replied the white-haired
+      gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like to deal with a gentleman,&rdquo; he said, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so do I,&rdquo; replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SPECIALTY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+      Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+      water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+      green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the
+      breeze&mdash;Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of
+      wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like
+      a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad
+      daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and
+      day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three
+      weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is
+      ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and
+      the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill
+      is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably an
+      entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the
+      waste-places of the world&mdash;a place left clean on sailors' charts; no
+      one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have
+      earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never
+      relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their
+      embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp. Their
+      story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and stored
+      beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle the
+      ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on these
+      waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea, where it
+      blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the world is blue
+      and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on these coasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barrin' fogs&mdash;always barrin' fogs!&rdquo; Captain Cable had said as his
+      last word on leaving the Signal House. &ldquo;If ye wait a month, never move in
+      a fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one of
+      those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or
+      reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunset the <i>Olaf</i> had crept cautiously in from the west&mdash;a
+      high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with
+      her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+      Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like a
+      clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who moves
+      slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and a little
+      dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+      very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a
+      half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then
+      he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+      beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he rang
+      the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped dead, its
+      bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain
+      Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high
+      forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The <i>Olaf</i> was anchored at
+      the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no
+      vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down,
+      and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There
+      was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon
+      now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its winking,
+      wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the <i>Olaf</i> rode out the gale that raged all through the night,
+      and in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the
+      northwest wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to
+      make a sea big enough to affect large vessels. The <i>Olaf</i> rode easily
+      enough, and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time,
+      throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at its
+      bath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and lively
+      in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of the black
+      sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost in the ample
+      folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It remains to be seen,&rdquo; he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+      &ldquo;whether that little man will come to us in this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will come,&rdquo; said Captain Petersen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things&mdash;at the
+      timidity and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad
+      weather, at life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people
+      who find life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that
+      it is easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells
+      that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and
+      chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The
+      gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the
+      happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin
+      Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy
+      cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim
+      pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea,
+      and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain
+      Petersen on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+      haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly
+      amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy, my
+      friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are putting our necks within a rope,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not your neck&mdash;only mine,&rdquo; replied Martin. &ldquo;It is a necktie that one
+      gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so free
+      from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine! The wine
+      runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there is a loose
+      rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his life&mdash;that
+      old man, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all very well for you,&rdquo; said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning his
+      gloomy eyes towards his companion. &ldquo;A prince does not get shot or hanged
+      or sent to the bottom in the high seas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you think that,&rdquo; said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. &ldquo;One can
+      never tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he broke into a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come on
+      to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in&mdash;that little bulldog of a
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,&rdquo;
+       grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has only one sense, that man&mdash;a sense of infinite fearlessness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is probably afraid&mdash;&rdquo; Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+      laboriously on to the rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+      aloft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
+      breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
+      that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
+      Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
+      horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
+      approaching before the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the water,
+      and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the beacon on
+      the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till the rounded wet
+      sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He disappeared into the
+      haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again astern of the <i>Olaf</i>,
+      a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan of spray. He was crashing
+      into the seas at full speed&mdash;a very different kind of sailor to the
+      careful captain of the <i>Olaf</i>. His low decks were clear, and each sea
+      leaped over the bow and washed aft&mdash;green and white. As the little
+      steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved his hand as he
+      stood alone on the high bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that
+      still broke over the bows. The crew of the <i>Olaf</i>, crowding to the
+      rail, looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of
+      their dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost
+      under water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable
+      stood swaying on the bridge&mdash;a little, square figure in gleaming
+      oilskins&mdash;and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed ahead of the <i>Olaf</i> and anchored there, paying out cable as
+      if he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a
+      sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port of
+      registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his business
+      was, this seaman knew it well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat,
+      and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity.
+      &ldquo;He is going to try and get to us!&rdquo; he said, pessimistically, and went
+      forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this
+      Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing
+      Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope&mdash;cleverly thrown&mdash;coiled
+      out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the <i>Olaf</i> and
+      shook hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince
+      Martin, who held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see you, Captain Cable,&rdquo; he said. Cable finished drying the salt
+      water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you thought I wasn't coming,&rdquo; he said, suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I knew you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see me for my own sake?&rdquo; suggested the captain, grimly smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it always does one good to see a man,&rdquo; answered Prince Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you're a prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makings of a man as well, perhaps,&rdquo; he said, doubtfully. Then he turned
+      to cast an eye over the <i>Olaf</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tin-kettle of a thing!&rdquo; he observed, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small.
+      Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and get
+      our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if it does
+      we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work all
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dammy, you're the right sort!&rdquo; he muttered, looking aloft at the rigging
+      with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the privilege
+      of the British sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on board
+      in the afternoon to bend the running tackle &ldquo;ship-shape and Bristol
+      fashion,&rdquo; and refused to remain on board the <i>Olaf</i> for luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got a bit of steak,&rdquo; he said, conclusively, and clambered over the
+      side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of fried
+      onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small steamer
+      to the large one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon&mdash;men who,
+      as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+      small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in
+      harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or a
+      musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+      successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after dark,
+      and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost noiselessly
+      under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's crew worked
+      quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun which was to
+      throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince Martin, Captain
+      Petersen, and several others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+      continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened,
+      and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the
+      transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out
+      of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the
+      other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the
+      creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three men
+      who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee
+      together in the cabin of the <i>Olaf</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Likely as not,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, &ldquo;we
+      three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+      seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they
+      did see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can never tell,&rdquo; said Martin, optimistically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the captain went on, &ldquo;I can hold me tongue. That's agreed&mdash;we
+      all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely to pay for a
+      word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper that I could
+      put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has had a hand in
+      some queer political pies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Martin, with his gay laugh, &ldquo;and kept it clean all the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+      father for my money in three days' time&mdash;barrin' fogs. And I'll tell
+      him I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's
+      a handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+      sea-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later the <i>Olaf</i> was alone on that shallow sea, which
+      seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a
+      room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TWO OF A TRADE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard,&rdquo; a witty Frenchwoman had once
+      said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin alone
+      could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French have a
+      trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as the hollow
+      ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a moment in a
+      deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear it&mdash;Reginald
+      Cartoner, a listener, not a talker&mdash;and made that man Paul Deulin's
+      friend for the rest of his life. As there is <i>point de culte sans
+      mystere</i>, so also there can be no lasting friendship without reserve.
+      And although these two men had met in many parts of the world&mdash;although
+      they had in common more languages than may be counted on the fingers&mdash;they
+      knew but little of each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
+      green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring to
+      conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole harvest
+      of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other hand, this
+      is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will discover the roots
+      of the flowers soon enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+      witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
+      they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
+      to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his own
+      flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of the new
+      presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
+      opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted in
+      his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
+      represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which is
+      the language of diplomacy, and means war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
+      it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be in
+      one place at a time,&rdquo; Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years his
+      junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
+      rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
+      place where their services were urgently needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during a
+      lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are.&rdquo;
+       Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
+      imperturbable smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The captain
+      of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
+      vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure a
+      number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin, during
+      fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering
+      faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him,
+      without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift
+      an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men
+      and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that
+      differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their own
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these was
+      Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+      professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always cross the road,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I see Cartoner on the other
+      side. If I did not, he would go past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in England
+      on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from a club in
+      Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that direction. Like
+      many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air. Like all Frenchmen, he
+      loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall, avoiding a man here and
+      there. For we all have friends whom we are content to see pass by on the
+      other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover, such that it got strangely mixed
+      up with his pleasure, and it often happens that discretion must needs
+      overcome a natural sociability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune, or
+      the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall, spare
+      form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm possession
+      of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of a great
+      land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked with
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I permit myself a question,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When did you return from Cuba?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I landed at Liverpool last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.
+      Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried
+      behind those smiling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in London, as you see,&rdquo; said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+      question. &ldquo;I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may
+      suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us
+      hope we may have another little . . . errand together&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman who
+      walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look
+      curiously at the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are dressed in your best clothes,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a pause; &ldquo;you
+      are going to pay calls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to call on one of my old chiefs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on a
+      new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk to a
+      clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all your old
+      chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment since you made
+      your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be glad to see you,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going. She
+      might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always go to see them when I am in town,&rdquo; said Cartoner, who usually
+      confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily intercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&mdash;how is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long in
+      many climates. She is always anxious about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the penalty a woman pays,&rdquo; said Deulin. &ldquo;To love and to be consumed
+      by anxiety&mdash;a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should have
+      gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want her good
+      services&mdash;again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+      reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+      already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of course,
+      you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the history of Poland,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+      front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his head
+      a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead a burden of
+      memories and knowledge of which his brain was always conscious&mdash;as a
+      man may stand in the centre of a great library, and become suddenly aware
+      that he has more books than he can ever open and understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more history
+      that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and Heaven knows
+      that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I never look into a
+      book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are in London. I give you
+      that&mdash;to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and son. It is not for
+      them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take care of themselves&mdash;though
+      they will not do that. It does not run in the family, as you know, who
+      read history books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner of St.
+      James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been passed in
+      London streets. For it must be remembered that English traffic is
+      different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a girl,&rdquo; pursued the Frenchman. &ldquo;Families like the Bukatys
+      should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is as gay
+      as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old ruffian&mdash;and
+      my very dear friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?&rdquo; inquired
+      Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+      should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+      enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I leave to Lady Orlay,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+      neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who
+      abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, ignoring the incident, &ldquo;I would not presume to dictate.
+      All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who has
+      the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father who is
+      a plotter and an old ruffian&mdash;a Polish noble, in fact&mdash;and a
+      brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I
+      should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the
+      world, practically alone&mdash;on the hard, hard upper-class world&mdash;with
+      only one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on
+      a shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps,
+      of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman&mdash;and,
+      vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my accomplished aunt . . .&rdquo; suggested Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh
+      than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of
+      common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+      until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+      Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last he
+      broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly following
+      the stream of his own thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is Joseph P. Mangles?&rdquo; he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An American gentleman&mdash;the word is applicable in its best sense&mdash;who
+      for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the
+      most terrible sister a man ever had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have met him&mdash;that puts another complexion on your
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is all you know about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he?&rdquo; repeated Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor devil&mdash;like
+      you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time kicking his heels in
+      New York, or wherever they kick their heels in America. The rest of his
+      time he is risking his health, or possibly his neck, wherever it may
+      please the fates to send him. If he had been properly trained, he might
+      have done something, that Joseph P. Mangles; for he can hold his tongue.
+      But he took to it late, as they all do in America. So he has come across,
+      has he? Yes, the storm-birds are congregating, my silent friend. There is
+      something in the wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that girl with them?&rdquo; he inquired presently&mdash;&ldquo;Miss Netty
+      Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always make love to Miss Cahere&mdash;she likes it best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+      Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare that
+      his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not speak
+      again until they had walked some distance northward of Piccadilly, and
+      stopped before a house with white window-boxes. Several carriages stood at
+      the other side of the road against the square railings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it her day?&rdquo; inquired Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since we
+      are here, let us go in&mdash;with a smile on the countenance, eh? my brave
+      Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a lie on the tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There I will meet you, too,&rdquo; replied Deulin, looking into his card-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a number
+      of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come together. It
+      was observable that this was not a congregation of fashionable or artistic
+      people; for the women were dressed quietly, and the men were mostly old
+      and white-haired. It was also dimly perceptible that there was a larger
+      proportion of brain in the room than is allotted to the merely
+      fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic and pictorial,
+      which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover, scraps of
+      conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude that the
+      house was in its way a miniature Babel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake
+      hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious
+      group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived
+      Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He seemed
+      to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length went to meet
+      Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and indefinable
+      family resemblances which start up at odd moments became visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you particularly to-morrow night,&rdquo; said the lady; &ldquo;I have some
+      people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+      Cartoner's elbow again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own tongue,
+      &ldquo;I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre Bukaty,&rdquo; he
+      added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy, white hair, and
+      the air of a mediaeval chieftain, &ldquo;allow me to present my old friend
+      Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin
+      still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn
+      towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had a
+      manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl of
+      open air and active tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess Wanda,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, &ldquo;my friend Mr. Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity seemed
+      suddenly reflected in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the best linguist in Europe,&rdquo; said Deulin, in a gay whisper; &ldquo;even
+      Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he himself spoke in Polish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place, where
+      human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books was
+      folded over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+      perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he would
+      have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading before
+      facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service. But he
+      was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been bestowed upon
+      the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the contempt hurled by
+      his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon Commerce as represented
+      in Poland by the thrifty German <i>emigre</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably
+      bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great height
+      as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact, he had
+      grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild early
+      sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething in its
+      midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London.
+      Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough,
+      he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile,
+      which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding
+      city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do not take me seriously,&rdquo; he said to his intimate friends; &ldquo;they do
+      not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live in
+      Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact that
+      he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times, when
+      the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to follow
+      him to the death&mdash;which is the way of the world. &ldquo;You have but to
+      hold up your hand,&rdquo; cries the faithful follower. But wise men know that
+      the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
+      impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
+      centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
+      off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as
+      Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
+      nothing could ever smooth him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
+      the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
+      said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
+      Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but English,
+      and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest people in the
+      world&mdash;you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your pardon.
+      Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel in Kensington&mdash;will
+      you come? That is the address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner,
+      after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which
+      was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning
+      speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better
+      equipments with which to face the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at length; &ldquo;it will give me much pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was
+      there to need reflection in such a small question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At five o'clock,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea
+      you drink in this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People whose
+      lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the smallest jests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted by a
+      page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in Kensington. The
+      Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black. There is in some
+      Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn until Poland is
+      reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like her father and her
+      brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her being, such as is
+      often found in slightly made persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came as early as I could,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the clock
+      struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had
+      not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather
+      naïve statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and
+      glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a
+      chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is kind of you,&rdquo; she said, speaking English without the least
+      suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her life.
+      &ldquo;My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are not only
+      taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a minute. He has just
+      been called away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very kind of him to ask me to call,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite new
+      to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+      countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a man
+      who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going straight
+      towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come to pay an
+      idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush into
+      conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment in it. His
+      hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this as he took a
+      chair near the window. He was probably ten years older than herself, and
+      gave the impression of experience and of a deep knowledge of the world.
+      From living much alone he had acquired the habit of wondering whether it
+      was worth while to say that which came into his mind&mdash;which is a
+      habit fatal to social success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night,&rdquo; said the princess, following
+      the usual instinct that silence between strangers is intolerable. &ldquo;He
+      talked a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He accuses you of talking too little,&rdquo; said Wanda, with some spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid, princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is diplomacy?&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I think you are both great artists,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, as the
+      door opened and her father entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only come to ask you a question&mdash;a word,&rdquo; said the prince.
+      &ldquo;Heavens! your English language! I have a man down-stairs&mdash;a question
+      of business&mdash;and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the
+      meaning of the word jettison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, &ldquo;of course. How
+      foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will excuse me,
+      will you not? Wanda will give you some tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
+      so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+      continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had found
+      him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their knowledge of
+      him. If he had only been that which is called a public man, a novelist or
+      a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his advertising would have
+      been done for him by others. For there was in him that unknown quantity
+      which the world must needs think magnificent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me all you know about him,&rdquo; said the princess in her
+      brisk way. &ldquo;He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
+      not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort of
+      person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love and marry,
+      or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married already, and his
+      wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy. But I don't. He has
+      no wife&mdash;unless he has two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care about his career,&rdquo; said the princess, lightly. &ldquo;I go deeper
+      than careers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay, blue
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man's career is only the surface of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then some men's lives are all surface,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
+      who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
+      decisive views upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping
+      when expedient&mdash;and avoiding collisions?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally,&rdquo; she answered,
+      &ldquo;and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness lay
+      that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as I
+      saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+      Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite
+      patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you have come down to a mere career again,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not necessarily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you people discussing,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;so gravely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for he
+      had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, slowly. &ldquo;The princess was giving
+      me her views.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. &ldquo;They are
+      long views, those views of hers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and looked
+      out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which caused him
+      intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any man of strong
+      purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of thoughtful
+      attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the <i>Minnie</i>, crossing the
+      street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business acquaintance
+      of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill. He
+      had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and out of
+      the <i>Minnie's</i> hatches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.
+      The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and Wanda
+      mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception given by the
+      Orlays that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going, of course?&rdquo; said the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to many such entertainments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I go to very few,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+      speculative way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission
+      of the usual &ldquo;Well, I must be off,&rdquo; or any such catch-word. He certainly
+      left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+      some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+      accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+      vehicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westminster Bridge,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down to
+      the steamboat-landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you want to go to?&rdquo; inquired the gruff, seafaring ticket-clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I can,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over the
+      rudder. He must have known that the <i>Minnie</i> was so constructed that
+      she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once. It
+      was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the passenger
+      traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having
+      leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was
+      natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart
+      seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage
+      of this affability to make inquiries about the <i>Minnie</i>. He knew,
+      perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side
+      worker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the Pool,
+      where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of steamers
+      lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority were
+      foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam
+      threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North
+      Sea fish-carriers, lay the <i>Minnie</i>, painted black, with nothing
+      brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby
+      green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+      fish-carrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to
+      take him to the <i>Minnie</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He must
+      have come down by the boat before yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the <i>Minnie</i>, and
+      banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+      tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face of
+      a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+      unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's you, Mr. Cartoner,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was passing in a steamer,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, quietly, &ldquo;and recognized
+      the <i>Minnie</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time you and
+      me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere stowed away
+      in a locker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VULTURES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; Miss Mangles was saying&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+      Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is possible, Jooly&mdash;it is possible,&rdquo; replied Mr. Joseph P.
+      Mangles, looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window
+      of his private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+      invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+      evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This invitation,&rdquo; said the recipient, &ldquo;accompanied as it is by a friendly
+      note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in the fact that
+      we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point to it, Joseph. It
+      seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me a welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem&mdash;just that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland
+      Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr. Joseph
+      P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a capacity for
+      leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was not ignorant in his
+      art. For he did not inform his sister that the invitation to which she
+      attached so flattering a national importance owed its origin to an
+      accidental encounter between himself and Lord Orlay&mdash;a friend of his
+      early senatorial days&mdash;in Pall Mall the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and
+      few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts. Of
+      what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an
+      invitation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jooly,&rdquo; Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's back&mdash;&ldquo;Jooly
+      is an impressive dresser when she tries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+      morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black cloth
+      garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a Norfolk
+      jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a rhomboid,
+      in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which so often
+      figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black and shiny and
+      straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by hydraulic
+      pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown baggy by much
+      speaking on public platforms&mdash;a fearsome thing in a woman. Her face
+      was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long ago there must
+      have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P. Mangles&mdash;moments
+      spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman of spirit that she was,
+      she had determined that, if she could not be beautiful, she could at all
+      events be great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted
+      Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed
+      it to her greatness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they abstainers?&rdquo; she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+      over the causes she had championed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland
+      Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than you
+      can chew,&rdquo; replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into the
+      vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of
+      himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort
+      of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and no
+      one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us ask them all and be done with them,&rdquo; she said; and had said it for
+      thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no other
+      prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain&mdash;then plain Mr.
+      Orlay. She had never &ldquo;done with them,&rdquo; had never secured that peaceful
+      domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her husband's dream,
+      and would never secure it. For these were two persons, now old and
+      white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world, and had a
+      supreme contempt for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of rich
+      black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+      beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink
+      and self-effacing quietness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall know no one,&rdquo; she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+      shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even the waiters,&rdquo; replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass,
+      glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. &ldquo;But they will
+      soon know us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+      acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote, with
+      the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for a moment
+      near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually did, a
+      little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph Mangles. Over
+      the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister he bowed in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing to say to that great woman,&rdquo; he sometimes said. &ldquo;She is so
+      elevated that my voice will not reach her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+      moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now
+      standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring
+      her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I expected you had forgotten me,&rdquo; she said, when Deulin presented
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me&mdash;I have tried,&rdquo; he replied, with great earnestness; but
+      the complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach
+      any deep meaning to his remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember them
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not remember them all, mademoiselle&mdash;only a very, very few.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the
+      room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there another in the room?&rdquo; inquired Deulin, looking around him with
+      some interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one
+      of us, does she?&rdquo; And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful
+      and inexperienced way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere,&rdquo; replied Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, then she is married?&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell three
+      semitones on the last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing,&rdquo; she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light
+      of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you pity her?&rdquo; asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they not&mdash;for
+      convenience, I mean&mdash;not from . . . from inclination, like other
+      girls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her
+      eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on
+      Deulin's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, with a sharp sigh&mdash;and that was all. He bowed, and
+      turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some
+      minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special
+      to report, for they walked aside together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts to
+      get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that unmatched hostess
+      at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the arrival of the latest
+      and the departure of the earliest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking for you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you, who always know where everybody
+      is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for him a moment
+      ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mangles is listening to the music in the library&mdash;comparatively
+      happy by himself behind a barricade of flowers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that preposterous woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen the Bukatys?&rdquo; inquired Lady Orlay. &ldquo;I called on them the
+      moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I have
+      never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away across
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked grave.
+      It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the old man,&rdquo; she said, with a change of tone. &ldquo;What is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a rebel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proscribed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+      remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+      ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier&mdash;more
+      arms than the national government could find men for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the man,&rdquo; said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction of
+      the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the girl&mdash;it is very sad&mdash;I like her very much. She is gay
+      and brave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;when a woman is gay and brave&mdash;and young&mdash;Heaven
+      help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Monsieur Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady&mdash;God keep
+      her,&rdquo; he said with a grave bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know. She
+      has a great capacity for making friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has already made a few&mdash;this evening,&rdquo; put in the Frenchman,
+      with a significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual enemy&mdash;of
+      a pretty girl&mdash;that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like that,
+      and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one less
+      experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some hidden
+      excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with the
+      frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed&mdash;but he laughed uneasily&mdash;and spread out his hands in
+      a gesture of bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mr. Mangles
+      has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes ago
+      old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook hands
+      with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures are
+      assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater&mdash;you and
+      Orlay&mdash;quietly moored beneath the trees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finally,&rdquo; continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, &ldquo;you
+      come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once or
+      twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like it&mdash;the
+      Vultures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+      silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are too discerning. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away,&rdquo; he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. &ldquo;I must
+      go and pack my trunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night. Miss
+      Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive and the
+      world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words of
+      thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall hope to see you again,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Fraid not,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;we're going to travel on the Continent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you start?&rdquo; asked her ladyship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another one,&rdquo; muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And her
+      brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come to say good-bye,&rdquo; she said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going away again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will not tell me where you are going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said, was
+      very experienced and very discerning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to Russia, all of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AT THE FRONTIER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric illumination
+      of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw Express steamed
+      into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never heard of
+      Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train just
+      before these electric lights were reached&mdash;to take his chance of
+      crossing the frontier before morning&mdash;history will never tell! How
+      many have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station
+      with a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of the
+      officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing Alexandrowo&mdash;of
+      getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland&mdash;but by this route. Before
+      the train is at a standstill at the platform each one of the long corridor
+      carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white trousers, the green tunic
+      and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty of Russian law. Here,
+      whatever time of day or night, winter or summer, it is always as light as
+      day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity. There are always sentries
+      on the outer side of the train. The platform is a prison-yard&mdash;the
+      waiting rooms are prison-yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and everywhere,
+      with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in baggage or
+      demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience will see the
+      traveller through. There is no fear of his being left in the huge station,
+      or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and rightful destination. But
+      with a passport that is old or torn, with a visa which bears any but a
+      recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted look, the voyager had better
+      take his chance of dropping from the footboard at speed, especially if it
+      be a misty night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so much
+      as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go through,
+      but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned within a large
+      room where the luggage is inspected, and they are deprived of their
+      passports. When the customs formalities are over they are allowed to find
+      the refreshment-room, and there console themselves with weak tea in
+      tumblers until such time as they are released.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great inspection-room,
+      with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to overflowing. The
+      majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be Germans. There were a
+      few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the others, had the
+      appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together&mdash;just as the women
+      drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who hoped against
+      hope that their passports were in order. For the most part, no one spoke,
+      though one German commercial traveller protested with so much warmth that
+      an examination of his trunks was nothing but an intrusion on the officer's
+      valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and feel at their ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's, was
+      an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of anybody,
+      and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin, whose train had
+      steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left it. He seemed to
+      know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be observed at the
+      frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge. He obeyed with a
+      silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned, black-capped porter
+      who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no attempt to escape an
+      examination of his luggage, and he avoided the refreshment-room tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate that
+      he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him. Then
+      he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
+      Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of the
+      examination-room. But they drifted together again&mdash;or, perhaps, the
+      younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
+      when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
+      chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
+      opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
+      young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
+      high-born Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Englishman?&rdquo; he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
+      oddly stiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you were,&rdquo; said the other, who, though his clothes were English
+      and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
+      There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the head&mdash;a
+      sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence. He moved
+      his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who was seated
+      near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye to something
+      unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to his coffee with a
+      youthful spirit of enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this would be mildly amusing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;at say any other hour of the
+      twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do you
+      succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can sleep anywhere,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at him
+      inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Alexandrowo pretty well,&rdquo; the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+      &ldquo;and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on friendly
+      terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as&mdash;the
+      multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
+      sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but for
+      a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who you are,&rdquo; said Cartoner, quietly: &ldquo;I recognized you from your
+      likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours ago in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda?&rdquo; inquired the other, eagerly. &ldquo;Dear old Wanda! How is she? She was
+      the prettiest girl in the room, I bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all about them. But, first, tell me your name. Wanda
+      writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their friends&mdash;the
+      Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to have made mention
+      of it in her letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reginald Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I have heard of you&mdash;but not from Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused to reflect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. &ldquo;No, she never
+      mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known out of
+      England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin&mdash;you know Deulin?&mdash;has
+      spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other friends in common.
+      We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to meet you. You say you
+      know my name&mdash;yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that you should have
+      recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad you think I am
+      like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh&mdash;not that there was
+      anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at life
+      from a cheerful standpoint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion over
+      the cup. &ldquo;Cartoner,&rdquo; Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend, &ldquo;weighs
+      you, and naturally finds you wanting.&rdquo; It seemed that he was weighing
+      Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your father also,&rdquo; he said, at length. &ldquo;He was kind enough to ask
+      me to call, which I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London&mdash;no one, I
+      mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never
+      quite understood on the Continent&mdash;that if you go to London you must
+      speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done
+      with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does
+      not easily make friends&mdash;you must have been very civil to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;According to my lights, I was,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way,
+      &ldquo;that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man by
+      the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a
+      tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want,
+      and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however, to
+      admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod an
+      acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had
+      approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured words
+      of politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you&mdash;thank you,&rdquo; said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+      within his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my passport,&rdquo; he explained to Cartoner, lightly. &ldquo;All the rest of
+      you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful
+      privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they
+      are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo you
+      rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always try to,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+      environments, &ldquo;we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there
+      was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are a
+      landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three
+      foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent&mdash;who make us clean their
+      boots and then cast them at our heads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers
+      were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost
+      daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a
+      fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished,
+      giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which hangs
+      in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw,&rdquo; said Martin, as they walked
+      up the platform. &ldquo;My father and sister will be coming home before long,
+      and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the place
+      tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for you
+      when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as any.
+      And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the best
+      horses and the worst roads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, very much,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. &ldquo;I, of course, do not know how long
+      I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know from
+      one day to another what my movements may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears. &ldquo;No,
+      of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you will be
+      here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw now. But, of
+      course, there are difficulties&mdash;even the races present difficulties&mdash;there
+      is the military element.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+      passing to his carriage in front of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have the best horses,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;They have more money than we
+      have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so accustomed
+      to the recognition of his rank that he went first without question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, &ldquo;I had quite forgotten that it is your
+      business to know all about us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to remind you of it several times,&rdquo; answered Cartoner,
+      quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To shut me up, you mean?&rdquo; asked the younger man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned away
+      with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet
+      again in a few hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of the
+      station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice&mdash;of a rather high
+      timbre&mdash;in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor.
+      For, like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues.
+      The Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first,
+      his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German, or
+      perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the two
+      countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so little&mdash;England
+      and France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+      made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was
+      broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and
+      fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the
+      sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have
+      no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was
+      usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be
+      convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather cold, steady
+      man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost insatiable
+      ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption in his
+      profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after another as
+      occasion seemed to demand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+      even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+      possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+      useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+      arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+      successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+      difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+      only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+      until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+      figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+      o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin Bukaty,
+      after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the compartment,
+      closing the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking about it,&rdquo; he said, in his quick way, &ldquo;and it won't
+      do, you know&mdash;it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our friend.
+      It would never do for us to show special attention to you. Anywhere else
+      in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train
+      glided into Warsaw Station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to
+      me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as a
+      rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not know that I was coming,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A REMOTE CITY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+      Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which
+      for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At Cracow&mdash;the
+      tomb of many kings&mdash;it passes half round the citadel, a shallow,
+      sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the present
+      capital&mdash;Warsaw&mdash;it finds its way across the great plain, amid
+      the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and Masovia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking from
+      a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In Praga&mdash;a
+      hundred years ago&mdash;the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+      thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand
+      were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in the
+      square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of their
+      conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired upon
+      them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in cold
+      blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for three hours
+      in the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops, with
+      a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in the
+      world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street, and,
+      like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name&mdash;the
+      Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel de
+      l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where kings
+      and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered, where the
+      bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were carried
+      after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where the great
+      light from the West&mdash;Miss Julie P. Mangles&mdash;alighted one May
+      morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Told you,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was
+      within almost measurable distance of snappishness&mdash;&ldquo;told you you
+      would have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before
+      had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame of mind&mdash;on
+      their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury, Massachusetts, when
+      the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters for the Truth failed
+      to reach the railway depot because they happened on a fire in a straw-hat
+      manufactory on their way, and heard that the newest pattern of straw hat
+      was to be had for the picking up in the open street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+      London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when
+      she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble
+      position of the prophet&mdash;not without honor in his own country&mdash;who
+      cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is even worse than I anticipated,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, watching the
+      hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is worse, Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poland!&rdquo; replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+      with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+      worse countries than Poland in her day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, slowly, &ldquo;that at this hour in the morning it
+      appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph,&rdquo; replied Miss Mangles,
+      looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a
+      bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel,
+      with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed
+      always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult still,
+      to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss Mangles was
+      conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as expert in the
+      lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform period, somewhat
+      alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the historic
+      staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a distinct
+      air of condescension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep
+      depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, &ldquo;what
+      languages you speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russian, French, Polish, German, English&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do to go on with,&rdquo; interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue. &ldquo;We'll
+      get along in English. My name is Mangles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and a
+      salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where
+      stood a couple of waiters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She
+      might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept
+      all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance of
+      having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the surface a
+      little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes seemed to
+      conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly theories, too,
+      which she often enunciated in her confidential manner; and one of these
+      was that one should always, in all places and at all times, be neat and
+      tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it noted in passing,
+      there have been many successful human careers based upon this simple rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress which
+      conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and the habit
+      of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs she gave a
+      little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along the broad
+      corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and nonchalantly
+      humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it appeared, as much at
+      home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, mademoiselle!&rdquo; he said, standing hat in hand before her, &ldquo;who could
+      have dreamed of such a pleasure&mdash;here and at this moment&mdash;in
+      this sad town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seemed gay enough&mdash;you were singing,&rdquo; answered Miss Cahere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps
+      you noticed it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear for
+      music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+      accomplishments, you know,&rdquo; said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in of
+      the shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his opinion
+      that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles and her
+      brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable to
+      feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She shook
+      hands, with her platform bow&mdash;from the waist&mdash;and passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; said Joseph Mangles. &ldquo;Got here before us? Thought you'd turn up.
+      Dismal place, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have just arrived, I suppose?&rdquo; said Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please don't laugh at us!&rdquo; broke in Netty. &ldquo;Of course you can see
+      that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from heaven,&rdquo;
+       answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her hair. It
+      was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did not seem to
+      hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to her uncle.
+      Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long one, for the
+      Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know,&rdquo; she said, turning
+      again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation of
+      her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who blush
+      easily&mdash;at the right time. &ldquo;I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased to
+      have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have you
+      friends here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one,&rdquo; replied Deulin&mdash;&ldquo;the waiter who serves the Zakuska
+      counter down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman,
+      travelling for his health in France. He does not recognize me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you stay long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not intend to,&rdquo; replied Deulin, &ldquo;when I came out of my room this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?&rdquo; asked Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in Warsaw,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we shall meet again,&rdquo; broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+      halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number
+      on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. &ldquo;Always welcome,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it does,&rdquo; answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the Krakowski
+      Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was already astir,
+      while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying home from the
+      morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and churches on either
+      side. Every palace has its story; two of them were confiscated by the
+      Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown from the pavement,
+      might possibly have come from one of the windows. Every church has rung to
+      the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn&mdash;&ldquo;At Thy altar we raise our
+      prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country.&rdquo; Into almost all of
+      them the soldiers have forced their way to make arrests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The clocks
+      were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little sigh of
+      enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Heaven, forgive me!&rdquo; he said, with upturned eyes. &ldquo;I have already
+      told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I shall
+      find Cartoner out of bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+      Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+      through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned to the
+      right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower, quieter
+      thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna are mostly large,
+      with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for existence. They are let
+      out in flats, or in even smaller apartments, where quiet people live&mdash;professors,
+      lawyers, and other persons, who have an interest within themselves and are
+      not dependent on the passer-by for entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination to
+      the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second floor,
+      and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the Frenchman
+      nodded familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he up yet?&rdquo; he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This hour, monsieur,&rdquo; replied the servant, leading the way along a narrow
+      corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass into a
+      comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a writing-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a
+      book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair.
+      &ldquo;Don't let me disturb you,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Finish what you are doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;News?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at Deulin
+      gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously dissimilar&mdash;these
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked up&mdash;Lelewel's
+      <i>History of Poland</i>, in Polish. &ldquo;I trouble for your future, Cartoner.
+      You take life so seriously&mdash;you, who need not work at all. Even
+      uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a position to lend
+      money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reflected for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I have news of all sorts&mdash;news which
+      goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead of
+      going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning&mdash;Mangles
+      frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner&mdash;&rdquo; He paused,
+      and examined his own boots with a critical air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that, mon cher?&mdash;all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+      fool who excels all other fools.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to
+      put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin
+      watched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in hand&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+      you,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+      that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in
+      love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there
+      is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss
+      Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very nice,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the
+      letter before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I like about her is her quiet ways,&rdquo; suggested Deulin, tentatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+      Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares,
+      must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose and
+      took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More lies!&rdquo; he murmured, humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SAND-WORKERS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska&mdash;the street running
+      down from the Cracow Faubourg to the river&mdash;there are always many
+      workers. It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here
+      lie the steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a
+      trade in timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that
+      float from the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here,
+      also, are loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+      spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand
+      which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts
+      hopefully from the higher parts of the city&mdash;the widest, the newest,
+      the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard&mdash;down
+      the hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is
+      no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a
+      broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts from
+      the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers lean on
+      their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the middle or
+      brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that render
+      navigation next to impossible&mdash;a clean, hard sand, most excellent for
+      building purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of the mid-day dinner&mdash;for Polish hours are the hours
+      of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The
+      horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate
+      their gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was
+      late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene was
+      not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river.
+      Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once said
+      that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+      uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+      position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of the
+      bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach within
+      half a mile unperceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; one of the workmen was saying, &ldquo;those who know say that there will
+      inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day, why
+      not now? Why not this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+      oval-faced men&mdash;real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+      Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that
+      comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills;
+      others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which
+      betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The third time, they say, is lucky,&rdquo; answered a white-haired man, at
+      length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his
+      face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others
+      turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the river
+      towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees. Perhaps he was
+      thinking of those other times, which he must have seen fifty and twenty
+      years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with the dead bodies of
+      its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish with the same burden.
+      He may have seen the people shot down in the streets of Warsaw only twenty
+      years before. His eyes had the dull look which nearly always betokens some
+      grim vision never forgotten. He seemed a placid old man, and was known as
+      an excellent worker, though cruel to his horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He who had first spoken&mdash;a boatman known as Kosmaroff&mdash;was a
+      spare man, with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat
+      beard. He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no
+      outward appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was
+      quick and vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his
+      mouth gave an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the
+      eye. His smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very
+      rarely, a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been
+      a raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
+      watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the old
+      man as if hoping that more was coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it will be the third time,&rdquo; he said, when the other had lapsed into
+      a musing silence, &ldquo;though few of us have seen it with our own eyes. But we
+      have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of our
+      forefathers to guide us&mdash;though we cannot say that our forefathers
+      have told us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
+      father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall time it better,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;than last time. We have men watching
+      the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as an old man is
+      marked by those who are named in his will. If anything happened to
+      Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the dogs should
+      quarrel among themselves&mdash;the three dogs that have torn Poland to
+      pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was coming. England
+      and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred thousand men into Warsaw
+      before they turned to the English. That showed what they thought of us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
+      was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others
+      looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board of
+      directors&mdash;some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed
+      to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his
+      boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all very well for you,&rdquo; said one, a little fat man with beady eyes.
+      Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity to danger
+      of any sort&mdash;&ldquo;you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to lose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+      speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that a
+      man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is a
+      part of it running over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are many who can be aristocrats some day&mdash;with a little
+      good-fortune,&rdquo; he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I lost five at Praga,&rdquo; muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+      manner of the toiler. &ldquo;That is enough for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well to remember Praga,&rdquo; returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.
+      &ldquo;It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!
+      There is much to remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff glanced
+      sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring sullenly across
+      the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may be an aristocrat by descent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but what does that come to?
+      I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a Polish
+      aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always done it.
+      They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a hundred others,
+      who could go to France and live there peaceably in the sunshine. I could
+      do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here. They will finish by
+      losing everything&mdash;the little they have left&mdash;or else they will
+      win everything. And I know which they will do. They will win! The prince
+      is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when they have won will they remember?&rdquo; asked one of the two smaller
+      men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You
+      may rely on that. They know what each gives&mdash;whether freely or with a
+      niggard hand&mdash;and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
+      freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
+      expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+      stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+      than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with
+      an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat
+      there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
+      instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
+      each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by
+      that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+      dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+      regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+      number&mdash;a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed
+      him much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was
+      back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name hidden
+      in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a raftsman
+      plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish patriotism&mdash;a
+      mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made the usual grand
+      tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to Siberia and Paris and
+      London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in the sunshine; but he
+      preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor, and the bread that
+      tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom which stood in the
+      forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are others who cherish the
+      same belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;I have news for you. We are a
+      little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently
+      until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they acted
+      at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall
+      nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step
+      nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is
+      never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around
+      his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five
+      thousand rifles in Poland&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+      lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+      blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw!&rdquo; he added, significantly. &ldquo;So, if there are any who think that
+      the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now&mdash;and take the
+      consequences.&rdquo; He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is ammunition enough,&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, &ldquo;to close the
+      account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+      conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;because I am likely to go to Cracow before
+      long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain events may
+      be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly&mdash;such as the death
+      of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the declaration
+      of war by any of the great powers. There is always something seething on
+      the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake. The Warsaw papers
+      will not have the news; but the <i>Czas</i> and the other Cracow journals
+      will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the Galician papers when
+      you want to, despite their censors and their police!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was
+      his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river
+      boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out into
+      a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers stirred
+      reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself&mdash;a long, lithe, wiry
+      figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must go back to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his
+      narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have
+      realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable
+      creation&mdash;a strong man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A WARNING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+      many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the
+      kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in
+      Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay
+      hands upon&mdash;that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in
+      protesting against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had
+      broken faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent
+      of those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was
+      permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and
+      Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
+      having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
+      jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but a
+      few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
+      while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed to
+      her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this lady,
+      who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland was yet
+      in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,&rdquo; the
+      old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the anniversary of
+      his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He mentioned it,
+      moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm frankness which was
+      somehow misunderstood, for the administration never placed him among the
+      suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking country, and the Poles,
+      expressing themselves in the roughest of European tongues, a plain-spoken
+      people. They spoke so plainly to Henry of Valois when he was their king
+      that one fine night he ran away to mincing France and gentler men. When,
+      under rough John Sobieski, they spoke with their enemy in the gate of
+      Vienna, their meaning was quite clear to the Moslem understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands respect
+      in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a conciliatory
+      attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without one of their kind
+      within her boundaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of your
+      petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he happens to
+      be living at the moment!&rdquo; he had boldly said to a great personage from St.
+      Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in the capital. It was,
+      moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had actually stretched a point or
+      two for the Prince Bukaty on more than one occasion. Like many outspoken
+      people, he passed for a barker and not a biter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town and
+      submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in the
+      Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+      Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian flag,
+      which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from time
+      immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see in the
+      great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that his
+      predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness, which were
+      his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered to the loquacious curator, &ldquo;I know. You tell me nothing
+      that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince Bukaty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young man
+      who had great possessions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment, but
+      because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on the
+      Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And to whom
+      can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+      sympathy. And that was all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+      was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+      Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind high
+      railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which entrance
+      is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality, and only
+      unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet brougham in which
+      the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is just round the corner of
+      the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski Gardens&mdash;a quiet spot in
+      this most noisy town. The building is a low one, with a tiled roof and
+      long windows, heavily framed, of which the smaller panes and thick
+      woodwork suggest the early days of window-glass. Inside, the house is the
+      house of a poor man. The carpets are worn thin; the furniture, of a
+      sumptuous design, is carefully patched and mended. The atmosphere has that
+      mournful scent of better days&mdash;now dead and past. It is the odor of
+      monarchy, slowly fading from the face of a world that reeks of cheap
+      democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air of the rooms&mdash;the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+      humanity on wood and texture&mdash;suggested that older comfort which has
+      been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+      wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had acted
+      without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the house must
+      have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back from the school
+      in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality of her own. The
+      difference she brought to the house was a certain brightness and a sort of
+      experimental femininity, which reigned supreme until her English governess
+      came back again to live as a companion with her pupil. Wanda moved the
+      furniture, turned the house round on its staid basis, and made a hundred
+      experiments in domestic economy before she gave way to her father's habits
+      of life. Then she made that happiest of human discoveries, which has the
+      magic power of allaying at one stroke the eternal feminine discontent
+      which has made the world uneasy since the day that Eve idled in that
+      perfect garden&mdash;she found that she was wanted in the world!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too obvious to
+      require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and now that old age
+      was coming, that health was failing and wealth had vanished, Poland would
+      have none of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+      with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions that
+      only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil desires and
+      answer questions is the best happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called a
+      palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and rarely
+      stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste; was fond of
+      travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning eye upon his
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made use
+      of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of the
+      house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading round from
+      the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office in the busier
+      part of Kotzebue Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+      accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are well
+      lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only as the
+      Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the custom to go
+      abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski is more crowded
+      after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had walked some distance
+      behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin unlocked the gate of the
+      garden and passed in, leaving the gate open with the key in the lock. In a
+      minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the gate after him, and gave the key
+      back to its owner on the steps of the garden door of the house, where
+      Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in hand. They did it without comment or
+      instruction, as men carry out a plan frequently resorted to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to a
+      door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were warmth and
+      comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end, beneath the lamp
+      and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were sitting. They were
+      in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought Kos to see you,&rdquo; said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+      towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with that
+      ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He apparently gave
+      no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from which the original
+      black had long since been washed away by the waters of the Vistula. He
+      wore his working-clothes as if they were the best habit for this or any
+      other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it in the old-world fashion,
+      which has survived to this day in Poland. But the careless manner in which
+      he raised her fingers to his lips would have showed quite clearly to a
+      competent observer that neither Wanda nor any other woman had ever touched
+      his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will excuse my getting up,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;My gout is bad
+      to-night. You will have something to eat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, I have eaten,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up, lighting
+      with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will take a glass of port,&rdquo; said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+      indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had his
+      after-dinner wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with a
+      glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he was
+      almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related, not only
+      in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff represented a
+      family long since deemed extinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+      good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to stir
+      them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable position,
+      &ldquo;you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move too quickly.
+      That is what I always preach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff.
+      &ldquo;You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to your opinion
+      that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to misunderstandings.
+      Plain speaking and clear understanding was the message you sent me&mdash;the
+      text of your last sermon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's wineglass,
+      which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that he drank his
+      health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was not my text&mdash;that was Wanda's,&rdquo; answered the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. &ldquo;Is that so? Then I will take
+      it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to Dresden and to London,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;and a woman
+      always sees much more than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By-the-way,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner&mdash;the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+      London,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;Who is he? Why should he not be here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you who he is,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light in
+      his eyes. &ldquo;He is the man that the English send when they suspect that
+      something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has a trick
+      of finding things out&mdash;that man. Such is his reputation, at all
+      events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of yours,
+      by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an American
+      here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There is either
+      something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that something may
+      move in Poland before long. These men are here to find out. They must find
+      out nothing from us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach much
+      importance to these foreigners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; went on Kosmaroff, &ldquo;they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+      says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+      ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So will
+      Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him trouble.
+      He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because he knows
+      that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different. There are
+      never any surprises for the English in matters that Cartoner has in hand.
+      He reports on events before they have happened, which is a different
+      story. I merely warn you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no instructions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;Except the usual one&mdash;patience!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, &ldquo;we shall be patient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+      comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+      winter months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But be careful,&rdquo; he added, addressing Martin more particularly, &ldquo;of this
+      man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know&mdash;you understand.
+      And no one must know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You met him in London, you say?&rdquo; he said to the prince. &ldquo;What did you
+      think of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought him&mdash;a quiet man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Wanda?&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her&mdash;&ldquo;she who
+      sees so much. What did she think of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid of him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+      called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades beneath
+      the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across from one
+      quarter of the town to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father at
+      such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still fresh
+      upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking the green
+      turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in the morning
+      these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any other park in
+      any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the alleys mostly to
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the leaves
+      were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the brief,
+      uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in Northern
+      latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out early, and was
+      sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that divides the gardens in
+      two from end to end. She was waiting for Martin, who had been called back
+      at the door of the palace and had promised to follow in a few minutes. He
+      had a hundred engagements during the day, a hundred friends among those
+      unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear the Russian uniform,
+      who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in any form of commerce, and
+      must not accept a government office&mdash;who are therefore idle, without
+      the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians and Spaniards to do
+      nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser than Martin. Girls
+      generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But the wisdom ceases to
+      grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old women. Wanda was, in a
+      sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She had, as he himself
+      acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into which his natural
+      heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As to the discontent in
+      which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes and their friends into
+      many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it, just as some families are
+      brought up to consumption and the anticipation of an early death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda was
+      much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger. Debt and
+      impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her father daily
+      needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his happiness more and
+      more upon his port wine and that ease which is only to be enjoyed by an
+      easy mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly heeded
+      the passers-by, though&mdash;for the feminine instincts were strong in her&mdash;she
+      looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on the Jew who
+      hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the richer quarter of
+      the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the Franoiszkanska. The latter,
+      perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin and his heedlessness; the former
+      made her think of&mdash;she knew not what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King of
+      Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the garden.
+      She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was unlike that of
+      the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It was more like the
+      gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw wear a uniform. That is
+      why they are there. There was a suggestion of determination in the walk of
+      this Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived her.
+      She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the precise moment
+      when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably upon experience that
+      Wanda based her theory that women see twice as much as men. She saw him
+      turn, without hesitation, away from her down a narrower alley leading to
+      the right. It was his intention to avoid her. But the only turning he
+      could take was that leading to the corner of Kotzebue Street, and Martin
+      was at the other end of it, coming towards him. Cartoner was thus caught
+      in the narrow alley. Wanda sat still and watched the two men. She suddenly
+      knew in advance what would happen, as it is often vouchsafed to the human
+      understanding to know at a moment's notice what is coming; and she had a
+      strange, discomforting sense that these minutes were preordained&mdash;that
+      Martin and Cartoner and herself were mere puppets in the hands of Fate,
+      and must say and do that which has been assigned to them in an unalterable
+      scheme of succeeding events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+      without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to continue
+      his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the Englishman's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it matter?&rdquo; Martin was saying. &ldquo;There is no one to see us here,
+      at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda, sitting on
+      the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's attitude
+      and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner yielded, for it
+      was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin&mdash;so determined,
+      so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned and came
+      towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew that it was
+      written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had something to say to
+      her which it was safer to say than to leave to be silently understood and
+      perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient sigh. She had always ruled
+      her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty, and this sense of
+      powerlessness was new to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+      way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, &ldquo;and went the other
+      way to avoid you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at her.
+      He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+      embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner and I,&rdquo; Prince Martin hastened to explain, &ldquo;travelled from
+      Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it
+      would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would
+      naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is why
+      he went the other way when he saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have been
+      the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner kept
+      silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit&mdash;very rare among
+      men and almost unknown in women&mdash;of thinking before he spoke. Which
+      habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if one
+      decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and the
+      futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself, &ldquo;in this
+      province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the best
+      strawberries from a basket,&rdquo; said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a question to be arranged beforehand,&rdquo; put in Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even by the governor-general of Poland?&rdquo; asked Wanda, looking
+      thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+      showered round them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even by the Czar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, I am told, means well!&rdquo; said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+      laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. &ldquo;Poor man!
+      It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's back that
+      one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+      walking-stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin and I are going for a tramp,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We like to get away from
+      the noise and the dust&mdash;and the uniforms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We attract less attention than if we stand,&rdquo; he explained. And Cartoner
+      took the seat offered. &ldquo;Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us to
+      offer you,&rdquo; commented the young prince, gayly, &ldquo;a clean stone seat on the
+      sunny side of a public garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But let us understand each other,&rdquo; put in Wanda, in her practical way,
+      and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw so
+      much, &ldquo;since we are conspirators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall be,&rdquo;
+       said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'&rdquo; said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plot is simple enough,&rdquo; answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing,
+      and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one more than the
+      other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of all
+      whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette&mdash;a little Russian
+      affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked the
+      ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The Bukatys
+      have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish nationality
+      which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to suppress for
+      nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria there is still a
+      Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs,
+      and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few old Lithuanian and Ruthenian
+      families extant. And rightly or wrongly, those in authority are kind
+      enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys for these survivals. Weeds, it
+      seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are really to blame or not is of no
+      consequence. It does not matter to the dog whether he deserves his bad
+      name or not&mdash;after he is hanged. But it is not good to be a Bukaty
+      and live in Poland just now, though some of us manage to have a good time
+      despite them all&mdash;eh, Wanda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+      answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was
+      part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for
+      fear some interruption should approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand,&rdquo; he continued, in his airy way, &ldquo;is a
+      most respectable man&mdash;in the employ of his country. That is what
+      damns Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great
+      reputation, to which I take off my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would never do,&rdquo; continued Martin, &ldquo;for us, the suspects, to be
+      avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some
+      capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no
+      consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are we to do?&rdquo; asked Wanda, practically. &ldquo;Let us have a clear
+      understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+      without haste&mdash;a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+      heart of the question. &ldquo;We must not meet in the streets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may not be as easy as it sounds,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;in a small city like
+      Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of avoiding
+      us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, at all events, try,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, simply. After a pause (the
+      pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be Cartoner's turn
+      to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all that the Bukatys
+      could offer him in Warsaw. &ldquo;I can begin at once,&rdquo; he said, gravely. And he
+      took off his hat and went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+      silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+      down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+      pillars of that building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man of action, and not of words,&rdquo; commented Martin, who spoke first. &ldquo;I
+      like him. Come, let us go for our walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though
+      they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that
+      Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side of
+      that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+      Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking a
+      contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met. Paul
+      Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which could
+      scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the Frenchman to himself, &ldquo;there is our friend Reginald. He is
+      in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any woman ever marries that man,&rdquo; the Frenchman said to himself, &ldquo;she
+      will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then, women are
+      good at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+      awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was not
+      an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+      thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it is well
+      to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the post-office.
+      And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not to have them
+      sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities are kind enough to
+      exercise a parental censorship over the travellers' correspondence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+      house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It was
+      a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him was
+      more than he could undertake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CARTONER <i>VERSUS</i> FATE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It is,
+      moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the cause
+      of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the theory
+      that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled by a common
+      sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor of that Czar who
+      said to Poland: &ldquo;Gentlemen&mdash;no dreams,&rdquo; seems in part justified by
+      the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves brought nearer
+      together on the race-course than in any other social function in Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's rooms
+      after lunch one day towards the end of October. &ldquo;Come, and let us bury the
+      hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the grand-stand at the
+      Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his wife, all the
+      authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep sideways at each
+      other, and turn up their noses at each other's toilets. To such has
+      descended the great strife in eastern Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same thing,
+      and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in it. Come
+      with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where the
+      Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where these
+      fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too ready to
+      take their hearts there and lose them&mdash;but the Czar forbids it. And,
+      let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than a pair
+      of Polish eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a speculative
+      glance, and turned away to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is a fine day&mdash;St. Martin's summer. It is
+      Sunday, but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording
+      angel on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have no principles,&rdquo; said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+      looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+      principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for his
+      neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+      By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; pursued Deulin; &ldquo;and I am bored. That is why I want you to come
+      to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than
+      to go&mdash;especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the
+      world in racing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is why I am going,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don't like racing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am very fond of it,&rdquo; answered the Englishman, in the same absent
+      voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found at
+      the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive up the
+      broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow (where
+      bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness of the
+      land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while driving
+      through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is a grudge
+      that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland had been a
+      kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart of
+      the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At the
+      entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles, and
+      Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare among
+      travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen in
+      the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
+      though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across a
+      Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
+      German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
+      domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into the
+      world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
+      unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
+      management of the course&mdash;tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
+      and white skins&mdash;energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
+      white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold lace.
+      Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in his
+      dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying high his
+      astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a gleam of
+      something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of many races,
+      one of the market-places where men may greet each other who come from
+      different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are sons of the
+      empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north, the south,
+      the east, and the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my breath
+      away,&rdquo; said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many races. On
+      all sides one heard different languages&mdash;German, the sing-song
+      Russian&mdash;the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot
+      kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Germany?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bores me, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number of
+      men were congregated, but no ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Fatherland,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German once,
+      when I was in the army of the Loire&mdash;a most painful business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached the
+      gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without turning
+      towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock, and
+      above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey. The
+      head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the heads
+      of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only half in
+      the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before a
+      dog&mdash;all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move
+      above a snail's pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+      practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+      Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which they
+      knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and knocked
+      the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on at a gallop
+      now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a broken bridle, his
+      two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was swearing in English.
+      And he had need to, for through the paddock gate the crowd was densely
+      packed and he was charging into it on a maddened horse beyond control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+      Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head was
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let go! let go!&rdquo; cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+      Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. &ldquo;Let go!
+      I'll teach him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince
+      Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a
+      moment and saw him open his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am unhurt,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Help me up. No! sh&mdash;h! No, nothing is
+      broken; it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+      minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box No.
+      18, in the grand-stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and tell her,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+      &ldquo;Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that her
+      father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face of
+      all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his memory. As he
+      approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She was dressed in
+      black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only the Russians and
+      the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the surprise on her face and
+      in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew that there were a hundred eyes
+      watching him, a hundred ears waiting to catch his words when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the prince has had a slight accident, and has sent
+      me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any report to
+      the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and was knocked
+      down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the club pavilion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+      understand and repeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we go to him?&rdquo; asked Wanda, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and would
+      come himself were he able to walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take us to him, monsieur?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal silence.
+      The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its forlorn, autumnal
+      flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked along it towards the
+      paddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very good of you to come and tell us,&rdquo; said Martin, in English,
+      &ldquo;with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good, you know, to
+      do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was true what you said
+      about the prince being unhurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. &ldquo;He is rather badly shaken. I think you will
+      find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; exclaimed Martin. &ldquo;He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come in
+      here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in case of
+      accidents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+      minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+      distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had been
+      successfully accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+      which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+      waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything to
+      say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear understanding of
+      which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to be compassed by
+      silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind them came nearer and
+      nearer as the horses approached the winning-post. The members of the club
+      stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some with field-glasses, others
+      with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All eyes were turned in one
+      direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+      hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no need
+      for anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely to
+      go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit under the
+      awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand,&rdquo; Martin said,
+      as he approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying to
+      gather round the winning horse. &ldquo;See, it is already a thing of the past.
+      And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is no good
+      advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad name, eh? Thank
+      you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You and Deulin, they
+      say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my dear Wanda. It is
+      forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I will come back to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, &ldquo;I leave her to your care,&rdquo; he
+      turned and left them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at length Wanda spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are not so strong as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As what?&rdquo; he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As Fate, I suppose,&rdquo; she answered, and her eyes were grave as she looked
+      across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun was sinking
+      below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the horizon. Sunset
+      over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it Fate?&rdquo; she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By action. I have written for my recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not his
+      companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was still
+      looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she said, after a pause, &ldquo;it would have been better for you if we
+      had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said that you
+      had never had a check in your career. This is the first check. And it has
+      come through&mdash;knowing us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion with
+      patient, thoughtful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot deny it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he did not deny it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+      keenness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you asked for your recall?&rdquo; she asked, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+      leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking. And
+      across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes of the
+      man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next box
+      to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party of
+      foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared for
+      sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one cannot
+      set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those depths to
+      which it sometimes descends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this,&rdquo; she said, when she had settled herself on the chair commanding
+      the best view, &ldquo;this is the turf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+      umbrella, &ldquo;is the turf. This is the grand-stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole,&rdquo; stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+      graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible to
+      her, the scene in general, &ldquo;the whole constitutes the turf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who was
+      prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her delicate
+      and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself of an
+      autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these young men are on it,&rdquo; concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual
+      decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside&mdash;the
+      privilege of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes
+      in the direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger; but some
+      of the young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in
+      the Russian race-card which she could not read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very sad,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making up
+      her mind how best to take them in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't see the worst of 'em here,&rdquo; muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. &ldquo;It
+      isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief&mdash;on
+      the turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+      reformed&mdash;by the young women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle Joseph
+      inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather wistful
+      expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men below were
+      still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to see them. At
+      this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda was preoccupied,
+      and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several ladies leaned over
+      the low partitions and asked questions, which were unintelligible to
+      Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth that the Prince Bukaty
+      was not hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+      brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+      called upon to transmit the information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Mangles, in an undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Jooly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul Deulin,
+      who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the
+      feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these people.
+      This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it is most
+      unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger for the nudge
+      of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which convey the
+      gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin would serve to
+      enlighten these benighted people, and some little good might yet be done
+      by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval towards the turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin,&rdquo; she said, shaking
+      hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you are here,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;there can be no harm. It is only a
+      garden-party, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+      conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he had
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?&rdquo; inquired Jooly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, unless I am quite sure,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is,&rdquo; observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be gracious&mdash;&ldquo;there
+      is perhaps less harm in that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And less risk,&rdquo; explained Deulin gravely. &ldquo;But surely,&rdquo; he said, in a
+      lower tone, turning to Netty, &ldquo;you know the Princess Wanda? Did you not
+      meet her at Lady Orlay's?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+      perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and he
+      was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does not
+      remember&mdash;though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she met
+      at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+      comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be assured,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;that she has not seen you, or she would not
+      fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe. The
+      princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has just had
+      a slight mishap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this young lady remembers meeting you in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that divided
+      the two boxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down so
+      near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly expect you to recollect me,&rdquo; Netty hastened to say. &ldquo;You must
+      have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who were at
+      Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda, rather absently. &ldquo;Are there many?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we three
+      and&mdash;Mr. Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin Bukaty's
+      eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she had much
+      animation, and her eyes were bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is unmistakable. I
+      hope the prince is not hurt?&rdquo; she said, in her little, friendly,
+      confidential way to Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I introduce
+      him? Martin. Miss Cahere&mdash;my brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty wanted.
+      She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk to Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be so interesting,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to live in Warsaw and to be able
+      to help the poor people who are so down-trodden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do nothing of that sort,&rdquo; replied Wanda. &ldquo;It is only in books that
+      women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can do for
+      Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he likes for
+      dinner, and to housekeep generally&mdash;just as you do when you are at
+      home, no doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; protested Netty, &ldquo;but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+      distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I could
+      never housekeep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark, made
+      her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin saw it.
+      At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather vacantly in
+      another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?&rdquo; said Wanda,
+      glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Wanda,&rdquo; put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, &ldquo;you surely
+      do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity. Miss Mangles
+      is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described in a prominent
+      journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care for the world, has
+      no time to think of an individual household.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;we have no settled home in America. We live
+      differently. We have not the comfort of European life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+      noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop of
+      the lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+      conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of the
+      use of his field-glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see,&rdquo; she said, in her confidential way, &ldquo;well enough for myself
+      with my own eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; she said to Wanda, when the race was over, &ldquo;that I saw Mr.
+      Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy he has,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our box.
+      I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on board. We
+      crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+      thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There was
+      in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set a machine
+      in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed to
+      come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Wanda,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;We must not keep him waiting. I can see him,
+      with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse,&rdquo; said Deulin,
+      &ldquo;and then return to the assistance of these ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+      explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching
+      the carriages after they had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gods forbid,&rdquo; he said, piously, to himself, &ldquo;that I should attempt to
+      interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda should
+      know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she knows now,
+      my shrewd princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from Wanda
+      as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on his heel,
+      to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng of people
+      moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black, and a shower
+      was impending.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well!&rdquo; he muttered, philosophically, &ldquo;they are capable of taking care
+      of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however, that
+      he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along by a
+      stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great gate, and
+      though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the other men, she
+      could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and his sister passed out
+      of the large gateway, and waited in the first available space beyond it.
+      Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of the crowd to the smaller gate,
+      and having passed it, decided to wait till her uncle, who undoubtedly must
+      have seen her, should come in search of her. She was not uneasy. All
+      through her life she had always found people, especially men, ready, nay,
+      anxious, to be kind to her. She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a
+      man came towards her. He was only a workman in his best suit of working
+      clothes. He had a narrow, sunburned face, and there was in his whole being
+      a not unpleasant suggestion of the seafaring life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, &ldquo;that
+      you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course, so
+      to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to find
+      your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. &ldquo;I think my
+      uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at him.
+      Perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, &ldquo;I will show you another way with pleasure.
+      Then that tall gentleman is not your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle,&rdquo; replied Netty, following her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. We are Americans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A diplomatist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my uncle is in the service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way; we
+      can pass through this alley and come to the large gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&mdash;you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me,&rdquo; said
+      Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this
+      interest, slightly changed his manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you are looking at my clothes,&rdquo; he said, rather less formally. &ldquo;In
+      Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a
+      Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street,
+      just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is pleasant
+      in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the great honor
+      of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will remember,&rdquo; answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that
+      his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew at once&mdash;at once,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you were English or
+      American.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Then there is a difference&mdash;&rdquo; said Netty, looking round for her
+      uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a difference&mdash;yes, assuredly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mirror will answer that question,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, with his odd,
+      one-sided smile, &ldquo;more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There is
+      your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand in
+      his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, &ldquo;do not give him
+      anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SENTENCED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
+      which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it. The
+      average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of it,
+      through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+      leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
+      or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
+      growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+      foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+      cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
+      Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
+      could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
+      any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
+      memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
+      riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
+      uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
+      knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
+      shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
+      with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
+      that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads into
+      the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
+      iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in silence on
+      the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large iron-works,
+      which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in the Lazienki
+      Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+      side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of his
+      horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it
+      patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and
+      found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with
+      the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light
+      enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From the
+      distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long, low
+      roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+      iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that the
+      animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened
+      first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the wind.
+      It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few moments
+      there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and at the
+      right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it started
+      forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts of the
+      gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+      doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating cranes
+      and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was hurriedly bolting
+      the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open door, but before he
+      reached it a number of men ran out and fell on him like hounds upon a fox.
+      He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and striking the first-comer full in
+      the chest with his fist. He charged the next and knocked him over; but
+      from the third he retreated, leaping quickly to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;don't you know me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Cartoner!&rdquo; replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+      behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+      Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; he said. And there was a
+      ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never heard
+      there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the meaning of
+      it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined men in moments
+      when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer side of human
+      nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which deals in battle
+      and sudden death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too risky,&rdquo; said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but
+      Cartoner heard it. &ldquo;We must kill him and be done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy feet of
+      the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner spoke,
+      quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had taken time to
+      reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had disadvantages, but
+      silence meant death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This near fore-shoe,&rdquo; he said in French, turning to his horse, &ldquo;is nearly
+      off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a foundry, is it
+      not? There must be a hammer and some nails about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there
+      was no loop-hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+      patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle
+      in front of him were in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! He's a brave man!&rdquo; muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's ear.
+      It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, hastily, &ldquo;this is a foundry. I can get you a hammer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced at
+      it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and he
+      was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might tell these men,&rdquo; he said, in French, &ldquo;of my mishap; perhaps one
+      of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately
+      hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+      French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly, so
+      as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped forward
+      to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for a
+      hammer and some nails&mdash;that his horse had nearly lost a shoe.
+      Cartoner had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated
+      the line of conduct he was to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get a hammer&mdash;one of you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+      Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak&mdash;to say more than
+      was discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+      that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent. Never
+      comment on your own victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during
+      the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost shoe.
+      Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such dangerous
+      words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird. Behind, were
+      the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men, whose faces he
+      could not see, while the full light glared through the open doorway upon
+      his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw&mdash;a dark autumn night, and
+      eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical way, as persons in
+      face of death nearly always do count, with a cold deliberation, their
+      chances of life. He played his miserable little cards with all the skill
+      he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity
+      served him. For he acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that
+      it would be a mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they
+      were not Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed
+      him first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs&mdash;of
+      the most calculating race the world had produced&mdash;a little slow in
+      their calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time;
+      but she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is
+      fully evolved&mdash;long, long after reader and writer are dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+      muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors, which
+      were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked
+      inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very much obliged to you,&rdquo; said Cartoner to Martin, who went towards
+      the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from Kosmaroff the
+      gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+      climbed into the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saved your life!&rdquo; he said, in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to the
+      men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open doorway,
+      but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were concealed the arms
+      brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in the <i>Minnie</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than I bargained for,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, as he rode away from
+      the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and presently to
+      a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was astonishingly
+      fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent by Kosmaroff to
+      follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the chase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+      life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much,
+      and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was
+      steady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+      clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which
+      stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate. He
+      had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without
+      weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a
+      different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that
+      which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Cartoner,&rdquo; Deulin was in the habit of saying, &ldquo;takes certain things
+      so seriously, and other things&mdash;social things, to which I give most
+      careful attention&mdash;he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by
+      different routes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+      that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic
+      race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady
+      perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment of danger give me Cartoner,&rdquo; Deulin had once said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without words,
+      that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism and
+      frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering
+      attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each
+      other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got a job in Russia,&rdquo; he had stolidly told any one who asked him. &ldquo;Cold,
+      unhealthy place.&rdquo; He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual
+      interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of
+      his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may
+      spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great
+      republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what
+      has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must
+      know what is going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+      delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+      relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life&mdash;alone
+      with his failures and his small successes&mdash;content, it would seem, to
+      be a good servant in a great service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place
+      of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance, like
+      the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was deserted as
+      he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The concierge was
+      sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken an apartment.
+      All along the street the dvornik of every house thus takes his station at
+      the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all through the town. It
+      is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of
+      Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its
+      protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man
+      may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by
+      one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of
+      the house under his care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs,&rdquo; said the door-keeper to
+      Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps were
+      turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the letter must
+      be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up the lamp, and,
+      taking the letter from the table where it lay in a prominent position, sat
+      down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+      nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief
+      and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work intrusted
+      to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A TALE HALF TOLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living
+      upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to such
+      as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and jovial
+      gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere of strife
+      and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived, while the
+      unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall quite soon, not
+      daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope of alleviation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+      lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+      generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the grimmest
+      stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and
+      read his <i>Figaro</i> quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the safety of
+      the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is late,&rdquo; he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return to
+      dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced towards
+      the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin, whose daring
+      was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in leadership than
+      in strategy. As to her father, he had come through the sixties, and had
+      survived the persecution and the dangers of Wielopolski's day&mdash;he
+      could reasonably be expected to take care of himself. With regard to
+      herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's lot of watching others in a
+      danger which she could not share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in
+      riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust,
+      looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself
+      into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had any dinner?&rdquo; asked his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There was a
+      suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate, fleeting
+      shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs and
+      carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially English or
+      Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a firmer stem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something has happened,&rdquo; said Wanda, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+      attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+      momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland was
+      written on those deep-lined features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything wrong?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing that affects affairs,&rdquo; replied Martin. &ldquo;Everything is safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the
+      identical phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs,&rdquo; continued
+      Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to
+      convince himself. &ldquo;It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid
+      fright, I can tell you&mdash;especially me, for I was doubly interested.
+      Cartoner rode into our midst to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner?&rdquo; repeated the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened&mdash;we were
+      expecting some one else&mdash;he led his horse into our midst, with a
+      loose shoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who saw him?&rdquo; asked the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kosmaroff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with Cartoner.
+      You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would have been a mistake,&rdquo; said the prince, reflectively. &ldquo;It was
+      the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in
+      driblets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It was
+      evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could not have
+      known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all&mdash;or nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could not have known all,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;That is an
+      impossibility.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he must have known nothing,&rdquo; put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at
+      one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know how much he perceived when he was in&mdash;as to his own
+      danger, I mean&mdash;for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady;
+      steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong,&rdquo; said
+      Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His
+      hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly
+      frightened. &ldquo;We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with
+      Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is more to his own danger than to any one else's,&rdquo; put in Wanda,
+      again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little of
+      the incident as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how do matters stand?&rdquo; inquired the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes to this,&rdquo; answered Martin, &ldquo;that Poland is not big enough to
+      hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to go,
+      or else&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the
+      color slowly faded from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else&mdash;what?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Wanda, who would have things plainly, &ldquo;that he would
+      assassinate him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+      sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+      wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national
+      government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince
+      made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that
+      that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to
+      stand in the way of success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues,&rdquo; said Martin, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened&mdash;as it is,
+      moreover, not my department&mdash;I cannot, personally, act in the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kosmaroff will obey nobody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then warn Cartoner,&rdquo; the prince said, in a final voice. His had always
+      been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot do it,&rdquo; said Martin, looking at Wanda. &ldquo;You know my position&mdash;how
+      I am watched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it,&rdquo; said Wanda&mdash;&ldquo;Paul
+      Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deulin could do it,&rdquo; said the prince, thoughtfully. &ldquo;But I never talk to
+      Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+      morning,&rdquo; said Wanda, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise. The
+      old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you run the risk of making people talk of you.
+      They may talk of us&mdash;of Martin and me&mdash;the world has talked of
+      the Bukatys for some centuries&mdash;but never of their women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will not talk of me,&rdquo; returned Wanda, composedly. &ldquo;I will see to
+      that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say that
+      he was not going to stay long in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He knew
+      that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, rising. &ldquo;I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us go
+      to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused half-way towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;which we should be wise to recollect&mdash;that
+      whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no farther. He is a
+      diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and to say nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!&rdquo; cried Martin, with his reckless
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the great
+      archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the
+      court-yard&mdash;where Hermani was assassinated&mdash;where the people
+      carried in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were
+      photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side
+      door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this
+      third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.
+      He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Cahere&mdash;the American lady?&rdquo; she said. And the porter gave her
+      the number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her
+      thither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's room,
+      and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished. At the
+      head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned room,
+      where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this room, reading a
+      French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant, a well-trained person.
+      And a well-trained French servant is the best servant in the world. He
+      took it for granted that Wanda had come to see his master, and led the way
+      to the spacious drawing-room occupied by Deulin, who always travelled <i>en
+      prince</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend,&rdquo; he said, in
+      defence of his extravagant habits, &ldquo;and the only people to whom I want to
+      give it are those who will not accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+      found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
+      surprise in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Jean show you in?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
+      would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
+      Wanda. Even plain people have enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
+      which she was sitting. &ldquo;Yes! What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An unfortunate incident,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+      predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+      comes. Your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner,&rdquo; said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+      leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with the
+      necessity of reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has found out something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, la! la!&rdquo; exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper&mdash;giving voice to that
+      exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve for
+      a really serious mishap. &ldquo;I should have thought he knew better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I cannot tell you what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+      ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came to Martin's knowledge,&rdquo; explained Wanda, looking at him across
+      the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. &ldquo;Look a man
+      in the eyes when you tell him a lie,&rdquo; Deulin had once said to Cartoner,
+      &ldquo;but not a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that&mdash;&rdquo; Wanda
+      paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in
+      Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London. We all like him.
+      Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My father won't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table. His
+      touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+      execution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I once took it upon myself to advise
+      Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
+      exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it&mdash;and
+      never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
+      and I was wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can do nothing, fair princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his life,&rdquo;
+       said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+      serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was neat
+      and gray and&mdash;shallow, as some thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for forty years and more I have watched men&mdash;and
+      women&mdash;do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite ceased
+      to affect my appetite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+      sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he said, as he followed her to the door. &ldquo;I will give him a
+      little hint&mdash;the merest ghost of a hint&mdash;will that do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+      Englishman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are reasons why I should not accompany you,&rdquo; said Deulin, opening
+      the door. &ldquo;Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which Wanda
+      had just vacated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the third woman who knows what she wants,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and yet I have
+      known thousands&mdash;thousands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      MUCH&mdash;OR NOTHING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference to his
+      good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become apparent
+      that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse themselves with
+      toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a long roll of
+      monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In some the
+      monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing space of
+      quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then
+      pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly
+      wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a
+      somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in
+      him. Thus the gods&mdash;with men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+      down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good
+      reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been
+      full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents&mdash;as the
+      hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part&mdash;with a
+      mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his being. He had
+      always known what he wanted, and had usually accomplished his desires with
+      the subtraction of that discount which is necessary to the accomplishment
+      of all human wishes. The gods had not helped him; but they had left him
+      alone, which is quite as good, and often better. And in human aid this
+      applies as well, which that domestic goddess, the managing female of the
+      family, would do well to remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
+      on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
+      crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had never
+      found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
+      apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him that
+      gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the sex of
+      this arbiter of human story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+      wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to avoid
+      the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two days
+      after the meeting at the Mokotow&mdash;the morning following the visit
+      paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe&mdash;Cartoner was early astir. He
+      drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
+      and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at ten minutes
+      past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of peasants&mdash;wild-looking
+      men in long coats and high boots, rough women in gay shades of red, in
+      short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+      capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted
+      the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman
+      Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe
+      on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting
+      room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class room was a little
+      emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-class
+      waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone. There was one person in
+      the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was Wanda. The gods were kind&mdash;or
+      cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going away?&rdquo; she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+      Cartoner looked at her in surprise. &ldquo;You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
+      you are going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+      yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all watched,&rdquo; said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. &ldquo;But
+      you are going away&mdash;that is all that matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
+      back this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+      which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers, they
+      were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the restaurant,
+      which is the more usual way of gaining access to the platform. She
+      probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to post a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave Warsaw,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it is not safe for you to stay here.
+      You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
+      for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
+      at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could not
+      hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There were
+      so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West which it
+      was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely bare; not so
+      much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had anything to say
+      to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this bare railway station
+      the place to say it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
+      He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
+      salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin would have warned you,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;but he did not dare to.
+      Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
+      had unwittingly run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unwittingly,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He said
+      so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you much&mdash;&rdquo; she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+      here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything&mdash;but not from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin hinted at that,&rdquo; said Wanda, slowly, &ldquo;but I did not believe him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as if
+      there were more in him&mdash;more of him&mdash;than she had ever expected.
+      And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+      baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which was
+      as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes from
+      the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able to
+      look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true enough,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fate has made us enemies, princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
+      fate&mdash;in Poland. Besides&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
+      your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must go&mdash;you must go!&rdquo; she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+      great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
+      understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of gray
+      in his closely cut hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
+      world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily&mdash;quite gayly&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she broke off with a light laugh, &ldquo;on a volcano&mdash;it is the Bukatys.
+      We have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
+      window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father was
+      in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;what it is to be a Bukaty.&rdquo; And he smiled slowly
+      as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her manner,
+      in a flash, was different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will go?&rdquo; she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he turned
+      away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them, she glanced
+      again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of hatred, and
+      there is another cunning, much deeper. &ldquo;Say you will go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think you understand,&rdquo; she went on, changing her manner and her
+      ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own stolid, dumb
+      form of defence. &ldquo;You do not understand what a danger to us your presence
+      here is. It is needless to tell you all this,&rdquo; with a gesture she
+      indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred marks of a high
+      state of civilization, &ldquo;is skin deep. That things in Poland are not at all
+      what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated. We live from day to day
+      in uncertainty. And my father is such an old man; he has had such a
+      hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to look at his face&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he has
+      gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so happy
+      and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe. That is
+      why I ask you to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
+      was quite a simple person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
+      follow it, call no logic at all, &ldquo;you can do no good here, if all your
+      care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
+      have they refused your recall? It is so stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must do the best I can,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+      ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we must not quarrel,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;We must not misunderstand
+      each other,&rdquo; she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, &ldquo;for we have only
+      five minutes in all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here and now,&rdquo; he corrected, with a glance at the clock, &ldquo;we have only
+      five minutes. But the world is large.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you,&rdquo; she said quickly, &ldquo;but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+      forget I am a Russian subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
+      his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My presence in Warsaw,&rdquo; he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+      elucidating, &ldquo;is in reality no source of danger to you&mdash;to your
+      father and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin.
+      Do not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+      nobody&mdash;nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+      that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make history.
+      I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which may come to
+      pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If nothing happens
+      I report nothing. I have not to say what might have happened&mdash;life is
+      too short to record that. So you see my being in Warsaw is really of no
+      danger to your father and brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I see&mdash;I see!&rdquo; answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now.
+      The door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The
+      guard, in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting
+      the length of the train. &ldquo;But it was not on account of that that we asked
+      Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
+      Martin. It is required of them&mdash;a sort of family tradition. It is
+      their business in life&mdash;almost their pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my business in life&mdash;almost my pleasure,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is there no one at home&mdash;in England&mdash;that you ought to
+      think of?&rdquo; in an odd, sharp voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody,&rdquo; he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+      respecting himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her stood a
+      carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no corridor
+      carriages. Two minutes now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must not be seen together on the platform,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am only going
+      to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old servants
+      whom I go to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for warning me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go,&rdquo; he added, after a moment's pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is so much to say,&rdquo; she said, half to herself. &ldquo;There is so much to
+      say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back. He
+      was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
+      eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right&mdash;whether there
+      was much to say&mdash;or nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE SENATORSKA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Miss Julie Mangles, &ldquo;in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+      one's hand on the true heart of the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's as may be, Jooly,&rdquo; replied her brother, &ldquo;but I take it that the
+      hearts of the women go to the Senatorska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
+      the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
+      their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright
+      images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a picture-gallery
+      of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to and fro with curved
+      backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the mark of eighteen hundred
+      years of persecution. No Christian would assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew
+      would be a Polish Jew if he could possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must
+      not leave the country, may not even quit his native town, unless it suits
+      a paternal government that he should go elsewhere. He has no personal
+      liberty, and may not exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall
+      wear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, &ldquo;write a paper on the Jewish question in
+      this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+      right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his
+      tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on the Semitic
+      question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a town-hall,
+      provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seen the Senatorska, Netty?&rdquo; he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+      Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go out into the Faubourg,&rdquo; her uncle explained, &ldquo;and just turn to the
+      left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
+      out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down&mdash;as
+      the paper itself recorded&mdash;the hot impressions of the moment,
+      gathered after a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their
+      impressions served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers
+      vividness to accuracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+      shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
+      and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
+      find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
+      Bond Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
+      Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest her
+      in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski&mdash;that weak
+      dreamer&mdash;built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
+      shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was passing
+      them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in the wares
+      of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of surprise, to
+      find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the Prince Martin
+      Bukaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid you did not remember me,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;You looked straight
+      at me, and did not seem to recognize me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+      should I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and then
+      looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+      remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. &ldquo;One meets a
+      great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find it
+      so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad,&rdquo; answered Martin, &ldquo;that you do not meet many people that you
+      like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people,&rdquo; urged Netty, in some
+      concern; &ldquo;I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind. Do
+      you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
+      kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
+      in yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
+      that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+      descriptive of a shrinking humility. &ldquo;Why should I? I have done nothing to
+      deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind&mdash;my
+      uncle and aunt&mdash;everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder
+      why it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell her,
+      and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could&mdash;if he dared. He had
+      never met anybody quite like Netty&mdash;so spontaneous and innocent and
+      easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
+      little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
+      answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had a
+      human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from under
+      her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes were
+      dark, almost as violets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ought I to be here?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Going about the streets alone, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not alone,&rdquo; answered Martin, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but&mdash;perhaps I ought to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In America, you know,&rdquo; said the voice from under the parasol, &ldquo;girls are
+      allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to be
+      careful, is it not?&mdash;to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
+      France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
+      the custom in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
+      that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes about
+      the streets as they do in England or America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can show you the best shops,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;such as they are. This is
+      Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good thing
+      I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love them,&rdquo; answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
+      next shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would naturally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea
+      in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of you to say that,&rdquo; said Netty, in a voice half-afraid,
+      half-reproachful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes,&rdquo; answered Martin, gayly.
+      He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with
+      Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
+      persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
+      this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
+      good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, &ldquo;I am much
+      interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done such
+      great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles&mdash;and the
+      poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nobles have come to great grief in Poland&mdash;that is all,&rdquo; replied
+      Martin, with a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is so sad,&rdquo; said Netty, with a shake of the head; &ldquo;but I am sure
+      it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
+      interested in Poland&mdash;you and your sister and your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are supposed to be,&rdquo; admitted Martin. &ldquo;But no one cares for Poland
+      now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of, and,
+      in England and America, Poland is forgotten now&mdash;and her history,
+      which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am sure you are wrong there,&rdquo; said Netty, earnestly. &ldquo;I know a
+      great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; asked Martin, looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, with downcast eyes. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; she said, after a pause,
+      with a sort of effort, &ldquo;we must not stand in front of this shop any
+      longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, &ldquo;as it is a
+      Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a
+      window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you will
+      not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in Warsaw
+      where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you must
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite serious,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must fight with what weapons we have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, indicating the shops, &ldquo;these people, but not you. You
+      are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
+      anything from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because there is nothing to take,&rdquo; laughed Martin, gayly; &ldquo;we were ruined
+      long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when my father
+      was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not either; so I am
+      a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry!&rdquo; she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short
+      sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped,
+      and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he
+      was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He
+      came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin&mdash;his
+      left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?&rdquo; he said to
+      Netty. &ldquo;I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if
+      you will permit it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+      Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not the
+      way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty desired
+      him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret
+      possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the flower-shop
+      kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a train
+      of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without
+      speaking. It was against his principles altogether. &ldquo;Never be silent with
+      a woman,&rdquo; he often said. &ldquo;She will only misconstrue it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was odd that I should meet you at that moment,&rdquo; he said, at length,
+      for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the
+      initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively
+      the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and
+      laughed. &ldquo;I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you at
+      a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if I
+      could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you, would
+      it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very kind of you,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;to think of me at the race-meeting
+      the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so interested in
+      the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely hair, and I think
+      her face is so interesting&mdash;a face with a history, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, rather shortly, &ldquo;Wanda is a nice girl.&rdquo; He did not
+      seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the prince,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the old one, I mean&mdash;for this one,
+      Prince Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;quite a boy,&rdquo; replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back
+      over his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had
+      first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so sad that they are ruined&mdash;if they are really ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no doubt whatever about that,&rdquo; answered Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Netty, who was practical, &ldquo;could nothing induce him&mdash;the
+      young prince, I mean&mdash;to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+      accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates and
+      recover his position?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+      sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world
+      like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of
+      others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden&mdash;by
+      the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an
+      occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+      lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He will
+      never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory life. He
+      has too much history behind him, which is a state of things never quite
+      understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has not got it in
+      him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities, and Siberia&mdash;his
+      certain destination&mdash;is not a good mise-en-scene for your dream. No,
+      you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings here, though it is
+      natural that you should seek the ever-evasive remedy&mdash;another
+      privilege of youth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk as if you were so very old,&rdquo; said Netty, reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very, very old,&rdquo; he replied, with a laugh. &ldquo;And there is no remedy
+      for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,&rdquo; answered
+      Netty, lightly. &ldquo;I think you are quite capable of taking care of
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of evolving my own dreams?&rdquo; he inquired. But she made no answer, and
+      did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know so little,&rdquo; she said, after a pause, &ldquo;so very little of Poland or
+      Polish history. I suppose you know everything&mdash;you and Mr. Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine of
+      knowledge, while I&mdash;I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+      everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there is
+      a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+      successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not
+      prescribe for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know him sufficiently well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Besides, he requires no
+      sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+      satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is that so?&rdquo; he inquired. &ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+      believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+      interested in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      JOSEPH'S STORY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he had
+      said, &ldquo;to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect harmony.&rdquo;
+       He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at the Cukiernia
+      Lourse&mdash;a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the Cracow
+      Faubourg&mdash;which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and
+      there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love with
+      Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In her
+      presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say. But
+      afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It takes
+      years off one's life,&rdquo; said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner, as they
+      sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from the
+      second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some chance he
+      was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a Gallic love of
+      street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the window waiting for
+      the clock to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, &ldquo;and we can make our entry together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows was
+      well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into the
+      square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man arrive
+      at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following
+      Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the
+      hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took his
+      coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave them
+      into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is to take
+      charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant. When he
+      entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found the party
+      assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets at her
+      waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were talking
+      together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of the
+      hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles,
+      bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking at him with suspicion,&rdquo; admitted Deulin, &ldquo;but not on that
+      account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not I
+      who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was
+      looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you
+      as lively when he came in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not what I should call a vivacious man,&rdquo; said Mangles, looking dismally
+      across the room. &ldquo;There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he came
+      in perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, in a low voice. &ldquo;That is bad. There is usually
+      something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What beautiful violets,&rdquo; said he to Netty. &ldquo;Surely Warsaw did not produce
+      those?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they are pretty,&rdquo; answered Netty, making a little movement to show
+      the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her waist
+      was very round and slender. &ldquo;They came from that shop in the Senatorska or
+      the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I think, was the
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, slowly. &ldquo;Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+      violets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when dinner
+      was announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the
+      subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner, who sat
+      next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of steamer
+      gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted theory that
+      quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather labored
+      ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times as they
+      are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and to enjoy
+      themselves according to their lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information respecting
+      Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?&rdquo; he said,
+      noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+      traversed the whole length of the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?&rdquo;
+       asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few
+      chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress
+      meetings&mdash;and I may publish,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be in the interests of humanity,&rdquo; murmured Deulin, politely. &ldquo;It
+      would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest happy,
+      seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, &ldquo;that
+      you dislike political women.&rdquo; Heaven knows how she knew it. &ldquo;But I am
+      afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort
+      of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the
+      people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their chief quality is gameness,&rdquo; said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think the
+      princess is delightful&mdash;do you not think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be a great many stories,&rdquo; went on Netty, &ldquo;connected with the
+      story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know&mdash;of
+      people's lives, I mean&mdash;of all they have attempted and have failed to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his
+      lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry heart
+      for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was listening,
+      with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was weighing them
+      with a greater nicety than experienced social experts are in the habit of
+      exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was talking hard, as usual,
+      and listening at the same time; which is not by any means an easy thing to
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always think,&rdquo; continued Netty, &ldquo;that the princess has a story. There
+      must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere
+      terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced at
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+      utterances. &ldquo;Perhaps she is thinking of her brother&mdash;Prince Martin.
+      He is always getting into scrapes&mdash;ce jeune homme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your romantic heart,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;that makes you see so much that
+      perhaps does not exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a story,&rdquo; put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep voice,
+      &ldquo;I can tell you one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?&rdquo; began Mangles,
+      looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I believe to be the truth,&rdquo; assented the Frenchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story,&rdquo; continued Joseph, &ldquo;but they
+      won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city who was
+      like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country could be
+      made a great country again, as it was in the past&mdash;dreamed that the
+      peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into human
+      beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be an
+      independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament, she
+      would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France and
+      England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the treaty, they
+      would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew, would keep his
+      word. Comes from having a romantic heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against
+      this danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My country,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+      breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own
+      father and whip him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing
+      the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever heard the Polish hymn?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+      story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and across,
+      in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him dyspepsia this
+      time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+      magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of
+      Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise
+      our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jooly&mdash;pass the mustard,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a
+      sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+      Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked
+      with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of wrath,
+      cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us,
+      O Lord, our free country!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of the
+      beef.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the first verse, and the last,&rdquo; he said at length. &ldquo;And all
+      Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+      forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.
+      They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on
+      the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when they
+      came out&mdash;women and children, old men and maidens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
+      say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman, but for
+      once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal acclaim. For
+      no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather impatiently at her
+      brother, who was always surprising her by knowing more than she had given
+      him credit for, and by interesting her, despite herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dreamer was arrested,&rdquo; he continued, pushing away his plate, &ldquo;on some
+      trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
+      warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give his own
+      personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all formalities and
+      futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great difficulty obtained
+      permission to follow. They were young&mdash;last of the family. Better
+      that they should be the last&mdash;thought the paternal government of
+      Russia. But she had influential relatives&mdash;so she went. She found him
+      working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of bringing doctor's
+      certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill him. Could he not
+      obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the body-servant of the
+      governor of his district&mdash;man who had risen from the ranks&mdash;and
+      was refused. So he went to the mines again&mdash;and died. The wife had in
+      her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to escape. Then
+      the worst happened&mdash;she had a son, in prison, and all the care and
+      forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The pestilential
+      race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that prison brat had
+      been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was not beaten yet. They
+      took the child from his mother, and she fretted and died. He had nobody
+      now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but his foster-father&mdash;that
+      great and parental government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice story,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+      brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+      Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was
+      extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit
+      of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must
+      keep account of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
+      telling than the reading of it would require.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes,&rdquo; said the host, &ldquo;and take some
+      yourself. Story cannot interest you&mdash;must be ancient history. Well&mdash;after
+      all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped
+      up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was
+      historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that
+      humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another
+      private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who
+      he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the
+      dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in
+      Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
+      and dogged eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man's loose in Poland now,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the end of the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+      person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
+      so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative&mdash;such men,
+      at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette from
+      time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible reason,
+      which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without the asking&mdash;namely,
+      that she was not going to allow men to claim the monopoly of tobacco.
+      There was the other reason, which prompts so many actions in these blatant
+      times&mdash;the unconscious reason that, in going counter to ancient
+      prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt for men, and meted out
+      a bitter punishment to the entire race for having consistently and
+      steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this evening,
+      upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over their
+      tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+      apartment&mdash;a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+      articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+      passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+      went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary to
+      custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre of
+      the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in the
+      passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china stove
+      opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and as she
+      did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung to. She
+      was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the room.
+      The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way cautiously
+      to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak&mdash;to ask who was
+      there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in books, but
+      it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself dumb until
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound.
+      Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive
+      persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small
+      slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the
+      door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve.
+      Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some one
+      infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she knew
+      by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one hand on
+      the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door. The light
+      from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment he
+      was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his
+      hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, mademoiselle!&rdquo; he said, in broken English. &ldquo;Then Heaven is kind&mdash;Heaven
+      is kind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing first
+      one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and Netty was
+      conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all her life she
+      had never known what it was to be really carried away until that moment.
+      She had never felt anything like it&mdash;had never seen a man like this&mdash;at
+      her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came,&rdquo; he said&mdash;and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+      see that no one approached&mdash;&ldquo;to see you, because I could not stay
+      away! You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can
+      love as well as a rich man&mdash;and perhaps better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go! you must go!&rdquo; said Netty. And yet she would have been sorry
+      if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is that the ebb
+      must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she recollected Joseph
+      Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if he had heard his own story
+      through the door of communication between Mangles' bedroom and the
+      dining-room. For the other door, from the salon to the bedroom, stood wide
+      open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I have only seen you once,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I have not. I have
+      seen you often. But the first time I saw you&mdash;at the races&mdash;was
+      enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go&mdash;you must go!&rdquo; whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now&mdash;for
+      five minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+      passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The streets
+      are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming to these
+      rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is the
+      tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I won't go
+      till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; whispered Netty, hurriedly. &ldquo;I will come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment. Secondly&mdash;it
+      is to be feared&mdash;she wanted to go. It was the high-water mark. This
+      man carried her there and swept her off her feet&mdash;this working-man,
+      in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and get a cloak,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will meet you by the great fountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart
+      beating as it had never beaten before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that twisted
+      his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the
+      chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when
+      Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a near thing,&rdquo; he said to himself in Russian, which language he
+      had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. &ldquo;And I found
+      the only way out of that hideous danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+      Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+      confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+      which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it, and,
+      with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later he
+      lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+      moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
+      couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff&mdash;for a
+      better motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's
+      brief summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern
+      plains lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was one
+      of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
+      autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose she will come,&rdquo; he said in his mind, watching the gate through
+      which Netty must enter the gardens. &ldquo;It matters little if she does not.
+      For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must leave that to
+      the inspiration of the moment&mdash;and the moonlight. She is pretty
+      enough to make it easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards him&mdash;not
+      hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first clandestine
+      meeting&mdash;but with her head thrown back, and with an air of having
+      business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely to
+      attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going back at once,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was very wrong to come. But you
+      frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
+      come, and despise me for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promised,&rdquo; he whispered, eagerly; &ldquo;you promised me five minutes. Out
+      of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw soon, and
+      I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the memory of
+      these five minutes to last me all my life&mdash;these five minutes and
+      that minute&mdash;that one minute in the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
+      bench, and raised it to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going away, too,&rdquo; she said. She was thinking also of that one
+      minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water mark.
+      &ldquo;We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting here till my
+      uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is not a business man,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested. &ldquo;What
+      is he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know whether
+      he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in America,
+      or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that we are
+      going on to St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without seeing
+      you? And the others&mdash;Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman, Cartoner&mdash;are
+      they going to St. Petersburg, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because a
+      solitary promenader was passing close by them. &ldquo;They never tell me either.
+      But . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to
+      see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see into
+      my heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+      waited for her to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;Why&mdash;tell me why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly,
+      and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill which
+      came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which Kosmaroff
+      trusted he got back into the straight path again at one bound&mdash;the
+      sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any wise man lose
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for you that he stays here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What a fool I was not to see
+      that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he has found it quite easy to do it,&rdquo; answered Netty, with an odd
+      laugh. &ldquo;No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is clever
+      and beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that to please me,&rdquo; she said at last. And her voice was quite
+      different&mdash;it was low and uneven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than you
+      in all the world. Heaven knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had
+      no faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who is there in Warsaw,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;whom any one could dream of
+      comparing with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner
+      compares with me&mdash;and even you must know that she is prettier than I
+      am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know it,&rdquo; protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. &ldquo;There is
+      no one in all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty,&rdquo; said Netty, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember I
+      saw them together at the races.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They knew each other in London,&rdquo; said Netty. &ldquo;They knew each other when I
+      first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
+      here since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
+      his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
+      Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
+      salon a few minutes earlier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it that he has fallen in love&mdash;or is it that he desires
+      information which she alone can give him?&rdquo; he asked at length. Which was,
+      after all, the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment
+      and in that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose hastily
+      and drew her cloak round her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I have been here much more than five minutes. Why
+      did you let me stay? Oh&mdash;why did you make me come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will come again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now that you have come once&mdash;you
+      cannot be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at
+      the foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
+      You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair, your
+      aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak French?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and she does not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good&mdash;then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye&mdash;and
+      remember that I love you&mdash;always, always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
+      side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
+      scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all fair&mdash;all fair,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+      convince himself. &ldquo;Besides&mdash;has the world been fair to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LIGHT TOUCH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty, having
+      a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way to that
+      weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions. She was not
+      old-fashioned in that respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first time
+      in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might do or
+      say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before. No one
+      in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That which the
+      lenient may call a school-girl escapade&mdash;a mere flight to the garden
+      for a few minutes&mdash;was scarcely sufficient to account for this
+      feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some
+      wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although Miss
+      Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long, innocent-looking
+      Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still some views of value to
+      be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+      soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced
+      with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave.
+      Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will come down to the door with you,&rdquo; said Deulin, in the passage. He
+      was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable instincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+      rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his hat
+      was back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a moonlight night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will walk with you part of the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+      hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to think
+      it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each other too
+      well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin, light
+      overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack, weighing
+      and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the Madrid Stick,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. &ldquo;You were with me when I
+      bought it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when you used it,&rdquo; added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he led
+      the way to the door. &ldquo;Generally keep your coat in the hall?&rdquo; he inquired,
+      casually, as they descended the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath
+      the brim of his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full and
+      almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without shadow
+      at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the right
+      instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg,
+      which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;let
+      us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some queer
+      towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense, so silent,
+      so unobservant&mdash;who sees nothing and knows nothing and never laughs,
+      but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the piece de
+      resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service, the typical
+      Frenchman; all shrugs and gesticulations and mustache&mdash;of politeness
+      that is so insincere&mdash;of a heart that is so unstable. Ah! these
+      national characteristics of comic journalism&mdash;how the stupid world
+      trips over them on to its vulgar face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker, with
+      a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was unnatural to
+      one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the streets whenever
+      he walked there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in a
+      narrow street now&mdash;between the backs of high houses&mdash;and had
+      left the life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin
+      turned once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street.
+      He released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in
+      an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand in
+      an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening for
+      footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing the
+      direction from which they had just come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any coming from the other side?&rdquo; asked Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the doorway,&rdquo; whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+      steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+      Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+      pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow doorway that
+      had the air of being little used. The long blade of his sword-stick, no
+      thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's sheath-knife, and
+      narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. &ldquo;But you
+      need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight, and
+      so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+      scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know there
+      is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal life.
+      And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across the
+      pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with the flat
+      of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like a flash. He
+      ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together, and did not
+      know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and planted a kick in
+      the small of his adversary's back, sending him staggering against the
+      wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries of &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; and &ldquo;La!&rdquo;
+       breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the fencing-floor&mdash;performed
+      a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a marvel of agility and
+      quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm, hand, head, and leg;
+      forward, back-handed, from above and below. He never awaited their attack&mdash;but
+      attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who said that the surest way to defend
+      is to attack?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men. The
+      sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness, from
+      the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the air was
+      not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying note of
+      steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to the
+      opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow. Without
+      turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even if they are armed,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;they won't fire. They don't want
+      the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not suit
+      my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both have knives,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but they cannot get near me. Stay where you
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Haven't had a chance yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice before
+      in all the years that they had known each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the best,&rdquo; he said, half to himself, &ldquo;of dealing with a man who
+      keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner&mdash;here they come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went out to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+      Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their returning
+      to the attack&mdash;thus, with a cold-blooded courage&mdash;showed that
+      they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran
+      forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he could
+      not lay aside the little flourish&mdash;the quick, stiff pose&mdash;of the
+      fencer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+      lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further,
+      as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in
+      as if into a cheese.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila, mon ami,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had made
+      him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered on
+      the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck eyes at
+      his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly curling up,
+      and he had no control over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Deulin, in Polish, &ldquo;for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round towards
+      Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man turned and
+      ran, followed closely by his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones, and
+      came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully dropped
+      it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a muddy
+      splash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never use that hand again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Poor devil! I only hope he
+      was well paid for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you an old envelope?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of
+      the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall. And
+      Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore it
+      into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright steel
+      with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt, where the
+      government mark and the word &ldquo;Toledo&rdquo; were deeply engraved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless I keep it clean it sticks,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;And if you want it at
+      all, you want it in a hurry&mdash;like a woman's heart, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade back
+      into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure that
+      nothing was left there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The light was good,&rdquo; he said, appreciatively, &ldquo;and the ground favorable
+      for&mdash;for the autumn manoeuvres.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he broke into a gay laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let us go back into the more frequented streets. This
+      back way was not a success&mdash;only proves that it never does to turn
+      tail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know,&rdquo; asked Cartoner, &ldquo;that this was coming off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at the
+      Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were followed.
+      So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni, vidi, vici&mdash;you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while he
+      made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought we might escape by the quieter streets,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;For it is
+      our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be. Neither
+      could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each other's
+      business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many chances
+      and changes, to be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying
+      that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was like you, to come like that and take the risk,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and say
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will,
+      five years hence&mdash;ten years hence&mdash;when the time comes. I will
+      tell you then why I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can only be one reason why you did it,&rdquo; muttered the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool&mdash;the very best sort
+      of fool&mdash;and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to
+      me as I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to fight some one to-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Some one of the very
+      first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things to-night&mdash;and
+      the angels in heaven are talking of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky. But
+      there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were
+      sincere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming
+      in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately behind
+      them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant, alighting
+      quickly, came towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+      that,&rdquo; he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. &ldquo;You, Cartoner!
+      What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been dining with Mangles,&rdquo; explained Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,&rdquo; added
+      Cartoner. &ldquo;But we think we are going home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be on the spree,&rdquo; said Martin, with a laugh in his voice, and
+      none in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are,&rdquo; answered Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. &ldquo;Come&mdash;your
+      shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a
+      ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do it,&rdquo; whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the garden
+      of the Bukaty Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and
+      passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown
+      to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds that
+      sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+      house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+      though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. &ldquo;You find me in
+      sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception&mdash;a
+      semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an appearance.
+      It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till midnight. Mind
+      those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, for a few minutes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, and seeing a movement of
+      dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is better,&rdquo; he said, in an undertone. &ldquo;It will put them completely off
+      the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the
+      first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said the young prince, &ldquo;into the drawing-room. I see they have
+      left the lights on there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow
+      his guests to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holloa!&rdquo; he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+      conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+      flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back again already?&rdquo; asked Martin, in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda. &ldquo;There were some people there he did not want to
+      meet, so we came away again at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought they could not possibly be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They got there,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;by some ill chance, from Petersburg,
+      just in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not such an ill chance, after all,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;since it gives us
+      the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is in his study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rather want to see him,&rdquo; said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;He will be glad to see you. It will
+      cheer him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly and
+      simply&mdash;so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans of
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+      warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+      brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+      Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and she
+      said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look at
+      him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with
+      quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his
+      habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wrong,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I said that fate could be hampered by
+      action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+      word &ldquo;here&rdquo; he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+      look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs no
+      telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to those
+      who have not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A clear understanding,&rdquo; he said abruptly, recalling her own words. &ldquo;That
+      is your creed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door with
+      deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done something
+      wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the thought, who can!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made another mistake,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Have been acting on it for years. I
+      thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an embassy&mdash;of
+      a viceroyalty, perhaps&mdash;when I was quite young, and thought the world
+      was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you. If it comes,
+      well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+      understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it doesn't come&rdquo;&mdash;he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb
+      that hung quiescent at his side&mdash;&ldquo;well and good. I shall have lived.
+      I shall have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the
+      happiest man in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+      profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+      been known to say more than he meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never has been anybody else,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;All that side of life
+      was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it, at Lady
+      Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world&mdash;you had come
+      across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there. At first I
+      did not believe. I thought it was a mistake&mdash;that we should drift
+      apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then that you
+      would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it&mdash;fought
+      against it&mdash;tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to
+      him since he entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never can be anybody else,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How could there be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her breath.
+      She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as this one
+      fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth&mdash;that he was
+      thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can carry.
+      For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of love is
+      infinitely harder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew from the first,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that there is no hope. Whichever
+      way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her eyes to his at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew?&rdquo; she asked, speaking for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the history of Poland,&rdquo; he said, quietly. &ldquo;The country must have
+      your father&mdash;your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up
+      Poland&mdash;you know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+      together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+      absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to
+      life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which
+      raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you asked me,&rdquo; said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      should do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would one
+      day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you. There
+      would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it&mdash;and that would be
+      the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it so delicate as that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the frailest thing in the world&mdash;and the strongest,&rdquo; he
+      answered, with his thoughtful smile. &ldquo;It is a very delicate sort of&mdash;thought,
+      which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
+      succeed in keeping it even passably intact&mdash;and not one couple in a
+      million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from the
+      outer world, but from themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you learn all that?&rdquo; she asked, looking at him with her shrewd,
+      smiling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You taught me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a terribly high ideal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+      compromises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With its conscience,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;And look at the result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are good,&rdquo; she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+      gravity, &ldquo;as well as concise&mdash;and rather masterful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is clear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that a man who persuades a woman to marry against
+      her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is seeking her
+      unhappiness and his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But you ask for a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask for love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; she said, going past that question, &ldquo;no obstacles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if one such object&mdash;quite a small one&mdash;should be found?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they must be content with love alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They seemed
+      to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so many
+      hasten and such numbers fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a way,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;of putting into words&mdash;so few words&mdash;what
+      others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they did&mdash;there
+      would, perhaps, be no marriages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There would be no unhappy ones,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is better to be content with love alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Content,&rdquo; was his sole answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their moments
+      were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten. Cartoner
+      had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour earlier, and his
+      life had been in peril&mdash;he had been down to the depths and up to the
+      heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that is your creed,&rdquo; she said at length. &ldquo;And there is no compromise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+      with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women
+      have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the
+      backbone of human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+      length of the long, lamp-lit room. &ldquo;You are strong&mdash;you are strong
+      for two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine, steely
+      strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime of which
+      the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of seeking
+      always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they had left
+      untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if two people had between them,&rdquo; she suggested, wonderingly, &ldquo;that
+      with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure
+      they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew that
+      they could never have more, could they be happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if they had to go on all their lives&mdash;and if one lived in London
+      and the other in Warsaw&mdash;Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They could still be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she&mdash;alone at one end of Europe&mdash;&rdquo; asked Wanda, with her
+      worldly-wise searching into detail&mdash;&ldquo;if she saw slowly vanishing
+      those small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care,
+      perhaps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could still be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some misfortune,
+      and felt lonely and disappointed&mdash;and there was no one near to&mdash;to
+      take care of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could still be happy&mdash;if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he knew that she loved him,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were
+      tears in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you may know that,&rdquo; she said, suddenly descending from the uncertain
+      heights of generality. &ldquo;You may be quite sure of that. If that is what you
+      want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She looked
+      at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs at his
+      temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely protecting
+      and dimly maternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to go away from Warsaw,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I would rather you went
+      even if you say&mdash;that you are afraid to stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; she added, with her head held high, &ldquo;they would not believe you
+      if you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise you,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;not to run any risks, to take every care.
+      But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+      teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to make you a promise in return. It would give
+      me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to remember it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be
+      speaking unnecessarily loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise you,&rdquo; said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, &ldquo;never to marry
+      anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+      talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the
+      clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To your tents, O Israel!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+      Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had
+      laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;remember me in your prayers to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WHITE FEATHER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to
+      seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+      interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+      thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+      masses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view, it
+      would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the least
+      harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man is he who
+      stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat without
+      proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds
+      out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no
+      catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder
+      which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+      cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and
+      women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the
+      unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism.
+      There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat
+      alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the
+      night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he
+      would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He was
+      thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there came,
+      moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
+      fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
+      ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
+      perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And in
+      the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the lives of
+      individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of affairs
+      that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which were affecting
+      the lives of those around him. More than any other do Frenchmen herd
+      together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in
+      Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move. He had a
+      friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the
+      Jerozolimska. This lady was a French Jewess, who had by some undercurrent
+      of Judaism drifted from Paris to Warsaw again and found herself once more
+      among her own people. The western world is ignorant of the strength of
+      Jewry in Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop. He
+      took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which Englishmen
+      have happily ceased to wear by day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One likes,&rdquo; he said to the stout Jewess, &ldquo;to talk one's own tongue in a
+      foreign land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+      Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
+      past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the day,
+      and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower at the
+      corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in his
+      buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
+      pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+      writing-table. &ldquo;Ah! if you were only idle, as I am&rdquo;&mdash;he paused, with
+      a sharp, little sigh&mdash;&ldquo;if you only could be idle, how much happier
+      you would be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Frenchman,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, without looking up, &ldquo;thinks that noise
+      means happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are happy&mdash;you pretend to happiness?&rdquo; inquired Deulin,
+      sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+      cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+      this morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't thank me&mdash;thank the gods,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with a sudden
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, &ldquo;what do you
+      want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I want?&rdquo; he inquired, innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When you
+      are most idle you are most occupied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it
+      with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+      towards the Column&mdash;the shady side, after the street has been watered&mdash;that
+      my soul desires,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When are you going?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought I
+      had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+      indefinitely for&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the upheaval,&rdquo; explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning&mdash;&rdquo; he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay
+      aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful
+      attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and
+      had his being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning I picked up a scrap of information.&rdquo; He drew towards him a
+      newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin. The
+      design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross, Deulin
+      threw the paper across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; no one knows that,&rdquo; replied Deulin. &ldquo;It is one of the very few
+      mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps,
+      with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content
+      to be known only by a mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+      which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a
+      pause. &ldquo;One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an upheaval.
+      But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo for many
+      years here. Suppose&mdash;suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their
+      own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the
+      creating of an opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anarchy?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ladies of the party call it Nihilism,&rdquo; replied the Frenchman, with an
+      inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay
+      a lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people. They
+      waited thirty years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And struck too hastily, after all,&rdquo; commented Deulin. &ldquo;Bukaty would not
+      link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But
+      there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait
+      longer, and are therefore less patient&mdash;men of a more modern stamp,
+      without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in
+      their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to
+      his lights,&rdquo; interrupted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! since you say so,&rdquo; returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+      &ldquo;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bon sang,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying. &ldquo;He
+      is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train of
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you know of Kosmaroff?&rdquo; he said, studying his companion's face. &ldquo;You
+      know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where is
+      Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw,&rdquo; guessed Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin&mdash;towards London, by the same
+      token.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on
+      the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That parishioner is in London, too,&rdquo; he said, in his own tongue&mdash;and
+      the word means more in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the drawing
+      to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trying to get me out of Warsaw,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Giving me a graceful chance of
+      showing the white feather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+      guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force of
+      habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the time
+      of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train at that
+      instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of Kosmaroff,
+      and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The white feather,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is an emblem that neither you nor I need
+      trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a
+      national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly
+      independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the
+      tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of envy,
+      or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on the
+      table, &ldquo;here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling&mdash;here, in Warsaw.
+      Here&mdash;in Berlin or in London&mdash;is the man with the match that
+      will set it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in
+      the shadow that it casts before it, for the second&mdash;no, for the third
+      time in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done
+      so when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know
+      the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since your
+      humor is so odd. You stay or you go&mdash;but remember that it is in the
+      interests of others that you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of others?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go
+      or stay, as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+      deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing
+      that decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go,&rdquo; he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair with
+      a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had observed,
+      when he was most idle that this gentleman had important business in hand.
+      He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to be supposed, never
+      set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed that he must have
+      played the game in earnest at one time, must have thrown down his stake
+      and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no use for his gain, which is
+      a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you are right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And, at all events, you will see the
+      last of this sad city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+      matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+      superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
+      and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
+      this period in European history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I smell,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in the
+      street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret which
+      one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he added, with a sudden gravity, &ldquo;there is nothing in life
+      worth making a secret of&mdash;except one's income. There are many reasons
+      why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should happen&mdash;anything&mdash;anywhere&mdash;we
+      keep each other advised. Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Usual cipher,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My salutations to Lady Orlay,&rdquo; said Deulin, with a reflective nod. &ldquo;That
+      woman who can keep a secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you had none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows the secret&mdash;of my income,&rdquo; answered the Frenchman. &ldquo;Tell
+      her&mdash;no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+      leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well, do
+      as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have we met
+      and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired rooms! We
+      have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael, and have none
+      to care when we furl our tents and steal away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing but
+      the hired furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police will be in here five minutes after you are out,&rdquo; he said,
+      curtly. &ldquo;You have no message&mdash;&rdquo; He paused to pick up from the floor a
+      petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+      looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: &ldquo;No
+      message to any one in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You
+      are hard, Cartoner&mdash;hard as nails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his possessions&mdash;already
+      furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that he was loath to go;
+      for he was turning his back on danger, and few men worthy of the name do
+      that with alacrity, whatever their nationality may be; for gameness is not
+      solely a British virtue, as is supposed in English public schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+      others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      COEUR VOLANT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central European
+      Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If rain is
+      coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The clouds
+      gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is done. For
+      some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the trees of the
+      Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole world was dusty
+      and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain. It had come at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was ushered
+      into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices. He did an
+      unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing that he did
+      not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as she entered
+      the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with a sort of
+      shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were dreaming,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo; he answered, fervently. &ldquo;Dreams and white hairs&mdash;No,
+      I was listening to the rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+      daring her to doubt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda&mdash;it is gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards the
+      large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in the
+      fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless, slow
+      persistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you not shut that door?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+      that strikes&mdash;that hopeless rain&mdash;a northern autumn evening!
+      There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a
+      woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and
+      drive in a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+      doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
+      glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched him
+      with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she knew
+      that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden anger,
+      or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow of
+      uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew that.
+      She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was in
+      reality about his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
+      her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. &ldquo;That is
+      more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
+      see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know if it will amuse you,&rdquo; answered Wanda, in her energetic
+      way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, &ldquo;but Mr.
+      Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
+      to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
+      same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Separately they are amusing enough,&rdquo; he said, slowly, &ldquo;but they do not
+      mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So has my father,&rdquo; put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young country
+      events move by jerks&mdash;that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+      somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are above that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of Poland,&rdquo;
+       she answered, gravely. &ldquo;They give everything. I have not much to give, you
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you have what every woman has&mdash;to sacrifice upon some
+      altar or another&mdash;your happiness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at him.
+      He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of that, at
+      least, she was sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happiness, or a hope of happiness,&rdquo; he went on, reflectively. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If you
+      gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
+      remembered by women, and very seldom by men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is common enough?&rdquo; he asked, absent-mindedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope! connais pas!&rdquo; he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. &ldquo;You must ask some
+      one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is why I am
+      so gay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all,&rdquo; he went on, as if seeking
+      to explain his own humor. &ldquo;Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
+      existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
+      fire to sit by. That is why I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
+      had something to tell her&mdash;that he had come for no other purpose.
+      And, that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that
+      it was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care
+      showed her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to
+      his character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
+      middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness of
+      younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart was
+      sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the world a
+      quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long and grim
+      a family history as the world has known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not feel lonely in this great room?&rdquo; he asked, looking round at
+      the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
+      that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think not,&rdquo; answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the room,
+      wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed down by the
+      sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts, usually
+      considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a feminine way of
+      skirting a subject&mdash;of walking round, as it were, and contemplating
+      it from various side issues, as if to find out the best approach to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst of Warsaw,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is its dulness. The theatres are
+      deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+      none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
+      amuse one's self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+      himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was sordid,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;One wondered how the performers could be
+      content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such an
+      undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
+      interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile&mdash;like
+      cracking nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away.
+      It was so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that
+      he must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
+      was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
+      they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
+      usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
+      had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
+      others who received the applause&mdash;the nut-cracker girl who
+      pirouetted, and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled
+      condescendingly. But the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing
+      at all, and quite forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression
+      of his patient face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one
+      was looking at him&mdash;which was only the truth. Then, when the applause
+      was over, he turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired&mdash;his
+      day's work done. And, I don't know why, I thought&mdash;of Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
+      have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+      thoughts, &ldquo;the world would get on very well without its talkers. No great
+      man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had to
+      tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose
+      to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his monologue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+      alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had any
+      doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in Wanda's
+      face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to know the
+      meaning of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am very glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. &ldquo;It is a
+      good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at half
+      an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which you
+      have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution, is
+      Cartoner's repose of manner&mdash;for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
+      not a devout man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have done what I asked you to do,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;some time ago,
+      and I am very grateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some time ago? It was only yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it? It seems more than that,&rdquo; said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his head
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
+      quite suddenly,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;So he packed up and went. He had not much
+      to pack. We travel light&mdash;he and I. We have no despatch-boxes or
+      note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember and forget
+      in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Oh! I do my best,&rdquo; he said, lightly. &ldquo;But if you desire to forget
+      anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering and
+      contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that he was
+      short-sighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think I will wait for the Mangles,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Especially Julie.
+      I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and
+      contemplated the fire thoughtfully. &ldquo;You never talk politics, I know. With
+      the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of politicians. It is no
+      affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted Warsaw&mdash;you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of discretion,&rdquo;
+       said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found us
+      all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her Netty&mdash;well,
+      because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. &ldquo;Have I concealed my
+      admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+      concealment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you have overdone the contempt,&rdquo; suggested Wanda. &ldquo;She is
+      probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+      test.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Deulin, in an explanatory way, &ldquo;Cartoner may have had
+      reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are the
+      only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people in the
+      passport-office&mdash;and the others, whose business it is to watch us
+      all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought it
+      all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So I took
+      it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by Cartoner. I
+      have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw. Cartoner
+      merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so he went at
+      once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he ignored the
+      little social trammels which the majority of mankind know much better than
+      they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He was too discreet
+      to call and say good-bye&mdash;knowing the ways of servants in this
+      country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by post,
+      knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+      pleasant laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wondering,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;why I am taking this unusual course. It is
+      not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his back.
+      It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
+      Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also, I
+      may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
+      to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At all events,&rdquo; said Wanda, shaking hands, &ldquo;you are cautious. You make no
+      promises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And therefore we break none,&rdquo; he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by Mr.
+      Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous and rather
+      shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles, standing well
+      in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting was over, and
+      then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as if he or she
+      were an assembly, he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to take
+      tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon to make
+      a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked two
+      cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to show
+      her independence&mdash;to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a&mdash;that
+      she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+      attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
+      sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
+      about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
+      foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
+      more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion that
+      they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of one of
+      the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+      tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
+      even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
+      on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
+      south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
+      knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in his
+      native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
+      Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
+      Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
+      variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
+      served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
+      it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
+      coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
+      run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those <i>articles
+      de luxe</i> which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There
+      is also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
+      shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a
+      large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a
+      white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
+      sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons of
+      his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
+      where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business, had
+      carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective brush,
+      which had last been used for red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
+      and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
+      respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on coster
+      carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge from it
+      later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants in
+      Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which tourists
+      are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of the fur and
+      feather of the country. There is also a small importation of American fur
+      to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers
+      from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy
+      work-people&mdash;men, women, and ancient children&mdash;also use this
+      door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the air again
+      after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship
+      with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women's
+      heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+      dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post is
+      nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian character
+      three words, which, being translated, read: &ldquo;The Brothers of Liberty.&rdquo; As
+      no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the Russian
+      characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would
+      necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one so
+      nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
+      would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
+      suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
+      afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that
+      hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's their lingo,&rdquo; said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+      emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the numbers
+      over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the furrier's
+      shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby imperilling
+      his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages from the Borough
+      Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece of his mind in the
+      choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse with man, and
+      received in turn winged words of such a forcible and original nature as to
+      send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's their lingo, right enough,&rdquo; said the captain, examining the tin
+      tablet a second time. &ldquo;That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+      nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+      critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-crowned
+      hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of disappointment. It
+      was not to come to such a house as this that he had put on what he called
+      his &ldquo;suit&rdquo;; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-cloth designed to be worn
+      as best in all climates and at all times. It was not in order to impress
+      such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that
+      he had unpacked from the state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and
+      of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of
+      Limehouse steeple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+      Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
+      signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the
+      threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron, who
+      looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name of Cable,&rdquo; said the captain, turning to expectorate on the pavement,
+      after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find themselves
+      on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards with an
+      interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name of Cable,&rdquo; repeated the captain. &ldquo;Dirty!&rdquo; he added, just by way of
+      inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
+      which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
+      aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave ahead!&rdquo; he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English he
+      knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
+      bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And he
+      stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was a small,
+      square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where discarded
+      bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a sparrow. The room
+      was full of men&mdash;six or seven foreign faces were turned towards the
+      new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was familiar to Captain
+      Cable. It was the face of the man known on the Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will be
+      remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
+      appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
+      man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no other
+      face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark man with
+      gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something magnetic in it.
+      Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward things. He picked out
+      the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at its possessor as if
+      measuring himself against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a chair, captain,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+      standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+      which had seen better days&mdash;and company&mdash;and smoking a
+      cigarette. He was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in
+      his business, and he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap
+      clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long
+      descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the
+      fine, clean, hard bone of a fighting race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
+      to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his &ldquo;suit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you speak German, captain?&rdquo; inquired Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sailed with a crew of Germans,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;I understand a bit, and I
+      know a few words. I know the German for d&mdash;n your eyes, and handy
+      words like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, &ldquo;we had better
+      continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+      dealing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+      stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have not much to say to Captain Cable,&rdquo; replied the man who seemed to
+      be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor voice,
+      and was what the French call <i>chetif</i> in appearance&mdash;a weak man,
+      fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is essential in the first place,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that we should
+      understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the smaller
+      of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he looked out
+      of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself quite
+      clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
+      entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
+      understands very little of what we are saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+      figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
+      who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,&rdquo; continued
+      the speaker. &ldquo;Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and verbal
+      agreements should be quite clear&mdash;the human memory is so liable to be
+      affected by circumstances&mdash;and should be repeated several times in
+      the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
+      period of nearly twenty years, Poland&mdash;is ready again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is only awaiting her opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body, which
+      owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a penny
+      bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker took up
+      the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his finger and
+      thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been justifiable. It was a
+      sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the
+      pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two nations represented in
+      that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history is a fascinating study,
+      especially for those who make it. And this quiet man had made a little in
+      his day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An opportunity is not an easy thing to define,&rdquo; he said at length. &ldquo;Any
+      event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
+      opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
+      would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about just
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
+      worst of blindness&mdash;the blindness of vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on the
+      frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
+      useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough&mdash;in print&mdash;and
+      ready enough to fight&mdash;in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
+      journalism&mdash;in England they have too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another opportunity would be a social upheaval,&rdquo; said the Russian,
+      drumming on the table with his slim fingers. &ldquo;The time has not come for
+      that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head&mdash;and that
+      we can offer to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I have heard that talk for the last ten
+      years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
+      waited till he had finished speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;that is all I have to propose to you&mdash;but this time it is
+      more than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+      succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+      world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
+      five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
+      amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have her
+      opportunity&mdash;and a good one&mdash;in a month from now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+      suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was about
+      to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience, paused, he
+      knew not why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think,&rdquo; said the other, in his smooth, even voice&mdash;&ldquo;one month from
+      now, after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
+      different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
+      nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
+      party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
+      affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
+      we seek the approval of no man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch for
+      the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the judgment of
+      any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five thousand roubles,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;And in exchange I give you the
+      date&mdash;so that Poland may be ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly as
+      he had lost it. &ldquo;I decline&mdash;for myself and for the whole of Poland.
+      We play a cleaner game than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights&mdash;if
+      I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you do
+      not give&mdash;I should take you by the throat and throw you out into the
+      street for daring to make such a proposal to me,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a deserter from a Cossack regiment,&rdquo; suggested the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To me,&rdquo; repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
+      at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
+      again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Cable,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;you and I have met before, and I learned
+      enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for you, and
+      these men no company for you. I am going&mdash;will you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm agreeable,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+      into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that man?&rdquo; he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+      behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
+      the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger and
+      made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is who he is,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard of him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I heard his voice&mdash;sort of
+      soft-spoken&mdash;on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+      refused the job and came out with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+      activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
+      awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
+      stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look for
+      the unexpected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain Cable
+      chartered the <i>Minnie</i> in the coasting trade, and after Christmas he
+      put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
+      Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
+      with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
+      sudden and untoward end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+      cold and wet weather. &ldquo;If the winter would only set in,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and dry
+      things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks almost to
+      the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would perhaps be more
+      endurable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and Cartoner
+      wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the Bukatys and
+      perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never reached Warsaw,
+      or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they were absorbed into
+      that playful post-office where little goes in and less comes out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+      likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+      relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;History is assuredly at a stand-still,&rdquo; said an old traveller one evening
+      at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. &ldquo;The world must be quiet
+      indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your head off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader, and
+      was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries in a
+      dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a deep
+      arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It came
+      in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little sailor
+      was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor household
+      without surprise or comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment, which
+      was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the social
+      scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until at last
+      you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates, while to
+      decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've always dealt square by each other, you and I,&rdquo; said the captain,
+      when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor, and
+      presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+      wall and shot me, sure as fate,&rdquo; he said, bringing his hand down on his
+      knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. &ldquo;That was ten years ago last
+      November, when the <i>Minnie</i> had been out of the builder's yard a
+      matter of six months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind. It
+      seemed that the building of the <i>Minnie</i> was not the epoch upon which
+      he reckoned his periods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's in Morrison's dry-dock now,&rdquo; said the captain, who in a certain way
+      was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
+      by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. &ldquo;You should go down and see
+      her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in the
+      mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry out
+      this plan, and included in it an inspection of the <i>Minnie's</i> new
+      boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
+      was never carried out after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have never
+      done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I believe,
+      that time&mdash;you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer Deulin&mdash;that
+      time, over yonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who
+      never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know which
+      is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left
+      hand from their right; and others, again, who say&mdash;or shout&mdash;that
+      all men are created equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been done, Mr. Cartoner&mdash;that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+      that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
+      hoodwinked, tricked&mdash;same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do
+      you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
+      turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
+      always kept my hands&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner&mdash;you that has known me ten
+      years and more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll say that for you,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did me!&rdquo; cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+      down on the table, &ldquo;with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+      post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said he
+      was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government stuff.
+      And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government official. It
+      was&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
+      up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bombs!&rdquo; he concluded&mdash;&ldquo;bombs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
+      set down here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know me and you know the <i>Minnie</i>, Mr. Cartoner!&rdquo; continued the
+      angry sailor. &ldquo;She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
+      and&mdash;well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
+      man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
+      material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me out,
+      and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean stuff
+      up to now&mdash;plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the other.
+      Always honest&mdash;revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But bombs&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no place
+      on a polite page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,&rdquo; he
+      concluded. &ldquo;That is what I have got to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know the Seemannshaus there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+      docks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the place,&rdquo; said Captain Cable. &ldquo;Well, one night I was up there,
+      on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
+      day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
+      up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
+      go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons. You
+      can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way. A man
+      comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a voyage
+      when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and we
+      couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect, with
+      hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. He
+      remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'&mdash;well,
+      to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told
+      me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf.
+      Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading
+      gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have
+      known at the time. He had a man with him&mdash;forwarding agent, he called
+      him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke German, and the other
+      man translated as we went along. I couldn't rightly see the other man's
+      face. Little, dark man&mdash;with a queer, soft voice, like a woman
+      wheedlin'! Too d&mdash;d innocent, and I ought to have known it. Don't you
+      ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a match?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+      always did&mdash;this unvarnished gentleman from the sea&mdash;and asked
+      for what he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
+      an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside of
+      the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want it.
+      And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man said,
+      and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed. We went
+      into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases broke
+      adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it. Then I saw
+      that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in wadding so as to
+      save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides, no government sends
+      loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the moment I did not think
+      much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a new crew. There were
+      other things to think about. And, I tell you, when I got to port, a chap
+      with gold lace on him came aboard and took the stuff away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
+      after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what had
+      brought these past events back to his recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge,&rdquo; said Captain Cable,
+      &ldquo;because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted square
+      by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing, though, I
+      sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit of
+      information&mdash;you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
+      and smoke it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+      conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Safternoon,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I went to see some people about a little job
+      for the <i>Minnie</i>. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
+      forget to come down and see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see her,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Go on with your story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+      offer me. Foreigners&mdash;every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+      politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
+      been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that got
+      me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I. And then
+      I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark night.
+      'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting quiet all
+      the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken the job at
+      any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten, and yet never
+      thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still going on, up
+      jumps a man&mdash;the only man I knew there&mdash;name beginning with a K&mdash;don't
+      quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that that room was
+      no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the man, if I could
+      remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head&mdash;quarter-deck
+      fashion&mdash;as if he was a king or a Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and
+      walks out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. But blessed if I knew
+      what it was all about. 'Who's that man!' I asks when we were in the
+      street. And the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he
+      rubs out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'That's who that is,'
+      he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the soft
+      pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and after
+      a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes for
+      eternity were exceedingly small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too much for me,&rdquo; he said, after a pause. &ldquo;You that deal in
+      politics and the like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other man's name is Kosmaroff,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it&mdash;a Russian,&rdquo; answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking
+      at the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years.
+      He carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of a
+      life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the outward
+      signs of man and nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It beats me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I've told you all I can&mdash;all, perhaps,
+      that you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two
+      together already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it.
+      It makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the <i>Minnie's</i>
+      hatches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me uneasy, too,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Wait a minute till I put on
+      another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching the
+      small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to a swarree?&rdquo; asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I shall
+      find him, as you say, at a soiree,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+      having dashed up from the club stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By-the-way,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I shall not be able to come down and see the <i>Minnie</i>
+      this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going foreign?&rdquo; asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am going abroad again,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, and there was a sudden
+      ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of action
+      who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE SPRING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+      lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither so
+      hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one, and
+      Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady would
+      select to pass the cold months in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have my orders,&rdquo; said Mangles, rather grimly, &ldquo;and I must stay here
+      till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
+      Nice if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason or
+      another&mdash;reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+      conversation with her aunt&mdash;the ladies lingered on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The place is dull for you,&rdquo; said Mangles, &ldquo;now that Cartoner seems to
+      have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
+      any circle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
+      not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+      Atlantic,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I always found you with your heads close together
+      whenever I came on deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think we sparkled much,&rdquo; said Joseph, with his under lip well
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of Uncle Joseph,&rdquo; said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+      Mangles, &ldquo;to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would be
+      lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could we?
+      You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should not
+      enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant of;
+      and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
+      particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
+      that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came forward
+      with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for others which
+      all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+      impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+      little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for a
+      brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which
+      Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate
+      coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski
+      Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow; and
+      as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.
+      Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her
+      steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked by ice
+      now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring, though
+      navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he came&mdash;had
+      gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving only the
+      memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had raised her.
+      Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine heart, an
+      unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff, any more than
+      she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she should, in
+      consequence, give much thought to them both. There was, she felt,
+      something in both alike which she had not got at, and she naturally wanted
+      to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart drew her attention
+      to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She might be able to
+      alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no doubt, wanted to stir it
+      up, as it were, and see what the result would be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+      understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
+      people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
+      no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
+      these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
+      uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed in
+      his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself&mdash;and, no
+      doubt, found herself quite easy to convince&mdash;as other people do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
+      was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
+      right&mdash;whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she
+      could not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
+      in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
+      supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found out
+      her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now at
+      Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked much
+      about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a different thing.
+      He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless information. When
+      in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies, and went so far as to
+      take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To Netty he showed a hundred
+      attentions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot understand,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;why everybody is so kind to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is because you are so kind to everybody,&rdquo; he answered, with that air
+      of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
+      Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand Mr. Deulin,&rdquo; said Netty to her uncle one day. &ldquo;Why
+      does he stay here? What is he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+      deepest tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he would not tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Cartoner,&rdquo; continued Netty, &ldquo;I understood he was coming back, but
+      he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult to get
+      information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course, who
+      comes and who goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course not,&rdquo; said Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+      Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you wonder that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong. Mr.
+      Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so odd and
+      quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see them exchange
+      glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I distrust the
+      quietness of the people, and&mdash;uncle&mdash;Mr. Deulin's gayety&mdash;I
+      distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and
+      leave you here alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is a dull hole,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that is why I want you to go away.
+      It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a conquered
+      country before. All conquered countries are like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he never
+      again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But Netty's
+      curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would answer no
+      question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did Cartoner stay
+      away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the Bukaty Palace. She
+      made an excuse in some illustrated English and American magazines which
+      might interest the Princess Wanda. But there was no one at home. She
+      understood from the servant, who spoke a little German, that they had gone
+      to their country house, a few miles from Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather
+      had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip
+      of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who
+      held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with a sort
+      of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really broken, or if
+      this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first days in March&mdash;a
+      month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long sleep, and men pull
+      themselves together to new endeavor. The majority of great events in the
+      world's history have taken place in the spring months. Is not the Ides of
+      March written large in the story of this planet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came to
+      her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English make,
+      which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare, like the
+      face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was gay and
+      light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his admiration
+      for Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is three days,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;since I have seen you. And it seems like
+      three years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+      Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days
+      had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My uncle has been pressing us to go away,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;to the south of
+      France, to Nice, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Netty, after a pause, &ldquo;you see for yourself&mdash;we have
+      not gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very selfish hope&mdash;but I hope you will stay,&rdquo; said Prince
+      Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure
+      caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is not
+      usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She looked,
+      besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at that
+      moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was only
+      natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew Wanda
+      to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which is the
+      difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was good,
+      and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and her was
+      to be treated with scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if at any time there is any reason why you
+      cannot stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should there be any reason&mdash;&rdquo; she began, and a quick
+      movement that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be
+      within hearing, made her stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know,&rdquo; she
+      said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her
+      horribly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+      persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better left
+      to men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost missed,&rdquo; he said gayly, &ldquo;an excellent opportunity of holding my
+      tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest
+      against being told anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only&mdash;be careful,&rdquo; she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course,
+      that brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful,
+      if it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake.
+      And at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But he
+      did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who
+      persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they will
+      vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be cowards. And
+      when the danger is there, and the woman is not&mdash;their vow is writ in
+      water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+      tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears
+      to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The
+      gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look
+      delicate and soft as a peach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not hear you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I will not. I will not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to hear
+      me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be an
+      outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go
+      well, and then I should be in a very different position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or, perhaps,
+      she was only putting together recollections which had all been thought out
+      before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She had only been in
+      Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet. But there were
+      terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty, that greatest of
+      all drawbacks, was the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you nothing now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But soon, before the summer, there
+      may be great changes in Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth
+      or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not
+      even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you mean,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;when you said 'Be careful'? What did you
+      mean&mdash;tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+      honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+      reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken her
+      hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her back.
+      She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear nervous
+      often rise to the occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know what I meant,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I do not know. You must not ask
+      me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and do
+      not ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a Bukaty
+      to be generous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I will ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SACRIFICE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things,
+      like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed
+      warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better
+      than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the thaw
+      comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field a
+      pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who can
+      set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely associated
+      in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green things, is
+      in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to drain off the
+      flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in these countries,
+      where men and women are booted to the knee, and every third house displays
+      the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left them, was
+      insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the smallest, used
+      once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for it stood in the
+      midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for it had been built in
+      the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and parvenu king built
+      himself the house in the valley of the Vistula, where he saw all his
+      greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim solitude which is the
+      inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the French architect is to be
+      detected even in this farm; for Poland, more frankly and consciously than
+      the rest of the world, drew all her inspiration and her art from France.
+      Did not France once send her a king? Was not Sobieski's wife a
+      Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that great fighter with her little
+      finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If ever a Frenchman was
+      artificially made from other racial materials, he was the last king of
+      Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a plain,
+      square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt had been made
+      at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been built in the
+      garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on the lawn, which
+      was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a meadow. The cows had
+      polished the sun-dial with their rough sides, while the passage of cold
+      winters and wet springs had left the plaster ornamentation mossy and
+      broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year. They
+      usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were needed.
+      The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and weaker in his
+      children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only remembered one.
+      The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his duty to care for
+      his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power the distress which
+      came upon them annually with the regularity of the recurring seasons. With
+      a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy taxation, and a standing bill
+      at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the village inn kept by another,
+      these peasants never had any money. And so far as human foresight can
+      perceive, there seems to be no reason why they ever should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince
+      seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world to
+      help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And, though
+      he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and not his
+      equals&mdash;as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only
+      succeeded in proving the contrary&mdash;he cared for their bodies as he
+      would have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry,
+      and he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could
+      not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying
+      his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers
+      who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine and
+      comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful nurse
+      could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the roof of
+      the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed upon the
+      front lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his knees,
+      the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house to house,
+      giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical advice,
+      listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor crops, of bad
+      seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his great laugh and
+      some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these Poles, through it
+      all. &ldquo;Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants,&rdquo; said Napoleon, that keenest
+      searcher of the human heart, who knew them a hundred years ago when their
+      troubles were comparatively fresh. And it is an odd thing that adversity
+      rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often strengthens it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough
+      work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her
+      father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being&mdash;like him, she was
+      intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They
+      liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round
+      their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather, and
+      longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the restless
+      spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who had stirred
+      all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow lay
+      thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines. In the
+      stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike the only
+      sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking beneath its
+      burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and forest for some
+      weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This frost cannot last,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;The spring must come soon, and
+      then we shall have to go back to the world and its business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief frost
+      was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was essentially
+      of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went the spirit of
+      unrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on
+      foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have had nothing to eat,&rdquo; said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+      weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity; a
+      man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship. He
+      had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough
+      sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots nearly
+      to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his eyebrows.
+      He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped his face from
+      time to time as the ice melted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+      know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of the
+      house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not go hungry from this house,&rdquo; said the prince, with his rather
+      fierce laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will get you what you want,&rdquo; said Wanda, lighting a candle. &ldquo;There are
+      no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only the
+      farmer and his wife&mdash;and my maid, who is English, and silent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+      waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the
+      homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the
+      manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all
+      societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at any
+      academy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you have finished,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;you can talk of your affairs. I
+      shall leave you to yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there is not much to say,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I have done no good
+      on my journey. Things make no progress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expect too much,&rdquo; said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass
+      of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. &ldquo;You expect the
+      world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember
+      that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never
+      make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward for five
+      years, and then falling through, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+      bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+      table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had
+      never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry&mdash;not, as many do,
+      to pass the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In fact, it
+      is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her
+      also. But, please, do not stand,&rdquo; he added, turning to her. &ldquo;I have all I
+      want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king&mdash;or a
+      beggar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;about that Englishman, Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on Kosmaroff's
+      sudden appearance at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, in a steady voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows more than it is safe to know&mdash;safe for us&mdash;or for
+      himself. One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a
+      pity, perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects
+      the lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the
+      life of one. This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate
+      concern in it&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have also no power,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;over those whose affair it is&mdash;you
+      understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the attitude
+      of the European powers, our&mdash;well, I suppose I may say&mdash;our
+      foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to us&mdash;they
+      were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words&mdash;and who are our
+      enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the foreign powers
+      know. It seems they must know something. It seems that Cartoner&mdash;knows
+      everything. So it is reported in Cracow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Cracow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;they are all words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are certain men, it appears,&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, &ldquo;in the service
+      of the governments&mdash;in one service it is called 'foreign affairs,' in
+      another the 'secret service'&mdash;whose mission it is to find themselves
+      where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They are, in jest,
+      called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would conclude. And the
+      Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore, the powers know
+      something. At Cracow, it is said&mdash;I ask your pardon for repeating it&mdash;that
+      they know, and that Cartoner knows what he knows&mdash;through the
+      Bukatys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak. Wanda,
+      who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was looking at
+      Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not taken by
+      surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and had warned
+      her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment, a thrill of
+      pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than any she had
+      had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff spoke made her
+      his friend for the rest of her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a
+      brave man. It happens that I know that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He knows as well as I
+      do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left London
+      I heard&mdash;for we have friends everywhere&mdash;that he had got his
+      passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back, so
+      you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these
+      suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control
+      over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin
+      had betrayed anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I or Martin would be assassinated,&rdquo; said the prince with his loud laugh.
+      &ldquo;I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the methods of
+      the sixties&mdash;suspicion and assassination. It has always been the ruin
+      of Poland&mdash;that method.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have no feelings with regard to this man?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff,
+      sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong glance, as
+      if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;He is a mere passing acquaintance.
+      He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him&mdash;you can tell your
+      friends&mdash;it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that
+      have been made for Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what they are,&rdquo; broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. &ldquo;They see a
+      mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with Cartoner.
+      Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to have called
+      on you at your hotel in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend,&rdquo; said the
+      prince, &ldquo;and I tell you, he shall be dropped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is more than that,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, &ldquo;that Martin and I
+      are put upon our good behavior&mdash;that our lives are safe only so long
+      as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having
+      any communication with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kosmaroff was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was clear
+      that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one hope. He
+      looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and had
+      satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this,&rdquo; he said, after a silence, &ldquo;because no one else dared to
+      tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you have
+      done&mdash;all that you are ready to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes. Everything must be done for Poland,&rdquo; said the prince,
+      suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's life
+      had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the princess says the same?&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, rising also, and raising
+      her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I say the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE PINE-WOODS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man, and
+      covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
+      prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which had
+      once owned his ancestor as lord and master&mdash;in those days when a
+      noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim for
+      an injured sheep to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a noble,
+      he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen, perhaps, enough
+      in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him that women&mdash;and
+      even Polish women&mdash;should take no part in politics. He believed in a
+      wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is better not to know.
+      He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the next morning, and Wanda
+      asked no questions. She had not slept until nearly morning, and had heard
+      her father bolt the doors after the departure of the ex-Cossack. She had
+      heard Kosmaroff's light and quick step on the frozen snow as he started on
+      his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
+      the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was bright
+      and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow from
+      melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous evening,
+      and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was young and
+      strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that had always been
+      &ldquo;game,&rdquo; that had always faced the world with unflinching eyes, and had
+      never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had lived a life of
+      hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and witnessed the ruin
+      or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could laugh with the merry,
+      while with the mourner it was his habit to purse up his lips beneath the
+      grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words, not of condolence, but of
+      stimulation to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt, to
+      carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified fight
+      against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have a grievance,&rdquo; he always said to those who brought their tales
+      of woe to his ears, &ldquo;air it as much as you like, but speak up, and do not
+      whine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority of
+      grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of Poland,
+      and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears there is no
+      cure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall make a long round to-day,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when he was in the
+      saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots covering
+      his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old face looking
+      out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. &ldquo;It may be the last time this
+      winter. The spring must come soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went away at an easy canter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest farm,
+      had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her father's
+      departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the pine-woods. The
+      trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the time of thaw, when
+      the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere, gains in weight and
+      breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as beneath the tread of
+      some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace the trees which in the
+      colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing their burden without
+      complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence like
+      that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living in the
+      twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a stealthy habit&mdash;the
+      smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the beasts of prey ever
+      alert for their natural enemy&mdash;man. The birds kept for the most part
+      to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the crops and the few, far
+      cottages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy forest-paths
+      were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her. In the nursery
+      she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never seen them. They
+      might be near or far; they might be watching through the avenues of
+      straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it had been the delight
+      of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the footprints of the wolves&mdash;near
+      the house, in the garden, right up to the nursery window. They had
+      gradually acquired the indifference of the peasants who work in the
+      fields, or the woodmen at their labors amid the trees, who are aware that
+      the silent, stealthy eyes are watching them, and work on without fear. The
+      prince had taught the children fearlessness, or, perhaps, it was in their
+      blood, and needed no education. He had taught them to look upon the beasts
+      of the forests not as enemies, but as quiet, watching friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning her
+      head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the peasants
+      were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all events, the Bukatys
+      were free to come and go. In cities they were watched, their footsteps
+      dogged by human wolves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and of
+      Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right angles
+      to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give passage to the
+      narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the woodman's cottage, and so
+      flat is the face of the earth that the distant trees are like the masts of
+      ships half-hidden by the curve of the world. It seems as if one could walk
+      on and on forever, or drop from hunger and fatigue and lie unheeded for
+      years in some forgotten corner. In the better-kept forests the paths are
+      staked and numbered, or else it would be impossible to know the way amid
+      such millions of trees&mdash;all alike, all of the same height. But the
+      prince was too poor to vie with the wealthy land-owners of Silesia, and
+      his forests were ill-kept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+      passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a tree
+      had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the open
+      space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was taken
+      by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow behind her.
+      She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason had returned
+      home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed her. But it was not
+      the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she had quite realized that it was he,
+      he was on his feet leading his horse towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+      inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to them a
+      few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes
+      vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments stolen from
+      heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored
+      ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority of
+      mankind, never at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you come?&rdquo; asked Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see you,&rdquo; replied this man of few words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all
+      her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength, he
+      had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it easily. For
+      he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and face every
+      trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief that he was not
+      in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break had he been
+      anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers that surrounded
+      them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand reasons why they should
+      not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood between them. But it was
+      only for a moment&mdash;a moment borrowed from eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the only reason?&rdquo; she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+      that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their real
+      world at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do not
+      know&mdash;&rdquo; And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+      such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he answered with a short laugh. &ldquo;I know. I am going away
+      to-night&mdash;to St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears
+      that she had half expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad.&rdquo; She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile. &ldquo;I
+      am so glad you are going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new anxiety,
+      which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather know that you were safe in England,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;even if I
+      were never to see you again. But,&rdquo; and she looked up at him with a sort of
+      pride in her eyes&mdash;that long-drawn pride of race which is strong to
+      endure&mdash;&ldquo;but you must never be hampered by a thought of me. I want
+      you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake your head. All
+      men say the same of you&mdash;they are afraid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I am not,&rdquo; she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness was real
+      enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the multitude. It
+      lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the eager world which,
+      presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never recognizes it, but
+      continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches, noise and laughter,
+      even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind to
+      them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such moments
+      fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be expressed on
+      paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+      snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+      unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid of
+      selfishness, and they looked for happiness&mdash;not in an immediate
+      gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+      hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and bridge
+      the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword. Loyalty to
+      self, to duty, and to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that should
+      stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore duty, which
+      is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres, Foresight,
+      Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of that madness, a
+      brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her lover should be wise,
+      should be careful for the future, should take her life into his hands with
+      a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right to do so&mdash;a right, not
+      to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered the privilege of that
+      which is called a great passion and admired as such&mdash;but a right to
+      shape, guard, and keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps, made
+      him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to consider the
+      feelings of others and to place them before his own, which, of course, is
+      quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which was his reading of Love,
+      and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March morning and pieced
+      together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive way, seemed to
+      content her. She seemed to gather from it that he loved her precisely as
+      she wished to be loved, and that, come what might, she had already enough
+      to make her life happier than the lives of most women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the spring
+      was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which they could
+      not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had become possessed
+      at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff. It touched those
+      things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not from Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that
+      they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not go any nearer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are sure no one saw you when
+      you came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For he
+      had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+      footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+      very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+      Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
+      again unobserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he knew&mdash;indeed, Wanda had told him&mdash;the dangers that
+      surrounded him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater
+      for Martin and the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only what you foresaw,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when&mdash;when we first
+      understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is worse than I foresaw,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in Poland
+      when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They could not
+      even write to each other while Wanda should be within the circle of the
+      Russian postal service. There was but the one link between them&mdash;Paul
+      Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin had brought
+      about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met Cartoner at
+      Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into the streets.
+      Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St. Petersburg
+      train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and go for a ride
+      into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in town, but at their
+      country house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see them,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;A man living on a volcano may surely play
+      with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
+      Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
+      catastrophe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in her
+      veins&mdash;that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+      hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity for
+      all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
+      waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
+      Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
+      solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of Poland,
+      for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees most of
+      the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years after Wanda
+      and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A BY-WAY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
+      the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
+      of the cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely away
+      from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his horse with
+      a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those days ten years
+      earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this white-haired dandy was
+      a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful business of killing Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+      ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the
+      direct way to St. Petersburg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hired a horse and rode out to meet you,&rdquo; he said, gayly&mdash;he was
+      singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the streets&mdash;and
+      he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine. He is not a
+      nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the mean time,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What
+      are we to do? It is one o'clock&mdash;and I have the inside of a
+      Frenchman. We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a
+      new republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so
+      quickly that the world stands breathless&mdash;but we always breakfast
+      before mid-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+      which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last
+      trump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not show
+      mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got accustomed
+      to me there. They think I am a harmless old man&mdash;a dentist, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+      &ldquo;I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a close
+      cab with the blinds down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there were
+      matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a monstrosity going to a fair,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I shall go with you. I
+      will even lunch with you at the station&mdash;a station steak and a beery
+      table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and those
+      who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished audience
+      like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am with you.
+      But let us be quick&mdash;and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?&rdquo; he asked,
+      finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the lower
+      parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked the
+      higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler sex in dealing with
+      certain delicate matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I only saw the princess,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said Deulin, at length, gravely, &ldquo;if that happens which you
+      expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for&mdash;I shall seek
+      out Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty
+      or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty
+      before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that
+      confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things are
+      stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets&mdash;when friends and
+      foes are seeking each other in vain&mdash;you need not seek me or think
+      about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember
+      that. I shall have eloped&mdash;with Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty and I,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;do not talk of these things
+      together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when the
+      first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you have
+      only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are&mdash;and I
+      will tell you where&mdash;we are. We are old birds at this sport&mdash;you
+      and I&mdash;and we know how to take care of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved
+      streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once
+      occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the
+      Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near a
+      market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin. In the cities
+      of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier erected
+      between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a narrow
+      street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different hopes,
+      aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and neighbors
+      are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel stood between
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe from
+      recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for the men
+      hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen thought of
+      gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely looked in
+      order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles&mdash;as if there
+      were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no beyond; nothing
+      but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which has lasted
+      nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out, seems to gain
+      in strength as the world grows older.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go by the back ways,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;and need never see any of
+      our world in Warsaw at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in an
+      atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little used for
+      wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live is of so retail
+      a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in mysterious cloth
+      bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were obliged to go slowly
+      through the groups, who never raised their heads, or seemed to speak above
+      a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they talk of&mdash;what do they think&mdash;all day?&rdquo; said
+      Cartoner. And, indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of
+      surreptitiousness. Even the children are sad, and stand about in
+      melancholy solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would sooner be a dog,&rdquo; answered Deulin, with a shake of the shoulders,
+      as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. &ldquo;Sooner a dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+      take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed
+      men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode
+      in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor
+      and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to
+      make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at
+      some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes
+      as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the
+      case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive&mdash;the
+      little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common
+      officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform
+      unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand,
+      the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better
+      regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention of
+      themselves in the background. But these well-intentioned efforts were of
+      small avail; for racial things are stronger than human endeavor or the
+      careful foresight of statesmen. Here in Warsaw the Muscovite, the Pole,
+      the Jew&mdash;herding together in the same streets, under the same roof,
+      obedient to one law, acknowledging one sovereign&mdash;were watching each
+      other, hating each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each
+      foot-passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired
+      droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath
+      the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn. On
+      the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense of
+      looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the
+      Russian-speaking police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mind them,&rdquo; said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+      booking-office. &ldquo;It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are doing no
+      harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our passports hold
+      out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For they have been through
+      my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe&mdash;I know when my things
+      have been touched&mdash;they or some one else. Perhaps Kosmaroff; who
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings as
+      only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+      musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord half
+      by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper meaning. He
+      ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied him on the
+      criminal paucity of his menu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like the
+      smell of goat. So give us beef&mdash;your railway beef, which has
+      travelled so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed and
+      cut up by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly failed
+      as a stoker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by a
+      doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+      underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+      Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew him so
+      well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his indifference.
+      While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to time at his
+      companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a hundred minute
+      instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been here
+      once before,&rdquo; answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+      Paris,&rdquo; said Deulin. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I learned Polish when I was young&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+      objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot from
+      whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with large,
+      deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if that
+      time is ill-spent,&rdquo; he said, airily. &ldquo;That is why the virtuous are such
+      poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the others&mdash;'nous
+      autres'&mdash;it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal column to
+      our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age when virtue is
+      almost a necessity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; he said, sharply, &ldquo;you are devilish absent-minded. It is a
+      bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your mind.
+      And having nothing on its own mind&mdash;or no mind to have anything on&mdash;it
+      hates you for your airs of superiority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
+      front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
+      vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air or
+      reconciliation to the inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a young&mdash;a very young diplomatist&mdash;an old scoundrel
+      in gold spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to
+      appear content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule
+      to this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt
+      you. It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into the
+      steady, meditating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you assume a reserve which one might think
+      unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not think
+      worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate, that&mdash;well&mdash;there
+      is nothing left but silence. And silence is sometimes dangerous. Not as
+      dangerous as speech, I allow&mdash;but dangerous, nevertheless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two schools
+      went out to meet each other&mdash;the old school of diplomacy, all words;
+      the new, all silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. &ldquo;I once knew a man into whose care was given
+      the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater responsibility,
+      by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation, even of one of the two
+      greatest nations in the world. And that is a care which you and I have had
+      upon our shoulders for a brief hour here and there. It was the old story;
+      for it was the happiness of a woman. God knows the man meant well! But he
+      bungled it. Bon Dieu&mdash;how he bungled it! He said too little. Ever
+      since he has talked too much. She was a Polish woman, by-the-way, and that
+      has left a tenderness, nay, a raw place, in my heart, which smarts at the
+      sound of a Polish word. For I was the man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; asked Cartoner, &ldquo;what do you want to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered the other, quick as thought. &ldquo;I only tell you the
+      story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said that has
+      not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a woman&mdash;even
+      the strongest&mdash;may not be able to bear such a strain as you can
+      bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+      attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had set
+      before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover with a
+      flourish full of promise&mdash;&ldquo;you know that I would give into your care
+      unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune, or&mdash;well&mdash;a
+      daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make a mistake. And
+      if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive you&mdash;never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?&rdquo; he asked, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do in
+      Warsaw,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not another word&mdash;they cost you so much, a few words&mdash;I
+      understand perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+      cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake&mdash;I
+      tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE QUIET CITY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He had
+      chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least tolerant of
+      advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he hated to make a
+      change, he had in one or two instances parted with old and trusted
+      servants&mdash;friends of his boyhood&mdash;rather than forgo one item of
+      his policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of their long
+      friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way of thinking,
+      for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not agree with you, but I will serve you,&rdquo; had answered one of
+      these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+      needed, accepted such service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by looking
+      down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and, mingling there
+      on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or the clever man&mdash;or
+      that rare being, the man who is both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not. Alexander
+      II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in a position to
+      confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as it were, a
+      ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than a board of
+      directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely the men he
+      wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw them up. How,
+      otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual thing. He looked
+      round among his relations, and, failing them, the friends of his youth.
+      For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the whole world to choose from,
+      has no larger a choice than any bourgeois looking round his own small
+      world for a satisfactory executor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his first
+      task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down to the
+      upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a useless war
+      in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+      liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with
+      his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand aloof
+      on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds as still
+      uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was untenable.
+      &ldquo;Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away,&rdquo; his advisers told
+      him. &ldquo;With the serf she cannot endure,&rdquo; he answered And twenty-two
+      millions of men were set free. In this act he stood almost alone; for
+      hardly a single minister was with him heart and soul, though many obeyed
+      him loyally enough against their own convictions. Many honestly thought
+      that this must be the end of the Russian Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their point
+      of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while counsel from
+      afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things from another
+      stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the human
+      race, men of different breed and color, of the three great contending
+      religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a nervous,
+      impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down with the weight
+      of his great responsibility. His father died in his arms, broken-hearted,
+      bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies of five European nations,
+      hated of all the world, despised of all mankind. Even to-day there is a
+      sinister sound in the very name of Russian. Men turn to look twice at one
+      who comes from that stupendous empire. It is said that an hereditary
+      melancholy broods beneath the weightiest earthly crown. History tells that
+      none wearing it has ever reached a hale old age. Soldiers still hearty,
+      still wearing the sword they have carried through half a dozen campaigns,
+      bow to-day in the Winter Palace before their sovereign, having taken the
+      oath of allegiance to four successive Czars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+      great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to find
+      that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon to prove
+      beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the surface of a
+      vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably spring up wheat or
+      tares&mdash;a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific growth of evil. He
+      made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of his people. With a
+      stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to despotic rule. Yet he
+      hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This tall, pale, gentle,
+      determined man was a man of courage. When the time came he faced the
+      consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want of me?&rdquo; he asked, the very moment after he had been
+      saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+      giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful
+      after each attempt upon his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening&mdash;that
+      the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in history
+      that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was full of
+      Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the Emperor
+      realized that he must fight&mdash;and fight alone, for no nation in Europe
+      would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil of
+      ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization. They
+      had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was
+      in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his own
+      internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European difficulties.
+      England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration of neutrality,
+      was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the dog waiting on the
+      threshold, was ready to side with the winner&mdash;for a consideration. No
+      wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all through his reign he
+      received and despatched telegrams at any hour of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+      liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There are
+      many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and look
+      twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one hand
+      while grasping with the other that which is really the property of their
+      neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+      cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: &ldquo;Gentlemen, let us have no
+      more dreams.&rdquo; Eleven years later he reminded an influential deputation of
+      Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words, commending the
+      caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits to Warsaw on one
+      excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming in his dominion.
+      This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard. The chief interest in the
+      study of a human life lies around the inexplicable. If we were quite
+      consistent we should be entirely dull. No one knows why this liberal
+      autocrat was mean to Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
+      travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found as
+      he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of the
+      people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few years
+      earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own strength.
+      They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because they had been
+      commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had followed with
+      understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the signing of the
+      treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were men, and no longer
+      driven beasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long northern
+      twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was reflected on
+      the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of the Admiralty
+      shot up into a cloudless sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the streets
+      through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost deserted. It
+      was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the drive in the
+      Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in another quarter of
+      the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most spacious capital in the
+      world, where there is more room than the inhabitants can occupy, where the
+      houses are too large and the streets too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of
+      course, frozen, and its broken surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while
+      the snow was spotted with rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into
+      numberless paths and crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It
+      had no history yet. The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow.
+      All St. Petersburg is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest
+      city in the world, excepting Venice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The river
+      showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were still in
+      use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of the city
+      which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and leading out
+      of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets where quiet
+      people live&mdash;lawyers and merchants, professors at the university or
+      at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges facing the river and
+      looking across it towards the English Quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+      proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
+      house like any other in the street&mdash;like any other in any other
+      street. For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
+      world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and there
+      by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter and St.
+      Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St. Isaac's&mdash;the
+      largest cathedral in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+      door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His was
+      a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this time,
+      when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave the
+      dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he raised
+      his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman asked for
+      was within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the second floor. You will remember the door,&rdquo; he said, over his
+      shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the house,
+      leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by a
+      clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured recognition
+      when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the way along a narrow
+      passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain bareness of wall and
+      floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened the door of a room and
+      stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
+      brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He was in
+      the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he stood up,
+      pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got other
+      work to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am at the same work. And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see,&rdquo; replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
+      foot and seating himself again before the fire. &ldquo;I am here still, where
+      you left me&rdquo;&mdash;he paused to make a brief calculation&mdash;&ldquo;five years
+      ago. I stayed here all through the war&mdash;all through the Berlin
+      Congress, when it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I
+      stayed. Tallow! It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its
+      tallow. And there is a simplicity about commerce, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a short laugh&mdash;the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+      failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a
+      ring of other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you put me up?&rdquo; asked Cartoner. &ldquo;Only for a few days, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms,&rdquo; replied the
+      other, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each other
+      had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has lasted
+      since childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gad!&rdquo; exclaimed the other, &ldquo;we are in a queer way. I went to the opera
+      the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house
+      was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so
+      that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him&mdash;they'll
+      get him! And he knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fools!&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are worse than fools,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;The man is down, and
+      they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints. His
+      policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia. He is
+      the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he
+      abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth,
+      Cartoner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, &ldquo;students who cannot learn&mdash;workmen
+      who will not work&mdash;women whom no one will marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes
+      one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, &ldquo;I have had nothing to eat since breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all you have to tell me about yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PAYMENT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had been
+      arrested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the beginning of the end,&rdquo; men said. &ldquo;They will now catch the
+      others. The new reign of terror is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jeliaboff himself&mdash;a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+      chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff Station&mdash;said
+      that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an arrested criminal,
+      was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+      Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+      walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+      approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in the
+      secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics no
+      longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+      stimulated emotion of the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+      persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty, had
+      studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a glimpse of
+      him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his habits and his
+      daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If it was known that he
+      would pass through a certain street, he was now allowed a monopoly of that
+      thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the Winter Palace than he could help.
+      If the Czar was seen to approach, men hurried in the opposite direction;
+      women called their children to them. He was a leper among his own people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not go to the opera to-morrow,&rdquo; one lady would say to another. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that the Czar is to be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia,&rdquo; men said to one another; &ldquo;the
+      street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it is
+      honeycombed by mines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others shrink
+      from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his cloak. But
+      some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties he remained
+      faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the world
+      knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a cloudless
+      sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter covering of
+      snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates, the streets too
+      wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was planned on too large a
+      scale by the man who did everything largely, and made his window looking
+      out upon Europe a bigger window than the coldness of his home would allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+      spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands of
+      Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving even to
+      the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart the advance
+      of Russia&mdash;the greater liberty of his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his usual
+      visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her palace at
+      two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen Cossacks. His
+      officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which way he would
+      take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew the streets as
+      thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always walked in them
+      unattended, unheeded, and unknown&mdash;had always mixed with his
+      subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven above his
+      people. He knew&mdash;always had known&mdash;what men said to each other
+      in the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+      Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+      Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies. The
+      road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet enough
+      thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen canal.
+      The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old and
+      soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens between
+      the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded by a low
+      wall and a railing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg
+      are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the world.
+      A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along and
+      whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly glanced
+      at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking over the
+      low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the bomb thrown
+      and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he heard or saw
+      at that minute, for he was dead the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+      horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The Czar
+      stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow. He
+      stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
+      afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
+      anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack&mdash;at the dead baker-boy.
+      The pavement and the road were strewn with wounded&mdash;some lying quite
+      still, others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs.
+      It was very cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+      captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been weaker,
+      he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went towards
+      him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of those few
+      moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the terror of it
+      seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part in this
+      tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were walking in
+      their sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!&rdquo; cried more than one
+      voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard this
+      strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in the
+      lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound to the
+      heights of immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a crowd
+      of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went towards
+      the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of the
+      shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+      hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the Czar.
+      He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to the
+      canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along it
+      towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed son of the
+      serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones between them&mdash;at
+      the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his slavery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+      white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt took
+      note of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very stones
+      of the pavement were displaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One leg
+      was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful. He
+      uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the end&mdash;the payment. He discharged his debt without a
+      murmur. He had done the right&mdash;against the counsel of the wise,
+      against his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his
+      father's teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He
+      had done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of
+      Russia. And this was the payment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other&mdash;the man who had thrown the bomb&mdash;was already dead.
+      The terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white
+      smoke, and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great
+      Assize. It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not
+      stammer in the presence of his Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was left
+      to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could to
+      succor him&mdash;though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+      beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+      literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+      brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the first
+      explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the dying man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+      again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
+      The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
+      hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures&mdash;the
+      instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
+      share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+      could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+      killer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the second
+      explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events brought
+      about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to be
+      watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he took
+      one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way from the
+      crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the slow accuracy
+      that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information obtained from one
+      source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain Cable, in St.
+      Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's opportunity. A
+      sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of the evil, not in
+      Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men called his luck
+      had brought him within sound of the first explosion by the side of the
+      Catherine Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+      hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the zone,
+      as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The driver
+      was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face. Here was
+      a man who had heard nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+      heavy leather apron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The telegraph office,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+      urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about their
+      ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking Sunday
+      exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
+      his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
+      made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
+      knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
+      great only when we look back at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the streets
+      of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by mistake or
+      on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand things to be
+      remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right word, or the word
+      that came nearest to the emergency of this moment? Could he telegraph that
+      the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him living, but assuredly
+      feeling his way across the last frontier? The Czar must assuredly be dead
+      before a telegram despatched now could reach England. It was a risk. But
+      Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to combine with an infinite
+      patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at a given moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+      behind their caging&mdash;stiff and formal within their semi-military
+      uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+      inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
+      could be despatched from Russia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
+      Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to London&mdash;a
+      single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer. The
+      first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second were
+      not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He walked
+      slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute there,
+      he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any one wish
+      to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried up the
+      steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and eyes in
+      which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by persistently
+      turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was allowed to enter,
+      he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he passed, which Captain
+      Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The two men looked at each
+      other in the twilight between the doors. Each knew that the other knew.
+      Then the little man passed in. The front of his black coat had a white
+      stain upon it, as if he had been holding a loaf of bread under his arm.
+      Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it afterwards, when he learned that
+      the bombs which seem to have been sown broadcast in the streets of St.
+      Petersburg that day were painted white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+      crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+      mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+      earthly throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LOVE-LETTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+      Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the snow
+      had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the garden
+      walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of the small
+      branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of spring were
+      assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
+      It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
+      Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially, perhaps,
+      for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of the world to
+      deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater pleasure of the
+      other half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
+      to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
+      experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
+      failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
+      an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
+      sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to what
+      she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
+      different from other men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange interview
+      with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a conviction that he
+      had merely to come again, and he would regain at once the place he had so
+      suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She knew that he was in the
+      background of her mind, as it were, and might come forward at any moment.
+      She often walked down the Bednarska to the river, and displayed much
+      interest in the breaking up of the ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
+      It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young man
+      dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that there was
+      really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked a mystery. Of
+      course it was most interesting that he should be a prince. Even Aunt
+      Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after speaking of
+      the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It was a great
+      pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh when she
+      thought of their poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
+      Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough when
+      he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in
+      the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had
+      to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so
+      long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually resolved themselves
+      into something very much like an understanding, if not a distinct
+      appointment. All people engaging in the game of love should be warned that
+      it is a game which never stands still, but must move onward or backward.
+      You may play it one day in jest, and find that it must be played in
+      earnest next time. You may never take it up just where you left it, for
+      the stake must always be either increasing or diminishing. And this is
+      what makes it rather an interesting game. For you may never tell what it
+      may grow to, and while it is in progress, none ever believe that it will
+      have an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a poor
+      one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it is a
+      thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections in such
+      practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it is young
+      men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens with whom
+      they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is oblivious to
+      the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to be the
+      business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is in love
+      with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes she does
+      not even go so far as that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+      maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning. The
+      faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+      yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at all
+      events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is leaden-footed
+      in this backward country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she felt
+      angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had ever been
+      before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was cold. Down
+      the whole length of the gardens there was only one other occupant of the
+      polished stone benches&mdash;an old man, sitting huddled up in his shabby
+      sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in the dull
+      realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+      Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+      entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+      gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+      fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+      almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+      hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate of
+      the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did not
+      come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all ways
+      before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old palace
+      of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the two
+      principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens, near to
+      the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+      except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+      satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her, but
+      Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not even
+      bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded note at
+      her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+      know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they had
+      gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
+      unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must not speak to you,&rdquo; Martin wrote, &ldquo;for there is danger in it&mdash;not
+      to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is for
+      to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the Europe.
+      I have already provided for your safety. There is great news, but no one
+      knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking of you, and&mdash;no!
+      I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say it&mdash;who
+      knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but I must
+      not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave something
+      on the seat that I may keep until I see you again&mdash;your glove or a
+      flower, to be my talisman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the length
+      of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes. She
+      rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no longer
+      current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between two young
+      persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+      covert-coating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
+      and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to make
+      up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling her of
+      those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew that events
+      were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of the Bukatys.
+      Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince would be the
+      first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown had gone by
+      ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She thoughtfully
+      removed them, and sat looking straight in front of her&mdash;absorbed in
+      maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first in Poland, Prince
+      Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets on the stone seat.
+      Martin had turned now though he was still far away. She looked towards
+      him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor. She knew that. She had
+      fully gauged the honor of more than one man; had found it astonishingly
+      reliable. The honor of women was quite a different question. That which
+      Prince Martin said in the day of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in
+      other circumstances. &ldquo;Besides&mdash;&rdquo; And she smiled a thoughtful smile of
+      conscious power as she bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange
+      her furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of snow
+      at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked at the
+      bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked slowly
+      away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting beneath the
+      leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat huddled
+      within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was no one
+      near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now going
+      towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed beneath its
+      arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone seat and take
+      up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste. Any one may pick up
+      a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a pretty girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
+      Kotzebue gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty had
+      been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery. He
+      turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until he was
+      out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the arches of
+      the covered passages of the palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down on the
+      seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the passers-by
+      had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near enough to
+      notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across the bank of
+      gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which Netty had thrown
+      there. He brought them back to the stone seat and spread them out there,
+      like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an expert at such things; for
+      in a moment he had them in order, and had pieced together the upper half
+      of the paper. Moreover, he must have been a linguist; the note was written
+      in English, and this Warsaw waif of the public gardens seemed to read it
+      without difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night,&rdquo; he read, and
+      instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient clothing. It
+      was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a flurry, as if there
+      were more to be done before nightfall than he could possibly compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
+      Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
+      palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
+      with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned into
+      the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
+      composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
+      Mangles there&mdash;not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;thought I might meet you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
+      conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
+      Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
+      he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark for
+      some minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mail is in,&rdquo; he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
+      the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something had
+      happened. &ldquo;Have you had important news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had nothing by the mail,&rdquo; he answered, looking straight in front of him.
+      And Netty asked no more questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your aunt Jooly,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;has had an interesting mail.
+      She has been offered the presidency&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the United States?&rdquo; asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+      Joseph paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; he answered, with deep gravity. &ldquo;Of the Massachusetts Women
+      Bachelors' Federation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll accept,&rdquo; opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a great honor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are different sorts of greatness,&rdquo; Joseph replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road to
+      allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school, and
+      still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
+      themselves in the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think it is like the blue-ribbon army,&rdquo; he said, when he returned to
+      Netty's side. &ldquo;The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer the
+      abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+      membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
+      will induce 'em to resign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Aunt Julie pleased?&rdquo; asked Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almighty,&rdquo; was the brief reply. &ldquo;And she will accept it. She will marry
+      the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually marries
+      him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms&mdash;the men that
+      help women to make fools of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed to have
+      a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty suspected
+      that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
+      Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;she'll give him his
+      choice between dismissal and&mdash;and earthly paradise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+      along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware of.
+      His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a way
+      through a crowded world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some order;
+      that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THIN ICE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the prince in?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Is he busy?&rdquo; he added, when the servant had
+      stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only shrugged
+      his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never busy.
+      Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a German
+      newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each other
+      since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's wrinkled and
+      drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able to perceive.
+      The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other side of the
+      fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of movement and
+      demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others who were intimate
+      with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+      then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the glow
+      of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made, with both
+      hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know?&rdquo; said the prince, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+      cipher telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner?&rdquo; said the prince, interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend this&mdash;pleasing
+      denouement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How well,&rdquo; he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+      reflectively&mdash;&ldquo;how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+      telegraph to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sometimes do each other a good turn,&rdquo; explained Deulin, rather curtly.
+      &ldquo;It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope that&mdash;it
+      was soon over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+      beneath his shaggy brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on this
+      occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made us&mdash;plain
+      men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number of enemies,
+      of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man was a thief.
+      He was a great man and in a great position, which only made him the
+      greater thief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is dead,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;and there is an end to it. I do
+      not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be dead;
+      and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian,&rdquo; said Deulin,
+      gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
+      which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
+      happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me or
+      to approve of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one effective
+      lesson&mdash;to judge no man,&rdquo; put in Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; continued the prince, &ldquo;I deplore the method. I understand it
+      was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy. You
+      will see&mdash;we shall both see, if we live long enough&mdash;that this
+      is a mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have
+      not even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They
+      have approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
+      business. But&mdash;well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of
+      every mishap to one's enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thin ice!&rdquo; he said, warningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; laughed the other. &ldquo;You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist&mdash;a
+      man who is afraid to look over a wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by less
+      obvious means,&rdquo; corrected the Frenchman. &ldquo;One must not be seen looking
+      over one's neighbor's wall&mdash;that is the first commandment of
+      diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are you here?&rdquo; asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+      chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
+      flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
+      that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I came here to pry into your affairs&mdash;to turn our
+      friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report
+      to my government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave
+      unsaid, before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes,&rdquo; answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends
+      glared at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough
+      in other days. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes! but why are you here this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions, I
+      want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck into
+      a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And&mdash;who
+      knows?&mdash;you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
+      in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
+      cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push Wanda
+      into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can help
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda!&rdquo; said the prince, in some surprise&mdash;&ldquo;Wanda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You forget&mdash;you Bukatys always have forgotten&mdash;the women.
+      Warsaw is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work&mdash;to-night's
+      work&mdash;is no work for Wanda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night's work! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;But I am
+      not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
+      as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
+      guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
+      is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
+      think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+      thumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not know that you had broken your heart&mdash;more than once&mdash;long
+      ago,&rdquo; he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once,&rdquo; he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+      Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, lightly, &ldquo;that is an old affair. That happened when she
+      used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's old
+      loves, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
+      time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
+      perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
+      ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
+      through it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once,&rdquo; repeated Deulin. &ldquo;I propose what any other young lover would
+      propose to do&mdash;to run away with her from Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty&mdash;a young girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+      gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take her
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
+      that can make her do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+      this thing for me. I come back in half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from Warsaw
+      to-day?&rdquo; asked the prince. &ldquo;What we know others must know now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
+      will find my way to the door, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you see Wanda as you go,&rdquo; called out the prince, as Deulin closed the
+      door behind him, &ldquo;send her to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+      drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He held
+      out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A telegram,&rdquo; she said, looking at it. &ldquo;But I cannot make out its meaning.
+      I never saw or heard of that word before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the end
+      of time,&rdquo; answered Deulin, lightly. &ldquo;It is from a reliable source.
+      Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+      wishes to say to you in his study now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nothing!&rdquo; put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+      &ldquo;Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question of
+      empires and kingdoms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+      could ask him a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+      passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man in the street,&rdquo; he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
+      Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
+      city know nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will know at the frontier,&rdquo; answered the prince, &ldquo;and it is there
+      that you will have difficulties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is there that we shall overcome them,&rdquo; he replied, gayly. &ldquo;It is
+      there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+      matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
+      will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I have
+      a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment. He
+      came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+      suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid his
+      old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches which
+      are nearly always better left unsaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must ask you,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, &ldquo;to drive
+      round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
+      up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
+      not come back. One never knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had run
+      with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the faces of
+      the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and to-morrow
+      would be as the seed of grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
+      their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races always
+      seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all beyond a
+      passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of enjoyment in
+      the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than usual, Deulin
+      thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be fully occupied
+      with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes at last, is really
+      more surprising than the unexpected itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance hall
+      was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between twelve
+      and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know nothing; but
+      others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+      first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you do about the Mangles?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;We cannot let them
+      remain here unwarned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin reflected for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had forgotten them,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;In times of stress one finds out
+      one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+      Mangles, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
+      her&mdash;&ldquo;yes, do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Odd people women are,&rdquo; said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
+      He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
+      almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I looked into Mangles's salon,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+      beside her again. &ldquo;He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
+      They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool&mdash;that
+      Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+      predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture of
+      good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men. He
+      seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They know,&rdquo; he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the Austrian
+      railway carriage. &ldquo;They all know. Look at their stupid, perturbed faces.
+      We have slipped across the frontier before they have decided whether they
+      are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah! what a thing it is to have
+      a smile to show the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or a grin,&rdquo; he added, after a long pause, &ldquo;that passes for one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FOR ANOTHER TIME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in; the
+      persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+      Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn would
+      see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature more
+      alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the south
+      of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there are three
+      roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and autumn. During
+      the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are under water. They
+      are only passable and worthy of the name of road in winter, when the
+      sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the middle road&mdash;which is the worst and the least frequented&mdash;a
+      number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The road
+      is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such deep
+      ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on either
+      side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for the
+      transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter it is
+      the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+      pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+      harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary hay-carts
+      of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more frequented road
+      nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The carts were going
+      towards the city now, but they were empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+      standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in his
+      working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare limbs.
+      He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet. He had
+      reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely have made
+      him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere outward things
+      were of no account. Every now and then he turned his head, half
+      impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him. The wheels
+      made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the carts
+      groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into the larger
+      Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on horseback, under
+      the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The horseman was riding
+      slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare horse. He was in a rough
+      peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth, drawn in at the waist, and
+      split from heel to band, for use in the saddle. They wear such coats still
+      in Poland and Galicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a man's
+      trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are punctual,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was nearly asleep in the saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat such
+      as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he leaned
+      forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not cold?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I feel as if I should never be cold again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
+      must take care of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So must you,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+      between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than in
+      face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which the French
+      call <i>camaraderie</i>, which was not the outcome of a long friendship.
+      Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have had a common
+      ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight, with royal blood
+      in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of the fair Bukatys,
+      whose women had always been beautiful, and their men always reckless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
+      for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound of
+      approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and struck
+      it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded hollow,
+      like a drum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you had little sleep last night,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff when Martin
+      yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;We may get some&mdash;to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what to do,&rdquo; said Martin to these in turn. &ldquo;Come to the
+      iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
+      you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to the
+      military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in line. You
+      are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the river on this
+      side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line, dropping your
+      load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you are stopped on
+      the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking what you have in
+      your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them; and while they are
+      looking into your carts you must kill them quietly with the knife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+      merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and that
+      was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and had perhaps
+      waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of promise in his
+      curt hilarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+      Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking to
+      the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs by the
+      river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+      pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
+      workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
+      rain, no one passed that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+      bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the lower
+      lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the iron-foundry
+      are on the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+      horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
+      at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I saw a glint under the wall,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff. &ldquo;There&mdash;there
+      it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the gleam of those
+      distant lights on a bayonet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go forward,&rdquo; said Martin, &ldquo;and see who it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+      beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
+      out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo; echoed Martin. &ldquo;But this is a high-road.&rdquo; And he moved
+      nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
+      gleamed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you cannot pass this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my friend&mdash;&rdquo; began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he
+      never finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle
+      on the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+      Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment his
+      rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now in
+      the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
+      breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which was
+      not Kosmaroff's cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First blood,&rdquo; he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
+      hands upon its mane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;how he smelled of bad cigarettes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+      mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he is dead enough,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I broke his neck. Did you not
+      hear it go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I heard it. But what was he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is yet to be found out,&rdquo; was the reply, in a sharp, strained voice.
+      &ldquo;This is Cartoner's work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt it,&rdquo; whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+      doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
+      the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He had
+      always been lucky and successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means,&rdquo; answered the man who had never been either, &ldquo;that the place is
+      surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have failed&mdash;this
+      time. Take the horses back towards the barracks&mdash;and wait for me
+      where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and make
+      sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they have
+      taken me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+      bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working clothes
+      were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will get over the wall here. Bring your horse
+      against the wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched across
+      the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand in your stirrups,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;and hold one arm up rigid
+      against the wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+      himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing on
+      Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready? I am going to spring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+      light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
+      could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he whispered, and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when he
+      heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff, breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving. He was,
+      it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a gallop,
+      stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin had to use
+      his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder they splashed
+      on in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went right in,&rdquo; gasped Kosmaroff. &ldquo;The arms are gone. The place is full
+      of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an ambuscade.
+      We have failed&mdash;failed&mdash;this time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men,&rdquo; said
+      Martin. &ldquo;We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are full of hope&mdash;you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am full of hope&mdash;still,&rdquo; answered Martin. He had more to
+      lose than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
+      these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from the
+      city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+      marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; he then said, &ldquo;that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+      wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize me. It
+      is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is different. If
+      they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know who procured
+      them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere,&rdquo; said Martin, with
+      a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; went on Kosmaroff, &ldquo;if they will have arrested your
+      father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace now
+      awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; answered Martin gayly, &ldquo;it does not matter much about that. What I
+      am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
+      How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+      found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+      military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If the
+      arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers; for
+      they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to be wiped
+      out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized carefully and
+      systematically&mdash;the brand to be thrown amid the straw. They were to
+      surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while the whole country
+      was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and the parties to the treaty
+      which Russia had systematically broken were appealed to and urged to
+      assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so wild as many that have
+      succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+      their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for another time&mdash;it is for another time!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff and
+      Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The streets
+      had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers, who, at a
+      given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers came
+      in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who shuffled
+      along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street in groups of
+      two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their houses. And the
+      conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a miserable fiasco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+      firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+      hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
+      and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and the
+      water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great length
+      of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the alert
+      night and day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the large,
+      flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling, and
+      climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been endowed
+      with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at midnight, but
+      the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark. The moon above
+      the clouds was almost full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one chance of escape,&rdquo; Kosmaroff had said&mdash;&ldquo;the river.
+      Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve. I
+      will get a boat. Have you money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a few roubles&mdash;I never had many,&rdquo; answered Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get more if you can&mdash;get some food if you can&mdash;a bottle of
+      vodka may make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+      Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+      earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
+      Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city. He
+      passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
+      slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the soldiers,
+      brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the street corners.
+      And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+      station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
+      low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
+      voice as that of a friend&mdash;a young Cossack officer who had lunched
+      with him two days earlier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had found
+      out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light filtering
+      through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was probably
+      sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire, meditating
+      over the failure which he must have realized by now from a note hurriedly
+      sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust. Martin knew that
+      Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would find her. This was one
+      of the hundred details to which the prince himself had attended. He had
+      been a skilled organizer in the days when he had poured arms and
+      ammunition into Poland across the Austrian frontier, and his hand had not
+      lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed by channels through which
+      information could be poured at any moment day or night, just as water is
+      distributed over the land of an irrigated farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+      bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of his
+      coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
+      likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+      houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
+      steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
+      this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
+      as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
+      directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers here
+      night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and those
+      whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get their
+      sleep when they can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where the
+      steps are&mdash;river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+      the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge which
+      are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a sleepless
+      interest in the prospects of a flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he also
+      had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had a fit
+      of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and at the most
+      deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps, coughing at
+      intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the land, but
+      across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The water is running freely,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;through the middle arch. I have a
+      boat out there on the ice. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the river
+      that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying on the
+      ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at the edge
+      of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it flowed
+      towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark that
+      Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat before he
+      saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity of build
+      used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+      unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
+      and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
+      We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will come
+      out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before dawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times; for
+      there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
+      reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must lie down in the bottom of the boat,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;and take
+      our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
+      the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
+      which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For the
+      castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been partially
+      withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these lights were left
+      behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in trees, could be
+      dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and were borne on the
+      breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a piece of bread,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am famished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had yet
+      to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the Vistula
+      came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be not only
+      ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills; here and
+      there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead horse; a
+      door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a hundred
+      trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant sea on
+      muddy waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself as
+      comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
+      rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
+      down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then&mdash;wet, tired out,
+      conscious of failure, sick at heart&mdash;he fell asleep, too, in the
+      hands of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The prince
+      had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared away, and a
+      full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above the level
+      land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here and there by
+      pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big, low-roofed farms
+      standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was almost morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
+      too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were proof
+      even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great pace
+      in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others gray
+      and muddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know where we are,&rdquo; he answered, after a pause. &ldquo;We have passed
+      Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish my
+      teeth wouldn't chatter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have secured mine with a piece of bread,&rdquo; mumbled Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot travel during the day,&rdquo; he said, after a long examination of
+      the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. &ldquo;We shall not
+      be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I am
+      afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some large
+      islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must wait with
+      him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the ice
+      was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
+      strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
+      the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that they
+      could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which, indeed,
+      seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen would attempt
+      to cross the river now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
+      and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the prince
+      at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to await them
+      at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their escape was
+      being arranged, but they must await further instructions before quitting
+      their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these further orders came
+      by the same sure channel, which was independent of the Russian
+      post-offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through that
+      town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would find
+      Captain Cable, in the <i>Minnie</i>, anchored in the stream ready for sea.
+      The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
+      whatever. There was no news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there. The
+      story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There are
+      persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There are
+      others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in use
+      in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is already
+      considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along the
+      Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
+      building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
+      If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from the
+      neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
+      river-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to wait
+      two days until the weather changed&mdash;until the moon, now well on the
+      wane, did not rise before midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
+      by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were cold,
+      and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon enveloped
+      them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them into the
+      mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+      strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
+      hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
+      before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
+      the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
+      by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks, the
+      street cries of a town&mdash;these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are getting near,&rdquo; he said, in little more than a whisper. &ldquo;What is
+      the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+      sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes at
+      a great pace. It is still of a vast width&mdash;one of the largest rivers
+      in Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mist was very thick here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
+      thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
+      They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
+      sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have come
+      from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, or we fire!&rdquo; it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
+      which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three boats
+      close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+      distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+      oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a suppressed
+      laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
+      fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin lay
+      concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward and
+      peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the officers
+      were calling to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it&mdash;a boat or a floating tree?&rdquo; they heard them ask each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
+      the bottom of the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bullet,&rdquo; answered Martin. &ldquo;It came through the side of the boat, low
+      down. It struck me in the back&mdash;the spine. I cannot move my legs. But
+      I have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole the
+      bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
+      through Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+      danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+      Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and with a
+      jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an envelope,
+      closed and doubled over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put that in your pocket,&rdquo; he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?&rdquo; asked Martin, suddenly,
+      after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her that, or get it to her,&rdquo; said Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, answering the unasked question, &ldquo;I am badly hit,
+      unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his voice was still cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
+      from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
+      rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
+      city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
+      pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; wrote Deulin, &ldquo;that you will soon be on your way home. I
+      think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+      events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
+      on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot. The
+      writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the letter
+      as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it were, of
+      this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go to Dantzic
+      and to see Captain Cable there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel. He
+      left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke, where
+      the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
+      pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or less
+      his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at Dantzic
+      quite as easily as at Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
+      small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
+      versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small vessels
+      to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner knew that he would find the <i>Minnie</i> not in dock, but in one
+      of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+      convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And Captain
+      Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the <i>Minnie</i>
+      just above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie in
+      mid-stream. The <i>Minnie</i> was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
+      stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
+      sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
+      departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
+      adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
+      cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
+      evidence. The <i>Minnie</i> did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
+      but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
+      minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
+      yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from the
+      steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+      clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of a
+      shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+      Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come below,&rdquo; he said, without enthusiasm. &ldquo;It wasn't you that I was
+      expecting. I tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled of
+      petroleum, as usual. The <i>Minnie</i> was a hospitable ship, according to
+      her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a corner
+      of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench at the
+      far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was up the Baltic,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Pit props. Got a full cargo on board.
+      Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip to come
+      to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all I'm going
+      to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all I want to know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!&rdquo; shouted Cable, suddenly, with a
+      bang of his little, thick fist on the table. &ldquo;I've been thinking since I
+      lay here&mdash;been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself&mdash;what
+      I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+      seemed to pacify the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he admitted, &ldquo;I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+      seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+      something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
+      bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I can assure you on that point,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Nobody who had
+      to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But I
+      do not know whom you are to take on board here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May be as you can guess,&rdquo; suggested the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think I can guess,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you won't tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. When do you expect them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll answer that and ask you another,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, getting a
+      yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. &ldquo;That's port&mdash;ship-chandler's
+      port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night. They'll
+      likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night. And now I'll
+      ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic River, Mr.
+      Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do&mdash;Paul Deulin.
+      Like to read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+      contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than even
+      to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wouldn't,&rdquo; he answered. He scratched his head reflectively, and
+      looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
+      ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got your luggage in the boat alongside?&rdquo; he asked, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It's at the station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
+      come aboard and see this thing through, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for his
+      luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mate's receipt?&rdquo; inquired the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest as
+      he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No stint of the wine,&rdquo; he said, and went out on deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself to
+      the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For the
+      captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
+      following night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb,&rdquo; he
+      said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
+      watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
+      did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
+      succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by side,
+      treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the same
+      reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope he is pleased with himself,&rdquo; he said, as he stood at the stern rail,
+      looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. &ldquo;For it is his doing,
+      you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're tricky&mdash;the
+      French. He's a tricky man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, &ldquo;he
+      is a tricky man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without speaking.
+      Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a boat yonder,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;coming down quiet, under the lee of the
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+      great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards them.
+      Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+      laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of the
+      boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide with
+      perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand by,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+      uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with two
+      turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the steamer as a
+      kitten may nestle against its mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his hand on
+      the rail of the <i>Minnie</i>. His head came up over the rail, and he
+      peered into Cartoner's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+      exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance which
+      he never expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to go to sea this tide,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where is the other man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Help me to lift
+      him on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why can't he come on board himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he is dead,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice. And
+      he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one arm and
+      held him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so weak!&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;so weak! I am famished!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+      fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat
+      that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held him
+      towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they got
+      him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to that
+      which was grandly called the captain's state-room. They laid him on the
+      locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself against
+      the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+      face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable
+      decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+      starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+      hundred unasked questions in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not me.
+      He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the night
+      before last. He died before the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! tut!&rdquo; muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of pity.
+      &ldquo;There was the makings of a man in him,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;the makings of a
+      man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common as
+      to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a
+      moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid of
+      a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take him out to sea and bury him there,&rdquo; said Cable, at length, &ldquo;if
+      so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at sea,
+      and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the only thing to be done,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that will do. He will lay quiet enough there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath the
+      sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll turn the hands out,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and we'll get to sea on the ebb. But
+      I'll have to send ashore for a pilot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, &ldquo;you need not do
+      that. I can take you out to sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and Cartoner
+      alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had been the
+      friend of both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you answer me a question?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can,&rdquo; was the reply, economical of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you on the 13th of March?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I do not understand you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I don't understand how we
+      failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. &ldquo;But I conclude you have failed,
+      since you are here&mdash;and he is there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed towards Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I had nothing to do with it,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot expect me to believe that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care,&rdquo; replied the English diplomat, gently, &ldquo;whether you
+      believe it or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+      Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you one thing,&rdquo; he said, in a hard, low voice. &ldquo;It will not
+      do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I will take
+      any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in Poland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am sent there I shall go,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. And there crept to one
+      side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck giving
+      his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole paused on
+      the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin again with his
+      hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it on the
+      cabin-table between them. &ldquo;A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss Cahere.
+      There is no message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dawn was in the sky before the <i>Minnie</i> swept out past the
+      pier-head light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed
+      down in the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern,
+      jumping and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under
+      the quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew
+      near to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to be
+      said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered. But
+      none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a passage home,&rdquo; said Cable, gruffly, &ldquo;cut your boat adrift.
+      You're welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;I am going back to Poland to try again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of the
+      only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      we shall meet again soon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. &ldquo;I am under orders for Madrid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat. Then
+      he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+      thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain,&rdquo; he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+      seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from the
+      shelter of his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, mister,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift, and
+      he sat down to the oars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff headed
+      his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the promise of a
+      stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging over Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a month
+      later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace and stood
+      his ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to keep
+      their acquaintances in the right place&mdash;that is to say, in the
+      background of her life. With this object in view, she had an &ldquo;at home&rdquo;
+       day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not stay
+      too long. To-day was not that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I ought not to have come this afternoon,&rdquo; explained Netty, with a
+      rather shy haste, as she shook hands. &ldquo;But I could not wait until next
+      Tuesday, because we sail that day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are going home again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush still
+      in her cheeks&mdash;&ldquo;yes, and I am engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do we know the&mdash;gentleman?&rdquo; asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+      with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+      exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in this
+      idyl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; answered Netty. &ldquo;He is not unknown in London. His name is
+      Burris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, &ldquo;the comp&mdash;&rdquo; Then she remembered that to call
+      a fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. &ldquo;The
+      millionaire?&rdquo; she concluded, rather lamely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe he is very rich,&rdquo; admitted Netty, &ldquo;though, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course not,&rdquo; Lady Orlay hastened to say. &ldquo;I congratulate you, and
+      wish you every happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word to
+      him. He took it promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading of
+      the hands&mdash;&ldquo;I wish you all the happiness&mdash;that money can buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his shoulder
+      turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which was to be
+      Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be her father, but
+      he was a millionaire twice over&mdash;in London and New York. He had,
+      moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of which details appeared
+      from time to time in the illustrated monthly magazines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I shall hope to be in London every year,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;and to see all
+      the friends who have been so kind to us&mdash;you and Lord Orlay and Mr.
+      Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Reginald Cartoner,&rdquo; suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+      shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes. And it
+      came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question, but
+      did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner was in
+      the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that Deulin had
+      brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until Martin effected his
+      escape and joined his sister in England. She only knew what the world now
+      knew&mdash;that Price Martin Bukaty had died and been buried at sea. It
+      was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be interested
+      in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice, seeking to
+      recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had taken an envelope
+      from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had thrown it on the fire,
+      where it was smouldering now on the coals. It was a soiled and worn
+      envelope, as if it had passed through vicissitudes; there seemed to be
+      something inside it which burned and gave forth an aromatic odor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave. When
+      the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite forgot
+      to be polite?&rdquo; she said to Deulin. &ldquo;Is it a letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a love-token,&rdquo; answered the Frenchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Netty Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was still
+      neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the fire and
+      was there consumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a smell of violets,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, looking down into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are violets&mdash;from Warsaw,&rdquo; admitted Deulin. &ldquo;Wanda is in?&rdquo; he
+      asked, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have received a letter from her father,&rdquo; said Deulin, with his hand on
+      the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+      mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried her
+      head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner followed her
+      into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard from your father at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of unfolding
+      it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going to give it to
+      Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay walked to the other
+      end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was about to follow her,
+      when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he stayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The letter begins,&rdquo; said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+      professional preliminary&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given by the
+      man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain Cable quite well.
+      When we met him at the Signal House, at Northfleet, I little thought that
+      he would be called upon to render the last earthly service to my son. So
+      it was he who read the last words. And Martin was buried in the Baltic.
+      You, my old friend, know all that I have given to Poland. The last gift
+      has been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope to write to Cartoner,
+      but not now. He is not a man to attach much importance to words. He is, I
+      think, a man to understand silence. At present I cannot write, as I am
+      virtually a prisoner in my own house. From a high quarter I have received
+      a gracious intimation that my affairs are under the special attention of a
+      beneficent monarch, and that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a
+      sentence of perpetual confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be
+      deemed sufficient punishment for&mdash;not having been found out. But my
+      worst enemies are my own party. Nothing can now convince them that Martin
+      and I did not betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is freely coupled
+      with ours. So they believe. So it will go down to history, and nothing
+      that we can say will make any difference. That I find myself in company
+      with Cartoner in this error only strengthens the feeling of friendship, of
+      which I was conscious when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake, never
+      to cross this frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making any sign
+      of friendship towards me or mine.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin,
+      for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial
+      moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause
+      for an instant before he could proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then follow,&rdquo; he said, rather uneasily, &ldquo;certain passages to myself which
+      I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health. Better,
+      indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough old man, and
+      may live to give much trouble yet.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, you see, he seems very cheerful,&rdquo; he said, as if it was the letter
+      that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket. &ldquo;He
+      seems to be getting on very well without you, you perceive,&rdquo; he added,
+      smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There was in his voice and
+      manner a dim suggestion of the losing game, consciously played.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I read the letter for myself?&rdquo; asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+      steady hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his pocket
+      and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group standing near
+      the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an imperceptible movement of
+      his eyebrows, as of one who had made an attempt and failed. They waited in
+      silence while Wanda read the letter, and at length she handed it back to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I read it differently. It is not only the world which
+      appears differently to two different people, even a letter may have two
+      meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+      deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a
+      broken-hearted man,&rdquo; she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during
+      which Wanda seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even
+      Deulin had nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps
+      Cartoner had already done so by his own life, without any words at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to Warsaw to-night,&rdquo; she said at last to Lady Orlay, &ldquo;if you
+      will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack gratitude.
+      But&mdash;you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, I understand,&rdquo; replied the woman who had known happiness. And
+      she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?&rdquo; said Wanda. As
+      she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none other. It
+      was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom she submitted
+      the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it before these people. As
+      if she took a subtle pride in showing them that he was what she knew him
+      to be. She was sure of her lover; which is, perhaps, happiness enough for
+      this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duty is best, is it not?&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the only thing,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+      partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic and
+      active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mind is made up?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;You go to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements for
+      the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you across
+      the frontier, you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you? When do you go to Spain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then good-bye.&rdquo; The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was at
+      the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the door
+      behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood and
+      looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's eyes. But
+      Deulin's smile was sadder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the end,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;the end!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay; &ldquo;it is not. It cannot be. I have never known a
+      great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+      happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the end,
+      Paul. Heaven is kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused, and,
+      facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself, commanding her
+      attention to his long life and story. &ldquo;Sometimes, milady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Vultures
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VULTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By Henry Seton Merriman
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ALL AT SEA
+
+Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad
+Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall,
+thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls'
+school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead,
+sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world
+was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin
+first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now
+moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was
+a dry, hard person, who had suffered from nothing but chronic
+dyspepsia--had suffered from it for fifty years or so.
+
+"Fine weather," he said. "Women will be coming on deck--hang the fine
+weather."
+
+And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+
+"Joseph," said Miss Mangles, "growls over his meals like a dog."
+
+The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
+man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
+large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
+better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
+his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
+characteristics are conducive to hostility.
+
+The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
+feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
+to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
+There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
+When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
+did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+
+There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business
+men--Joseph P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a
+sea of commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four
+days that had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made
+anything, or sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready
+for production at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and
+trade. Neither was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and
+yet both were difficult to get on with. For human confidences must
+be mutual. It is only to God that man can continue telling, telling,
+telling, and getting never a word in return. These two men had nothing
+to tell their fellows about themselves; so the other passengers drifted
+away into those closely linked corporations characteristic of steamer
+life and left them to themselves--to each other.
+
+And they had never said things to each other--had never, as it were, got
+deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+
+Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under
+a strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen
+in the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite straight, and
+cut across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a direct, stern look
+to dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he turned slowly, and
+looked down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance.
+He seemed to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken. And Mangles
+met the glance with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark. But
+Mangles spoke first, after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "the women will be on deck soon--and my sister Jooly.
+You don't know Jooly?"
+
+He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+
+"I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon," said
+Cartoner. "She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was pretty."
+
+"That wasn't Jooly," said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+
+"Who was it?" asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who
+have no self-consciousness--who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as
+are the majority of men and women.
+
+"My niece, Netty Cahere."
+
+"She is pretty," said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have
+meant much to feminine ears.
+
+"You'll fall in love with her," said Mangles, lugubriously. "They all
+do. She says she can't help it."
+
+Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+reply.
+
+"Distresses her very much," concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his
+cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side
+of his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss
+Netty Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal
+environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more
+especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what there was in
+Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in the present.
+
+The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck.
+She was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven
+young man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He
+was speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an
+expression of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering blue
+eyes and a complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never
+altered. She was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly
+deprecating manner, as if her own opinion of herself were small, and she
+wished the world to accept her at that valuation. She made no sign
+of having perceived her uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth
+officer, who reluctantly mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back
+as he went.
+
+Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+
+"She don't like smoke," he growled.
+
+Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay,
+when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that
+he was not alone.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+though he was very young--quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor."
+
+She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart
+full of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+
+"I wish some of my relations were sailors," replied Mr. Mangles, in his
+deepest tones. "Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my friend,
+Mr. Cartoner--Miss Cahere."
+
+He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious wave
+of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it was his
+eyes that turned away first.
+
+"You have not been down to meals," he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+
+"No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends on
+board?"
+
+"There are very few ladies. I know none of them."
+
+"But I dare say some of them are nice," said Miss Cahere, who evidently
+thought well of human nature.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+thoughtfulness.
+
+Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes--dark
+lashes around blue eyes--with a guileless and wondering admiration. He
+certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air
+which bespeaks good breeding.
+
+"Have you seen the ship on the other side?" she asked, after a pause; "a
+sailing ship. You cannot see it from here."
+
+As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot
+from whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and Mr.
+Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-case.
+
+"There," said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+"One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much
+nearer. That ship's officer pointed it out to me."
+
+Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+
+"I think," said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice--she had a rather
+confidential manner--"I think sailors are very nice, don't you?
+But . . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?"
+
+"It depends what you were going to say."
+
+Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had been
+about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself. She
+glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+
+"I think I prefer soldiers," she said, thoughtfully.
+
+Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the ship
+he had been told to look at.
+
+"Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave
+enough to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most
+people are afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before."
+
+"No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+each other."
+
+Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+
+"Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service," said Miss
+Cahere, carelessly.
+
+For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body
+of amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+
+Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house
+for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather
+side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without
+explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter.
+But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held
+her there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat,
+looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him to come
+to her assistance. The same gust of wind made the steamer lurch so that
+Cartoner had to grasp Miss Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+
+"Thank you," she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the
+incident had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned notions,
+and was not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met girls who are
+friendly in five minutes with men and women alike.
+
+When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards
+him, and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his returning
+his cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the
+cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
+
+"No," she said, firmly, "you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner--is it not
+foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not
+care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now."
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder
+and looked down at him.
+
+"As if it mattered whether I like it or not," she said. "And I do like
+it--I like the smell of your cigars."
+
+Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which
+was perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+tenderness.
+
+"As if it mattered what I think," she said, humbly, again.
+
+"Always like to conciliate a lady," said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
+
+"Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and
+her frocks," answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner
+was, nevertheless, able to overhear.
+
+"Where is your aunt Jooly?" inquired the old man, hurriedly. "I thought
+she was coming on deck."
+
+"So she is," answered Netty. "I left her in the saloon. She is quite
+well. She was talking to some people."
+
+"What, already?" exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head
+with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from
+whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+
+"My sister Jooly, sir," explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, "is no doubt
+known to you--Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City."
+
+Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived
+in the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible
+to be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
+
+"Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?" suggested Mr.
+Mangles, not unkindly.
+
+"No--I think not."
+
+"Her line is--at present--prisons."
+
+"I have never been in prison," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No doubt you will get experience in course of time," said Mr. Mangles,
+with his deep, curt laugh. "No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets
+on platforms and talks."
+
+"What about?" asked Cartoner.
+
+Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
+
+"About most things," he answered, gravely; "chiefly about women, I take
+it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them.
+And she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick
+there. She had found out what very few women know--namely, that when
+women work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody
+wants. So Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment,
+and pointing out to the public and the administration many ways in which
+women may be profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption
+of the government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice
+berth for which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments
+have no gumption, sir. And--"
+
+"Here is Aunt Julie," interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+
+As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the
+second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship
+and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty
+Cahere's face--perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes--for
+he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his
+face.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNAL HOUSE
+
+Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet--where the spicy odors of
+chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray
+sky--there stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called
+no one knows and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square
+house of the Jacobean period--presumably because it is so hidden by
+trees, so wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get
+at, that its outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+
+It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of
+the tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is
+haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they
+are never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted
+them shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A
+side gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall,
+up an alley, is labelled "Tradesman's Entrance," but the tradesmen never
+linger there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin,
+blue milk on that threshold. The butcher's chariot wheels never tarry at
+the corner of that alley. Indeed, the local butcher has no chariot. His
+clients mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them
+wrapped in a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class
+buyers wear a cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of
+hair by a hat-pin.
+
+The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He
+goes slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before
+he tips his measure.
+
+This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he could
+live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of it--a
+noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was once a
+family mansion; later it was described as a riverside residence, then as
+a quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price fell with a crash,
+and an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by her relations to live
+in it, with two servants, who were frequently to be met in Gravesend in
+the evening hours, at which time, it is to be presumed, the elderly lady
+of weak intellect was locked in the Signal House alone. But the house
+never had a ghost. Haunted houses very seldom have. The ghost was the
+mere invention of some kitchen-maid.
+
+Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+foreigner took it--a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and
+the river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was not
+preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He was
+well known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable suburb for
+a desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to make; and he was
+delighted at the cheapness of the house, the greenness of the old lawn,
+the height of the grimy trees within the red brick wall.
+
+He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his throat
+in the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had obviously
+been designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the Signal
+House occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it up
+altogether, and tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years, while
+the Russian banker extended his business and lived virtuously elsewhere.
+Then he suddenly began using the house again as a house of recreation,
+and brought his foreign servants, and his foreign friends and their
+foreign servants, to stay from Saturday till Monday.
+
+And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played
+bowls on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors
+could hear them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the
+grimy trees and the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried
+much about the Signal House; for they were a busy people who lived all
+around, and had to earn their living, in addition to the steady and
+persistent assuagement of a thirst begotten of cement dust and the
+pungent smell of bone manure. One or two local amateurs had made sure
+of the fact that there was nothing in the house that would repay a
+burglarious investigation, which, added to the fact that the police
+station is only a few doors off, tended to allay a natural curiosity as
+to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+
+When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and usually
+told the cabman when his services would again be required. He came
+thus with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and came
+without luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab, carried
+some parcels, presumably of refreshments. These grave gentlemen were,
+it appeared, about to enjoy a picnic at the Signal House--possibly a
+tea-picnic in the Russian fashion.
+
+The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the
+back of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at
+the closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build would
+allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who seemed to
+know his bearings.
+
+"Well, mister," he said, in a Northern voice, "another of your little
+jobs?"
+
+The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the
+vehicle had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the
+question.
+
+"Yes, my fren'," he said, "another of my little jobs. I hope you are
+well, Captain Cable?"
+
+But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+conventions. He was obviously well--as well as a hard, seafaring life
+will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man,
+with a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a
+little piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His
+eyes were blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart,
+but it was certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick
+coat of blue pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but because
+it was his best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black
+felt. It had perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years
+earlier. He wore no gloves--Captain Cable drew the line there. As for
+the rest, he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig.
+
+"And yourself?" he answered, mechanically.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," replied the polite banker, who, it will
+have been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the
+reader. The truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously
+Russian that the plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of
+consonants. "It is an affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you,
+but I think they do not speak English, except your colleague, the other
+captain, who speaks a little--a very little."
+
+As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+awaiting them.
+
+"This is Captain Cable," he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign
+ways; but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn,
+just to show that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the
+conversation.
+
+"Tell 'em," he said, "that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+clean."
+
+He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken
+metaphorically.
+
+The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions,
+rather markedly and with much deference.
+
+"You're speakin' French," interrupted Captain Cable.
+
+"Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?"
+
+"Not me," returned Captain Cable, affably. "They're all one to me.
+They're all damn nonsense."
+
+He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the
+social station of the speaker.
+
+The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He was
+a tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair and
+mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were dark,
+and he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which had been
+placed near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a cedar-tree, and
+his manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in his daily life he
+had always been looked up to and obeyed without question.
+
+"Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands," he said.
+
+And the banker replied:
+
+"Oui, mon Prince."
+
+But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the others,
+the youngest of the group--a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy, fair
+mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+
+"My father," he said, in perfect English, "says that we also are plain
+men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours."
+
+He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it
+had been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not
+like these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the
+young man.
+
+The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted
+group seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat
+down last, was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown,
+and was mostly hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a
+Northerner, the abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark
+of the other element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable
+looked at him hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they
+sat next to each other at one side of the table, and faced the three
+landsmen. Again Captain Cable spoke first.
+
+"Provided it's nothing underhand," he said, "I'm ready and willing.
+Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God--them's my risks!
+I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives--"
+
+"There are explosives," admitted the banker.
+
+"Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my hatches.
+Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face."
+
+"There are cartridges," said the young man who had shaken hands.
+
+"That'll do," said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+towards the banker, added, "Now, mister," and sat back in his chair.
+
+"It is a very simple matter," explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+voice. "We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is
+some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters.
+There is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you
+understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost."
+
+The banker paused for breath.
+
+"I understand," said Captain Cable. "It's the same with me and my ship.
+There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's
+neck or nothing with me."
+
+And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+respect, nothing.
+
+"I understand right enough," he added, with an affable nod to the three
+foreigners.
+
+"You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in
+the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the _Olaf_,
+Captain Petersen--sitting by your side."
+
+Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+
+"Thought you was a seafaring man," he said. And Captain Petersen replied
+that he was "Vair pleased."
+
+"The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable."
+
+"I don't deny," replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen
+out of the corner of his eye, "that I have been there before."
+
+"You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a
+sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber
+waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+captain?"
+
+"To-morrow," replied the captain. "Ship's lying in the river now, and if
+these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--"
+
+"No, I do not think we shall have time for that!" put in the banker,
+hastily. "And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your
+meeting-place. You have your charts?"
+
+By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years
+he had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain
+sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the
+overhanging trees.
+
+"Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much," he said,
+apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+
+The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the
+action, looked at him sharply.
+
+"Seafaring man?" he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his
+voice.
+
+"Not by profession, only for fun."
+
+"Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet
+found out where the fun comes in!"
+
+"This gentleman," explained the banker, "his Ex--Mr.--" He paused, and
+looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Martin."
+
+"Mr. Martin will be on board the _Olaf_ when you meet Captain Petersen
+in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that Captain
+Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The
+two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson
+undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my
+fren'?"
+
+"My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious
+little of that," replied Captain Cable.
+
+He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for us
+two--us seafaring men?"
+
+"There is five hundred pounds for each of you," replied the white-haired
+gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+
+Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+
+"I like to deal with a gentleman," he said, gruffly.
+
+"And so do I," replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+
+Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A SPECIALTY
+
+A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the
+breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet
+and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like
+a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad
+daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and
+day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three
+weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is
+ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and
+the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+
+There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill
+is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably
+an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the
+waste-places of the world--a place left clean on sailors' charts; no
+one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have
+earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never
+relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their
+embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp.
+Their story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and
+stored beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle
+the ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on
+these waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea,
+where it blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the
+world is blue and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on
+these coasts.
+
+"Barrin' fogs--always barrin' fogs!" Captain Cable had said as his last
+word on leaving the Signal House. "If ye wait a month, never move in a
+fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!"
+
+And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one
+of those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or
+reason.
+
+At sunset the _Olaf_ had crept cautiously in from the west--a
+high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with
+her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like
+a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who
+moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and
+a little dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every
+current.
+
+Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a
+half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then
+he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he
+rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped
+dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then
+Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high
+forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The _Olaf_ was anchored at
+the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no
+vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went
+down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into
+night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below
+the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its
+winking, wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+
+Here the _Olaf_ rode out the gale that raged all through the night, and
+in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the northwest
+wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to make a
+sea big enough to affect large vessels. The _Olaf_ rode easily enough,
+and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time,
+throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at
+its bath.
+
+Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and
+lively in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of
+the black sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost
+in the ample folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+
+"It remains to be seen," he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+"whether that little man will come to us in this."
+
+"He will come," said Captain Petersen.
+
+Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things--at the timidity
+and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad weather, at
+life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people who find
+life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that it is
+easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells
+that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and
+chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The
+gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the
+happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin
+Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy
+cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim
+pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea,
+and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain
+Petersen on the back.
+
+"Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly
+amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy,
+my friend?"
+
+Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+
+"We are putting our necks within a rope," he said.
+
+"Not your neck--only mine," replied Martin. "It is a necktie that one
+gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so
+free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine!
+The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there
+is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his
+life--that old man, eh?"
+
+"It is all very well for you," said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning
+his gloomy eyes towards his companion. "A prince does not get shot or
+hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas."
+
+"Ah! you think that," said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. "One can
+never tell."
+
+Then he broke into a laugh.
+
+"Come!" he said, "I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come
+on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of a
+man."
+
+"If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,"
+grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
+
+"He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness."
+
+"He is probably afraid--" Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+laboriously on to the rail.
+
+"Of what?" inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+
+"Of a woman."
+
+And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+aloft.
+
+They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
+breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
+that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
+Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
+horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
+approaching before the wind.
+
+Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the
+water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the
+beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till
+the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He
+disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again
+astern of the _Olaf_, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan
+of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very different
+kind of sailor to the careful captain of the _Olaf_. His low decks were
+clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--green and white.
+As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved
+his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.
+
+Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that
+still broke over the bows. The crew of the _Olaf_, crowding to the rail,
+looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of their
+dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost under
+water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable
+stood swaying on the bridge--a little, square figure in gleaming
+oilskins--and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+
+He passed ahead of the _Olaf_ and anchored there, paying out cable as if
+he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a
+sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port
+of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his
+business was, this seaman knew it well.
+
+No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat,
+and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity.
+"He is going to try and get to us!" he said, pessimistically, and went
+forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this
+Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing
+Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope--cleverly
+thrown--coiled out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's
+face.
+
+A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the _Olaf_ and shook
+hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince Martin,
+who held out his hand.
+
+"Glad to see you, Captain Cable," he said. Cable finished drying the
+salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook
+hands.
+
+"Suppose you thought I wasn't coming," he said, suspiciously.
+
+"No, I knew you would."
+
+"Glad to see me for my own sake?" suggested the captain, grimly smiling.
+
+"Yes, it always does one good to see a man," answered Prince Martin.
+
+"They tell me you're a prince."
+
+"That is all."
+
+The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+
+"Makings of a man as well, perhaps," he said, doubtfully. Then he turned
+to cast an eye over the _Olaf_.
+
+"Tin-kettle of a thing!" he observed, after a pause.
+
+"My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small.
+Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and
+get our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if
+it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work
+all night?"
+
+"I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is."
+
+The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+
+"Dammy, you're the right sort!" he muttered, looking aloft at the
+rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the
+privilege of the British sailor.
+
+Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on
+board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle "ship-shape and
+Bristol fashion," and refused to remain on board the _Olaf_ for
+luncheon.
+
+"We've got a bit of steak," he said, conclusively, and clambered over
+the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of
+fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small
+steamer to the large one.
+
+The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon--men who,
+as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in
+harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or
+a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+
+There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after
+dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost
+noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's
+crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun
+which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince
+Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.
+
+Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened,
+and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the
+transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out
+of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the
+other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the
+creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three
+men who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee
+together in the cabin of the _Olaf_.
+
+"Likely as not," said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, "we
+three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they
+did see me."
+
+"We can never tell," said Martin, optimistically.
+
+"Of course," the captain went on, "I can hold me tongue. That's
+agreed--we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely
+to pay for a word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper
+that I could put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has
+had a hand in some queer political pies."
+
+"Yes," answered Martin, with his gay laugh, "and kept it clean all the
+same."
+
+"That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+father for my money in three days' time--barrin' fogs. And I'll tell him
+I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's a
+handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly."
+
+Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+sea-boots.
+
+Half an hour later the _Olaf_ was alone on that shallow sea, which
+seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a
+room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TWO OF A TRADE
+
+"His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard," a witty Frenchwoman had
+once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin
+alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French
+have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as
+the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a
+moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+
+The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear
+it--Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker--and made that man Paul
+Deulin's friend for the rest of his life. As there is _point de culte
+sans mystere_, so also there can be no lasting friendship without
+reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of the
+world--although they had in common more languages than may be counted on
+the fingers--they knew but little of each other.
+
+If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
+green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring
+to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole
+harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other
+hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will
+discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.
+
+Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
+they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
+to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his
+own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of
+the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
+opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted
+in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
+represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which
+is the language of diplomacy, and means war.
+
+For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
+it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+
+"The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
+in one place at a time," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years
+his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
+rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
+place where their services were urgently needed.
+
+"If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during
+a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are."
+Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
+imperturbable smile.
+
+Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
+captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
+vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
+a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
+during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
+remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
+with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
+quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
+fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
+only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
+manufactured their own thoughts.
+
+Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
+was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+
+"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
+side. If I did not, he would go past."
+
+This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
+England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
+a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that
+direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.
+Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall,
+avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are
+content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover,
+such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often
+happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.
+
+Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune,
+or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall,
+spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm
+possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of
+a great land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked
+with Cartoner.
+
+"I permit myself a question," he said. "When did you return from Cuba?"
+
+"I landed at Liverpool last night."
+
+Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.
+Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried
+behind those smiling eyes.
+
+"I am in London, as you see," said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+question. "I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may
+suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us
+hope we may have another little . . . errand together--eh?"
+
+As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman
+who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look
+curiously at the two men.
+
+"You are dressed in your best clothes," said Deulin, after a pause; "you
+are going to pay calls."
+
+"I am going to call on one of my old chiefs."
+
+"Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on a
+new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk to
+a clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all your
+old chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment since you
+made your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men--eh?"
+
+"She will be glad to see you," said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going. She
+might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy one."
+
+"I always go to see them when I am in town," said Cartoner, who usually
+confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily intercourse.
+
+"And he--how is he?"
+
+"He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long in
+many climates. She is always anxious about him."
+
+"It is the penalty a woman pays," said Deulin. "To love and to be
+consumed by anxiety--a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should
+have gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want her
+good services--again."
+
+And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+
+"I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of course,
+you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw."
+
+"I know the history of Poland," answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his
+head a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead
+a burden of memories and knowledge of which his brain was always
+conscious--as a man may stand in the centre of a great library, and
+become suddenly aware that he has more books than he can ever open and
+understand.
+
+"Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more history
+that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and Heaven
+knows that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I never look
+into a book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are in London. I
+give you that--to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and son. It is
+not for them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take care of
+themselves--though they will not do that. It does not run in the family,
+as you know, who read history books."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner
+of St. James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been
+passed in London streets. For it must be remembered that English traffic
+is different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+
+"There is a girl," pursued the Frenchman. "Families like the Bukatys
+should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is
+as gay as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old
+ruffian--and my very dear friend."
+
+"And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?" inquired
+Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+
+"That I leave to Lady Orlay," replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who
+abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.
+
+"Yes," he said, ignoring the incident, "I would not presume to dictate.
+All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who
+has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father
+who is a plotter and an old ruffian--a Polish noble, in fact--and a
+brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I
+should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the
+world, practically alone--on the hard, hard upper-class world--with only
+one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on a
+shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps,
+of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman--and,
+vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.'"
+
+"And my accomplished aunt . . ." suggested Cartoner.
+
+"Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh
+than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of
+common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation."
+
+As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last
+he broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly
+following the stream of his own thoughts.
+
+"Who is Joseph P. Mangles?" he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+
+"An American gentleman--the word is applicable in its best sense--who
+for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the
+most terrible sister a man ever had."
+
+"So much I know."
+
+Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+
+"Then you have met him--that puts another complexion on your question."
+
+"I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him."
+
+"And that is all you know about him?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on."
+
+"What is he?" repeated Cartoner.
+
+"He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor
+devil--like you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time kicking
+his heels in New York, or wherever they kick their heels in America.
+The rest of his time he is risking his health, or possibly his neck,
+wherever it may please the fates to send him. If he had been properly
+trained, he might have done something, that Joseph P. Mangles; for he
+can hold his tongue. But he took to it late, as they all do in America.
+So he has come across, has he? Yes, the storm-birds are congregating, my
+silent friend. There is something in the wind."
+
+Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed it.
+
+"Was that girl with them?" he inquired presently--"Miss Netty Cahere?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I always make love to Miss Cahere--she likes it best."
+
+Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare
+that his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not
+speak again until they had walked some distance northward of Piccadilly,
+and stopped before a house with white window-boxes. Several carriages
+stood at the other side of the road against the square railings.
+
+"Is it her day?" inquired Deulin.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+
+"And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since
+we are here, let us go in--with a smile on the countenance, eh? my brave
+Cartoner."
+
+"And a lie on the tongue."
+
+"There I will meet you, too," replied Deulin, looking into his
+card-case.
+
+They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a
+number of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come
+together. It was observable that this was not a congregation of
+fashionable or artistic people; for the women were dressed quietly, and
+the men were mostly old and white-haired. It was also dimly perceptible
+that there was a larger proportion of brain in the room than is allotted
+to the merely fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic
+and pictorial, which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover,
+scraps of conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude
+that the house was in its way a miniature Babel.
+
+The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake
+hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious
+group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived
+Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He
+seemed to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length
+went to meet Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and
+indefinable family resemblances which start up at odd moments became
+visible.
+
+"I want you particularly to-morrow night," said the lady; "I have some
+people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening."
+
+And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+Cartoner's elbow again.
+
+"Here," he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own
+tongue, "I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre
+Bukaty," he added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy,
+white hair, and the air of a mediaeval chieftain, "allow me to present
+my old friend Cartoner."
+
+The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin
+still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn
+towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had
+a manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl
+of open air and active tastes.
+
+"Princess Wanda," said the Frenchman, "my friend Mr. Cartoner."
+
+The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity
+seemed suddenly reflected in them.
+
+"He is the best linguist in Europe," said Deulin, in a gay whisper;
+"even Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels."
+
+And he himself spoke in Polish.
+
+Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place,
+where human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books
+was folded over.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he
+would have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading
+before facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service.
+But he was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been
+bestowed upon the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the
+contempt hurled by his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon
+Commerce as represented in Poland by the thrifty German _emigre_.
+
+The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably
+bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great
+height as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact,
+he had grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild
+early sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething
+in its midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
+
+The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London.
+Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough,
+he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile,
+which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding
+city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
+
+"They do not take me seriously," he said to his intimate friends; "they
+do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall
+see."
+
+And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live
+in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact
+that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times,
+when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to
+follow him to the death--which is the way of the world. "You have but to
+hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But wise men know
+that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
+impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
+centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
+off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian,
+as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
+nothing could ever smooth him.
+
+He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
+the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
+said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
+Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+
+"It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but
+English, and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest
+people in the world--you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your
+pardon. Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel in
+Kensington--will you come? That is the address."
+
+And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner,
+after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which
+was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning
+speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better
+equipments with which to face the world.
+
+"Yes," he said at length; "it will give me much pleasure."
+
+The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was
+there to need reflection in such a small question?
+
+"At five o'clock," he said. "We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea
+you drink in this country."
+
+And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People whose
+lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the smallest
+jests.
+
+It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted by
+a page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in Kensington.
+The Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black. There is in some
+Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn until Poland is
+reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like her father and her
+brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her being, such as is
+often found in slightly made persons.
+
+"I came as early as I could," said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the clock
+struck.
+
+The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had
+not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather
+naive statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and
+glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a
+chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+
+"That is kind of you," she said, speaking English without the least
+suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her life.
+"My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are not
+only taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a minute. He
+has just been called away."
+
+"It was very kind of him to ask me to call," replied Cartoner.
+
+There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite
+new to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a
+man who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going
+straight towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come
+to pay an idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush into
+conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment in it.
+His hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this as
+he took a chair near the window. He was probably ten years older than
+herself, and gave the impression of experience and of a deep knowledge
+of the world. From living much alone he had acquired the habit of
+wondering whether it was worth while to say that which came into his
+mind--which is a habit fatal to social success.
+
+"Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night," said the princess, following
+the usual instinct that silence between strangers is intolerable. "He
+talked a great deal of you."
+
+"Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much."
+
+"He accuses you of talking too little," said Wanda, with some spirit.
+
+"You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid,
+princess."
+
+"Which is diplomacy?" she suggested.
+
+"Which is diplomacy."
+
+"Then I think you are both great artists," she said, with a laugh, as
+the door opened and her father entered the room.
+
+"I only come to ask you a question--a word," said the prince. "Heavens!
+your English language! I have a man down-stairs--a question of
+business--and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the meaning of
+the word jettison?"
+
+Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+
+"Ah!" cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, "of course.
+How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will
+excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea."
+
+And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
+so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
+
+The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had
+found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their
+knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public
+man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his
+advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in him
+that unknown quantity which the world must needs think magnificent.
+
+"I want you to tell me all you know about him," said the princess in her
+brisk way. "He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
+not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort
+of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love
+and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married
+already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy.
+But I don't. He has no wife--unless he has two."
+
+"I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career."
+
+"I do not care about his career," said the princess, lightly. "I go
+deeper than careers."
+
+She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay,
+blue eyes.
+
+"A man's career is only the surface of his life."
+
+"Then some men's lives are all surface," said Cartoner.
+
+Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+
+"Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse," she replied.
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
+who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
+decisive views upon it.
+
+"What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping
+when expedient--and avoiding collisions?" he inquired.
+
+"I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally," she answered,
+"and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness
+lay that way."
+
+"Yes," he laughed. "You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as I
+saw you."
+
+"One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite
+patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness."
+
+"Now you have come down to a mere career again," said Cartoner.
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+
+"What are you people discussing," he asked, "so gravely?"
+
+He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for
+he had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+
+"I do not quite know," answered Cartoner, slowly. "The princess was
+giving me her views."
+
+"I know," retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. "They are
+long views, those views of hers."
+
+Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and
+looked out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which
+caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any
+man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of
+thoughtful attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the _Minnie_, crossing
+the street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business
+acquaintance of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+
+Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.
+He had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and
+out of the _Minnie's_ hatches.
+
+The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.
+The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and
+Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception
+given by the Orlays that evening.
+
+"You're going, of course?" said the prince.
+
+"Yes, I am going."
+
+"You go to many such entertainments?"
+
+"No, I go to very few," replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+speculative way.
+
+Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission
+of the usual "Well, I must be off," or any such catch-word. He certainly
+left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.
+
+He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+vehicle.
+
+"Westminster Bridge," he said.
+
+He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down
+to the steamboat-landing.
+
+"Where do you want to go to?" inquired the gruff, seafaring
+ticket-clerk.
+
+"As far as I can," was the reply.
+
+A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over
+the rudder. He must have known that the _Minnie_ was so constructed that
+she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once.
+It was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the passenger
+traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having
+leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was
+natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart
+seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage
+of this affability to make inquiries about the _Minnie_. He knew,
+perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side
+worker.
+
+The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the
+Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of
+steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority
+were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam
+threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+
+In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of
+North Sea fish-carriers, lay the _Minnie_, painted black, with nothing
+brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a
+shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+fish-carrier.
+
+Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to
+take him to the _Minnie_.
+
+"Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir," he said. "He
+must have come down by the boat before yours."
+
+A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the _Minnie_, and
+banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+
+The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face
+of a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+
+"It's you, Mr. Cartoner," he said. "Glad to see you."
+
+"I was passing in a steamer," answered Cartoner, quietly, "and
+recognized the _Minnie_."
+
+"I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time
+you and me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere
+stowed away in a locker."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+"I suppose," Miss Mangles was saying--"I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?"
+
+"It is possible, Jooly--it is possible," replied Mr. Joseph P. Mangles,
+looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window of his
+private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.
+
+Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+
+"This invitation," said the recipient, "accompanied as it is by a
+friendly note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in
+the fact that we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point
+to it, Joseph. It seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me
+a welcome."
+
+"On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem--just that."
+
+Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland
+Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr.
+Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a
+capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was
+not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the
+invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance
+owed its origin to an accidental encounter between himself and Lord
+Orlay--a friend of his early senatorial days--in Pall Mall the day
+before.
+
+Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and
+few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts.
+Of what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an
+invitation?
+
+"Jooly," Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's
+back--"Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries."
+
+But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black
+cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a
+Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a
+rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which
+so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black
+and shiny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by
+hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown
+baggy by much speaking on public platforms--a fearsome thing in a woman.
+Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long
+ago there must have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P.
+Mangles--moments spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman
+of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she could not be
+beautiful, she could at all events be great.
+
+One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted
+Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed
+it to her greatness.
+
+"Are they abstainers?" she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+over the causes she had championed.
+
+"Nay," replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland
+Avenue.
+
+"Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction."
+
+"If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than
+you can chew," replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into
+the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of
+himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort
+of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
+
+Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and
+no one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+
+"Let us ask them all and be done with them," she said; and had said it
+for thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no
+other prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain--then plain
+Mr. Orlay. She had never "done with them," had never secured that
+peaceful domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her
+husband's dream, and would never secure it. For these were two persons,
+now old and white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world,
+and had a supreme contempt for it.
+
+The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of
+rich black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink
+and self-effacing quietness.
+
+"We shall know no one," she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+
+"Not even the waiters," replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass,
+glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. "But they will
+soon know us."
+
+They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote,
+with the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for a
+moment near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually
+did, a little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph
+Mangles. Over the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister he bowed
+in silence.
+
+"I have nothing to say to that great woman," he sometimes said. "She is
+so elevated that my voice will not reach her."
+
+Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now
+standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring
+her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+
+"Ah! I expected you had forgotten me," she said, when Deulin presented
+himself.
+
+"Believe me--I have tried," he replied, with great earnestness; but the
+complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach
+any deep meaning to his remark.
+
+"You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember
+them all."
+
+"I do not remember them all, mademoiselle--only a very, very few."
+
+"Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the
+room?"
+
+"Is there another in the room?" inquired Deulin, looking around him with
+some interest.
+
+"Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black."
+
+"Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?"
+
+"I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one
+of us, does she?" And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful
+and inexperienced way.
+
+"She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere," replied Deulin.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess."
+
+"Oh, then she is married?" exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell
+three semitones on the last word.
+
+"No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole."
+
+Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light
+of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+
+"Why do you pity her?" asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+
+"Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they
+not--for convenience, I mean--not from . . . from inclination, like
+other girls?"
+
+And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her
+eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on
+Deulin's lips.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a sharp sigh--and that was all. He bowed, and
+turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some
+minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special
+to report, for they walked aside together.
+
+It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts
+to get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that unmatched
+hostess at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the arrival of
+the latest and the departure of the earliest.
+
+"I was looking for you," she said; "you, who always know where everybody
+is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for him a moment
+ago."
+
+"Mangles is listening to the music in the library--comparatively happy
+by himself behind a barricade of flowers."
+
+"And that preposterous woman?"
+
+"That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room."
+
+Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+
+"You have seen the Bukatys?" inquired Lady Orlay. "I called on them the
+moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I have
+never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?"
+
+"I think so," replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away
+across the room.
+
+Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked
+grave. It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's
+room.
+
+"I like the old man," she said, with a change of tone. "What is he?"
+
+"He is a rebel."
+
+"Proscribed?"
+
+"No--they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier--more
+arms than the national government could find men for."
+
+"Yes, I remember that."
+
+"That is the man," said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction
+of the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.
+
+"And the girl--it is very sad--I like her very much. She is gay and
+brave."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, "when a woman is gay and brave--and young--Heaven
+help us."
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur Deulin."
+
+"And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady--God keep
+her," he said with a grave bow.
+
+"I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know.
+She has a great capacity for making friends."
+
+"She has already made a few--this evening," put in the Frenchman, with a
+significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual
+enemy--of a pretty girl--that is all."
+
+He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like
+that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one
+less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some
+hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with
+the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He laughed--but he laughed uneasily--and spread out his hands in a
+gesture of bewilderment.
+
+"What is what?"
+
+Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+
+"Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly," she said. "Mr. Mangles
+has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes
+ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook
+hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures
+are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees
+it."
+
+"Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater--you and
+Orlay--quietly moored beneath the trees."
+
+"Finally," continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, "you
+come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once
+or twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like
+it--the Vultures."
+
+She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said. "You are too discerning. Good-bye."
+
+"You are going--?"
+
+"Away," he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. "I
+must go and pack my trunks."
+
+Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night.
+Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive
+and the world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words
+of thanks.
+
+"We shall hope to see you again," said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+
+"'Fraid not," he answered; "we're going to travel on the Continent."
+
+"When do you start?" asked her ladyship.
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"Another one," muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And her
+brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+
+"You have come to say good-bye," she said to him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are going away again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will not tell me where you are going."
+
+"I cannot," answered Cartoner.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said,
+was very experienced and very discerning.
+
+"You are going to Russia, all of you."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AT THE FRONTIER
+
+Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric
+illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw
+Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never
+heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+
+How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train
+just before these electric lights were reached--to take his chance of
+crossing the frontier before morning--history will never tell! How many
+have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station with
+a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of
+the officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing
+Alexandrowo--of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland--but by this
+route. Before the train is at a standstill at the platform each one
+of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white
+trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty
+of Russian law. Here, whatever time of day or night, winter or summer,
+it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity.
+There are always sentries on the outer side of the train. The platform
+is a prison-yard--the waiting rooms are prison-yards.
+
+With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and
+everywhere, with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in
+baggage or demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience
+will see the traveller through. There is no fear of his being left
+in the huge station, or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and
+rightful destination. But with a passport that is old or torn, with a
+visa which bears any but a recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted
+look, the voyager had better take his chance of dropping from the
+footboard at speed, especially if it be a misty night.
+
+Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so
+much as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go
+through, but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned
+within a large room where the luggage is inspected, and they are
+deprived of their passports. When the customs formalities are over they
+are allowed to find the refreshment-room, and there console themselves
+with weak tea in tumblers until such time as they are released.
+
+The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great
+inspection-room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to
+overflowing. The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be
+Germans. There were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the
+others, had the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together--just as
+the women drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who
+hoped against hope that their passports were in order. For the most
+part, no one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested
+with so much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an
+intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and
+feel at their ease.
+
+Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's,
+was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of
+anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin,
+whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left
+it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be
+observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge.
+He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned,
+black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no
+attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and he avoided the
+refreshment-room tea.
+
+Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
+that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him.
+Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
+Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of
+the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or, perhaps, the
+younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
+when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
+chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
+
+He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
+opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
+young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
+high-born Briton.
+
+"Englishman?" he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
+oddly stiff.
+
+"Thought you were," said the other, who, though his clothes were English
+and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
+There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the
+head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence.
+He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who
+was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye
+to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to
+his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.
+
+"All this would be mildly amusing," he said, "at say any other hour of
+the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
+you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?"
+
+"I can sleep anywhere," replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
+him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
+talk.
+
+"I know Alexandrowo pretty well," the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+"and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on
+friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as--the
+multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
+sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere."
+
+He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but
+for a card.
+
+"I know who you are," said Cartoner, quietly: "I recognized you from
+your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours
+ago in London."
+
+"Wanda?" inquired the other, eagerly. "Dear old Wanda! How is she? She
+was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet."
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "all about them. But, first, tell me your name.
+Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their
+friends--the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to
+have made mention of it in her letters."
+
+"Reginald Cartoner."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of you--but not from Wanda."
+
+He paused to reflect.
+
+"No," he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. "No, she never
+mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known
+out of England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin--you know
+Deulin?--has spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other
+friends in common. We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to
+meet you. You say you know my name--yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that
+you should have recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad
+you think I am like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am,
+you know."
+
+And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh--not that there was
+anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at
+life from a cheerful standpoint.
+
+Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion
+over the cup. "Cartoner," Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend,
+"weighs you, and naturally finds you wanting." It seemed that he was
+weighing Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+
+"I saw your father also," he said, at length. "He was kind enough to ask
+me to call, which I did."
+
+"That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London--no one, I
+mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never
+quite understood on the Continent--that if you go to London you must
+speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done
+with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does
+not easily make friends--you must have been very civil to him."
+
+"According to my lights, I was," admitted Cartoner.
+
+Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in
+the morning.
+
+"The truth is," continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way,
+"that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man
+by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a
+tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want,
+and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however,
+to admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated."
+
+He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod
+an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had
+approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured
+words of politeness.
+
+"Thank you--thank you," said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+within his pocket.
+
+"It is my passport," he explained to Cartoner, lightly. "All the rest of
+you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful
+privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they
+are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo
+you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I
+suppose."
+
+"I always try to," replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+
+"You see," went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+environments, "we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there
+was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are
+a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three
+foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent--who make us clean their boots
+and then cast them at our heads."
+
+The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers
+were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost
+daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a
+fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished,
+giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which
+hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
+
+"I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw," said Martin, as they
+walked up the platform. "My father and sister will be coming home before
+long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the
+place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for
+you when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as
+any. And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the
+best horses and the worst roads."
+
+"Thanks, very much," replied Cartoner. "I, of course, do not know how
+long I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know
+from one day to another what my movements may be."
+
+"No," replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears.
+"No, of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you
+will be here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw
+now. But, of course, there are difficulties--even the races present
+difficulties--there is the military element."
+
+He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+passing to his carriage in front of them.
+
+"They have the best horses," he explained. "They have more money than we
+have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is."
+
+He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so
+accustomed to the recognition of his rank that he went first without
+question.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a laugh, "I had quite forgotten that it is your
+business to know all about us."
+
+"I have tried to remind you of it several times," answered Cartoner,
+quietly.
+
+"To shut me up, you mean?" asked the younger man.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned
+away with a laugh.
+
+"Good-night," he said. "Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet
+again in a few hours."
+
+He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of
+the station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice--of a rather high
+timbre--in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor. For,
+like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues. The
+Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first,
+his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German,
+or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the
+two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so
+little--England and France.
+
+Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It
+was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was
+green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing
+eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman
+seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable
+man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times
+as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather
+cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost
+insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption
+in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after
+another as occasion seemed to demand.
+
+He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin
+Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the
+compartment, closing the door behind him.
+
+"I have been thinking about it," he said, in his quick way, "and it
+won't do, you know--it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our
+friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you.
+Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in
+Warsaw."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, "I understand."
+
+He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train
+glided into Warsaw Station.
+
+In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+
+"All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to
+me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as
+a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times."
+
+He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+
+"She did not know that I was coming," he said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN A REMOTE CITY
+
+The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which
+for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At
+Cracow--the tomb of many kings--it passes half round the citadel, a
+shallow, sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the
+present capital--Warsaw--it finds its way across the great plain,
+amid the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and
+Masovia.
+
+Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking
+from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In
+Praga--a hundred years ago--the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand
+were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in
+the square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of
+their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired
+upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in
+cold blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for
+three hours in the streets.
+
+Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops,
+with a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in
+the world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street,
+and, like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name--the
+Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel
+de l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where
+kings and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered,
+where the bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were
+carried after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where
+the great light from the West--Miss Julie P. Mangles--alighted one May
+morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+
+"Told you," said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was
+within almost measurable distance of snappishness--"told you you would
+have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before
+had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame
+of mind--on their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury,
+Massachusetts, when the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters
+for the Truth failed to reach the railway depot because they happened
+on a fire in a straw-hat manufactory on their way, and heard that the
+newest pattern of straw hat was to be had for the picking up in the open
+street.
+
+There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when
+she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble
+position of the prophet--not without honor in his own country--who
+cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+
+"This is even worse than I anticipated," said Miss Mangles, watching the
+hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+
+"What is worse, Jooly?"
+
+"Poland!" replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+worse countries than Poland in her day.
+
+"I allow," said Mr. Mangles, slowly, "that at this hour in the morning
+it appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?"
+
+"Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph," replied Miss Mangles,
+looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a
+bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his
+place.
+
+Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel,
+with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed
+always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult
+still, to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss
+Mangles was conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as
+expert in the lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform
+period, somewhat alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the
+historic staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a
+distinct air of condescension.
+
+"Tell me," said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep
+depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, "what
+languages you speak."
+
+"Russian, French, Polish, German, English--"
+
+"That'll do to go on with," interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue.
+"We'll get along in English. My name is Mangles."
+
+Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and
+a salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where
+stood a couple of waiters.
+
+Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She
+might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept
+all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance
+of having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the
+surface a little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes
+seemed to conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly
+theories, too, which she often enunciated in her confidential manner;
+and one of these was that one should always, in all places and at all
+times, be neat and tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it
+noted in passing, there have been many successful human careers based
+upon this simple rule.
+
+She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress
+which conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and
+the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs
+she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along
+the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and
+nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it
+appeared, as much at home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" he said, standing hat in hand before her, "who could
+have dreamed of such a pleasure--here and at this moment--in this sad
+town?"
+
+"You seemed gay enough--you were singing," answered Miss Cahere.
+
+"It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps
+you noticed it?"
+
+"No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear
+for music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+accomplishments, you know," said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in
+of the shoulders.
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his
+opinion that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles
+and her brother.
+
+Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable
+to feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She
+shook hands, with her platform bow--from the waist--and passed on.
+
+"Hallo!" said Joseph Mangles. "Got here before us? Thought you'd turn
+up. Dismal place, eh?"
+
+"You have just arrived, I suppose?" said Deulin.
+
+"Oh, please don't laugh at us!" broke in Netty. "Of course you can see
+that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!"
+
+"You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from
+heaven," answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her
+hair. It was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did
+not seem to hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to
+her uncle. Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long
+one, for the Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+
+"You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know," she said, turning
+again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation
+of her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who
+blush easily--at the right time. "I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased
+to have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have
+you friends here?"
+
+"Only one," replied Deulin--"the waiter who serves the Zakuska counter
+down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman, travelling for
+his health in France. He does not recognize me now."
+
+"Will you stay long?"
+
+"I did not intend to," replied Deulin, "when I came out of my room this
+morning."
+
+"But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?" asked
+Netty.
+
+"Not in Warsaw," was the reply.
+
+"Suppose we shall meet again," broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number
+on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. "Always welcome,"
+he said. "Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose."
+
+"I suppose it does," answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+
+He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the
+Krakowski Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was
+already astir, while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying
+home from the morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and
+churches on either side. Every palace has its story; two of them were
+confiscated by the Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown
+from the pavement, might possibly have come from one of the windows.
+Every church has rung to the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn--"At
+Thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free
+country." Into almost all of them the soldiers have forced their way to
+make arrests.
+
+Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The
+clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little
+sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+
+"Just Heaven, forgive me!" he said, with upturned eyes. "I have already
+told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I
+shall find Cartoner out of bed?"
+
+He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned
+to the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower,
+quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna
+are mostly large, with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for
+existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments,
+where quiet people live--professors, lawyers, and other persons,
+who have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the
+passer-by for entertainment.
+
+Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination
+to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second
+floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the
+Frenchman nodded familiarly.
+
+"Is he up yet?" he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+
+"This hour, monsieur," replied the servant, leading the way along a
+narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass
+into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a
+writing-table.
+
+"Good-morning," said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a
+book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair.
+"Don't let me disturb you," he continued. "Finish what you are doing."
+
+"News?" inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at
+Deulin gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously
+dissimilar--these friends.
+
+"Bah!" returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked
+up--Lelewel's _History of Poland_, in Polish. "I trouble for your
+future, Cartoner. You take life so seriously--you, who need not work
+at all. Even uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a
+position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of
+that!"
+
+He reflected for a moment.
+
+"Yes," he said, after a pause, "I have news of all sorts--news which
+goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead
+of going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning--Mangles
+frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner--" He paused, and
+examined his own boots with a critical air.
+
+"I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?"
+
+"Fifty."
+
+"All that, mon cher?--all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+fool who excels all other fools."
+
+Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to
+put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin
+watched him.
+
+"I say," said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in
+hand--"what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?"
+
+"I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+you," was the reply.
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in
+love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there
+is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss
+Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?"
+
+"Very nice," replied Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the
+letter before him.
+
+"What I like about her is her quiet ways," suggested Deulin,
+tentatively.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares,
+must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose
+and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that
+evening.
+
+Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+
+"More lies!" he murmured, humbly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SAND-WORKERS
+
+At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska--the street running down
+from the Cracow Faubourg to the river--there are always many workers.
+It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here lie the
+steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a trade in
+timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that float from
+the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here, also, are
+loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
+
+A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand
+which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts
+hopefully from the higher parts of the city--the widest, the newest,
+the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard--down the
+hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is
+no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a
+broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts
+from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers
+lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the
+middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that
+render navigation next to impossible--a clean, hard sand, most excellent
+for building purposes.
+
+It was the hour of the mid-day dinner--for Polish hours are the hours of
+the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses
+nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their
+gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was
+late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene
+was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river.
+Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once
+said that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
+
+It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of
+the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach
+within half a mile unperceived.
+
+"Yes," one of the workmen was saying, "those who know say that there
+will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day,
+why not now? Why not this time?"
+
+His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+oval-faced men--real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that
+comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills;
+others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which
+betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+
+"The third time, they say, is lucky," answered a white-haired man, at
+length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his
+face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others
+turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the
+river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees.
+Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen
+fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with
+the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish
+with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the
+streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look
+which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed
+a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to
+his horses.
+
+He who had first spoken--a boatman known as Kosmaroff--was a spare man,
+with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard.
+He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward
+appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and
+vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave
+an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His
+smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely,
+a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a
+raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
+watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the
+old man as if hoping that more was coming.
+
+"Yes, it will be the third time," he said, when the other had lapsed
+into a musing silence, "though few of us have seen it with our own eyes.
+But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of
+our forefathers to guide us--though we cannot say that our forefathers
+have told us--"
+
+He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
+father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+
+"We shall time it better," he said, "than last time. We have men
+watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as
+an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything
+happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the
+dogs should quarrel among themselves--the three dogs that have torn
+Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was
+coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred
+thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed
+what they thought of us!"
+
+The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
+was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others
+looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board
+of directors--some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed
+to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his
+boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+
+"It is all very well for you," said one, a little fat man with beady
+eyes. Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity
+to danger of any sort--"you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to
+lose!"
+
+Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that
+a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is
+a part of it running over.
+
+"There are many who can be aristocrats some day--with a little
+good-fortune," he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+
+"I lost five at Praga," muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+manner of the toiler. "That is enough for me."
+
+"It is well to remember Praga," returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.
+"It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!
+There is much to remember!"
+
+And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff
+glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring
+sullenly across the river.
+
+"I may be an aristocrat by descent," he said, "but what does that come
+to? I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a
+Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always
+done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a
+hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the
+sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here.
+They will finish by losing everything--the little they have left--or
+else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They will
+win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!"
+
+"And when they have won will they remember?" asked one of the two
+smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+
+"If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.
+You may rely on that. They know what each gives--whether freely or with
+a niggard hand--and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
+freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
+expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!"
+
+The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger,
+with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they
+sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
+instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
+each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance
+by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
+
+Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+number--a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed him
+much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was
+back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name
+hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a
+raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish
+patriotism--a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made
+the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to
+Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in
+the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor,
+and the bread that tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom
+which stood in the forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are
+others who cherish the same belief.
+
+"This time," he went on, after a pause, "I have news for you. We are a
+little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently
+until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they
+acted at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall
+nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step
+nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is
+never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around
+his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five
+thousand rifles in Poland--"
+
+He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+
+"In Warsaw!" he added, significantly. "So, if there are any who think
+that the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now--and take the
+consequences." He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+
+No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+
+"And there is ammunition enough," continued Kosmaroff, "to close the
+account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!"
+
+His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+
+"I tell you this," he went on, "because I am likely to go to Cracow
+before long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain
+events may be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly--such as
+the death of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the
+declaration of war by any of the great powers. There is always something
+seething on the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake.
+The Warsaw papers will not have the news; but the _Czas_ and the other
+Cracow journals will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the
+Galician papers when you want to, despite their censors and their
+police!"
+
+A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was
+his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+
+At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river
+boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out
+into a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers
+stirred reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+
+Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself--a long, lithe, wiry
+figure.
+
+"Come," he said. "We must go back to work."
+
+He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his
+narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have
+realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable
+creation--a strong man.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A WARNING
+
+It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the
+kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in
+Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay
+hands upon--that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in protesting
+against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had broken
+faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent of
+those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was
+permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and
+Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
+having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
+jaw.
+
+The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but
+a few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
+while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed
+to her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this
+lady, who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland
+was yet in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
+
+"Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,"
+the old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the
+anniversary of his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He
+mentioned it, moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm
+frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration never
+placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking
+country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of
+European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry
+of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to
+mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they
+spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite
+clear to the Moslem understanding.
+
+The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands
+respect in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a
+conciliatory attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without one
+of their kind within her boundaries.
+
+"You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of
+your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he
+happens to be living at the moment!" he had boldly said to a great
+personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in
+the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had actually
+stretched a point or two for the Prince Bukaty on more than one
+occasion. Like many outspoken people, he passed for a barker and not a
+biter.
+
+It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town
+and submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in
+the Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian
+flag, which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from time
+immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see in
+the great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that his
+predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness, which were
+his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+
+"Yes," he answered to the loquacious curator, "I know. You tell me
+nothing that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince
+Bukaty!"
+
+And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young
+man who had great possessions.
+
+For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment,
+but because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on
+the Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And to
+whom can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+
+Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+sympathy. And that was all!
+
+The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind
+high railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which
+entrance is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality,
+and only unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet
+brougham in which the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is
+just round the corner of the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski
+Gardens--a quiet spot in this most noisy town. The building is a low
+one, with a tiled roof and long windows, heavily framed, of which the
+smaller panes and thick woodwork suggest the early days of window-glass.
+Inside, the house is the house of a poor man. The carpets are worn thin;
+the furniture, of a sumptuous design, is carefully patched and mended.
+The atmosphere has that mournful scent of better days--now dead and
+past. It is the odor of monarchy, slowly fading from the face of a world
+that reeks of cheap democracy.
+
+The air of the rooms--the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+humanity on wood and texture--suggested that older comfort which has
+been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+
+The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had
+acted without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the
+house must have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back
+from the school in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality
+of her own. The difference she brought to the house was a certain
+brightness and a sort of experimental femininity, which reigned supreme
+until her English governess came back again to live as a companion with
+her pupil. Wanda moved the furniture, turned the house round on its
+staid basis, and made a hundred experiments in domestic economy before
+she gave way to her father's habits of life. Then she made that happiest
+of human discoveries, which has the magic power of allaying at one
+stroke the eternal feminine discontent which has made the world uneasy
+since the day that Eve idled in that perfect garden--she found that she
+was wanted in the world!
+
+The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too obvious
+to require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and now that
+old age was coming, that health was failing and wealth had vanished,
+Poland would have none of him.
+
+There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions
+that only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil desires
+and answer questions is the best happiness.
+
+Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called
+a palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and
+rarely stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste; was
+fond of travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning eye upon
+his movements.
+
+There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made
+use of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of the
+house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading round
+from the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office in the
+busier part of Kotzebue Street.
+
+He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are well
+lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only as the
+Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the custom to go
+abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski is more crowded
+after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had walked some distance
+behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin unlocked the gate of the
+garden and passed in, leaving the gate open with the key in the lock. In
+a minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the gate after him, and gave the key
+back to its owner on the steps of the garden door of the house, where
+Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in hand. They did it without comment
+or instruction, as men carry out a plan frequently resorted to.
+
+Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to
+a door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were warmth
+and comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end, beneath the
+lamp and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were sitting. They
+were in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his chair.
+
+"I have brought Kos to see you," said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with that
+ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He apparently gave
+no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from which the original
+black had long since been washed away by the waters of the Vistula. He
+wore his working-clothes as if they were the best habit for this or
+any other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it in the old-world
+fashion, which has survived to this day in Poland. But the careless
+manner in which he raised her fingers to his lips would have showed
+quite clearly to a competent observer that neither Wanda nor any other
+woman had ever touched his heart.
+
+"You will excuse my getting up," said the prince. "My gout is bad
+to-night. You will have something to eat?"
+
+"Thank you, I have eaten," replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+
+Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up, lighting
+with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+
+"He will take a glass of port," said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had
+his after-dinner wine.
+
+Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with a
+glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he was
+almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related,
+not only in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff
+represented a family long since deemed extinct.
+
+"I have come," he said, "to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to
+stir them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn."
+
+"Ah!" laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable
+position, "you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move
+too quickly. That is what I always preach."
+
+"And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching," answered
+Kosmaroff. "You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to
+your opinion that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to
+misunderstandings. Plain speaking and clear understanding was the
+message you sent me--the text of your last sermon."
+
+With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's
+wineglass, which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that he
+drank his health.
+
+"That was not my text--that was Wanda's," answered the prince.
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. "Is that so? Then I will
+take it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast experience."
+
+"I have been to Dresden and to London," answered Wanda, "and a woman
+always sees much more than a man."
+
+"Always?" asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+
+"Always."
+
+But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+
+"By-the-way," he asked, "what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?"
+
+"Cartoner--the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+London," answered the prince. "Who is he? Why should he not be here?"
+
+"I will tell you who he is," answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light in
+his eyes. "He is the man that the English send when they suspect that
+something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has a
+trick of finding things out--that man. Such is his reputation, at all
+events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of yours,
+by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an American
+here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There is either
+something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that something may
+move in Poland before long. These men are here to find out. They must
+find out nothing from us."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach much
+importance to these foreigners.
+
+"Of course," went on Kosmaroff, "they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So
+will Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him
+trouble. He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because
+he knows that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different.
+There are never any surprises for the English in matters that Cartoner
+has in hand. He reports on events before they have happened, which is a
+different story. I merely warn you."
+
+As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+
+"There are no instructions?"
+
+"None," answered the prince. "Except the usual one--patience!"
+
+"Ah yes," replied Kosmaroff, "we shall be patient."
+
+He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+winter months.
+
+"But be careful," he added, addressing Martin more particularly, "of
+this man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know--you understand.
+And no one must know!"
+
+He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+
+"You met him in London, you say?" he said to the prince. "What did you
+think of him?"
+
+"I thought him--a quiet man."
+
+"And Wanda?" continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her--"she who sees
+so much. What did she think of him?"
+
+"I was afraid of him!"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+
+The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades beneath
+the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across from one
+quarter of the town to another.
+
+Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father
+at such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still
+fresh upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking
+the green turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in
+the morning these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any
+other park in any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the alleys
+mostly to herself.
+
+The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the
+leaves were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the
+brief, uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in
+Northern latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out
+early, and was sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that divides
+the gardens in two from end to end. She was waiting for Martin, who had
+been called back at the door of the palace and had promised to follow
+in a few minutes. He had a hundred engagements during the day, a hundred
+friends among those unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear
+the Russian uniform, who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in
+any form of commerce, and must not accept a government office--who are
+therefore idle, without the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians
+and Spaniards to do nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser
+than Martin. Girls generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But
+the wisdom ceases to grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old
+women. Wanda was, in a sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She
+had, as he himself acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into
+which his natural heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As
+to the discontent in which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes
+and their friends into many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it,
+just as some families are brought up to consumption and the anticipation
+of an early death.
+
+In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda was
+much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger. Debt and
+impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her father
+daily needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his happiness more
+and more upon his port wine and that ease which is only to be enjoyed by
+an easy mind.
+
+Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly
+heeded the passers-by, though--for the feminine instincts were strong in
+her--she looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on the
+Jew who hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the
+richer quarter of the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the
+Franoiszkanska. The latter, perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin and
+his heedlessness; the former made her think of--she knew not what.
+
+She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King of
+Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the garden.
+She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was unlike that
+of the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It was more like
+the gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw wear a uniform.
+That is why they are there. There was a suggestion of determination in
+the walk of this Englishman.
+
+He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived
+her. She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the precise
+moment when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably upon
+experience that Wanda based her theory that women see twice as much as
+men. She saw him turn, without hesitation, away from her down a narrower
+alley leading to the right. It was his intention to avoid her. But the
+only turning he could take was that leading to the corner of Kotzebue
+Street, and Martin was at the other end of it, coming towards him.
+Cartoner was thus caught in the narrow alley. Wanda sat still and
+watched the two men. She suddenly knew in advance what would happen, as
+it is often vouchsafed to the human understanding to know at a moment's
+notice what is coming; and she had a strange, discomforting sense that
+these minutes were preordained--that Martin and Cartoner and herself
+were mere puppets in the hands of Fate, and must say and do that which
+has been assigned to them in an unalterable scheme of succeeding events.
+
+She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to
+continue his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the
+Englishman's arm.
+
+"What does it matter?" Martin was saying. "There is no one to see us
+here, at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda,
+sitting on the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me."
+
+And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's
+attitude and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner
+yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin--so
+determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned
+and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew
+that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had
+something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave to be
+silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient
+sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty,
+and this sense of powerlessness was new to her.
+
+While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+
+"I saw you," he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, "and went the
+other way to avoid you."
+
+And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at
+her. He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+embarrassment.
+
+"Cartoner and I," Prince Martin hastened to explain, "travelled from
+Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it
+would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would
+naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is
+why he went the other way when he saw you."
+
+Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have
+been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner
+kept silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit--very rare
+among men and almost unknown in women--of thinking before he spoke.
+Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if
+one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and
+the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
+
+"You see," said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself,
+"in this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own
+friends."
+
+"Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the
+best strawberries from a basket," said Wanda.
+
+"Not a question to be arranged beforehand," put in Cartoner.
+
+"Not even by the governor-general of Poland?" asked Wanda, looking
+thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+showered round them.
+
+"Not even by the Czar."
+
+"Who, I am told, means well!" said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. "Poor
+man! It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's
+back that one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me."
+
+Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+walking-stick.
+
+"Martin and I are going for a tramp," she said. "We like to get away
+from the noise and the dust--and the uniforms."
+
+But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+
+"We attract less attention than if we stand," he explained. And Cartoner
+took the seat offered. "Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us
+to offer you," commented the young prince, gayly, "a clean stone seat on
+the sunny side of a public garden."
+
+"But let us understand each other," put in Wanda, in her practical way,
+and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw
+so much, "since we are conspirators."
+
+"The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall
+be," said Cartoner.
+
+"I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'" said Wanda.
+
+"The plot is simple enough," answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing,
+and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one more than
+the other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of
+all whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette--a little Russian
+affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked
+the ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his
+sister.
+
+"Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The Bukatys
+have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish nationality
+which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to suppress for
+nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria there is still
+a Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the Romanoffs, the
+Hapsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few old Lithuanian
+and Ruthenian families extant. And rightly or wrongly, those in
+authority are kind enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys for these
+survivals. Weeds, it seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are really to
+blame or not is of no consequence. It does not matter to the dog whether
+he deserves his bad name or not--after he is hanged. But it is not good
+to be a Bukaty and live in Poland just now, though some of us manage to
+have a good time despite them all--eh, Wanda?"
+
+And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was
+part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for
+fear some interruption should approach.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand," he continued, in his airy way, "is a
+most respectable man--in the employ of his country. That is what damns
+Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great
+reputation, to which I take off my hat."
+
+And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+
+"It would never do," continued Martin, "for us, the suspects, to be
+avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some
+capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no
+consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember."
+
+"But what are we to do?" asked Wanda, practically. "Let us have a clear
+understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+without haste--a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+heart of the question. "We must not meet in the streets."
+
+"That may not be as easy as it sounds," said Wanda, "in a small city
+like Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of
+avoiding us?"
+
+"I can, at all events, try," answered Cartoner, simply. After a
+pause (the pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be
+Cartoner's turn to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all
+that the Bukatys could offer him in Warsaw. "I can begin at once," he
+said, gravely. And he took off his hat and went away.
+
+It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+pillars of that building.
+
+"A man of action, and not of words," commented Martin, who spoke first.
+"I like him. Come, let us go for our walk."
+
+And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though
+they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that
+Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+
+He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side
+of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking
+a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met.
+Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which
+could scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+
+"Ah!" said the Frenchman to himself, "there is our friend Reginald. He
+is in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance."
+
+He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+slowly.
+
+"If any woman ever marries that man," the Frenchman said to himself,
+"she will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then,
+women are good at that."
+
+And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+
+Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was
+not an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it
+is well to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the
+post-office. And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not
+to have them sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities
+are kind enough to exercise a parental censorship over the travellers'
+correspondence.
+
+Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It
+was a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him
+was more than he could undertake.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+CARTONER _VERSUS_ FATE
+
+It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It
+is, moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the
+cause of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the
+theory that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled
+by a common sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor
+of that Czar who said to Poland: "Gentlemen--no dreams," seems in part
+justified by the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves
+brought nearer together on the race-course than in any other social
+function in Warsaw.
+
+"Come," cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's
+rooms after lunch one day towards the end of October. "Come, and let
+us bury the hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the
+grand-stand at the Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his
+wife, all the authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep
+sideways at each other, and turn up their noses at each other's toilets.
+To such has descended the great strife in eastern Europe."
+
+"You think so."
+
+"Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same
+thing, and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in
+it. Come with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where
+the Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where
+these fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too
+ready to take their hearts there and lose them--but the Czar forbids it.
+And, let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than
+a pair of Polish eyes."
+
+He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a
+speculative glance, and turned away to the window.
+
+"Come," he said. "It is a fine day--St. Martin's summer. It is Sunday,
+but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording angel
+on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover."
+
+"Oh, I have no principles," said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+
+"You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for
+his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nor I," pursued Deulin; "and I am bored. That is why I want you to come
+to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than
+to go--especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the world
+in racing."
+
+"That is why I am going," said Cartoner.
+
+"Then you don't like racing?"
+
+"Yes, I am very fond of it," answered the Englishman, in the same absent
+voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+
+In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found
+at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive
+up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow
+(where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness
+of the land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while
+driving through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is
+a grudge that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland
+had been a kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her
+capital.
+
+The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart
+of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At
+the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles,
+and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare
+among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
+attention.
+
+It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
+in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
+though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across
+a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
+German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
+domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into
+the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
+unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
+management of the course--tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
+and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
+white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold
+lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in
+his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying
+high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a
+gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of
+many races, one of the market-places where men may greet each other who
+come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are
+sons of the empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north,
+the south, the east, and the west.
+
+"France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my
+breath away," said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many
+races. On all sides one heard different languages--German, the sing-song
+Russian--the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot kill.
+
+"And Germany?" inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+
+"Bores me, my friend."
+
+He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number
+of men were congregated, but no ladies.
+
+"The Fatherland," he added, "the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German
+once, when I was in the army of the Loire--a most painful business."
+
+He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached
+the gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without
+turning towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+
+"Look!" he said, "look!"
+
+There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock,
+and above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey.
+The head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the
+heads of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only
+half in the saddle.
+
+The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before
+a dog--all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move
+above a snail's pace.
+
+Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which
+they knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and
+knocked the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on
+at a gallop now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a
+broken bridle, his two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was
+swearing in English. And he had need to, for through the paddock gate
+the crowd was densely packed and he was charging into it on a maddened
+horse beyond control.
+
+Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head
+was down.
+
+"Let go! let go!" cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. "Let go!
+I'll teach him!"
+
+And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince
+Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a
+moment and saw him open his eyes.
+
+"I am unhurt," he said. "Help me up. No! sh--h! No, nothing is broken;
+it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box
+No. 18, in the grand-stand."
+
+He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+
+"Go and tell her," said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+"Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that
+her father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come
+back."
+
+So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face of
+all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his memory. As
+he approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She was dressed in
+black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only the Russians and
+the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the surprise on her
+face and in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew that there were
+a hundred eyes watching him, a hundred ears waiting to catch his words
+when he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "the prince has had a slight accident, and has sent
+me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any report to
+the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and was knocked
+down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the club pavilion."
+
+He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+understand and repeat.
+
+"Shall we go to him?" asked Wanda, rising.
+
+"Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and
+would come himself were he able to walk."
+
+Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+
+"Will you take us to him, monsieur?" she said.
+
+And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal
+silence. The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its
+forlorn, autumnal flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked along
+it towards the paddock.
+
+"It was very good of you to come and tell us," said Martin, in English,
+"with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good, you know,
+to do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was true what you
+said about the prince being unhurt?"
+
+"Almost," answered Cartoner. "He is rather badly shaken. I think you
+will find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety."
+
+"Oh no!" exclaimed Martin. "He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come in
+here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in case
+of accidents."
+
+He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+
+"Wait here," he said, "with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+minutes."
+
+So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had
+been successfully accomplished.
+
+Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything to
+say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear understanding
+of which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to be compassed by
+silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind them came nearer
+and nearer as the horses approached the winning-post. The members of the
+club stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some with field-glasses,
+others with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All eyes were turned in
+one direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+
+Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no
+need for anxiety.
+
+"He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely
+to go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit under
+the awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand," Martin
+said, as he approached.
+
+"See," he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying to
+gather round the winning horse. "See, it is already a thing of the past.
+And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is no good
+advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad name, eh?
+Thank you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You and Deulin,
+they say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my dear Wanda. It
+is forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I will come back
+to you."
+
+With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, "I leave her to your care," he
+turned and left them again.
+
+Then at length Wanda spoke.
+
+"You see," she said, "you are not so strong as--"
+
+"As what?" he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+
+"As Fate, I suppose," she answered, and her eyes were grave as she
+looked across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun
+was sinking below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the
+horizon. Sunset over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+
+"Is it Fate?" she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+
+"Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess," answered
+Cartoner.
+
+"By what?"
+
+"By action. I have written for my recall."
+
+He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not
+his companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was still
+looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+
+"You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," she said, after a pause, "it would have been better for you if
+we had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said
+that you had never had a check in your career. This is the first check.
+And it has come through--knowing us."
+
+Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion
+with patient, thoughtful eyes.
+
+"You cannot deny it," she said.
+
+And he did not deny it.
+
+Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+keenness.
+
+"Why have you asked for your recall?" she asked, slowly.
+
+And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking.
+And across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes
+of the man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+
+When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next
+box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party
+of foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared
+for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one
+cannot set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those
+depths to which it sometimes descends.
+
+"And this," she said, when she had settled herself on the chair
+commanding the best view, "this is the turf."
+
+"That," corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+umbrella, "is the turf. This is the grand-stand."
+
+"The whole," stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible
+to her, the scene in general, "the whole constitutes the turf."
+
+Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who
+was prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her
+delicate and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself
+of an autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+
+"And these young men are on it," concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual
+decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside--the privilege
+of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes in the
+direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger; but some of the
+young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in the
+Russian race-card which she could not read.
+
+"It is very sad," she said.
+
+Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making
+up her mind how best to take them in hand.
+
+"Don't see the worst of 'em here," muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. "It
+isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief--on the
+turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+reformed--by the young women."
+
+Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle Joseph
+inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather wistful
+expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men below were
+still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to see them.
+At this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda was
+preoccupied, and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several
+ladies leaned over the low partitions and asked questions, which were
+unintelligible to Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth
+that the Prince Bukaty was not hurt.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+called upon to transmit the information.
+
+"Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this," said Miss
+Mangles, in an undertone.
+
+"You are right, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul Deulin,
+who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the
+feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these
+people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it
+is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger
+for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which
+convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin
+would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good
+might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval
+towards the turf.
+
+"One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin," she said,
+shaking hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+
+"Since you are here," he answered, "there can be no harm. It is only a
+garden-party, after all."
+
+And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he had
+come.
+
+"Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?" inquired Jooly.
+
+"Never, unless I am quite sure," he answered.
+
+"There is," observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be
+gracious--"there is perhaps less harm in that."
+
+"And less risk," explained Deulin gravely. "But surely," he said, in a
+lower tone, turning to Netty, "you know the Princess Wanda? Did you not
+meet her at Lady Orlay's?"
+
+Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and he
+was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does
+not remember--though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she met
+at the same time."
+
+Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+
+"Be assured," he answered, "that she has not seen you, or she would not
+fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe. The
+princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has just
+had a slight mishap."
+
+He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "this young lady remembers meeting you in London."
+
+Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that
+divided the two boxes.
+
+"Of course," she said, "Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down so
+near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else."
+
+"I hardly expect you to recollect me," Netty hastened to say. "You must
+have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who were
+at Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?"
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, rather absently. "Are there many?"
+
+"Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we
+three and--Mr. Cartoner."
+
+She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin Bukaty's
+eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she had much
+animation, and her eyes were bright.
+
+"I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is unmistakable.
+I hope the prince is not hurt?" she said, in her little, friendly,
+confidential way to Wanda.
+
+"No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I introduce
+him? Martin. Miss Cahere--my brother."
+
+And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty wanted.
+She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk to Wanda.
+
+"It must be so interesting," she said, "to live in Warsaw and to be able
+to help the poor people who are so down-trodden."
+
+"But I do nothing of that sort," replied Wanda. "It is only in books
+that women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can
+do for Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he likes
+for dinner, and to housekeep generally--just as you do when you are at
+home, no doubt."
+
+"Oh," protested Netty, "but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I could
+never housekeep."
+
+And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark,
+made her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin
+saw it. At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather
+vacantly in another direction.
+
+"I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?" said Wanda,
+glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+
+"My dear Wanda," put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, "you
+surely do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity.
+Miss Mangles is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described in
+a prominent journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care for
+the world, has no time to think of an individual household."
+
+"Besides," said Netty, "we have no settled home in America. We live
+differently. We have not the comfort of European life."
+
+And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop of
+the lips.
+
+At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of the
+use of his field-glasses.
+
+"I can see," she said, in her confidential way, "well enough for myself
+with my own eyes."
+
+And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+
+"I am sure," she said to Wanda, when the race was over, "that I saw Mr.
+Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?"
+
+"I fancy he has," was the reply.
+
+"He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our
+box. I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on
+board. We crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite ridiculous."
+
+Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There
+was in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set
+a machine in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative
+satisfaction.
+
+Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed
+to come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.
+
+"Come, Wanda," said Martin. "We must not keep him waiting. I can see
+him, with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure."
+
+"I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse," said
+Deulin, "and then return to the assistance of these ladies."
+
+He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching
+the carriages after they had gone.
+
+"The gods forbid," he said, piously, to himself, "that I should attempt
+to interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda
+should know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she
+knows now, my shrewd princess."
+
+And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from
+Wanda as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on
+his heel, to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng
+of people moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black,
+and a shower was impending.
+
+"Ah, well!" he muttered, philosophically, "they are capable of taking
+care of themselves."
+
+And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however,
+that he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along
+by a stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great
+gate, and though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the
+other men, she could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and
+his sister passed out of the large gateway, and waited in the first
+available space beyond it. Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of
+the crowd to the smaller gate, and having passed it, decided to wait
+till her uncle, who undoubtedly must have seen her, should come in
+search of her. She was not uneasy. All through her life she had always
+found people, especially men, ready, nay, anxious, to be kind to her.
+She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a man came towards her. He
+was only a workman in his best suit of working clothes. He had a narrow,
+sunburned face, and there was in his whole being a not unpleasant
+suggestion of the seafaring life.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, "that
+you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course,
+so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to
+find your father?"
+
+"Thank you," answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. "I think
+my uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at
+him. Perhaps--"
+
+"Yes," answered Kosmaroff, "I will show you another way with pleasure.
+Then that tall gentleman is not your father?"
+
+"No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle," replied Netty, following her companion.
+
+"Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?"
+
+"Yes. We are Americans."
+
+"A diplomatist?"
+
+"Yes, my uncle is in the service."
+
+"And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way;
+we can pass through this alley and come to the large gate."
+
+"But you--you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me," said
+Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this
+interest, slightly changed his manner.
+
+"Ah! you are looking at my clothes," he said, rather less formally. "In
+Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a
+Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street,
+just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is
+pleasant in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the
+great honor of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes, I will remember," answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that
+his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+
+"I knew at once--at once," he said, "that you were English or American."
+
+"Ah! Then there is a difference--" said Netty, looking round for her
+uncle.
+
+"There is a difference--yes, assuredly."
+
+"What is it?" asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her
+voice.
+
+"Your mirror will answer that question," replied Kosmaroff, with his
+odd, one-sided smile, "more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There
+is your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go."
+
+Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand
+in his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+
+"No," said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, "do not give him
+anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+SENTENCED
+
+Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
+which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it.
+The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of
+it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
+
+Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
+or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
+growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
+Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
+could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
+any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
+memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
+riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
+uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
+knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.
+
+One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
+shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
+with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
+that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads
+into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
+iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in
+silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large
+iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in
+the Lazienki Park.
+
+Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of
+his horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it
+patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and
+found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with
+the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light
+enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+
+The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From
+the distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long,
+low roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+
+Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that
+the animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened
+first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the
+wind. It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few
+moments there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and
+at the right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it
+started forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts
+of the gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.
+
+Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating
+cranes and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was
+hurriedly bolting the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open
+door, but before he reached it a number of men ran out and fell on
+him like hounds upon a fox. He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and
+striking the first-comer full in the chest with his fist. He charged
+the next and knocked him over; but from the third he retreated, leaping
+quickly to one side.
+
+"Bukaty!" he cried; "don't you know me?"
+
+"You, Cartoner!" replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. "You here!" he said. And there was
+a ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never
+heard there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the
+meaning of it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined
+men in moments when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer
+side of human nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which
+deals in battle and sudden death.
+
+"It is too risky," said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but
+Cartoner heard it. "We must kill him and be done with it."
+
+There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy
+feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner
+spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had
+taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had
+disadvantages, but silence meant death.
+
+"This near fore-shoe," he said in French, turning to his horse, "is
+nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a
+foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about."
+
+Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there
+was no loop-hole.
+
+Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle
+in front of him were in the dark.
+
+"Good! He's a brave man!" muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's
+ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, hastily, "this is a foundry. I can get you a
+hammer."
+
+His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced
+at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and
+he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+
+"You might tell these men," he said, in French, "of my mishap; perhaps
+one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately
+hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow."
+
+He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly,
+so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped
+forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.
+
+Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for
+a hammer and some nails--that his horse had nearly lost a shoe. Cartoner
+had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated the
+line of conduct he was to pursue.
+
+"Get a hammer--one of you," said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak--to say more than was
+discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent.
+Never comment on your own victory.
+
+Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during
+the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost
+shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such
+dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird.
+Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men,
+whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the
+open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw--a dark
+autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical
+way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold
+deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little
+cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial
+characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave
+his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They
+would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other
+Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their
+mistake afterwards. They were Slavs--of the most calculating race the
+world had produced--a little slow in their calculations. So he gave
+them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit
+eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved--long, long
+after reader and writer are dust.
+
+Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors,
+which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked
+inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Cartoner to Martin, who went
+towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from
+Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+
+Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+climbed into the saddle.
+
+"Saved your life!" he said, in a whisper.
+
+"I know," answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to
+the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open
+doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were
+concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in
+the _Minnie_.
+
+"More than I bargained for," he muttered to himself, as he rode away
+from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and
+presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was
+astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent
+by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the
+chase.
+
+Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much,
+and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle
+was steady.
+
+He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which
+stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate.
+He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without
+weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in
+a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that
+which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
+
+"That Cartoner," Deulin was in the habit of saying, "takes certain
+things so seriously, and other things--social things, to which I give
+most careful attention--he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end
+by different routes."
+
+Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic
+race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady
+perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+
+"In a moment of danger give me Cartoner," Deulin had once said.
+
+On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without
+words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism
+and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering
+attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each
+other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+
+"Got a job in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him.
+"Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the
+casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the
+attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels
+within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree
+affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with
+the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to
+the field of action must know what is going to happen.
+
+Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life--alone
+with his failures and his small successes--content, it would seem, to be
+a good servant in a great service.
+
+He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place
+of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance,
+like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was
+deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The
+concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken
+an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus
+takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all
+through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into
+the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast
+the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by
+the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his
+movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the
+authorities for the good name of the house under his care.
+
+"The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs," said the door-keeper to
+Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps
+were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the
+letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned
+up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a
+prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+
+It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in
+brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work
+intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid
+verbosity.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TALE HALF TOLD
+
+The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living
+upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to
+such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and
+jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere
+of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived,
+while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall
+quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope
+of alleviation.
+
+The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the
+grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor
+man and read his _Figaro_ quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the
+safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
+
+"He is late," he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return
+to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced
+towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin,
+whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in
+leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through
+the sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of
+Wielopolski's day--he could reasonably be expected to take care of
+himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's
+lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.
+
+It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in
+riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust,
+looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself
+into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+
+"Had any dinner?" asked his father.
+
+Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There
+was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate,
+fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs
+and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially
+English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a
+firmer stem.
+
+"Something has happened," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"Yes," replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+
+The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland
+was written on those deep-lined features.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing that affects affairs," replied Martin. "Everything is safe."
+
+Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the
+identical phrases.
+
+"I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs," continued
+Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to
+convince himself. "It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid
+fright, I can tell you--especially me, for I was doubly interested.
+Cartoner rode into our midst to-night."
+
+"Cartoner?" repeated the prince.
+
+"Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened--we were expecting
+some one else--he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe."
+
+"Who saw him?" asked the prince.
+
+"Every one."
+
+"Kosmaroff?"
+
+"Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with
+Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing."
+
+"That would have been a mistake," said the prince, reflectively. "It was
+the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in
+driblets."
+
+"That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It
+was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could
+not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all--or
+nothing."
+
+"He could not have known all," said the prince. "That is an
+impossibility."
+
+"Then he must have known nothing," put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at
+one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+
+"I do not know how much he perceived when he was in--as to his own
+danger, I mean--for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier
+than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong," said Martin,
+wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand
+shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened.
+"We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The
+man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it."
+
+"That is more to his own danger than to any one else's," put in Wanda,
+again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little
+of the incident as possible.
+
+"Then how do matters stand?" inquired the prince.
+
+"It comes to this," answered Martin, "that Poland is not big enough to
+hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to
+go, or else----"
+
+Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the
+color slowly faded from her face.
+
+"Or else--what?" she inquired.
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles."
+
+"You mean," said Wanda, who would have things plainly, "that he would
+assassinate him?"
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous
+national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The
+prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+
+"We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game
+that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be
+allowed to stand in the way of success."
+
+"It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues," said Martin,
+uneasily.
+
+"Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened--as it is,
+moreover, not my department--I cannot, personally, act in the matter."
+
+"Kosmaroff will obey nobody else."
+
+"Then warn Cartoner," the prince said, in a final voice. His had always
+been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
+
+"I cannot do it," said Martin, looking at Wanda. "You know my
+position--how I am watched."
+
+"There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it," said Wanda--"Paul
+Deulin."
+
+"Deulin could do it," said the prince, thoughtfully. "But I never talk
+to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between
+us."
+
+"Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+morning," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"You?" asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise.
+The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+
+"Remember," he said, "that you run the risk of making people talk of
+you. They may talk of us--of Martin and me--the world has talked of the
+Bukatys for some centuries--but never of their women."
+
+"They will not talk of me," returned Wanda, composedly. "I will see to
+that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say
+that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw."
+
+The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He
+knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+
+"Well," he said, rising. "I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us
+go to bed."
+
+He paused half-way towards the door.
+
+"There is one thing," he said, "which we should be wise to
+recollect--that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no
+farther. He is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and
+to say nothing."
+
+"Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!" cried Martin, with his
+reckless laugh.
+
+There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the
+great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the
+court-yard--where Hermani was assassinated--where the people carried
+in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were
+photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side
+door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this
+third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.
+He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of
+it.
+
+"Miss Cahere--the American lady?" she said. And the porter gave her the
+number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her
+thither.
+
+Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's
+room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished.
+At the head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned
+room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this
+room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant,
+a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best
+servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see
+his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room occupied by
+Deulin, who always travelled _en prince_.
+
+"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in
+defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want
+to give it are those who will not accept it."
+
+Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
+surprise in his eyes.
+
+"Did Jean show you in?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
+would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
+Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."
+
+Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+
+"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
+which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"
+
+"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."
+
+"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+comes. Your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Martin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
+the necessity of reply.
+
+"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"
+
+"He has found out something."
+
+"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
+exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
+for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."
+
+"And I cannot tell you what it is."
+
+"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across
+the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look
+a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to
+Cartoner, "but not a woman."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda
+paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
+way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
+Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.
+We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My
+father won't--"
+
+Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.
+His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+execution.
+
+"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to
+advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
+exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it--and
+never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
+and I was wrong."
+
+He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
+hands.
+
+"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."
+
+"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his
+life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was
+neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.
+
+"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched
+men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite
+ceased to affect my appetite."
+
+Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+
+"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a
+little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?"
+
+"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+
+"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+Englishman."
+
+Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+
+"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin, opening
+the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round."
+
+He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which
+Wanda had just vacated.
+
+"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I
+have known thousands--thousands."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MUCH--OR NOTHING
+
+If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference
+to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become
+apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse
+themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a
+long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In
+some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing
+space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
+
+A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will
+then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.
+The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed
+in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all
+interest in him. Thus the gods--with men.
+
+Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers
+good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for
+it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these
+incidents--as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly
+part--with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half
+of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually
+accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is
+necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not
+helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and
+often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic
+goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.
+
+The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
+on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
+crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had
+never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
+apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him
+that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the
+sex of this arbiter of human story.
+
+Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to
+avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two
+days after the meeting at the Mokotow--the morning following the visit
+paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe--Cartoner was early astir. He
+drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
+and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at
+ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of
+peasants--wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in
+gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
+
+This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw
+attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the
+humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some
+parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the
+third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class
+room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades
+of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone.
+There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was
+Wanda. The gods were kind--or cruel.
+
+"You are going away?" she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+Cartoner looked at her in surprise. "You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
+you are going away."
+
+"No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+again."
+
+"We are all watched," said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. "But
+you are going away--that is all that matters."
+
+"I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
+back this afternoon."
+
+Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers,
+they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the
+restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the
+platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to
+post a letter.
+
+"You must leave Warsaw," she said; "it is not safe for you to stay here.
+You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
+for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger."
+
+She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
+at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could
+not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There
+were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West
+which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely
+bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had
+anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this
+bare railway station the place to say it in.
+
+Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
+He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
+salutation.
+
+"Martin would have warned you," she went on, "but he did not dare to.
+Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
+had unwittingly run."
+
+"Not unwittingly," said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He
+said so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+
+"I cannot tell you much--" she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+
+"Stop," he said, "you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything--but not from you."
+
+"Martin hinted at that," said Wanda, slowly, "but I did not believe
+him."
+
+And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as
+if there were more in him--more of him--than she had ever expected.
+And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which
+was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes
+from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able
+to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+
+"It is true enough," he said, "fate has made us enemies, princess."
+
+"You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
+fate--in Poland. Besides----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
+your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall."
+
+And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+
+"It has been refused."
+
+"But you must go--you must go!" she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
+understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of
+gray in his closely cut hair.
+
+"You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
+world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily--quite gayly--"
+she broke off with a light laugh, "on a volcano--it is the Bukatys. We
+have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
+window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father
+was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
+times."
+
+"I know," said Cartoner, "what it is to be a Bukaty." And he smiled
+slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her
+manner, in a flash, was different.
+
+"Then you will go?" she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he
+turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them,
+she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of
+hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. "Say you will go!"
+
+And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+
+"I do not think you understand," she went on, changing her manner
+and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own
+stolid, dumb form of defence. "You do not understand what a danger to
+us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this," with
+a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred
+marks of a high state of civilization, "is skin deep. That things in
+Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated.
+We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old
+man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to
+look at his face--"
+
+"I know," admitted Cartoner.
+
+"It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he
+has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so
+happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe.
+That is why I ask you to go."
+
+"Yes, I know," answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
+was quite a simple person.
+
+"Besides," said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
+follow it, call no logic at all, "you can do no good here, if all your
+care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
+have they refused your recall? It is so stupid."
+
+"I must do the best I can," replied Cartoner.
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+
+"But we must not quarrel," she said, gently. "We must not misunderstand
+each other," she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, "for we have only
+five minutes in all the world."
+
+"Here and now," he corrected, with a glance at the clock, "we have only
+five minutes. But the world is large."
+
+"For you," she said quickly, "but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+forget I am a Russian subject."
+
+But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
+his face.
+
+"My presence in Warsaw," he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+elucidating, "is in reality no source of danger to you--to your father
+and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do
+not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+nobody--nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make
+history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which
+may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If
+nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have
+happened--life is too short to record that. So you see my being in
+Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother."
+
+"Yes, I see--I see!" answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The
+door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard,
+in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the
+length of the train. "But it was not on account of that that we asked
+Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
+Martin. It is required of them--a sort of family tradition. It is their
+business in life--almost their pleasure."
+
+"It is my business in life--almost my pleasure," said Cartoner, with a
+smile.
+
+"But is there no one at home--in England--that you ought to think of?"
+in an odd, sharp voice.
+
+"Nobody," he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+respecting himself.
+
+Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her
+stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no
+corridor carriages. Two minutes now.
+
+"We must not be seen together on the platform," she said. "I am only
+going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old
+servants whom I go to see."
+
+She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "for warning me."
+
+And that was all.
+
+"You must go," he added, after a moment's pause.
+
+Still she lingered.
+
+"There is so much to say," she said, half to herself. "There is so much
+to say."
+
+The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back.
+He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
+eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right--whether there
+was much to say--or nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+IN THE SENATORSKA
+
+"It is," said Miss Julie Mangles, "in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+one's hand on the true heart of the people."
+
+"That's as may be, Jooly," replied her brother, "but I take it that the
+hearts of the women go to the Senatorska."
+
+For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
+the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
+their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with
+bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a
+picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to
+and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the
+mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would
+assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could
+possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not
+even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he
+should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a
+choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
+
+"I shall," said Miss Mangles, "write a paper on the Jewish question in
+this country."
+
+And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with
+his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on
+the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a
+town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+
+"Seen the Senatorska, Netty?" he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+
+"Go out into the Faubourg," her uncle explained, "and just turn to the
+left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+are."
+
+Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
+out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down--as the
+paper itself recorded--the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after
+a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions
+served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to
+accuracy.
+
+Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
+and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
+find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
+Bond Street.
+
+The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
+Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest
+her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--that weak
+dreamer--built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
+shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was
+passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed
+in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of
+surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the
+Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+"I was afraid you did not remember me," said Martin. "You looked
+straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me."
+
+"Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+should I?"
+
+And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and
+then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+
+"Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting."
+
+"Of course," said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. "One meets
+a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find
+it so?"
+
+"I am glad," answered Martin, "that you do not meet many people that you
+like."
+
+"Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people," urged Netty, in some
+concern; "I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind.
+Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
+kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?"
+
+"I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
+in yours."
+
+And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
+that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
+
+"Oh no!" she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+descriptive of a shrinking humility. "Why should I? I have done nothing
+to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind--my
+uncle and aunt--everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why
+it is?"
+
+And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell
+her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could--if he dared. He
+had never met anybody quite like Netty--so spontaneous and innocent and
+easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
+little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
+answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had
+a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from
+under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes
+were dark, almost as violets.
+
+"Ought I to be here?" she asked. "Going about the streets alone, I
+mean?"
+
+"You are not alone," answered Martin, with a laugh.
+
+"No, but--perhaps I ought to be."
+
+And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+
+"In America, you know," said the voice from under the parasol, "girls
+are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to
+be careful, is it not?--to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
+France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
+the custom in Warsaw."
+
+Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+
+"In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
+that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes
+about the streets as they do in England or America."
+
+As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
+
+"I can show you the best shops," he said, "such as they are. This is
+Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good
+thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?"
+
+"I love them," answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
+next shop.
+
+"You would naturally."
+
+"Why?" asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of
+tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+
+"Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the
+eyes?"
+
+"It is very kind of you to say that," said Netty, in a voice
+half-afraid, half-reproachful.
+
+"It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes," answered Martin,
+gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on
+with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
+persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
+this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
+good.
+
+"You know," said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, "I am much
+interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done
+such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles--and the
+poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?"
+
+"The nobles have come to great grief in Poland--that is all," replied
+Martin, with a short laugh.
+
+"And it is so sad," said Netty, with a shake of the head; "but I am
+sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
+interested in Poland--you and your sister and your father."
+
+"We are supposed to be," admitted Martin. "But no one cares for Poland
+now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of,
+and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now--and her history,
+which is the saddest history of any nation in the world."
+
+"But I am sure you are wrong there," said Netty, earnestly. "I know a
+great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+them."
+
+"Are you?" asked Martin, looking down at her.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with downcast eyes. "Come," she said, after a pause,
+with a sort of effort, "we must not stand in front of this shop any
+longer."
+
+"Especially," he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, "as it is a
+Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in
+a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you
+will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in
+Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you
+must go."
+
+Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+
+"I am quite serious," he said. "We must fight with what weapons we
+have."
+
+"Yes," she answered, indicating the shops, "these people, but not you.
+You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
+anything from you."
+
+"Because there is nothing to take," laughed Martin, gayly; "we were
+ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when
+my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not
+either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own."
+
+"I am so sorry!" she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
+
+Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her
+short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She
+stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived
+them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had
+just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to
+Martin--his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and
+familiar friend.
+
+"I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?" he said to
+Netty. "I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if
+you will permit it."
+
+And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not
+the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty
+desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of
+a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the
+flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+
+A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a
+train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without
+speaking. It was against his principles altogether. "Never be silent
+with a woman," he often said. "She will only misconstrue it."
+
+"It was odd that I should meet you at that moment," he said, at length,
+for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the
+initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively
+the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and
+laughed. "I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you
+at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if
+I could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you,
+would it not?"
+
+"It was very kind of you," said Netty, "to think of me at the
+race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so
+interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely
+hair, and I think her face is so interesting--a face with a history, is
+it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, rather shortly, "Wanda is a nice girl." He did
+not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+
+"And the prince," she said, "the old one, I mean--for this one, Prince
+Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?"
+
+"Oh yes--quite a boy," replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back over
+his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had
+first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+
+"It is so sad that they are ruined--if they are really ruined."
+
+"There is no doubt whatever about that," answered Deulin.
+
+"But," said Netty, who was practical, "could nothing induce him--the
+young prince, I mean--to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates
+and recover his position?"
+
+"You mean," said Deulin, "the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world
+like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of
+others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden--by
+the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an
+occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady."
+
+Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+
+"Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He
+will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory
+life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things
+never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has
+not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities,
+and Siberia--his certain destination--is not a good mise-en-scene for
+your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings
+here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive
+remedy--another privilege of youth."
+
+"You talk as if you were so very old," said Netty, reproachfully.
+
+"I am very, very old," he replied, with a laugh. "And there is no remedy
+for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age."
+
+"I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases," answered
+Netty, lightly. "I think you are quite capable of taking care of
+yourself."
+
+"And of evolving my own dreams?" he inquired. But she made no answer,
+and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+
+"I know so little," she said, after a pause, "so very little of Poland
+or Polish history. I suppose you know everything--you and Mr. Cartoner?"
+
+"Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine
+of knowledge, while I--I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there
+is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not
+prescribe for him?"
+
+Netty smiled gravely.
+
+"I hardly know him sufficiently well," she said. "Besides, he requires
+no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a
+fortune."
+
+Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+
+"Ah! is that so?" he inquired. "Who told you that?"
+
+But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+interested in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+JOSEPH'S STORY
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. "It is well," he
+had said, "to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect
+harmony." He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at
+the Cukiernia Lourse--a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the
+Cracow Faubourg--which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and
+there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+
+"I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love
+with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In
+her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say.
+But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It
+takes years off one's life," said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner,
+as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
+
+As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from
+the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some
+chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a
+Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the
+window waiting for the clock to strike.
+
+"I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive," he said to
+himself, "and we can make our entry together."
+
+It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows
+was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into
+the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man
+arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following
+Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the
+hotel.
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took
+his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave
+them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is
+to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant.
+When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found
+the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets
+at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were
+talking together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of
+the hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
+
+"You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money," said Mr. Mangles,
+bluntly.
+
+"I was looking at him with suspicion," admitted Deulin, "but not on that
+account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not
+I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was
+looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you
+as lively when he came in?"
+
+"Not what I should call a vivacious man," said Mangles, looking dismally
+across the room. "There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he
+came in perhaps."
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, in a low voice. "That is bad. There is usually
+something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+know."
+
+They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+
+"What beautiful violets," said he to Netty. "Surely Warsaw did not
+produce those?"
+
+"Yes, they are pretty," answered Netty, making a little movement to show
+the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her
+waist was very round and slender. "They came from that shop in the
+Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I
+think, was the name."
+
+And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, slowly. "Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+violets?"
+
+"I love them."
+
+Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when
+dinner was announced.
+
+"It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska," said Mr.
+Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the
+subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner,
+who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of
+steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted
+theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+
+Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather
+labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times
+as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and
+to enjoy themselves according to their lights.
+
+Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information
+respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+
+"And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?" he said,
+noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+
+"I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+traversed the whole length of the street."
+
+"And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?"
+asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+
+"I have."
+
+And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few
+chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen
+hundred years.
+
+"I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress
+meetings--and I may publish," she said.
+
+"It would be in the interests of humanity," murmured Deulin, politely.
+"It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations."
+
+Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest
+happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be
+described.
+
+"I know," she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, "that
+you dislike political women." Heaven knows how she knew it. "But I am
+afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort
+of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the
+people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities."
+
+"Their chief quality is gameness," said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think
+the princess is delightful--do you not think so?"
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+
+"There must be a great many stories," went on Netty, "connected with
+the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know--of
+people's lives, I mean--of all they have attempted and have failed to
+do."
+
+Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his
+lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry
+heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was
+listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was
+weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts
+are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was
+talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by
+any means an easy thing to do.
+
+"I always think," continued Netty, "that the princess has a story.
+There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere
+terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking."
+
+And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced
+at Cartoner.
+
+"Perhaps," put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+utterances. "Perhaps she is thinking of her brother--Prince Martin. He
+is always getting into scrapes--ce jeune homme."
+
+But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
+
+"It is your romantic heart," said Deulin, "that makes you see so much
+that perhaps does not exist."
+
+"If you want a story," put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep
+voice, "I can tell you one."
+
+And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+
+"Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?" began
+Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
+
+"Which I believe to be the truth," assented the Frenchman.
+
+"Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story," continued Joseph, "but
+they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city
+who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country
+could be made a great country again, as it was in the past--dreamed that
+the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into
+human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be
+an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament,
+she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France
+and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the
+treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew,
+would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart."
+
+And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against
+this danger.
+
+"My country," he went on, "didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own
+father and whip him."
+
+And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing
+the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+
+"Ever heard the Polish hymn?" he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and
+across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him
+dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+
+"'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of
+Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise
+our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+
+"Jooly--pass the mustard," he said.
+
+Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with
+a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+
+"'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked
+with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of
+wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to
+restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of
+the beef.
+
+"That is the first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all
+Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.
+They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on
+the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when
+they came out--women and children, old men and maidens."
+
+Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
+say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman,
+but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal
+acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather
+impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing
+more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite
+herself.
+
+"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pushing away his plate, "on
+some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
+warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give
+his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all
+formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great
+difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of
+the family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal
+government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.
+She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of
+bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill
+him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the
+body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen from
+the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and died. The
+wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to
+escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison, and all the
+care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The
+pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that
+prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was
+not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and
+died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but
+his foster-father--that great and parental government."
+
+Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
+eyes.
+
+"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race
+was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is
+a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody
+must keep account of 'em."
+
+The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
+telling than the reading of it would require.
+
+"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take
+some yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history.
+Well--after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian
+government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a
+face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word
+with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat
+met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face,
+and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has
+weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half
+a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that
+face if they saw it now."
+
+Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
+and dogged eyes.
+
+"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.
+
+And that was the end of the story.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
+so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such men, at
+all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
+
+Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette
+from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible
+reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without
+the asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the
+monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many
+actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going
+counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt
+for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having
+consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.
+
+Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this
+evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over
+their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+
+The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary
+to custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre
+of the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in
+the passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china
+stove opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and
+as she did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung
+to. She was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.
+
+Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the
+room. The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way
+cautiously to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak--to ask
+who was there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in
+books, but it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself
+dumb until now.
+
+Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound.
+Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive
+persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small
+slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the
+door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve.
+Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some
+one infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she
+knew by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one
+hand on the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door.
+The light from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.
+
+It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment
+he was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his
+hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+
+"You, mademoiselle!" he said, in broken English. "Then Heaven is
+kind--Heaven is kind!"
+
+In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing
+first one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and
+Netty was conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all
+her life she had never known what it was to be really carried away until
+that moment. She had never felt anything like it--had never seen a man
+like this--at her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free
+them.
+
+"I came," he said--and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+see that no one approached--"to see you, because I could not stay away!
+You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can love as
+well as a rich man--and perhaps better!"
+
+"You must go! you must go!" said Netty. And yet she would have been
+sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is
+that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she
+recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if
+he had heard his own story through the door of communication between
+Mangles' bedroom and the dining-room. For the other door, from the salon
+to the bedroom, stood wide open.
+
+"You think I have only seen you once," said Kosmaroff. "I have not. I
+have seen you often. But the first time I saw you--at the races--was
+enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!"
+
+"You must go--you must go!" whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+
+"I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now--for five
+minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The
+streets are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming
+to these rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is
+the tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I
+won't go till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes!" whispered Netty, hurriedly. "I will come!"
+
+Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment.
+Secondly--it is to be feared--she wanted to go. It was the high-water
+mark. This man carried her there and swept her off her feet--this
+working-man, in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+
+"Go and get a cloak," he said. "I will meet you by the great fountain."
+
+And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart
+beating as it had never beaten before.
+
+Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that
+twisted his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the
+chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when
+Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+
+"It was a near thing," he said to himself in Russian, which language
+he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. "And I
+found the only way out of that hideous danger."
+
+As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it,
+and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later
+he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his
+arm.
+
+It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
+couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a better
+motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's brief
+summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains
+lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+
+Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was
+one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
+autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+
+"I suppose she will come," he said in his mind, watching the gate
+through which Netty must enter the gardens. "It matters little if she
+does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must
+leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is
+pretty enough to make it easy."
+
+In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards
+him--not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first
+clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of
+having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely
+to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.
+
+"I am going back at once," she said. "It was very wrong to come. But you
+frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
+come, and despise me for it?"
+
+"You promised," he whispered, eagerly; "you promised me five minutes.
+Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw
+soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the
+memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five minutes
+and that minute--that one minute in the hotel."
+
+And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
+bench, and raised it to his lips.
+
+"We are going away, too," she said. She was thinking also of that one
+minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water
+mark. "We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting
+here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is
+engaged."
+
+"But he is not a business man," said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.
+"What is he doing here?"
+
+"I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know
+whether he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in
+America, or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that
+we are going on to St. Petersburg."
+
+"And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without
+seeing you? And the others--Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman,
+Cartoner--are they going to St. Petersburg, too?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because
+a solitary promenader was passing close by them. "They never tell me
+either. But . . ."
+
+"But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to
+see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see
+into my heart!"
+
+And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+waited for her to answer.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it."
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff. "Why--tell me why?"
+
+But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly,
+and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill
+which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which
+Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at one
+bound--the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any
+wise man lose himself.
+
+"It is for you that he stays here," he said. "What a fool I was not to
+see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?"
+
+"I think he has found it quite easy to do it," answered Netty, with an
+odd laugh. "No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is
+clever and beautiful."
+
+"There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw."
+
+And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+
+"You say that to please me," she said at last. And her voice was quite
+different--it was low and uneven.
+
+"I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than
+you in all the world. Heaven knows it."
+
+And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had
+no faith.
+
+"But who is there in Warsaw," he asked, "whom any one could dream of
+comparing with you?"
+
+"I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner
+compares with me--and even you must know that she is prettier than I
+am."
+
+"I do not know it," protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. "There
+is no one in all the world."
+
+"There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty," said Netty, curtly.
+
+"Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember
+I saw them together at the races."
+
+"They knew each other in London," said Netty. "They knew each other when
+I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
+here since."
+
+Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
+his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
+Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
+salon a few minutes earlier.
+
+"Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires information
+which she alone can give him?" he asked at length. Which was, after all,
+the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment and in
+that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.
+
+Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose
+hastily and drew her cloak round her.
+
+"I must go," she said; "I have been here much more than five minutes.
+Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?"
+
+And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+
+"You will come again," he said. "Now that you have come once--you cannot
+be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at the
+foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
+You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair,
+your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak
+French?"
+
+"Yes--and she does not."
+
+"Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and
+remember that I love you--always, always!"
+
+He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
+side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
+scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+
+"It is all fair--all fair," said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+convince himself. "Besides--has the world been fair to me?"
+
+Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A LIGHT TOUCH
+
+Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty,
+having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way
+to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions.
+She was not old-fashioned in that respect.
+
+But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first
+time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might
+do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before.
+No one in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That
+which the lenient may call a school-girl escapade--a mere flight to the
+garden for a few minutes--was scarcely sufficient to account for this
+feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some
+wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.
+
+Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although
+Miss Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long,
+innocent-looking Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still
+some views of value to be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+
+Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced
+with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave.
+Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+
+"I will come down to the door with you," said Deulin, in the passage.
+He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable
+instincts.
+
+At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his
+hat was back again.
+
+"It is a moonlight night," he said. "I will walk with you part of the
+way."
+
+He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to
+think it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each
+other too well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin,
+light overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack,
+weighing and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+
+"That is the Madrid Stick," said the Frenchman. "You were with me when I
+bought it."
+
+"And when you used it," added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he
+led the way to the door. "Generally keep your coat in the hall?" he
+inquired, casually, as they descended the steps.
+
+"Sometimes," replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath
+the brim of his hat.
+
+It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full
+and almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without
+shadow at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the
+river.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the right
+instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg,
+which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. "Yes--let
+us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some
+queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense,
+so silent, so unobservant--who sees nothing and knows nothing and never
+laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the
+piece de resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service,
+the typical Frenchman; all shrugs and gesticulations and mustache--of
+politeness that is so insincere--of a heart that is so unstable. Ah!
+these national characteristics of comic journalism--how the stupid world
+trips over them on to its vulgar face!"
+
+As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker,
+with a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was
+unnatural to one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the
+streets whenever he walked there.
+
+Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in
+a narrow street now--between the backs of high houses--and had left the
+life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin turned
+once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street. He
+released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in
+an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand
+in an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening
+for footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing
+the direction from which they had just come.
+
+Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+pavement.
+
+"Any coming from the other side?" asked Deulin.
+
+"No."
+
+"In the doorway," whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow
+doorway that had the air of being little used. The long blade of
+his sword-stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's
+sheath-knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the
+moonlight.
+
+"Here," he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. "But
+you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!"
+
+With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight,
+and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know
+there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal
+life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across
+the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with
+the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like
+a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together,
+and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and
+planted a kick in the small of his adversary's back, sending him
+staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries
+of "Ah!" and "La!" breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the
+fencing-floor--performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a
+marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm,
+hand, head, and leg; forward, back-handed, from above and below. He
+never awaited their attack--but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who
+said that the surest way to defend is to attack?
+
+The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men.
+The sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness,
+from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the
+air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying
+note of steel.
+
+The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to
+the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow.
+Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the
+doorway.
+
+"Even if they are armed," said Deulin, "they won't fire. They don't want
+the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not
+suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now."
+
+While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+
+"Both have knives," he said, "but they cannot get near me. Stay where
+you are."
+
+"All right," said Cartoner. "Haven't had a chance yet."
+
+And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice
+before in all the years that they had known each other.
+
+"That's the best," he said, half to himself, "of dealing with a man who
+keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner--here they come."
+
+And he went out to meet them.
+
+But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their
+returning to the attack--thus, with a cold-blooded courage--showed that
+they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran
+forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he
+could not lay aside the little flourish--the quick, stiff pose--of the
+fencer.
+
+His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further,
+as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in
+as if into a cheese.
+
+"Voila, mon ami," he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had
+made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+
+The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered
+on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck
+eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly
+curling up, and he had no control over them.
+
+"And now," said Deulin, in Polish, "for you."
+
+He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round
+towards Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man
+turned and ran, followed closely by his companion.
+
+Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones,
+and came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully
+dropped it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a
+muddy splash.
+
+"He will never use that hand again," he said. "Poor devil! I only hope
+he was well paid for it."
+
+"Doubt it."
+
+Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+
+"Have you an old envelope?" he inquired.
+
+Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of
+the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall.
+And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore
+it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright
+steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt,
+where the government mark and the word "Toledo" were deeply engraved.
+
+"Unless I keep it clean it sticks," he explained. "And if you want it at
+all, you want it in a hurry--like a woman's heart, eh?"
+
+He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade
+back into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure
+that nothing was left there.
+
+"The light was good," he said, appreciatively, "and the ground favorable
+for--for the autumn manoeuvres."
+
+And he broke into a gay laugh.
+
+"Come," he said. "Let us go back into the more frequented streets.
+This back way was not a success--only proves that it never does to turn
+tail."
+
+"How did you know," asked Cartoner, "that this was coming off?"
+
+"Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at
+the Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were
+followed. So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni,
+vidi, vici--you understand?"
+
+And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while
+he made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+
+"I thought we might escape by the quieter streets," he went on. "For
+it is our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be.
+Neither could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each
+other's business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many
+chances and changes, to be friends."
+
+They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying
+that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+
+"It was like you, to come like that and take the risk," he said, "and
+say nothing."
+
+But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+
+"As to that," he said, "silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will,
+five years hence--ten years hence--when the time comes. I will tell you
+then why I did it."
+
+"There can only be one reason why you did it," muttered the Englishman.
+
+"Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool--the very best sort of
+fool--and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to me as
+I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship."
+
+And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+
+"I should like to fight some one to-night," he said. "Some one of
+the very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things
+to-night--and the angels in heaven are talking of me."
+
+In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky.
+But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were
+sincere.
+
+As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming
+in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately
+behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant,
+alighting quickly, came towards them.
+
+"There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+that," he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+
+"You!" he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. "You, Cartoner!
+What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?"
+
+"We have been dining with Mangles," explained Deulin.
+
+"And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,"
+added Cartoner. "But we think we are going home."
+
+"You seem to be on the spree," said Martin, with a laugh in his voice,
+and none in his eyes.
+
+"We are," answered Deulin.
+
+"Come," said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. "Come--your
+shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a
+ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them."
+
+"Do it," whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+
+And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the
+garden of the Bukaty Palace.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+
+Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and
+passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown
+to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds
+that sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their
+leaves.
+
+A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. "You find
+me in sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception--a
+semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an
+appearance. It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till
+midnight. Mind those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course."
+
+And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+
+"Thank you, for a few minutes," answered Deulin, and seeing a movement
+of dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+
+"It is better," he said, in an undertone. "It will put them completely
+off the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it."
+
+So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the
+first time.
+
+"Come," said the young prince, "into the drawing-room. I see they have
+left the lights on there."
+
+He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow
+his guests to pass.
+
+"Holloa!" he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.
+
+At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+
+"Back again already?" asked Martin, in surprise.
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda. "There were some people there he did not want to
+meet, so we came away again at once."
+
+"But I thought they could not possibly be there."
+
+"They got there," answered Wanda, "by some ill chance, from Petersburg,
+just in time."
+
+And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+
+"It is not such an ill chance, after all," said Deulin, "since it gives
+us the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?"
+
+"He is in his study."
+
+"I rather want to see him," said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+
+"Come along, then," was the answer. "He will be glad to see you. It will
+cheer him up."
+
+And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly
+and simply--so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans
+of Heaven.
+
+Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and
+she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+
+He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look
+at him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with
+quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his
+habit.
+
+"I was wrong," he said, "when I said that fate could be hampered by
+action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again."
+
+He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+word "here" he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs
+no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to
+those who have not.
+
+"A clear understanding," he said abruptly, recalling her own words.
+"That is your creed."
+
+She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door
+with deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done
+something wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the
+thought, who can!
+
+"I made another mistake," he said. "Have been acting on it for years.
+I thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an
+embassy--of a viceroyalty, perhaps--when I was quite young, and thought
+the world was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you.
+If it comes, well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake."
+
+She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+
+"If it doesn't come"--he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that
+hung quiescent at his side--"well and good. I shall have lived. I shall
+have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the happiest man
+in the world."
+
+He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+been known to say more than he meant.
+
+"There never has been anybody else," he continued. "All that side of
+life was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it,
+at Lady Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world--you had
+come across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there.
+At first I did not believe. I thought it was a mistake--that we should
+drift apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then
+that you would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it--fought
+against it--tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to."
+
+She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to
+him since he entered the room.
+
+"There never can be anybody else," he said. "How could there be?"
+
+And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her
+breath. She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as
+this one fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth--that
+he was thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can
+carry. For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of
+love is infinitely harder.
+
+"I knew from the first," he continued, "that there is no hope. Whichever
+way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me
+that."
+
+She turned her eyes to his at last.
+
+"You knew?" she asked, speaking for the first time.
+
+"I know the history of Poland," he said, quietly. "The country must
+have your father--your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up
+Poland--you know that."
+
+They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to
+life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which
+raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.
+
+"If you asked me," said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile--"I
+should do it."
+
+"And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would
+one day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you.
+There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it--and that would
+be the end."
+
+"Is it so delicate as that?" she asked.
+
+"It is the frailest thing in the world--and the strongest," he answered,
+with his thoughtful smile. "It is a very delicate sort of--thought,
+which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
+succeed in keeping it even passably intact--and not one couple in a
+million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from
+the outer world, but from themselves."
+
+"Where did you learn all that?" she asked, looking at him with her
+shrewd, smiling eyes.
+
+"You taught me."
+
+"But you have a terribly high ideal."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+She shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+compromises."
+
+"With its conscience," said Cartoner. "And look at the result."
+
+"Then you are good," she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+gravity, "as well as concise--and rather masterful."
+
+"It is clear," he said, "that a man who persuades a woman to marry
+against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is
+seeking her unhappiness and his own."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "But you ask for a great deal."
+
+"I ask for love."
+
+"And," she said, going past that question, "no obstacles."
+
+"No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside."
+
+"And if one such object--quite a small one--should be found?"
+
+"Then they must be content with love alone."
+
+Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They
+seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so
+many hasten and such numbers fall.
+
+"You have a way," she said, "of putting into words--so few words--what
+others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they
+did--there would, perhaps, be no marriages."
+
+"There would be no unhappy ones," said Cartoner.
+
+"And it is better to be content with love alone?"
+
+"Content," was his sole answer.
+
+Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their
+moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten.
+Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour
+earlier, and his life had been in peril--he had been down to the depths
+and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.
+
+"So that is your creed," she said at length. "And there is no
+compromise?"
+
+"None," he answered.
+
+And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women
+have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the
+backbone of human nature.
+
+"Ah!" she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+length of the long, lamp-lit room. "You are strong--you are strong for
+two."
+
+He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine,
+steely strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime
+of which the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of
+seeking always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they
+had left untouched.
+
+"And if two people had between them," she suggested, wonderingly, "that
+with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure
+they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew
+that they could never have more, could they be happy?"
+
+"They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world," he
+answered.
+
+"And if they had to go on all their lives--and if one lived in London
+and the other in Warsaw--Warsaw?"
+
+"They could still be happy."
+
+"If she--alone at one end of Europe--" asked Wanda, with her
+worldly-wise searching into detail--"if she saw slowly vanishing those
+small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care,
+perhaps?"
+
+"She could still be happy."
+
+"And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some
+misfortune, and felt lonely and disappointed--and there was no one near
+to--to take care of him?"
+
+"He could still be happy--if--"
+
+"If--?"
+
+"If he knew that she loved him," replied Cartoner, slowly.
+
+Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were
+tears in her eyes.
+
+"Oh! you may know that," she said, suddenly descending from the
+uncertain heights of generality. "You may be quite sure of that. If that
+is what you want."
+
+"That is what I want."
+
+As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She
+looked at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs
+at his temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely
+protecting and dimly maternal.
+
+"I want you to go away from Warsaw," she said. "I would rather you went
+even if you say--that you are afraid to stay."
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"Besides," she added, with her head held high, "they would not believe
+you if you did."
+
+"I promise you," he answered, "not to run any risks, to take every care.
+But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing
+you."
+
+She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in
+that direction.
+
+"I should like," she said, "to make you a promise in return. It would
+give me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to
+remember it."
+
+The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be
+speaking unnecessarily loud.
+
+"I promise you," said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, "never to marry
+anybody else."
+
+And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the
+clock.
+
+"To your tents, O Israel!" he said.
+
+Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had
+laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "remember me in your prayers to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE WHITE FEATHER
+
+It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough
+to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+masses.
+
+Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view,
+it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the
+least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man
+is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat
+without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated,
+who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has
+happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in
+that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must
+ever evoke.
+
+Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men
+and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably
+the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his
+cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious.
+For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long
+into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts
+which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He
+was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there
+came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
+fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
+ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
+perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And
+in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the
+lives of individuals.
+
+Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of
+affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which
+were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other
+do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his
+fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life
+they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small
+feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French
+Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris
+to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The
+western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.
+
+Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop.
+He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which
+Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.
+
+"One likes," he said to the stout Jewess, "to talk one's own tongue in a
+foreign land."
+
+And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
+past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the
+day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower
+at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in
+his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
+pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+writing-table. "Ah! if you were only idle, as I am"--he paused, with
+a sharp, little sigh--"if you only could be idle, how much happier you
+would be!"
+
+"A Frenchman," replied Cartoner, without looking up, "thinks that noise
+means happiness."
+
+"Then you are happy--you pretend to happiness?" inquired Deulin,
+sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+
+"Yes, thank you," replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+this morning.
+
+"Don't thank me--thank the gods," replied Deulin, with a sudden gravity.
+
+"Well," said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, "what do you
+want?"
+
+Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+
+"What do I want?" he inquired, innocently.
+
+"Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When
+you are most idle you are most occupied."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it
+with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+
+"There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+towards the Column--the shady side, after the street has been
+watered--that my soul desires," said the Frenchman, at length.
+
+"When are you going?" asked Cartoner, softly.
+
+"I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought
+I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+indefinitely for----"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the upheaval," explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+cigarette.
+
+"This morning--" he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside
+his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention
+which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his
+being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+
+"This morning I picked up a scrap of information." He drew towards him
+a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin.
+The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross,
+Deulin threw the paper across the table.
+
+"You know that man?"
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No; no one knows that," replied Deulin. "It is one of the very few
+mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up."
+
+Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking,
+perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was
+still content to be known only by a mark.
+
+"Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+which, happily, have never reached the newspaper," said Deulin, after
+a pause. "One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an
+upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo
+for many years here. Suppose--suppose, my friend, that they manufacture
+their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as
+to the creating of an opportunity."
+
+"Anarchy?" inquired Cartoner.
+
+"The ladies of the party call it Nihilism," replied the Frenchman, with
+an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to
+gainsay a lady.
+
+"Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people.
+They waited thirty years."
+
+"And struck too hastily, after all," commented Deulin. "Bukaty would not
+link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But
+there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to
+wait longer, and are therefore less patient--men of a more modern stamp,
+without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough
+in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way--"
+
+"The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to
+his lights," interrupted Cartoner.
+
+"Ah! since you say so," returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+"yes."
+
+"Bon sang," said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying.
+"He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists."
+
+But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train
+of thought.
+
+"So you know of Kosmaroff?" he said, studying his companion's face. "You
+know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where
+is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that."
+
+"In Warsaw," guessed Cartoner.
+
+"Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin--towards London, by the same token."
+
+Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn
+on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+
+"That parishioner is in London, too," he said, in his own tongue--and
+the word means more in French.
+
+Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the
+drawing to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+
+"Trying to get me out of Warsaw," he said. "Giving me a graceful chance
+of showing the white feather."
+
+Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force
+of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the
+time of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train
+at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of
+Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.
+
+"The white feather," he said, "is an emblem that neither you nor I need
+trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a
+national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly
+independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the
+tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?"
+
+And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of
+envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+
+"Look here," he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on
+the table, "here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling--here, in Warsaw.
+Here--in Berlin or in London--is the man with the match that will set
+it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the
+shadow that it casts before it, for the second--no, for the third time
+in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done so
+when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know
+the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since
+your humor is so odd. You stay or you go--but remember that it is in the
+interests of others that you go."
+
+"Of others?"
+
+"Yes--of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go or
+stay, as you like."
+
+Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing
+that decision.
+
+"I will go," he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair
+with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had
+observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important
+business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to
+be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed
+that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have
+thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no
+use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
+
+"I dare say you are right," he said. "And, at all events, you will see
+the last of this sad city."
+
+Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
+and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
+this period in European history.
+
+"I smell," he said, "something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in
+the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret
+which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets."
+
+He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+
+"Because," he added, with a sudden gravity, "there is nothing in life
+worth making a secret of--except one's income. There are many reasons
+why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should
+happen--anything--anywhere--we keep each other advised. Is it not so?"
+
+"Usual cipher," answered Cartoner.
+
+"My salutations to Lady Orlay," said Deulin, with a reflective nod.
+"That woman who can keep a secret."
+
+"I thought you had none."
+
+"She knows the secret--of my income," answered the Frenchman. "Tell
+her--no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+leave?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well,
+do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have
+we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired
+rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael,
+and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away."
+
+He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing
+but the hired furniture.
+
+"The police will be in here five minutes after you are out," he said,
+curtly. "You have no message--" He paused to pick up from the floor a
+petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No
+message to any one in Warsaw?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner.
+
+"No--you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are
+hard, Cartoner--hard as nails."
+
+Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his
+possessions--already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that
+he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men
+worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality
+may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in
+English public schools.
+
+Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+
+"Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye."
+
+And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+
+"The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+together."
+
+And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+COEUR VOLANT
+
+In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central
+European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
+rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
+clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
+done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
+trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
+world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain.
+It had come at last.
+
+In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
+ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices.
+He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing
+that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as
+she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with
+a sort of shock.
+
+"You were dreaming," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "Dreams and white hairs--No, I
+was listening to the rain."
+
+He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+daring her to doubt him.
+
+"I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone."
+
+He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
+the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
+the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
+slow persistency.
+
+"Can you not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
+a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
+should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in
+a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw."
+
+Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
+glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched
+him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she
+knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden
+anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow
+of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew
+that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was
+in reality about his business.
+
+"There," he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
+her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. "That is
+more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
+see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?"
+
+"I do not know if it will amuse you," answered Wanda, in her energetic
+way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, "but Mr.
+Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening."
+
+Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
+to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
+same.
+
+"Separately they are amusing enough," he said, slowly, "but they do not
+mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles."
+
+"So has my father," put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+
+"Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young
+country events move by jerks--that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you are above that sort of thing."
+
+"I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of
+Poland," she answered, gravely. "They give everything. I have not much
+to give, you see."
+
+"I suppose you have what every woman has--to sacrifice upon some altar
+or another--your happiness!"
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at
+him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of
+that, at least, she was sure.
+
+"Happiness, or a hope of happiness," he went on, reflectively. "Perhaps
+one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If
+you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
+remembered by women, and very seldom by men."
+
+"Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events."
+
+"What is common enough?" he asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+"Hope."
+
+"Hope! connais pas!" he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. "You must ask
+some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is
+why I am so gay."
+
+And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+
+"The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all," he went on, as if seeking
+to explain his own humor. "Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
+existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
+fire to sit by. That is why I am here."
+
+And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
+had something to tell her--that he had come for no other purpose. And,
+that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that it
+was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care showed
+her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his
+character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
+middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness
+of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart
+was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the
+world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long
+and grim a family history as the world has known.
+
+"Do you not feel lonely in this great room?" he asked, looking round at
+the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
+that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+
+"No, I think not," answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
+room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
+down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the
+first time.
+
+Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
+usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
+feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
+contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
+approach to it.
+
+"The worst of Warsaw," he said, "is its dulness. The theatres are
+deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
+amuse one's self."
+
+He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+
+"It was sordid," he continued. "One wondered how the performers could be
+content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such
+an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
+interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like cracking
+nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was
+so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he
+must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
+was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
+they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
+usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
+had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
+others who received the applause--the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted,
+and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled condescendingly. But
+the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing at all, and quite
+forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression of his patient
+face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one was looking
+at him--which was only the truth. Then, when the applause was over, he
+turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired--his day's
+work done. And, I don't know why, I thought--of Cartoner."
+
+She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
+have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+thoughts, "the world would get on very well without its talkers.
+No great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in
+history?"
+
+Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had
+to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and
+Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his
+monologue.
+
+"I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw."
+
+Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had
+any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in
+Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to
+know the meaning of that.
+
+"Gone!" she said. "I am very glad."
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. "It is
+a good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at
+half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which
+you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution,
+is Cartoner's repose of manner--for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
+not a devout man."
+
+"Then you have done what I asked you to do," said Wanda, "some time ago,
+and I am very grateful."
+
+"Some time ago? It was only yesterday."
+
+"Was it? It seems more than that," said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his
+head slowly.
+
+"I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
+quite suddenly," he explained. "So he packed up and went. He had not
+much to pack. We travel light--he and I. We have no despatch-boxes
+or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember
+and forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets
+anything."
+
+"And you?" asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+
+"I? Oh! I do my best," he said, lightly. "But if you desire to forget
+anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+life."
+
+He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering
+and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that
+he was short-sighted.
+
+"I do not think I will wait for the Mangles," he said. "Especially
+Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way--" He paused,
+and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. "You never talk politics,
+I know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of
+politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted
+Warsaw--you understand?"
+
+"I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of
+discretion," said Wanda.
+
+"Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found
+us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her
+Netty--well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion."
+
+"And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. "Have I concealed
+my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+concealment."
+
+"Perhaps you have overdone the contempt," suggested Wanda. "She is
+probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+test."
+
+"You see," said Deulin, in an explanatory way, "Cartoner may have had
+reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are
+the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people
+in the passport-office--and the others, whose business it is to watch us
+all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought
+it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So
+I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by
+Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw.
+Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so
+he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he
+ignored the little social trammels which the majority of mankind know
+much better than they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He
+was too discreet to call and say good-bye--knowing the ways of servants
+in this country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by
+post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office."
+
+He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+pleasant laugh.
+
+"You are wondering," he said, "why I am taking this unusual course. It
+is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his
+back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
+Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also,
+I may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
+to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
+them."
+
+"At all events," said Wanda, shaking hands, "you are cautious. You make
+no promises."
+
+"And therefore we break none," he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
+
+He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by
+Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous
+and rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles,
+standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting
+was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as
+if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to
+take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon
+to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked
+two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to
+show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--that
+she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache."
+
+And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+
+It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
+sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
+about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
+foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
+more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion
+that they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of
+one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+
+There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
+even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
+on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
+south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
+knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in
+his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
+Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
+Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
+variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
+served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
+
+There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
+it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
+coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
+run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles
+de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is
+also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
+shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite
+a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by
+a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
+sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
+
+There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
+of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
+where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business,
+had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective
+brush, which had last been used for red.
+
+On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
+and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
+respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
+coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
+from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
+in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
+tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
+the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
+American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
+fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
+number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
+use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
+air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
+companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
+and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+
+The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
+is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
+character three words, which, being translated, read: "The Brothers of
+Liberty." As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the
+Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment
+would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one
+so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
+would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
+suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
+afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain
+that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+
+"That's their lingo," said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
+numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
+furrier's shop.
+
+He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
+imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
+from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
+of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse
+with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and
+original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
+
+"That's their lingo, right enough," said the captain, examining the tin
+tablet a second time. "That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman."
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his
+high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of
+disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he
+had put on what he called his "suit"; a coat and trousers of solid
+pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all
+times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly
+live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the
+state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape,
+such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
+
+The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
+signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on
+the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron,
+who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+
+"Name of Cable," said the captain, turning to expectorate on the
+pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find
+themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards
+with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+
+"Name of Cable," repeated the captain. "Dirty!" he added, just by way of
+inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
+which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+
+This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
+aside.
+
+"Heave ahead!" he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English
+he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
+bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And
+he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was
+a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where
+discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a
+sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were
+turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was
+familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the
+Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+
+The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will
+be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
+appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
+man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no
+other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark
+man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something
+magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward
+things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at
+its possessor as if measuring himself against him.
+
+"Take a chair, captain," said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He was
+clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and
+he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide
+that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim
+strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a
+fighting race.
+
+The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
+to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his "suit."
+
+"Do you speak German, captain?" inquired Kosmaroff.
+
+And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+
+"Sailed with a crew of Germans," he answered; "I understand a bit, and I
+know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy words
+like that."
+
+"Then," said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, "we had better
+continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+dealing."
+
+He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+
+"We have not much to say to Captain Cable," replied the man who seemed
+to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor
+voice, and was what the French call _chetif_ in appearance--a weak man,
+fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
+
+"It is essential in the first place," he continued, "that we should
+understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered."
+
+With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the
+smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he
+looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+
+"We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself
+quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
+entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
+understands very little of what we are saying."
+
+Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
+who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
+
+"Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,"
+continued the speaker. "Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and
+verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable
+to be affected by circumstances--and should be repeated several times in
+the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
+period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again."
+
+There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+
+"Yes," said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+
+"And is only awaiting her opportunity."
+
+"Yes."
+
+One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body,
+which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a
+penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker
+took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed
+his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been
+justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps
+he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two
+nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history
+is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet
+man had made a little in his day.
+
+"An opportunity is not an easy thing to define," he said at length.
+"Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
+opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
+would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about
+just yet."
+
+He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
+worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.
+
+"We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on
+the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
+useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print--and
+ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
+journalism--in England they have too much."
+
+Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+
+"Another opportunity would be a social upheaval," said the Russian,
+drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come for
+that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and that we
+can offer to you."
+
+Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+
+"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "I have heard that talk for the last ten
+years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?"
+
+The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
+waited till he had finished speaking.
+
+"Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more
+than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
+five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
+amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have
+her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now."
+
+He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was
+about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience,
+paused, he knew not why.
+
+"Think," said the other, in his smooth, even voice--"one month from now,
+after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
+different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
+nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
+party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
+affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
+we seek the approval of no man."
+
+There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch
+for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the
+judgment of any.
+
+"Five thousand roubles," he concluded. "And in exchange I give you the
+date--so that Poland may be ready."
+
+"Thank you," said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly
+as he had lost it. "I decline--for myself and for the whole of Poland.
+We play a cleaner game than that."
+
+He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+
+"If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights--if
+I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you
+do not give--I should take you by the throat and throw you out into
+the street for daring to make such a proposal to me," he said, in a low
+voice.
+
+"To a deserter from a Cossack regiment," suggested the other.
+
+"To me," repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
+at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
+again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+
+"Captain Cable," said Kosmaroff, "you and I have met before, and I
+learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for
+you, and these men no company for you. I am going--will you come?"
+
+"I'm agreeable," said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+
+When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+
+"Who's that man?" he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Kosmaroff.
+
+They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
+the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger
+and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+
+"That is who he is," he said.
+
+Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+
+"I've heard of him," he said. "And I heard his voice--sort of
+soft-spoken--on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+refused the job and came out with you."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+
+More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
+awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
+stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look
+for the unexpected.
+
+It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain
+Cable chartered the _Minnie_ in the coasting trade, and after Christmas
+he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
+Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
+with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
+sudden and untoward end.
+
+Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+cold and wet weather. "If the winter would only set in," he said, "and
+dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks
+almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would
+perhaps be more endurable."
+
+Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and
+Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the
+Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never
+reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they
+were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and
+less comes out.
+
+There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+
+"History is assuredly at a stand-still," said an old traveller one
+evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. "The world must
+be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your
+head off."
+
+"I am waiting," replied Cartoner.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I do not know," he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+
+Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader,
+and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries
+in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a
+deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It
+came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little
+sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor
+household without surprise or comment.
+
+Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment,
+which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the
+social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until
+at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates,
+while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
+
+"We've always dealt square by each other, you and I," said the captain,
+when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor,
+and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+wall and shot me, sure as fate," he said, bringing his hand down on
+his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. "That was ten years ago last
+November, when the _Minnie_ had been out of the builder's yard a matter
+of six months."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind.
+It seemed that the building of the _Minnie_ was not the epoch upon which
+he reckoned his periods.
+
+"She's in Morrison's dry-dock now," said the captain, who in a certain
+way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
+by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. "You should go down and
+see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in
+the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely."
+
+Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry
+out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the _Minnie's_ new
+boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
+was never carried out after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have
+never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I
+believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer
+Deulin--that time, over yonder."
+
+And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one
+who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know
+which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their
+left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or shout--that
+all men are created equal.
+
+"I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
+hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you
+a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
+turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
+always kept my hands----"
+
+He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+
+"You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years
+and more."
+
+"Yes, I'll say that for you," answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+
+"They did me!" cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+down on the table, "with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said
+he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government
+stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government
+official. It was----"
+
+Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
+up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
+
+"Bombs!" he concluded--"bombs!"
+
+Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
+set down here.
+
+"You know me and you know the _Minnie_, Mr. Cartoner!" continued the
+angry sailor. "She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
+and--well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
+man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
+material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me
+out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean
+stuff up to now--plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the
+other. Always honest--revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But
+bombs----"
+
+And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no
+place on a polite page.
+
+"There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them," he
+concluded. "That is what I have got to tell you."
+
+"How do you know?" asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+
+The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+other.
+
+"Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Know the Seemannshaus there?"
+
+"Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+docks."
+
+"That's the place," said Captain Cable. "Well, one night I was up there,
+on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
+day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
+up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
+go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons.
+You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way.
+A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a
+voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and
+we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect,
+with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning.
+He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was
+goin'--well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth.
+Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down
+at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the
+bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as
+I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding
+agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke
+German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't
+rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft
+voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have
+known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a
+match?"
+
+For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for what
+he wanted.
+
+"Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
+an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside
+of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want
+it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man
+said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed.
+We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases
+broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it.
+Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in
+wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides,
+no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the
+moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a
+new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when
+I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the
+stuff away."
+
+Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
+after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what
+had brought these past events back to his recollection.
+
+"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable,
+"because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
+square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
+though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
+of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
+and smoke it."
+
+And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+
+"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little
+job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
+forget to come down and see her?"
+
+"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."
+
+"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
+been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that
+got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.
+And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark
+night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting
+quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken
+the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten,
+and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still
+going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with
+a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that
+that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the
+man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way
+of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a
+Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had
+been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that
+man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and
+makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a
+hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says."
+
+Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
+soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and
+after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes
+for eternity were exceedingly small.
+
+"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in
+politics and the like."
+
+"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.
+
+"That's it--a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
+the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He
+carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of
+a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
+outward signs of man and nature.
+
+"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that
+you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together
+already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It
+makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_
+hatches."
+
+"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on
+another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."
+
+He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
+the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+
+"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+
+"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
+shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+having dashed up from the club stand.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the
+_Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Going foreign?" asked the captain.
+
+"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a
+sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of
+action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit
+still.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+IN THE SPRING
+
+The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither
+so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one,
+and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady
+would select to pass the cold months in.
+
+"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here
+till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
+Nice if you like."
+
+And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason
+or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.
+
+"The place is dull for you," said Mangles, "now that Cartoner seems to
+have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
+any circle."
+
+And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
+not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
+
+"You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+Atlantic," she said. "I always found you with your heads close together
+whenever I came on deck."
+
+"Don't think we sparkled much," said Joseph, with his under lip well
+forward.
+
+"It is very kind of Uncle Joseph," said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+Mangles, "to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would
+be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could
+we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should
+not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here."
+
+Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant
+of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
+particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
+that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came
+forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for
+others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.
+
+Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for
+a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which
+Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate
+coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski
+Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow;
+and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.
+Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her
+steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked
+by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring,
+though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+
+Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he
+came--had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving
+only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had
+raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine
+heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff,
+any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she
+should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was,
+she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she
+naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart
+drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She
+might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no
+doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would
+be.
+
+Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
+people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
+no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
+these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
+uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed
+in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself--and, no
+doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other people do.
+
+Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
+was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
+right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could
+not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
+in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
+supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found
+out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
+
+Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now
+at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked
+much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a
+different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless
+information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies,
+and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To
+Netty he showed a hundred attentions.
+
+"I cannot understand," she said, "why everybody is so kind to me."
+
+"It is because you are so kind to everybody," he answered, with that air
+of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
+Netty.
+
+"I do not understand Mr. Deulin," said Netty to her uncle one day. "Why
+does he stay here? What is he doing here?"
+
+And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+deepest tones:
+
+"You had better ask him!"
+
+"But he would not tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"And Mr. Cartoner," continued Netty, "I understood he was coming back,
+but he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult
+to get information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course,
+who comes and who goes."
+
+"Course not," said Mangles.
+
+After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+
+"Uncle," she said, "I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+Warsaw."
+
+"What made you wonder that?"
+
+"I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong.
+Mr. Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so
+odd and quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see
+them exchange glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I
+distrust the quietness of the people, and--uncle--Mr. Deulin's gayety--I
+distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and
+leave you here alone."
+
+Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+
+"Because it is a dull hole," he said, "that is why I want you to go
+away. It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a
+conquered country before. All conquered countries are like that."
+
+Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he
+never again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But
+Netty's curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would
+answer no question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did
+Cartoner stay away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the
+Bukaty Palace. She made an excuse in some illustrated English and
+American magazines which might interest the Princess Wanda. But there
+was no one at home. She understood from the servant, who spoke a little
+German, that they had gone to their country house, a few miles from
+Warsaw.
+
+The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather
+had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip
+of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who
+held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with
+a sort of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really
+broken, or if this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first
+days in March--a month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long
+sleep, and men pull themselves together to new endeavor. The majority
+of great events in the world's history have taken place in the spring
+months. Is not the Ides of March written large in the story of this
+planet?
+
+Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came
+to her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English
+make, which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare,
+like the face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was
+gay and light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his
+admiration for Netty.
+
+"It is three days," he said, "since I have seen you. And it seems like
+three years."
+
+Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days
+had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
+
+"My uncle has been pressing us to go away," said Netty, "to the south of
+France, to Nice, but----"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Well," answered Netty, after a pause, "you see for yourself--we have
+not gone."
+
+"It is a very selfish hope--but I hope you will stay," said Prince
+Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure
+caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is
+not usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She
+looked, besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at
+that moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was
+only natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew
+Wanda to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which
+is the difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was
+good, and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and
+her was to be treated with scorn.
+
+"I will tell you," he said, "if at any time there is any reason why you
+cannot stay."
+
+"But why should there be any reason--" she began, and a quick movement
+that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be within
+hearing, made her stop.
+
+"Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know," she
+said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her
+horribly.
+
+He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better
+left to men.
+
+"I almost missed," he said gayly, "an excellent opportunity of holding
+my tongue."
+
+"Only----" began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest against
+being told anything.
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"Only--be careful," she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course, that
+brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful, if
+it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake. And
+at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But
+he did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who
+persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they
+will vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be
+cowards. And when the danger is there, and the woman is not--their vow
+is writ in water.
+
+Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears
+to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The
+gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look
+delicate and soft as a peach.
+
+"I will not hear you," she said. "I will not. I will not."
+
+Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+
+"No," he said; "you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to
+hear me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be
+an outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go
+well, and then I should be in a very different position."
+
+Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or,
+perhaps, she was only putting together recollections which had all been
+thought out before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She
+had only been in Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet.
+But there were terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty,
+that greatest of all drawbacks, was the other.
+
+"I can tell you nothing now," he said. "But soon, before the summer,
+there may be great changes in Poland."
+
+Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth
+or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not
+even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
+
+"What did you mean," he asked, "when you said 'Be careful'? What did you
+mean--tell me?"
+
+His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken
+her hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her
+back. She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear
+nervous often rise to the occasion.
+
+"I do not know what I meant," she said; "I do not know. You must not ask
+me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and
+do not ask me."
+
+By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a
+Bukaty to be generous.
+
+"Some day," he said, "I will ask you."
+
+And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A SACRIFICE
+
+Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things,
+like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed
+warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
+
+Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+
+So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better
+than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the
+thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field
+a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who
+can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely
+associated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green
+things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to
+drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in
+these countries, where men and women are booted to the knee, and every
+third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
+
+The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left
+them, was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the
+smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for
+it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for
+it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and
+parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula,
+where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim
+solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the
+French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland,
+more frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her
+inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a
+king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that
+great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If
+ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials, he
+was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+
+Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a
+plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt
+had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been
+built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on
+the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a
+meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides,
+while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster
+ornamentation mossy and broken.
+
+Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year.
+They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were
+needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and
+weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only
+remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his
+duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power
+the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity of the
+recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy
+taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the
+village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any money. And
+so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be no reason why
+they ever should.
+
+By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince
+seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world
+to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And,
+though he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and
+not his equals--as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only
+succeeded in proving the contrary--he cared for their bodies as he would
+have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry, and
+he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could
+not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying
+his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers
+who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine
+and comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful
+nurse could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the
+roof of the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed
+upon the front lawn.
+
+Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his
+knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house
+to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical
+advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor
+crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his
+great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these
+Poles, through it all. "Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants," said
+Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a
+hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it
+is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often
+strengthens it.
+
+Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough
+work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her
+father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being--like him, she was
+intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They
+liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round
+their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather,
+and longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the
+restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who
+had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
+
+Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow
+lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines.
+In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike
+the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking
+beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and
+forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+
+"This frost cannot last," said the prince. "The spring must come soon,
+and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business."
+
+But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief
+frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was
+essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went
+the spirit of unrest.
+
+He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on
+foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+
+"And you have had nothing to eat," said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity;
+a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship.
+He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough
+sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots
+nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his
+eyebrows. He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped
+his face from time to time as the ice melted.
+
+"No," he answered, "I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of
+the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here."
+
+"You will not go hungry from this house," said the prince, with his
+rather fierce laugh.
+
+"I will get you what you want," said Wanda, lighting a candle. "There
+are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only
+the farmer and his wife--and my maid, who is English, and silent."
+
+So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in
+the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet
+had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in
+all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at
+any academy.
+
+"When you have finished," said Wanda, "you can talk of your affairs. I
+shall leave you to yourselves."
+
+"Oh, there is not much to say," answered Kosmaroff. "I have done no good
+on my journey. Things make no progress."
+
+"You expect too much," said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass
+of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. "You expect
+the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy,
+remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks.
+You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going
+forward for five years, and then falling through, after all."
+
+Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had
+never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many do, to
+pass the time.
+
+"One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now," he said. "In fact, it
+is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her
+also. But, please, do not stand," he added, turning to her. "I have
+all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king--or a
+beggar."
+
+His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+
+"It is," he said, after a pause, "about that Englishman, Cartoner."
+
+Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on
+Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.
+
+"Yes," she said, in a steady voice.
+
+"He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself. One
+evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps,
+that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and
+happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one.
+This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in
+it----" He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+
+"But I have also no power," he added, "over those whose affair it
+is--you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study
+the attitude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our
+foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to
+us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who are
+our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the
+foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that
+Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+
+"In Cracow," he said, "they are all words."
+
+"There are certain men, it appears," continued Kosmaroff, "in the
+service of the governments--in one service it is called 'foreign
+affairs,' in another the 'secret service'--whose mission it is to find
+themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They
+are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would
+conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore,
+the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said--I ask your pardon
+for repeating it--that they know, and that Cartoner knows what he
+knows--through the Bukatys."
+
+The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak.
+Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was
+looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not
+taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and
+had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment,
+a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than
+any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff
+spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.
+
+"I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a
+brave man. It happens that I know that," he said. "He knows as well as
+I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left
+London I heard--for we have friends everywhere--that he had got his
+passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back,
+so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these
+suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control
+over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin
+had betrayed anything--"
+
+"I or Martin would be assassinated," said the prince with his loud
+laugh. "I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the
+methods of the sixties--suspicion and assassination. It has always been
+the ruin of Poland--that method."
+
+"But you have no feelings with regard to this man?" asked Kosmaroff,
+sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong
+glance, as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him
+untouched.
+
+"None whatever," answered the prince. "He is a mere passing
+acquaintance. He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him--you can tell
+your friends--it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that
+have been made for Poland."
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+
+"You know what they are," broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. "They see
+a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with
+Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to
+have called on you at your hotel in London."
+
+"It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend," said the
+prince, "and I tell you, he shall be dropped."
+
+"It is more than that," answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+
+"You mean," said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, "that Martin and
+I are put upon our good behavior--that our lives are safe only so long
+as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having
+any communication with him."
+
+And Kosmaroff was silent.
+
+He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was
+clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one
+hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and
+had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
+
+"I tell you this," he said, after a silence, "because no one else dared
+to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you
+have done--all that you are ready to do."
+
+"Yes--yes. Everything must be done for Poland," said the prince,
+suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's
+life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck
+ten.
+
+"And the princess says the same?" said Kosmaroff, rising also, and
+raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish
+fashion.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I say the same."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN THE PINE-WOODS
+
+The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man,
+and covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
+prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which
+had once owned his ancestor as lord and master--in those days when a
+noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim
+for an injured sheep to-day.
+
+The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a
+noble, he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen,
+perhaps, enough in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him
+that women--and even Polish women--should take no part in politics. He
+believed in a wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is
+better not to know. He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the
+next morning, and Wanda asked no questions. She had not slept until
+nearly morning, and had heard her father bolt the doors after the
+departure of the ex-Cossack. She had heard Kosmaroff's light and quick
+step on the frozen snow as he started on his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.
+
+Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
+the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was
+bright and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow
+from melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous
+evening, and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was
+young and strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that
+had always been "game," that had always faced the world with unflinching
+eyes, and had never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had
+lived a life of hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and
+witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could
+laugh with the merry, while with the mourner it was his habit to purse
+up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words,
+not of condolence, but of stimulation to endure.
+
+He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt,
+to carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified fight
+against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+
+"If you have a grievance," he always said to those who brought their
+tales of woe to his ears, "air it as much as you like, but speak up, and
+do not whine."
+
+He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority
+of grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of
+Poland, and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears
+there is no cure.
+
+"I shall make a long round to-day," he said to Wanda, when he was in the
+saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots covering
+his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old face
+looking out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. "It may be the last
+time this winter. The spring must come soon."
+
+And he went away at an easy canter.
+
+Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest
+farm, had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her
+father's departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the
+pine-woods. The trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the
+time of thaw, when the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere,
+gains in weight and breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as
+beneath the tread of some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace the
+trees which in the colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing their
+burden without complaint.
+
+The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence like
+that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living in
+the twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a stealthy
+habit--the smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the beasts of
+prey ever alert for their natural enemy--man. The birds kept for the
+most part to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the crops and
+the few, far cottages.
+
+Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy
+forest-paths were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her.
+In the nursery she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never
+seen them. They might be near or far; they might be watching through the
+avenues of straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it had been
+the delight of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the footprints
+of the wolves--near the house, in the garden, right up to the nursery
+window. They had gradually acquired the indifference of the peasants who
+work in the fields, or the woodmen at their labors amid the trees, who
+are aware that the silent, stealthy eyes are watching them, and work
+on without fear. The prince had taught the children fearlessness, or,
+perhaps, it was in their blood, and needed no education. He had taught
+them to look upon the beasts of the forests not as enemies, but as
+quiet, watching friends.
+
+Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning
+her head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the
+peasants were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all events,
+the Bukatys were free to come and go. In cities they were watched, their
+footsteps dogged by human wolves.
+
+There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and
+of Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right
+angles to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give passage
+to the narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the woodman's
+cottage, and so flat is the face of the earth that the distant trees are
+like the masts of ships half-hidden by the curve of the world. It seems
+as if one could walk on and on forever, or drop from hunger and fatigue
+and lie unheeded for years in some forgotten corner. In the better-kept
+forests the paths are staked and numbered, or else it would be
+impossible to know the way amid such millions of trees--all alike, all
+of the same height. But the prince was too poor to vie with the wealthy
+land-owners of Silesia, and his forests were ill-kept.
+
+In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a
+tree had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the
+open space.
+
+Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was
+taken by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow
+behind her. She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason
+had returned home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed
+her. But it was not the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she had quite
+realized that it was he, he was on his feet leading his horse towards
+her.
+
+She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to them
+a few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes
+vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments stolen from
+heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored
+ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority
+of mankind, never at all.
+
+"Why have you come?" asked Wanda.
+
+"To see you," replied this man of few words.
+
+And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all
+her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength,
+he had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it
+easily. For he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and
+face every trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief
+that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break
+had he been anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers
+that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand
+reasons why they should not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood
+between them. But it was only for a moment--a moment borrowed from
+eternity.
+
+"Is that the only reason?" she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their
+real world at all.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do
+not know--" And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to
+them.
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered with a short laugh. "I know. I am going away
+to-night--to St. Petersburg."
+
+He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears
+that she had half expressed.
+
+"I am so glad." She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile. "I
+am so glad you are going away."
+
+She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new
+anxiety, which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+
+"I would rather know that you were safe in England," she said, "even
+if I were never to see you again. But," and she looked up at him with a
+sort of pride in her eyes--that long-drawn pride of race which is strong
+to endure--"but you must never be hampered by a thought of me. I want
+you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake your head.
+All men say the same of you--they are afraid of you."
+
+She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+
+"And I am not," she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness
+was real enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the
+multitude. It lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the
+eager world which, presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never
+recognizes it, but continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches,
+noise and laughter, even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+
+They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind
+to them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such
+moments fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be
+expressed on paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+
+They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid
+of selfishness, and they looked for happiness--not in an immediate
+gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and
+bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword.
+Loyalty to self, to duty, and to each other.
+
+Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that
+should stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore
+duty, which is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres,
+Foresight, Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of
+that madness, a brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her
+lover should be wise, should be careful for the future, should take her
+life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right
+to do so--a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered
+the privilege of that which is called a great passion and admired as
+such--but a right to shape, guard, and keep.
+
+Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps,
+made him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to
+consider the feelings of others and to place them before his own, which,
+of course, is quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which was his
+reading of Love, and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March
+morning and pieced together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive
+way, seemed to content her. She seemed to gather from it that he loved
+her precisely as she wished to be loved, and that, come what might,
+she had already enough to make her life happier than the lives of most
+women.
+
+And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the
+spring was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which
+they could not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had
+become possessed at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff. It
+touched those things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not
+from Wanda.
+
+The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that
+they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.
+
+"You must not go any nearer," she said. "You are sure no one saw you
+when you came?"
+
+"No one," answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For
+he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
+again unobserved.
+
+For he knew--indeed, Wanda had told him--the dangers that surrounded
+him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater for Martin
+and the prince.
+
+"It is only what you foresaw," she said, "when--when we first
+understood."
+
+"No, it is worse than I foresaw," he answered.
+
+So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in
+Poland when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They
+could not even write to each other while Wanda should be within the
+circle of the Russian postal service. There was but the one link between
+them--Paul Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin
+had brought about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met
+Cartoner at Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into
+the streets. Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St.
+Petersburg train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and
+go for a ride into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in
+town, but at their country house.
+
+"Go and see them," he added. "A man living on a volcano may surely play
+with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
+Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
+catastrophe."
+
+Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
+her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
+for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+
+Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
+waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
+Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
+solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of
+Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees
+most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years
+after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN A BY-WAY
+
+There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
+the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
+of the cemetery.
+
+Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
+away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
+horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
+days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
+white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
+business of killing Germans.
+
+Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the
+direct way to St. Petersburg.
+
+"I hired a horse and rode out to meet you," he said, gayly--he was
+singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye--"to
+intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the
+streets--and he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine.
+He is not a nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my
+friend."
+
+He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+Cartoner.
+
+"In the mean time," he said, "I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What
+are we to do? It is one o'clock--and I have the inside of a Frenchman.
+We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a new
+republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so
+quickly that the world stands breathless--but we always breakfast before
+mid-day."
+
+He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last
+trump.
+
+"And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not
+show mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got
+accustomed to me there. They think I am a harmless old man--a dentist,
+perhaps."
+
+"My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three," said Cartoner.
+"I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a
+close cab with the blinds down."
+
+And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there
+were matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+
+"Like a monstrosity going to a fair," he said. "And I shall go with you.
+I will even lunch with you at the station--a station steak and a beery
+table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and
+those who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished
+audience like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am
+with you. But let us be quick--and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?" he
+asked, finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the
+lower parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked
+the higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler sex in dealing with
+certain delicate matters.
+
+"No, I only saw the princess," replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+silence.
+
+"You know," said Deulin, at length, gravely, "if that happens which you
+expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for--I shall seek out
+Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty
+or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty
+before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that
+confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things
+are stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets--when friends
+and foes are seeking each other in vain--you need not seek me or think
+about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember
+that. I shall have eloped--with Wanda."
+
+And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+
+"Bukaty and I," he went on, after a pause, "do not talk of these things
+together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when
+the first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you
+have only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are--and
+I will tell you where--we are. We are old birds at this sport--you and
+I--and we know how to take care of ourselves."
+
+They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved
+streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once
+occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the
+Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near
+a market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin. In the
+cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier
+erected between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a
+narrow street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different
+hopes, aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and
+neighbors are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel
+stood between them.
+
+Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe
+from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for
+the men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen
+thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely
+looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles--as
+if there were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no
+beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which
+has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out,
+seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.
+
+"We will go by the back ways," said Cartoner, "and need never see any of
+our world in Warsaw at all."
+
+The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in
+an atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little
+used for wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live
+is of so retail a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in
+mysterious cloth bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were
+obliged to go slowly through the groups, who never raised their heads,
+or seemed to speak above a whisper.
+
+"What do they talk of--what do they think--all day?" said Cartoner. And,
+indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of surreptitiousness.
+Even the children are sad, and stand about in melancholy solitude.
+
+"I would sooner be a dog," answered Deulin, with a shake of the
+shoulders, as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. "Sooner a
+dog."
+
+By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed
+men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode
+in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor
+and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to
+make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at
+some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective
+eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As
+is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most
+offensive--the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration,
+the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword
+and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the
+other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of
+the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful
+retention of themselves in the background. But these well-intentioned
+efforts were of small avail; for racial things are stronger than human
+endeavor or the careful foresight of statesmen. Here in Warsaw the
+Muscovite, the Pole, the Jew--herding together in the same streets,
+under the same roof, obedient to one law, acknowledging one
+sovereign--were watching each other, hating each other.
+
+At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each
+foot-passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired
+droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath
+the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn.
+On the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense
+of looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the
+Russian-speaking police.
+
+"I do not mind them," said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+booking-office. "It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are doing
+no harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our passports
+hold out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For they have been
+through my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe--I know when my
+things have been touched--they or some one else. Perhaps Kosmaroff; who
+knows?"
+
+Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings
+as only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord
+half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper
+meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied
+him on the criminal paucity of his menu.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like the
+smell of goat. So give us beef--your railway beef, which has travelled
+so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed and cut up
+by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly failed as a
+stoker."
+
+He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by
+a doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew
+him so well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his
+indifference. While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to
+time at his companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a
+hundred minute instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+
+"You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?" he said.
+
+"I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been
+here once before," answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+
+"When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+Paris," said Deulin. "Yes--I learned Polish when I was young----"
+
+He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot
+from whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with
+large, deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+
+"When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if
+that time is ill-spent," he said, airily. "That is why the virtuous
+are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the
+others--'nous autres'--it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal
+column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age
+when virtue is almost a necessity."
+
+Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
+him.
+
+"Do you know," he said, sharply, "you are devilish absent-minded. It is
+a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your
+mind. And having nothing on its own mind--or no mind to have anything
+on--it hates you for your airs of superiority."
+
+He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
+front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
+vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air
+or reconciliation to the inevitable.
+
+"When I was a young--a very young diplomatist--an old scoundrel in gold
+spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to appear
+content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule to
+this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt you.
+It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that."
+
+He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+
+"Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?"
+
+And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into
+the steady, meditating eyes.
+
+"It is not," he said, "that you assume a reserve which one might think
+unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not
+think worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate,
+that--well--there is nothing left but silence. And silence is sometimes
+dangerous. Not as dangerous as speech, I allow--but dangerous,
+nevertheless."
+
+Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two
+schools went out to meet each other--the old school of diplomacy, all
+words; the new, all silence.
+
+"Listen," said the Frenchman. "I once knew a man into whose care
+was given the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater
+responsibility, by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation, even
+of one of the two greatest nations in the world. And that is a care
+which you and I have had upon our shoulders for a brief hour here and
+there. It was the old story; for it was the happiness of a woman. God
+knows the man meant well! But he bungled it. Bon Dieu--how he bungled
+it! He said too little. Ever since he has talked too much. She was a
+Polish woman, by-the-way, and that has left a tenderness, nay, a raw
+place, in my heart, which smarts at the sound of a Polish word. For I
+was the man."
+
+"Well," asked Cartoner, "what do you want to know?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the other, quick as thought. "I only tell you the
+story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said
+that has not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a
+woman--even the strongest--may not be able to bear such a strain as you
+can bear."
+
+Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be
+serious.
+
+"You know," went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had
+set before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover
+with a flourish full of promise--"you know that I would give into
+your care unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune,
+or--well--a daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make
+a mistake. And if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive
+you--never."
+
+And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+companion.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?" he asked, curtly.
+
+"You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do in
+Warsaw," replied Cartoner.
+
+Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+
+"Not another word--they cost you so much, a few words--I understand
+perfectly."
+
+Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish
+before him.
+
+"And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake--I tell
+you that."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE QUIET CITY
+
+The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He had
+chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least tolerant of
+advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he hated to make
+a change, he had in one or two instances parted with old and trusted
+servants--friends of his boyhood--rather than forgo one item of his
+policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of their long
+friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way of thinking,
+for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+
+"I do not agree with you, but I will serve you," had answered one of
+these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+needed, accepted such service.
+
+For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by
+looking down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and,
+mingling there on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or
+the clever man--or that rare being, the man who is both.
+
+Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not. Alexander
+II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in a position
+to confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as it were, a
+ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than a board of
+directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely the men he
+wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw them up. How,
+otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual thing. He looked
+round among his relations, and, failing them, the friends of his youth.
+For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the whole world to choose
+from, has no larger a choice than any bourgeois looking round his own
+small world for a satisfactory executor.
+
+Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his
+first task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down
+to the upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a
+useless war in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+
+Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with
+his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand
+aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds
+as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was
+untenable. "Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away," his
+advisers told him. "With the serf she cannot endure," he answered And
+twenty-two millions of men were set free. In this act he stood almost
+alone; for hardly a single minister was with him heart and soul, though
+many obeyed him loyally enough against their own convictions. Many
+honestly thought that this must be the end of the Russian Empire.
+
+It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their
+point of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while
+counsel from afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things from
+another stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+
+Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the human
+race, men of different breed and color, of the three great contending
+religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a nervous,
+impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down with the
+weight of his great responsibility. His father died in his arms,
+broken-hearted, bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies of five
+European nations, hated of all the world, despised of all mankind. Even
+to-day there is a sinister sound in the very name of Russian. Men turn
+to look twice at one who comes from that stupendous empire. It is said
+that an hereditary melancholy broods beneath the weightiest earthly
+crown. History tells that none wearing it has ever reached a hale old
+age. Soldiers still hearty, still wearing the sword they have carried
+through half a dozen campaigns, bow to-day in the Winter Palace before
+their sovereign, having taken the oath of allegiance to four successive
+Czars.
+
+Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to
+find that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon
+to prove beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the
+surface of a vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably
+spring up wheat or tares--a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific
+growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of
+his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to
+despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This
+tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time
+came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching
+eye.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked, the very moment after he had been
+saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful
+after each attempt upon his life.
+
+The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening--that
+the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in
+history that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was
+full of Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the
+Emperor realized that he must fight--and fight alone, for no nation in
+Europe would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil
+of ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization.
+They had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding
+them.
+
+To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was
+in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his
+own internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European
+difficulties. England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration
+of neutrality, was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the
+dog waiting on the threshold, was ready to side with the winner--for a
+consideration. No wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all
+through his reign he received and despatched telegrams at any hour of
+the night.
+
+No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There
+are many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and
+look twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one
+hand while grasping with the other that which is really the property of
+their neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+
+On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: "Gentlemen, let us
+have no more dreams." Eleven years later he reminded an influential
+deputation of Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words,
+commending the caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits
+to Warsaw on one excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming
+in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard.
+The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the
+inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No
+one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.
+
+From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
+travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found
+as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of
+the people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few
+years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own
+strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because
+they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had
+followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the
+signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were
+men, and no longer driven beasts.
+
+It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long
+northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was
+reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of
+the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.
+
+The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the
+streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost
+deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the
+drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in
+another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most
+spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the
+inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets
+too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken
+surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with
+rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and
+crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet.
+The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St. Petersburg
+is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest city in the
+world, excepting Venice.
+
+The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The
+river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were
+still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of
+the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and
+leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets
+where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the
+university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges
+facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.
+
+It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
+house like any other in the street--like any other in any other street.
+For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
+world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and
+there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter
+and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St.
+Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.
+
+When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His
+was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this
+time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave
+the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he
+raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman
+asked for was within.
+
+"On the second floor. You will remember the door," he said, over his
+shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the
+house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+
+Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by
+a clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured
+recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the
+way along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain
+bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened
+the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+
+Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
+brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He
+was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he
+stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got
+other work to do."
+
+"No, I am at the same work. And you?"
+
+"As you see," replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
+foot and seating himself again before the fire. "I am here still, where
+you left me"--he paused to make a brief calculation--"five years ago. I
+stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin Congress, when
+it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I stayed. Tallow!
+It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its tallow. And there
+is a simplicity about commerce, you know."
+
+He gave a short laugh--the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a
+ring of other things.
+
+"Can you put me up?" asked Cartoner. "Only for a few days, perhaps."
+
+"As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms," replied the
+other, gravely.
+
+Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each
+other had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has
+lasted since childhood.
+
+"Well?" he inquired.
+
+"Gad!" exclaimed the other, "we are in a queer way. I went to the opera
+the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house
+was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so
+that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him--they'll get
+him! And he knows it."
+
+"Fools!" said Cartoner.
+
+"They are worse than fools," answered the other. "The man is down, and
+they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints.
+His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia.
+He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he
+abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth,
+Cartoner!"
+
+"I know," replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, "students who cannot
+learn--workmen who will not work--women whom no one will marry."
+
+"Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes
+one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself."
+
+"Well," answered Cartoner, "I have had nothing to eat since breakfast."
+
+"That is all you have to tell me about yourself?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+THE PAYMENT
+
+It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had
+been arrested.
+
+"It is the beginning of the end," men said. "They will now catch the
+others. The new reign of terror is over."
+
+But Jeliaboff himself--a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff
+Station--said that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an
+arrested criminal, was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+
+For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in
+the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics
+no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+stimulated emotion of the platform.
+
+For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+
+In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty,
+had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a
+glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his
+habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If
+it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now
+allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the
+Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach, men
+hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to them.
+He was a leper among his own people.
+
+"Do not go to the opera to-morrow," one lady would say to another. "I
+have heard that the Czar is to be there."
+
+"Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia," men said to one another; "the
+street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it
+is honeycombed by mines."
+
+The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others
+shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his
+cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties
+he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.
+
+He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the
+world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a
+cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter
+covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates,
+the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was
+planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything largely,
+and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window than the
+coldness of his home would allow.
+
+The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands
+of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving
+even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart
+the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.
+
+Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his
+usual visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her
+palace at two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen
+Cossacks. His officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which
+way he would take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew
+the streets as thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always
+walked in them unattended, unheeded, and unknown--had always mixed with
+his subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven
+above his people. He knew--always had known--what men said to each other
+in the streets.
+
+He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies.
+The road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet
+enough thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen
+canal. The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old
+and soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens
+between the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded
+by a low wall and a railing.
+
+The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg
+are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the
+world. A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along
+and whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly
+glanced at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking
+over the low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the
+bomb thrown and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he
+heard or saw at that minute, for he was dead the next.
+
+The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The
+Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow.
+He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
+afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
+anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead baker-boy. The
+pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some lying quite still,
+others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs. It
+was very cold.
+
+Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been
+weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went
+towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of
+those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the
+terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part
+in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were
+walking in their sleep.
+
+Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+
+"Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!" cried more than one
+voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard
+this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in
+the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound
+to the heights of immortality.
+
+Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a
+crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went
+towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of
+the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+
+The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+
+One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the
+Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to
+the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along
+it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed
+son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones
+between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his
+slavery.
+
+It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt
+took note of it.
+
+A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very
+stones of the pavement were displaced.
+
+The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One
+leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful.
+He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+
+This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a murmur.
+He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise, against
+his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his father's
+teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He had
+done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of Russia.
+And this was the payment!
+
+The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The
+terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke,
+and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize.
+It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer
+in the presence of his Judge.
+
+The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was
+left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could
+to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the
+first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the
+dying man.
+
+The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
+The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
+hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures--the
+instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
+share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+
+His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+killer.
+
+He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the
+second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events
+brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+
+Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to
+be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he
+took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way
+from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the
+slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information
+obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain
+Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's
+opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of
+the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men
+called his luck had brought him within sound of the first explosion by
+the side of the Catherine Canal.
+
+He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the
+zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The
+driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.
+Here was a man who had heard nothing.
+
+Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+heavy leather apron.
+
+"The telegraph office," he said.
+
+And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
+their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
+Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards
+away.
+
+Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
+his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
+made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
+knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
+great only when we look back at them.
+
+He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
+streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by
+mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand
+things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right
+word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?
+Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him
+living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The
+Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach
+England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to
+combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at
+a given moment.
+
+The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
+uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
+could be despatched from Russia.
+
+Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
+Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
+
+The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
+London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+
+He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
+The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second
+were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He
+walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute
+there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any
+one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried
+up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and
+eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+
+Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by
+persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was
+allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he
+passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The
+two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each
+knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of
+his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding
+a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it
+afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown
+broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.
+
+He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+earthly throne.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A LOVE-LETTER
+
+The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the
+snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the
+garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of
+the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of
+spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
+
+She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
+It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
+Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially,
+perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of
+the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater
+pleasure of the other half.
+
+She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
+to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
+experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
+failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
+an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
+sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to
+what she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
+different from other men.
+
+She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange
+interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a
+conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once
+the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She
+knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might
+come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska to the
+river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.
+
+As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
+It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young
+man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that
+there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked
+a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.
+Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after
+speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It
+was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh
+when she thought of their poverty.
+
+In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
+Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough
+when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad
+walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so
+frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered
+why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually
+resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding,
+if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love
+should be warned that it is a game which never stands still, but must
+move onward or backward. You may play it one day in jest, and find that
+it must be played in earnest next time. You may never take it up just
+where you left it, for the stake must always be either increasing or
+diminishing. And this is what makes it rather an interesting game. For
+you may never tell what it may grow to, and while it is in progress,
+none ever believe that it will have an end.
+
+Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a
+poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it
+is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections
+in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it
+is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens
+with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is
+oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to
+be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is
+in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes
+she does not even go so far as that.
+
+Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning.
+The faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at
+all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is
+leaden-footed in this backward country.
+
+Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she
+felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had
+ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was
+cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other
+occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up
+in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in
+the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
+
+Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate
+of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did
+not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all
+ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
+
+Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old
+palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the
+two principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens,
+near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+
+It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her,
+but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not
+even bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded
+note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+
+There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they
+had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
+unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
+
+
+"I must not speak to you," Martin wrote, "for there is danger in it--not
+to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is
+for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the
+Europe. I have already provided for your safety. There is great news,
+but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking
+of you, and--no! I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say
+it--who knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but
+I must not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave
+something on the seat that I may keep until I see you again--your glove
+or a flower, to be my talisman."
+
+
+Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the
+length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes.
+She rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no
+longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between
+two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+covert-coating.
+
+Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
+and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to
+make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling
+her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew
+that events were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of
+the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince
+would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown
+had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
+
+Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She
+thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of
+her--absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first
+in Poland, Prince Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets
+on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.
+She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.
+She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man;
+had found it astonishingly reliable. The honor of women was quite
+a different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day
+of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in other circumstances.
+"Besides--" And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as she
+bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange her furs.
+
+She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of
+snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked
+at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked
+slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting
+beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat
+huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was
+no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now
+going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed
+beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone
+seat and take up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste.
+Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a
+pretty girl.
+
+Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
+Kotzebue gate.
+
+Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty
+had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.
+He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until
+he was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the
+arches of the covered passages of the palace.
+
+After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down
+on the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the
+passers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near
+enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across
+the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which
+Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat and
+spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an
+expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and had
+pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must have been
+a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw waif of the
+public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.
+
+"That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night," he
+read, and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient
+clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a
+flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he could
+possibly compass.
+
+He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
+Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
+palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
+with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
+
+Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned
+into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
+composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
+Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "thought I might meet you here."
+
+He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
+conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
+Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
+he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark
+for some minutes.
+
+"The mail is in," he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
+the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+
+"Ah!" answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something
+had happened. "Have you had important news?"
+
+"Had nothing by the mail," he answered, looking straight in front of
+him. And Netty asked no more questions.
+
+"Your aunt Jooly," he said, after a pause, "has had an interesting mail.
+She has been offered the presidency--"
+
+"Of the United States?" asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+Joseph paused.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, with deep gravity. "Of the Massachusetts Women
+Bachelors' Federation."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She'll accept," opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+
+"Is it a great honor?"
+
+"There are different sorts of greatness," Joseph replied.
+
+"What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?"
+
+Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road
+to allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school,
+and still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
+themselves in the future.
+
+"Think it is like the blue-ribbon army," he said, when he returned to
+Netty's side. "The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer
+the abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
+will induce 'em to resign."
+
+"Is Aunt Julie pleased?" asked Netty.
+
+"Almighty," was the brief reply. "And she will accept it. She will
+marry the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually
+marries him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms--the men
+that help women to make fools of themselves."
+
+This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed
+to have a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty
+suspected that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
+Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+
+"She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly," he said; "she'll give him his
+choice between dismissal and--and earthly paradise."
+
+Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware
+of. His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a
+way through a crowded world.
+
+And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some
+order; that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THIN ICE
+
+It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+
+"Is the prince in?" he asked. "Is he busy?" he added, when the servant
+had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only
+shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never
+busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a
+German newspaper.
+
+The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each
+other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's
+wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able
+to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other
+side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of
+movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others
+who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly
+bright.
+
+They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the
+glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made,
+with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+
+"Do you know?" said the prince, grimly.
+
+"I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+cipher telegram."
+
+"Cartoner?" said the prince, interrogatively.
+
+"Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend
+this--pleasing denouement."
+
+The prince gave a short laugh.
+
+"How well," he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+reflectively--"how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+telegraph to you?"
+
+"We sometimes do each other a good turn," explained Deulin, rather
+curtly. "It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope
+that--it was soon over."
+
+The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+beneath his shaggy brows.
+
+"My friend," he said, "you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on
+this occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made
+us--plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number
+of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man
+was a thief. He was a great man and in a great position, which only made
+him the greater thief."
+
+The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+fire.
+
+"He is dead," he went on, after a pause, "and there is an end to it. I
+do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be
+dead; and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing."
+
+"You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian," said Deulin,
+gravely.
+
+"I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
+which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
+happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me
+or to approve of me."
+
+"My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one
+effective lesson--to judge no man," put in Deulin.
+
+"Remember," continued the prince, "I deplore the method. I understand it
+was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy.
+You will see--we shall both see, if we live long enough--that this is a
+mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have not
+even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They have
+approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
+business. But--well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of every
+mishap to one's enemy."
+
+Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+
+"Thin ice!" he said, warningly.
+
+"Bah!" laughed the other. "You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist--a
+man who is afraid to look over a wall."
+
+"No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by
+less obvious means," corrected the Frenchman. "One must not be seen
+looking over one's neighbor's wall--that is the first commandment of
+diplomacy."
+
+"Then why are you here?" asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough
+laugh.
+
+And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
+flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
+that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+
+"You think I came here to pry into your affairs--to turn our friendship
+into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report to my
+government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid,
+before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?"
+
+"Yes--yes," answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends glared
+at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in
+other days. "Yes--yes! but why are you here this morning?"
+
+"Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions,
+I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck
+into a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And--who
+knows?--you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
+in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
+cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push
+Wanda into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can
+help it!"
+
+"Wanda!" said the prince, in some surprise--"Wanda!"
+
+"Yes. You forget--you Bukatys always have forgotten--the women. Warsaw
+is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work--to-night's work--is no
+work for Wanda!"
+
+"To-night's work! What do you mean?"
+
+The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+
+"Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing," was the answer. "But I am
+not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
+as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
+guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
+is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
+think!"
+
+And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+thumb.
+
+The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+
+"If I did not know that you had broken your heart--more than once--long
+ago," he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+
+"Only once," he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+
+"Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+Wanda."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, lightly, "that is an old affair. That happened when
+she used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's
+old loves, you know."
+
+"Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
+time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
+perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
+ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
+through it--"
+
+"Only once," repeated Deulin. "I propose what any other young lover
+would propose to do--to run away with her from Warsaw."
+
+"When?"
+
+Deulin looked at his watch.
+
+"In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty--a young girl."
+
+And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+gained.
+
+"I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take
+her in."
+
+"Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?"
+
+"If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
+that can make her do it."
+
+The prince smiled.
+
+"You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend."
+
+"That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+this thing for me. I come back in half an hour."
+
+"What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from
+Warsaw to-day?" asked the prince. "What we know others must know now."
+
+"Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
+will find my way to the door, thank you."
+
+"If you see Wanda as you go," called out the prince, as Deulin closed
+the door behind him, "send her to me."
+
+Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He
+held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+
+"A telegram," she said, looking at it. "But I cannot make out its
+meaning. I never saw or heard of that word before."
+
+"Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the
+end of time," answered Deulin, lightly. "It is from a reliable source.
+Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+wishes to say to you in his study now."
+
+"Ah!" said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+
+"It is nothing!" put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+"Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question
+of empires and kingdoms."
+
+With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+could ask him a question.
+
+In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+
+"The man in the street," he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
+Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go--"the
+man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
+city know nothing."
+
+"They will know at the frontier," answered the prince, "and it is there
+that you will have difficulties."
+
+"Then it is there that we shall overcome them," he replied, gayly. "It
+is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
+will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I
+have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone."
+
+For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
+He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
+his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches
+which are nearly always better left unsaid.
+
+"I must ask you," he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, "to drive
+round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
+up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
+not come back. One never knows."
+
+And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
+run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
+faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
+to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
+
+In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
+their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races
+always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all
+beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of
+enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than
+usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be
+fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes
+at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.
+
+It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance
+hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between
+twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know
+nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar
+was dead.
+
+As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+first time.
+
+"What will you do about the Mangles?" she asked. "We cannot let them
+remain here unwarned."
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment.
+
+"I had forgotten them," he answered. "In times of stress one finds out
+one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+Mangles, if you like."
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
+her--"yes, do that."
+
+"Odd people women are," said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
+He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
+almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
+
+"I looked into Mangles's salon," he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+beside her again. "He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
+They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that
+Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing."
+
+At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
+of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men.
+He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+
+"They know," he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
+Austrian railway carriage. "They all know. Look at their stupid,
+perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
+decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
+what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!"
+
+"Or a grin," he added, after a long pause, "that passes for one."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+FOR ANOTHER TIME
+
+The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
+the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
+would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
+more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+
+There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
+south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there
+are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
+autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
+under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
+winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+
+Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
+number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
+road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such
+deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on
+either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for
+the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter
+it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used
+at all.
+
+It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary
+hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
+frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
+carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
+
+Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
+his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
+limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
+He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
+have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
+outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
+head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him.
+The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the
+carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
+
+At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into
+the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
+horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
+horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
+horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
+drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
+saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
+
+Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
+man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+
+"You are punctual," he said. "I was nearly asleep in the saddle."
+
+And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
+such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he
+leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+
+"You are not cold?" he asked.
+
+"No; I feel as if I should never be cold again."
+
+"That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
+must take care of yourself."
+
+"So must you," answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+
+Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than
+in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
+the French call _camaraderie_, which was not the outcome of a long
+friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
+had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
+with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
+the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
+always reckless.
+
+Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
+for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound
+of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and
+struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded
+hollow, like a drum.
+
+"I suppose you had little sleep last night," said Kosmaroff when Martin
+yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+
+"I had none."
+
+"Nor I," said Kosmaroff. "We may get some--to-morrow."
+
+The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
+side.
+
+"You know what to do," said Martin to these in turn. "Come to the
+iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
+you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to
+the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in
+line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the
+river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line,
+dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you
+are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking
+what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them;
+and while they are looking into your carts you must kill them quietly
+with the knife."
+
+The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
+that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and
+had perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
+promise in his curt hilarity.
+
+Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
+to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
+by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+
+In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
+workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
+rain, no one passed that way.
+
+Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the
+lower lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the
+iron-foundry are on the right.
+
+At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
+at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+
+"What is it?" asked Martin.
+
+"I thought I saw a glint under the wall," answered Kosmaroff.
+"There--there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the
+gleam of those distant lights on a bayonet."
+
+"Then let us go forward," said Martin, "and see who it is."
+
+And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
+out:
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Who goes there?" echoed Martin. "But this is a high-road." And he moved
+nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
+gleamed again.
+
+"No matter," he said; "you cannot pass this way."
+
+"But, my friend--" began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
+finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
+the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+
+The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
+his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now
+in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
+breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which
+was not Kosmaroff's cough.
+
+After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+
+"First blood," he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
+hands upon its mane.
+
+"Bah!" he exclaimed, "how he smelled of bad cigarettes!"
+
+Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+mud.
+
+"Oh, he is dead enough," said Kosmaroff. "I broke his neck. Did you not
+hear it go?"
+
+"Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?"
+
+"That is yet to be found out," was the reply, in a sharp, strained
+voice. "This is Cartoner's work."
+
+"I doubt it," whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
+the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
+
+"What does it mean?" he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
+had always been lucky and successful.
+
+"It means," answered the man who had never been either, "that the
+place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
+failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
+for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and
+make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they
+have taken me."
+
+As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
+clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
+
+"Wait a moment," he said. "I will get over the wall here. Bring your
+horse against the wall."
+
+Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
+across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+
+"Stand in your stirrups," said Kosmaroff, "and hold one arm up rigid
+against the wall."
+
+He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
+on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+
+"Are you ready? I am going to spring."
+
+He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
+could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+
+"All right," he whispered, and disappeared.
+
+Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
+he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
+breathless.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered. "Quick!"
+
+And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.
+He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
+gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
+had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder
+they splashed on in the darkness.
+
+"I went right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is
+full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
+ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!"
+
+"We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men," said
+Martin. "We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
+work."
+
+Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "You are full of hope--you."
+
+"Yes--I am full of hope--still," answered Martin. He had more to lose
+than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+
+They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
+these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from
+the city.
+
+Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+
+"I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
+me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
+different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know
+who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw
+again."
+
+"I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere," said Martin,
+with a laugh.
+
+"I do not know," went on Kosmaroff, "if they will have arrested your
+father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
+now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night."
+
+"Oh," answered Martin gayly, "it does not matter much about that. What I
+am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
+How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?"
+
+And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+
+Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
+the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers;
+for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to
+be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized
+carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown amid the straw.
+They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while
+the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
+the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
+appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
+wild as many that have succeeded.
+
+The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
+away.
+
+"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and
+Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+darkness.
+
+In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
+streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
+who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
+streets.
+
+At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
+came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
+shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
+in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
+houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
+
+It was a miserable fiasco.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+
+Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
+and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
+the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
+length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
+alert night and day.
+
+Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
+large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
+and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
+endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
+midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
+The moon above the clouds was almost full.
+
+"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.
+Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
+I will get a boat. Have you money?"
+
+"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.
+
+"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
+make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."
+
+And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
+Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city.
+He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
+slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the
+soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the
+street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+
+A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
+low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
+voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched with
+him two days earlier.
+
+Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
+found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
+filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was
+probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire,
+meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now from a
+note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust.
+Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would
+find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the prince
+himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the days
+when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the Austrian
+frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed
+by channels through which information could be poured at any moment day
+or night, just as water is distributed over the land of an irrigated
+farm.
+
+Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
+his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
+likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+
+Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
+steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
+this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
+as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
+directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers
+here night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and
+those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get
+their sleep when they can.
+
+To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
+the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
+which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
+sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.
+
+Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
+also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had
+a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
+at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
+coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the
+land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
+
+"The water is running freely," he said, "through the middle arch. I have
+a boat out there on the ice. Come!"
+
+And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
+river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying
+on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at
+the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it
+flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark
+that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat
+before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity
+of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+
+Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
+and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+
+"Help me," he said, "to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
+We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will
+come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before
+dawn."
+
+The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
+for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
+reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+
+"We must lie down in the bottom of the boat," said Kosmaroff, "and take
+our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel."
+
+As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
+the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
+which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For
+the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been
+partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these
+lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in
+trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and
+were borne on the breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up.
+
+"Give me a piece of bread," he said. "I am famished."
+
+But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+
+The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
+yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
+Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
+not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills;
+here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead
+horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a
+hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant
+sea on muddy waters.
+
+Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
+as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
+rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
+down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out, conscious
+of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands of God.
+
+When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
+prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
+away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above
+the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here
+and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big,
+low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was
+almost morning.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
+too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were
+proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
+
+"Where are we?" he asked.
+
+Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
+pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others
+gray and muddy.
+
+"I know where we are," he answered, after a pause. "We have passed
+Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
+my teeth wouldn't chatter."
+
+"I have secured mine with a piece of bread," mumbled Martin.
+
+Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+
+"We cannot travel during the day," he said, after a long examination of
+the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. "We shall
+not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I
+am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some
+large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must
+wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through
+Thorn."
+
+Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
+ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
+strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
+the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that
+they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which,
+indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen
+would attempt to cross the river now.
+
+Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
+and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
+prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
+await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their
+escape was being arranged, but they must await further instructions
+before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these
+further orders came by the same sure channel, which was independent of
+the Russian post-offices.
+
+The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through
+that town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would
+find Captain Cable, in the _Minnie_, anchored in the stream ready for
+sea. The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
+whatever. There was no news.
+
+At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there.
+The story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There
+are persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There
+are others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in
+use in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is
+already considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along
+the Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
+building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
+If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from
+the neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
+river-side.
+
+After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to
+wait two days until the weather changed--until the moon, now well on the
+wane, did not rise before midnight.
+
+At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
+by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were
+cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon
+enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them
+into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
+
+The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
+hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
+before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+
+Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
+the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
+by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks,
+the street cries of a town--these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
+
+"We are getting near," he said, in little more than a whisper. "What is
+the time?"
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes
+at a great pace. It is still of a vast width--one of the largest rivers
+in Europe.
+
+The mist was very thick here.
+
+"Listen!" whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
+thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+
+Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
+They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
+sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have
+come from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this
+time.
+
+"Stop, or we fire!" it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
+which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three
+boats close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
+
+Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a
+suppressed laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+
+Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
+fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin
+lay concealed.
+
+Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward
+and peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the
+officers were calling to each other.
+
+"What was it--a boat or a floating tree?" they heard them ask each
+other.
+
+Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
+the bottom of the boat.
+
+"What is it?" he whispered.
+
+"A bullet," answered Martin. "It came through the side of the boat, low
+down. It struck me in the back--the spine. I cannot move my legs. But I
+have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole
+the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
+through Thorn."
+
+He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+
+Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and
+with a jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an
+envelope, closed and doubled over.
+
+"Put that in your pocket," he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+
+"You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?" asked Martin, suddenly,
+after a pause.
+
+Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
+
+"Yes, I know her."
+
+"Give her that, or get it to her," said Martin.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Yes," said Martin, answering the unasked question, "I am badly hit,
+unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn."
+
+And his voice was still cheerful.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+
+Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
+from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
+rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
+city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
+pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+
+"I suppose," wrote Deulin, "that you will soon be on your way home.
+I think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
+on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there."
+
+This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot.
+The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the
+letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it
+were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go
+to Dantzic and to see Captain Cable there.
+
+He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel.
+He left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke,
+where the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+
+The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
+pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or
+less his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at
+Dantzic quite as easily as at Berlin.
+
+Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
+small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
+versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small
+vessels to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+
+Cartoner knew that he would find the _Minnie_ not in dock, but in one
+of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And
+Captain Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+
+Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the _Minnie_ just
+above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie
+in mid-stream. The _Minnie_ was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
+stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
+sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
+departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
+adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
+cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
+evidence. The _Minnie_ did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
+but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
+minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
+yours.
+
+Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from
+the steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of
+a shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+
+"Come below," he said, without enthusiasm. "It wasn't you that I was
+expecting. I tell you that."
+
+Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled
+of petroleum, as usual. The _Minnie_ was a hospitable ship, according
+to her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a
+corner of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench
+at the far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
+
+"Was up the Baltic," he explained. "Pit props. Got a full cargo on
+board. Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip
+to come to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all
+I'm going to tell you."
+
+"That's all I want to know," answered Cartoner.
+
+"But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!" shouted Cable, suddenly, with
+a bang of his little, thick fist on the table. "I've been thinking since
+I lay here--been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself--what
+I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!"
+
+"In what way?" inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+seemed to pacify the captain.
+
+"Of course," he admitted, "I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
+bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat."
+
+"I think I can assure you on that point," said Cartoner. "Nobody who had
+to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But
+I do not know whom you are to take on board here."
+
+"May be as you can guess," suggested the captain.
+
+"Yes, I think I can guess," admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"But you won't tell me?"
+
+"No. When do you expect them?"
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another," said Captain Cable, getting
+a yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. "That's
+port--ship-chandler's port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind."
+
+For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night.
+They'll likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night.
+And now I'll ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic
+River, Mr. Cartoner?"
+
+"A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do--Paul Deulin. Like
+to read it?"
+
+And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than
+even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," he answered. He scratched his head reflectively,
+and looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
+ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+
+"Got your luggage in the boat alongside?" he asked, at length.
+
+"No. It's at the station."
+
+"Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
+come aboard and see this thing through, I hope."
+
+"Thank you," answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for
+his luggage.
+
+"Mate's receipt?" inquired the captain.
+
+And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest
+as he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+
+"No stint of the wine," he said, and went out on deck.
+
+When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself
+to the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For
+the captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
+following night.
+
+"If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb," he
+said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+sleep.
+
+He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
+watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
+did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
+succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by
+side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the
+same reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+
+Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+
+"Hope he is pleased with himself," he said, as he stood at the stern
+rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. "For it is
+his doing, you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're
+tricky--the French. He's a tricky man."
+
+"Yes," admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, "he
+is a tricky man."
+
+After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without
+speaking. Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into
+the night.
+
+"There's a boat yonder," he said, "coming down quiet, under the lee of
+the land."
+
+They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards
+them. Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of
+the boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide
+with perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+
+"Stand by," said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+
+Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with two
+turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the steamer as
+a kitten may nestle against its mother.
+
+The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his hand
+on the rail of the _Minnie_. His head came up over the rail, and he
+peered into Cartoner's face.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance
+which he never expected.
+
+Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+
+"I want to go to sea this tide," he said. "Where is the other man?"
+
+"The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty," was the answer. "Help me to
+lift him on board."
+
+"Why can't he come on board himself?"
+
+"Because he is dead," answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice. And
+he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one arm and
+held him up.
+
+"I am so weak!" he murmured, "so weak! I am famished!"
+
+Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat
+that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held
+him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they
+got him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to
+that which was grandly called the captain's state-room. They laid him on
+the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself
+against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+
+The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable
+decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+
+"Here," he said, "drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done."
+
+Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+hundred unasked questions in them.
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Cartoner, at length.
+
+"They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not
+me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the
+night before last. He died before the morning."
+
+"Tut! tut!" muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of
+pity. "There was the makings of a man in him," he said--"the makings of
+a man!"
+
+And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common
+as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a
+moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid
+of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+
+"I'll take him out to sea and bury him there," said Cable, at length,
+"if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at
+sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth."
+
+"That is the only thing to be done," said Cartoner.
+
+Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that will do. He will lay quiet enough there."
+
+And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath
+the sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+
+Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
+
+"I'll turn the hands out," he said, "and we'll get to sea on the ebb.
+But I'll have to send ashore for a pilot."
+
+"No," answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, "you need not
+do that. I can take you out to sea."
+
+The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and
+Cartoner alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had
+been the friend of both.
+
+"Will you answer me a question?" asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+
+"If I can," was the reply, economical of words.
+
+"Where were you on the 13th of March?"
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+
+"In St. Petersburg."
+
+"Then I do not understand you," said Kosmaroff. "I don't understand how
+we failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?"
+
+"I know nothing," answered Cartoner. "But I conclude you have failed,
+since you are here--and he is there."
+
+And he pointed towards Martin.
+
+"Thanks to you."
+
+"No, I had nothing to do with it," said Cartoner.
+
+"You cannot expect me to believe that."
+
+"I do not care," replied the English diplomat, gently, "whether you
+believe it or not."
+
+Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+
+"I will tell you one thing," he said, in a hard, low voice. "It will not
+do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I will
+take any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in
+Poland!"
+
+"If I am sent there I shall go," replied Cartoner. And there crept to
+one side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him
+pain.
+
+"I believe you will."
+
+Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck
+giving his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole
+paused on the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin
+again with his hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+
+"Look here," he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it
+on the cabin-table between them. "A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss
+Cahere. There is no message."
+
+Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+
+"I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it," he said.
+
+The dawn was in the sky before the _Minnie_ swept out past the pier-head
+light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed down in
+the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern, jumping
+and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under the
+quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew near
+to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+
+The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to
+be said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered.
+But none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the
+other.
+
+"If you want a passage home," said Cable, gruffly, "cut your boat
+adrift. You're welcome."
+
+"Thank you," was the answer. "I am going back to Poland to try again."
+
+He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of
+the only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him.
+"Perhaps we shall meet again soon," he said, "in Poland."
+
+"Not yet," replied Cartoner. "I am under orders for Madrid."
+
+Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat.
+Then he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.
+
+Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+
+Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+
+"Captain," he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from
+the shelter of his pocket.
+
+"Good-bye, mister," he said.
+
+Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift, and
+he sat down to the oars.
+
+There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff
+headed his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the
+promise of a stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging over
+Poland.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a month
+later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace and
+stood his ground.
+
+Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to
+keep their acquaintances in the right place--that is to say, in the
+background of her life. With this object in view, she had an "at home"
+day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not
+stay too long. To-day was not that day.
+
+"I know I ought not to have come this afternoon," explained Netty, with
+a rather shy haste, as she shook hands. "But I could not wait until next
+Tuesday, because we sail that day."
+
+"Then you are going home again?"
+
+Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush still
+in her cheeks--"yes, and I am engaged to be married."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes said
+nothing.
+
+"Do we know the--gentleman?" asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in this
+idyl.
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty. "He is not unknown in London. His name
+is Burris."
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Orlay, "the comp--" Then she remembered that to call
+a fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. "The
+millionaire?" she concluded, rather lamely.
+
+"I believe he is very rich," admitted Netty, "though, of course--"
+
+"No, of course not," Lady Orlay hastened to say. "I congratulate you,
+and wish you every happiness."
+
+She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word
+to him. He took it promptly.
+
+"And I," he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading of
+the hands--"I wish you all the happiness--that money can buy."
+
+Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his shoulder
+turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which was to be
+Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be her father,
+but he was a millionaire twice over--in London and New York. He had,
+moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of which details
+appeared from time to time in the illustrated monthly magazines.
+
+"So I shall hope to be in London every year," said Netty, "and to see
+all the friends who have been so kind to us--you and Lord Orlay and Mr.
+Deulin."
+
+"And Reginald Cartoner," suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes. And
+it came.
+
+"Yes," she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question, but
+did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner
+was in the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that
+Deulin had brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until Martin
+effected his escape and joined his sister in England. She only knew what
+the world now knew--that Price Martin Bukaty had died and been buried at
+sea. It was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+
+Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be
+interested in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice,
+seeking to recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had taken
+an envelope from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had thrown it
+on the fire, where it was smouldering now on the coals. It was a soiled
+and worn envelope, as if it had passed through vicissitudes; there
+seemed to be something inside it which burned and gave forth an aromatic
+odor.
+
+He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave. When
+the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+
+"What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite
+forgot to be polite?" she said to Deulin. "Is it a letter?"
+
+"It is a love-token," answered the Frenchman.
+
+"For Netty Cahere?"
+
+"No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be."
+
+Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was
+still neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the
+fire and was there consumed.
+
+"Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility," she said.
+
+"I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there."
+
+"It has a smell of violets," said Lady Orlay, looking down into the
+fire.
+
+"They are violets--from Warsaw," admitted Deulin. "Wanda is in?" he
+asked, gravely.
+
+"Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her."
+
+"I have received a letter from her father," said Deulin, with his hand
+on the bell.
+
+Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried
+her head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner
+followed her into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's face.
+
+"You have news?"
+
+"I have heard from your father at last."
+
+The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of
+unfolding it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going to
+give it to Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay walked
+to the other end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was about to
+follow her, when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he stayed.
+
+"The letter begins," said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+professional preliminary--
+
+"'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given by
+the man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain Cable quite
+well. When we met him at the Signal House, at Northfleet, I little
+thought that he would be called upon to render the last earthly service
+to my son. So it was he who read the last words. And Martin was buried
+in the Baltic. You, my old friend, know all that I have given to Poland.
+The last gift has been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope
+to write to Cartoner, but not now. He is not a man to attach much
+importance to words. He is, I think, a man to understand silence. At
+present I cannot write, as I am virtually a prisoner in my own house.
+From a high quarter I have received a gracious intimation that my
+affairs are under the special attention of a beneficent monarch, and
+that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a sentence of perpetual
+confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be deemed sufficient
+punishment for--not having been found out. But my worst enemies are
+my own party. Nothing can now convince them that Martin and I did not
+betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is freely coupled with ours.
+So they believe. So it will go down to history, and nothing that we
+can say will make any difference. That I find myself in company with
+Cartoner in this error only strengthens the feeling of friendship, of
+which I was conscious when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake,
+never to cross this frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making
+any sign of friendship towards me or mine.'"
+
+
+As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin,
+for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial
+moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause
+for an instant before he could proceed.
+
+"Then follow," he said, rather uneasily, "certain passages to myself
+which I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health.
+Better, indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough
+old man, and may live to give much trouble yet.'"
+
+Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+alone.
+
+"So, you see, he seems very cheerful," he said, as if it was the letter
+that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket. "He
+seems to be getting on very well without you, you perceive," he added,
+smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There was in his voice and
+manner a dim suggestion of the losing game, consciously played.
+
+"May I read the letter for myself?" asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+steady hand.
+
+After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his
+pocket and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group
+standing near the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an
+imperceptible movement of his eyebrows, as of one who had made an
+attempt and failed. They waited in silence while Wanda read the letter,
+and at length she handed it back to him.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I read it differently. It is not only the world which
+appears differently to two different people, even a letter may have two
+meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon that----"
+
+She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"--which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a broken-hearted
+man," she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during which Wanda
+seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even Deulin had
+nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps Cartoner had
+already done so by his own life, without any words at all.
+
+"I shall go to Warsaw to-night," she said at last to Lady Orlay, "if
+you will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack
+gratitude. But--you understand?"
+
+"Yes, dear, I understand," replied the woman who had known happiness.
+And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might
+falter.
+
+"It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?" said Wanda. As
+she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none other.
+It was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom she
+submitted the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it before
+these people. As if she took a subtle pride in showing them that he was
+what she knew him to be. She was sure of her lover; which is, perhaps,
+happiness enough for this world.
+
+"Duty is best, is it not?" she repeated.
+
+"It is the only thing," he answered.
+
+Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic
+and active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+
+"Your mind is made up?" he asked. "You go to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements
+for the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you
+across the frontier, you understand?"
+
+He turned to Cartoner.
+
+"And you? When do you go to Spain?"
+
+"To-night," was the answer.
+
+"Then good-bye." The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was
+at the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the door
+behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood and
+looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's eyes.
+But Deulin's smile was sadder.
+
+"And this is the end," he said--"the end!"
+
+"No," said Lady Orlay; "it is not. It cannot be. I have never known
+a great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the end,
+Paul. Heaven is kind."
+
+"Sometimes," answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused,
+and, facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself,
+commanding her attention to his long life and story. "Sometimes,
+milady."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
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diff --git a/3805.zip b/3805.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #3805 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3805)
diff --git a/old/3805-h.htm.2021-01-27 b/old/3805-h.htm.2021-01-27
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Vultures
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VULTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE VULTURES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A NOVEL <br /> <br /> By Henry Seton Merriman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALL AT SEA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad Atlantic,
+      was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall, thin man, who
+      carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls' school as
+      &ldquo;poking.&rdquo; He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead, sunken cheeks,
+      and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world was one of patient
+      disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin first, doggedly through
+      life. The weather had been bad, and was now moderating. But Mr. Mangles
+      had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was a dry, hard person, who had
+      suffered from nothing but chronic dyspepsia&mdash;had suffered from it for
+      fifty years or so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine weather,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Women will be coming on deck&mdash;hang the fine
+      weather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joseph,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, &ldquo;growls over his meals like a dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+      leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near&mdash;and the
+      man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+      Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The large
+      majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no better; so it
+      must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at his worst, only
+      comically French&mdash;a matter of a smile; but Teutonic characteristics
+      are conducive to hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six feet
+      high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed to take
+      up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world. There was
+      nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet. When he spoke
+      he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he did, with patience,
+      in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business men&mdash;Joseph
+      P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a sea of
+      commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four days that
+      had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made anything, or
+      sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready for production
+      at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and trade. Neither
+      was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and yet both were
+      difficult to get on with. For human confidences must be mutual. It is only
+      to God that man can continue telling, telling, telling, and getting never
+      a word in return. These two men had nothing to tell their fellows about
+      themselves; so the other passengers drifted away into those closely linked
+      corporations characteristic of steamer life and left them to themselves&mdash;to
+      each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they had never said things to each other&mdash;had never, as it were,
+      got deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under a
+      strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen in
+      the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite straight, and cut
+      across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a direct, stern look to
+      dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he turned slowly, and looked
+      down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance. He seemed
+      to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken. And Mangles met the glance
+      with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark. But Mangles spoke first,
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the women will be on deck soon&mdash;and my sister Jooly.
+      You don't know Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon,&rdquo; said
+      Cartoner. &ldquo;She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was pretty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That wasn't Jooly,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who have
+      no self-consciousness&mdash;who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as
+      are the majority of men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My niece, Netty Cahere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is pretty,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have meant
+      much to feminine ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll fall in love with her,&rdquo; said Mangles, lugubriously. &ldquo;They all do.
+      She says she can't help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Distresses her very much,&rdquo; concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his
+      cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side of
+      his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss Netty
+      Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from personal
+      environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more
+      especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what there was in
+      Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck. She
+      was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven young
+      man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He was
+      speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an expression
+      of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering blue eyes and a
+      complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never altered. She
+      was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly deprecating manner, as
+      if her own opinion of herself were small, and she wished the world to
+      accept her at that valuation. She made no sign of having perceived her
+      uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth officer, who reluctantly
+      mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back as he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She don't like smoke,&rdquo; he growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+      after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay,
+      when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that he
+      was not alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+      though he was very young&mdash;quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+      mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart full
+      of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish some of my relations were sailors,&rdquo; replied Mr. Mangles, in his
+      deepest tones. &ldquo;Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my friend, Mr.
+      Cartoner&mdash;Miss Cahere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious wave
+      of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it was his
+      eyes that turned away first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not been down to meals,&rdquo; he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends on
+      board?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are very few ladies. I know none of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I dare say some of them are nice,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, who evidently
+      thought well of human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+      thoughtfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes&mdash;dark
+      lashes around blue eyes&mdash;with a guileless and wondering admiration.
+      He certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air
+      which bespeaks good breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen the ship on the other side?&rdquo; she asked, after a pause; &ldquo;a
+      sailing ship. You cannot see it from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot from
+      whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and Mr.
+      Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+      &ldquo;One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much nearer.
+      That ship's officer pointed it out to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice&mdash;she had a rather
+      confidential manner&mdash;&ldquo;I think sailors are very nice, don't you? But .
+      . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends what you were going to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+      however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had been
+      about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself. She
+      glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I prefer soldiers,&rdquo; she said, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the ship
+      he had been told to look at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave enough
+      to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most people are
+      afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+      hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+      each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Cahere, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+      Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+      mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body of
+      amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house for
+      his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather side,
+      where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without
+      explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter. But
+      at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held her
+      there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat,
+      looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him to come
+      to her assistance. The same gust of wind made the steamer lurch so that
+      Cartoner had to grasp Miss Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the incident
+      had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned notions, and was
+      not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met girls who are friendly
+      in five minutes with men and women alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards him,
+      and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his returning his
+      cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took possession of the
+      cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers selected a cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, firmly, &ldquo;you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+      think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner&mdash;is it not
+      foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did not
+      care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder
+      and looked down at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if it mattered whether I like it or not,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And I do like it&mdash;I
+      like the smell of your cigars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which was
+      perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+      tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if it mattered what I think,&rdquo; she said, humbly, again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always like to conciliate a lady,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, in his deep voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and her
+      frocks,&rdquo; answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner was,
+      nevertheless, able to overhear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is your aunt Jooly?&rdquo; inquired the old man, hurriedly. &ldquo;I thought
+      she was coming on deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So she is,&rdquo; answered Netty. &ldquo;I left her in the saloon. She is quite well.
+      She was talking to some people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, already?&rdquo; exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her head
+      with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon stairway, from
+      whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sister Jooly, sir,&rdquo; explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, &ldquo;is no doubt
+      known to you&mdash;Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had lived in
+      the United States during some months, and he knew that it is possible to
+      be famous in New York and quite without honor in Connecticut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?&rdquo; suggested Mr.
+      Mangles, not unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I think not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her line is&mdash;at present&mdash;prisons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never been in prison,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt you will get experience in course of time,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles,
+      with his deep, curt laugh. &ldquo;No, sir, my sister is a lecturer. She gets on
+      platforms and talks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about?&rdquo; asked Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About most things,&rdquo; he answered, gravely; &ldquo;chiefly about women, I take
+      it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of them. And
+      she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the stick there.
+      She had found out what very few women know&mdash;namely, that when women
+      work for nothing, they are giving away something that nobody wants. So
+      Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's employment, and pointing
+      out to the public and the administration many ways in which women may be
+      profitably employed and paid. She leaves it to the gumption of the
+      government to discover for themselves that there is many a nice berth for
+      which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently suited, but governments have no
+      gumption, sir. And&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Aunt Julie,&rdquo; interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship, the
+      second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to the ship
+      and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty
+      Cahere's face&mdash;perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes&mdash;for
+      he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SIGNAL HOUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet&mdash;where the spicy odors of
+      chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+      manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray sky&mdash;there
+      stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called no one knows
+      and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square house of the
+      Jacobean period&mdash;presumably because it is so hidden by trees, so
+      wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get at, that its
+      outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of the
+      tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it is
+      haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and they are
+      never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have painted them
+      shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the hinges. A side
+      gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in the wall, up an
+      alley, is labelled &ldquo;Tradesman's Entrance,&rdquo; but the tradesmen never linger
+      there. No merry milkman leaves the latest gossip with his thin, blue milk
+      on that threshold. The butcher's chariot wheels never tarry at the corner
+      of that alley. Indeed, the local butcher has no chariot. His clients
+      mostly come in a shawl, and take their purchases away with them wrapped in
+      a doubtful newspaper beneath its folds. The better-class buyers wear a
+      cloth cricketing cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of hair by a
+      hat-pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He goes
+      slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before he tips
+      his measure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he could
+      live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of it&mdash;a
+      noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was once a
+      family mansion; later it was described as a riverside residence, then as a
+      quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price fell with a crash, and
+      an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by her relations to live in it,
+      with two servants, who were frequently to be met in Gravesend in the
+      evening hours, at which time, it is to be presumed, the elderly lady of
+      weak intellect was locked in the Signal House alone. But the house never
+      had a ghost. Haunted houses very seldom have. The ghost was the mere
+      invention of some kitchen-maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+      foreigner took it&mdash;a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+      pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and the
+      river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was not
+      preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He was well
+      known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable suburb for a
+      desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to make; and he was
+      delighted at the cheapness of the house, the greenness of the old lawn,
+      the height of the grimy trees within the red brick wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his throat in
+      the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had obviously been
+      designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the Signal House
+      occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it up altogether, and
+      tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years, while the Russian banker
+      extended his business and lived virtuously elsewhere. Then he suddenly
+      began using the house again as a house of recreation, and brought his
+      foreign servants, and his foreign friends and their foreign servants, to
+      stay from Saturday till Monday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played bowls
+      on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors could hear
+      them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the grimy trees and
+      the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried much about the Signal
+      House; for they were a busy people who lived all around, and had to earn
+      their living, in addition to the steady and persistent assuagement of a
+      thirst begotten of cement dust and the pungent smell of bone manure. One
+      or two local amateurs had made sure of the fact that there was nothing in
+      the house that would repay a burglarious investigation, which, added to
+      the fact that the police station is only a few doors off, tended to allay
+      a natural curiosity as to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and usually
+      told the cabman when his services would again be required. He came thus
+      with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and came without
+      luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab, carried some parcels,
+      presumably of refreshments. These grave gentlemen were, it appeared, about
+      to enjoy a picnic at the Signal House&mdash;possibly a tea-picnic in the
+      Russian fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the back
+      of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at the
+      closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build would
+      allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who seemed to know
+      his bearings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mister,&rdquo; he said, in a Northern voice, &ldquo;another of your little
+      jobs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the vehicle
+      had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my fren',&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;another of my little jobs. I hope you are well,
+      Captain Cable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+      conventions. He was obviously well&mdash;as well as a hard, seafaring life
+      will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man, with
+      a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a little
+      piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His eyes were
+      blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart, but it was
+      certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick coat of blue
+      pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but because it was his
+      best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black felt. It had
+      perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years earlier. He
+      wore no gloves&mdash;Captain Cable drew the line there. As for the rest,
+      he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yourself?&rdquo; he answered, mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very well, thank you,&rdquo; replied the polite banker, who, it will have
+      been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the reader. The
+      truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously Russian that the
+      plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of consonants. &ldquo;It is an
+      affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you, but I think they do not
+      speak English, except your colleague, the other captain, who speaks a
+      little&mdash;a very little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+      awaiting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Captain Cable,&rdquo; he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+      hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign ways;
+      but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn, just to show
+      that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell 'em,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+      speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+      clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken metaphorically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions, rather
+      markedly and with much deference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're speakin' French,&rdquo; interrupted Captain Cable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; returned Captain Cable, affably. &ldquo;They're all one to me. They're
+      all damn nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+      patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the social
+      station of the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He was a
+      tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair and
+      mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were dark, and
+      he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which had been placed
+      near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a cedar-tree, and his
+      manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in his daily life he had
+      always been looked up to and obeyed without question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the banker replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oui, mon Prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the others,
+      the youngest of the group&mdash;a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy, fair
+      mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said, in perfect English, &ldquo;says that we also are plain
+      men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it had
+      been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not like
+      these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the young
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted group
+      seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat down last,
+      was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown, and was mostly
+      hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of a Northerner, the
+      abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The mark of the other
+      element was so plainly written upon him that Captain Cable looked at him
+      hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do so they sat next to each
+      other at one side of the table, and faced the three landsmen. Again
+      Captain Cable spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Provided it's nothing underhand,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'm ready and willing.
+      Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God&mdash;them's my
+      risks! I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are explosives,&rdquo; admitted the banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my hatches.
+      Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are cartridges,&rdquo; said the young man who had shaken hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do,&rdquo; said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+      towards the banker, added, &ldquo;Now, mister,&rdquo; and sat back in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very simple matter,&rdquo; explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+      voice. &ldquo;We have a cargo&mdash;a greater part of it weight, though there is
+      some measurement&mdash;a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+      will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters. There is
+      nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you understand.
+      What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker paused for breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said Captain Cable. &ldquo;It's the same with me and my ship.
+      There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual risks. It's
+      neck or nothing with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+      respect, nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand right enough,&rdquo; he added, with an affable nod to the three
+      foreigners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+      Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet in
+      the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the <i>Olaf</i>,
+      Captain Petersen&mdash;sitting by your side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you was a seafaring man,&rdquo; he said. And Captain Petersen replied
+      that he was &ldquo;Vair pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+      lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't deny,&rdquo; replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain Petersen
+      out of the corner of his eye, &ldquo;that I have been there before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port&mdash;just a
+      sawmill, at the head of a fjord&mdash;where I shall have a cargo of timber
+      waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+      captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; replied the captain. &ldquo;Ship's lying in the river now, and if
+      these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not think we shall have time for that!&rdquo; put in the banker,
+      hastily. &ldquo;And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle your
+      meeting-place. You have your charts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+      papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years he had
+      been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain sections of
+      the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the overhanging
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much,&rdquo; he said,
+      apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing the
+      action, looked at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seafaring man?&rdquo; he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by profession, only for fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet found
+      out where the fun comes in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gentleman,&rdquo; explained the banker, &ldquo;his Ex&mdash;Mr.&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      paused, and looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Martin will be on board the <i>Olaf</i> when you meet Captain
+      Petersen in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that
+      Captain Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language. The
+      two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain Peterson
+      undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your crew, my
+      fren'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and precious
+      little of that,&rdquo; replied Captain Cable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+      bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one thing&mdash;I'm a plain-spoken man myself&mdash;what is there
+      for us two&mdash;us seafaring men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is five hundred pounds for each of you,&rdquo; replied the white-haired
+      gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like to deal with a gentleman,&rdquo; he said, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so do I,&rdquo; replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SPECIALTY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+      Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+      water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+      green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the
+      breeze&mdash;Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of
+      wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like
+      a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad
+      daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and
+      day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three
+      weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is
+      ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and
+      the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill
+      is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably an
+      entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is one of the
+      waste-places of the world&mdash;a place left clean on sailors' charts; no
+      one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many rocks which have
+      earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime story. For they never
+      relinquish anything that touches them. They are soft and gentle in their
+      embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that comes within their grasp. Their
+      story is a long, grim tale of disaster. Their treasure is vast and stored
+      beneath a weight, half sand, half water, which must ever baffle the
+      ingenuity of man. Fog, the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on these
+      waters, rising on the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea, where it
+      blows to and fro for weeks and weeks together. When all the world is blue
+      and sunny, fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on these coasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barrin' fogs&mdash;always barrin' fogs!&rdquo; Captain Cable had said as his
+      last word on leaving the Signal House. &ldquo;If ye wait a month, never move in
+      a fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one of
+      those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning or
+      reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunset the <i>Olaf</i> had crept cautiously in from the west&mdash;a
+      high-prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with
+      her name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+      Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working like a
+      clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life, he who moves
+      slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence and a little
+      dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of every current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+      very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a
+      half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then
+      he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+      beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he rang
+      the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped dead, its
+      bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain
+      Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high
+      forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The <i>Olaf</i> was anchored at
+      the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and no
+      vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun went down,
+      and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded into night. There
+      was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill was below the horizon
+      now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near, turning its winking,
+      wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the <i>Olaf</i> rode out the gale that raged all through the night,
+      and in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the
+      northwest wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however, to
+      make a sea big enough to affect large vessels. The <i>Olaf</i> rode easily
+      enough, and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time to time,
+      throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like a bird at its
+      bath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and lively
+      in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow of the black
+      sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was lost in the ample
+      folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It remains to be seen,&rdquo; he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+      &ldquo;whether that little man will come to us in this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will come,&rdquo; said Captain Petersen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things&mdash;at the
+      timidity and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad
+      weather, at life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy people
+      who find life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will say that
+      it is easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but experience tells
+      that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes and
+      chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad weather than good. The
+      gayest are not those who can be pointed out as the happiest. Indeed, the
+      happiest are those who appear to have nothing to make them happy. Martin
+      Bukaty might, for instance, have chosen a better abode than the stuffy
+      cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-boat and cheerier companions than a grim
+      pair of Norse seamen. He might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea,
+      and yet he stood on the dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain
+      Petersen on the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+      haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that exceedingly
+      amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why look so gloomy, my
+      friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are putting our necks within a rope,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not your neck&mdash;only mine,&rdquo; replied Martin. &ldquo;It is a necktie that one
+      gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so free
+      from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine! The wine
+      runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there is a loose
+      rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his life&mdash;that
+      old man, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all very well for you,&rdquo; said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning his
+      gloomy eyes towards his companion. &ldquo;A prince does not get shot or hanged
+      or sent to the bottom in the high seas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you think that,&rdquo; said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. &ldquo;One can
+      never tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he broke into a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come on
+      to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in&mdash;that little bulldog of a
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,&rdquo;
+       grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has only one sense, that man&mdash;a sense of infinite fearlessness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is probably afraid&mdash;&rdquo; Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+      laboriously on to the rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+      aloft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
+      breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
+      that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
+      Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
+      horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
+      approaching before the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the water,
+      and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the beacon on
+      the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till the rounded wet
+      sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He disappeared into the
+      haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again astern of the <i>Olaf</i>,
+      a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan of spray. He was crashing
+      into the seas at full speed&mdash;a very different kind of sailor to the
+      careful captain of the <i>Olaf</i>. His low decks were clear, and each sea
+      leaped over the bow and washed aft&mdash;green and white. As the little
+      steamer came down he suddenly slackened speed, and waved his hand as he
+      stood alone on the high bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray that
+      still broke over the bows. The crew of the <i>Olaf</i>, crowding to the
+      rail, looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the height of
+      their dry and steady deck. They watched the men working quickly almost
+      under water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was good. Captain Cable
+      stood swaying on the bridge&mdash;a little, square figure in gleaming
+      oilskins&mdash;and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed ahead of the <i>Olaf</i> and anchored there, paying out cable as
+      if he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name visible, a
+      sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name and port of
+      registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed. Whatever his business
+      was, this seaman knew it well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat,
+      and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity.
+      &ldquo;He is going to try and get to us!&rdquo; he said, pessimistically, and went
+      forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this
+      Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat containing
+      Captain Cable and two men came within reach, a rope&mdash;cleverly thrown&mdash;coiled
+      out into the flying scud and fell across the captain's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the <i>Olaf</i> and
+      shook hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince
+      Martin, who held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see you, Captain Cable,&rdquo; he said. Cable finished drying the salt
+      water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you thought I wasn't coming,&rdquo; he said, suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I knew you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see me for my own sake?&rdquo; suggested the captain, grimly smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it always does one good to see a man,&rdquo; answered Prince Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you're a prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makings of a man as well, perhaps,&rdquo; he said, doubtfully. Then he turned
+      to cast an eye over the <i>Olaf</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tin-kettle of a thing!&rdquo; he observed, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too small.
+      Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn to and get
+      our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening, and if it does
+      we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready to work all
+      night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dammy, you're the right sort!&rdquo; he muttered, looking aloft at the rigging
+      with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the privilege
+      of the British sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on board
+      in the afternoon to bend the running tackle &ldquo;ship-shape and Bristol
+      fashion,&rdquo; and refused to remain on board the <i>Olaf</i> for luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got a bit of steak,&rdquo; he said, conclusively, and clambered over the
+      side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of fried
+      onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the small steamer
+      to the large one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon&mdash;men who,
+      as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+      small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in
+      harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or a
+      musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+      successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after dark,
+      and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost noiselessly
+      under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's crew worked
+      quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was begun which was to
+      throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty, Prince Martin, Captain
+      Petersen, and several others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+      continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably lightened,
+      and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through the day the
+      transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights were slung out
+      of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the dark hold of the
+      other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the second night the
+      creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after daylight the three men
+      who had superintended the work without resting took a cup of coffee
+      together in the cabin of the <i>Olaf</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Likely as not,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, &ldquo;we
+      three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+      seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if they
+      did see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can never tell,&rdquo; said Martin, optimistically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; the captain went on, &ldquo;I can hold me tongue. That's agreed&mdash;we
+      all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely to pay for a
+      word or two. Often enough I've read things in the newspaper that I could
+      put a different name to. And that little ship of mine has had a hand in
+      some queer political pies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Martin, with his gay laugh, &ldquo;and kept it clean all the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+      father for my money in three days' time&mdash;barrin' fogs. And I'll tell
+      him I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him he's
+      a handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+      sea-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later the <i>Olaf</i> was alone on that shallow sea, which
+      seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits a
+      room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TWO OF A TRADE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard,&rdquo; a witty Frenchwoman had once
+      said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin alone
+      could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French have a
+      trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as the hollow
+      ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for a moment in a
+      deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear it&mdash;Reginald
+      Cartoner, a listener, not a talker&mdash;and made that man Paul Deulin's
+      friend for the rest of his life. As there is <i>point de culte sans
+      mystere</i>, so also there can be no lasting friendship without reserve.
+      And although these two men had met in many parts of the world&mdash;although
+      they had in common more languages than may be counted on the fingers&mdash;they
+      knew but little of each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the gay
+      green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth, endeavoring to
+      conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand tragedies, a whole harvest
+      of lost illusions, a host of grim human comedies. On the other hand, this
+      is a pious fraud; for half the world is young, and will discover the roots
+      of the flowers soon enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+      witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new republic,
+      they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and official dignity,
+      to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his own
+      flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of the new
+      presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
+      opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted in
+      his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
+      represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which is
+      the language of diplomacy, and means war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
+      it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be in
+      one place at a time,&rdquo; Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years his
+      junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
+      rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
+      place where their services were urgently needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during a
+      lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are.&rdquo;
+       Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
+      imperturbable smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The captain
+      of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
+      vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure a
+      number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin, during
+      fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering
+      faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him,
+      without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift
+      an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men
+      and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that
+      differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their own
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these was
+      Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+      professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always cross the road,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I see Cartoner on the other
+      side. If I did not, he would go past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in England
+      on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from a club in
+      Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that direction. Like
+      many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air. Like all Frenchmen, he
+      loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall, avoiding a man here and
+      there. For we all have friends whom we are content to see pass by on the
+      other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover, such that it got strangely mixed
+      up with his pleasure, and it often happens that discretion must needs
+      overcome a natural sociability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune, or
+      the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall, spare
+      form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm possession
+      of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of a great
+      land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked with
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I permit myself a question,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When did you return from Cuba?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I landed at Liverpool last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.
+      Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried
+      behind those smiling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in London, as you see,&rdquo; said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+      question. &ldquo;I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one may
+      suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion. Let us
+      hope we may have another little . . . errand together&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman who
+      walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look
+      curiously at the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are dressed in your best clothes,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a pause; &ldquo;you
+      are going to pay calls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to call on one of my old chiefs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on a
+      new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk to a
+      clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all your old
+      chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment since you made
+      your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be glad to see you,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going. She
+      might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always go to see them when I am in town,&rdquo; said Cartoner, who usually
+      confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily intercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&mdash;how is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long in
+      many climates. She is always anxious about him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the penalty a woman pays,&rdquo; said Deulin. &ldquo;To love and to be consumed
+      by anxiety&mdash;a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should have
+      gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want her good
+      services&mdash;again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+      reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+      already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of course,
+      you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the history of Poland,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+      front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his head
+      a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead a burden of
+      memories and knowledge of which his brain was always conscious&mdash;as a
+      man may stand in the centre of a great library, and become suddenly aware
+      that he has more books than he can ever open and understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more history
+      that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and Heaven knows
+      that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I never look into a
+      book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are in London. I give you
+      that&mdash;to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and son. It is not for
+      them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take care of themselves&mdash;though
+      they will not do that. It does not run in the family, as you know, who
+      read history books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner of St.
+      James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been passed in
+      London streets. For it must be remembered that English traffic is
+      different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a girl,&rdquo; pursued the Frenchman. &ldquo;Families like the Bukatys
+      should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is as gay
+      as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old ruffian&mdash;and
+      my very dear friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?&rdquo; inquired
+      Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+      should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+      enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I leave to Lady Orlay,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+      neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy, who
+      abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, ignoring the incident, &ldquo;I would not presume to dictate.
+      All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a girl who has
+      the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has a father who is
+      a plotter and an old ruffian&mdash;a Polish noble, in fact&mdash;and a
+      brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince can be.' I
+      should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this girl upon the
+      world, practically alone&mdash;on the hard, hard upper-class world&mdash;with
+      only one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole row of hearts on
+      a shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down another, made, perhaps,
+      of ambition, or sport, or the love of a different sort of woman&mdash;and,
+      vogue la galere, they go on just as well as they did before.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my accomplished aunt . . .&rdquo; suggested Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh
+      than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of
+      common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+      until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+      Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last he
+      broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly following
+      the stream of his own thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is Joseph P. Mangles?&rdquo; he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An American gentleman&mdash;the word is applicable in its best sense&mdash;who
+      for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with the
+      most terrible sister a man ever had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have met him&mdash;that puts another complexion on your
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is all you know about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he?&rdquo; repeated Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor devil&mdash;like
+      you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time kicking his heels in
+      New York, or wherever they kick their heels in America. The rest of his
+      time he is risking his health, or possibly his neck, wherever it may
+      please the fates to send him. If he had been properly trained, he might
+      have done something, that Joseph P. Mangles; for he can hold his tongue.
+      But he took to it late, as they all do in America. So he has come across,
+      has he? Yes, the storm-birds are congregating, my silent friend. There is
+      something in the wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that girl with them?&rdquo; he inquired presently&mdash;&ldquo;Miss Netty
+      Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always make love to Miss Cahere&mdash;she likes it best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+      Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare that
+      his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not speak
+      again until they had walked some distance northward of Piccadilly, and
+      stopped before a house with white window-boxes. Several carriages stood at
+      the other side of the road against the square railings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it her day?&rdquo; inquired Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since we
+      are here, let us go in&mdash;with a smile on the countenance, eh? my brave
+      Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a lie on the tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There I will meet you, too,&rdquo; replied Deulin, looking into his card-case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a number
+      of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come together. It
+      was observable that this was not a congregation of fashionable or artistic
+      people; for the women were dressed quietly, and the men were mostly old
+      and white-haired. It was also dimly perceptible that there was a larger
+      proportion of brain in the room than is allotted to the merely
+      fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic and pictorial,
+      which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover, scraps of
+      conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude that the
+      house was in its way a miniature Babel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake
+      hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious
+      group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived
+      Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He seemed
+      to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length went to meet
+      Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and indefinable
+      family resemblances which start up at odd moments became visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you particularly to-morrow night,&rdquo; said the lady; &ldquo;I have some
+      people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+      Cartoner's elbow again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own tongue,
+      &ldquo;I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre Bukaty,&rdquo; he
+      added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy, white hair, and
+      the air of a mediaeval chieftain, &ldquo;allow me to present my old friend
+      Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin
+      still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn
+      towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had a
+      manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl of
+      open air and active tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess Wanda,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, &ldquo;my friend Mr. Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity seemed
+      suddenly reflected in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the best linguist in Europe,&rdquo; said Deulin, in a gay whisper; &ldquo;even
+      Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he himself spoke in Polish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place, where
+      human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books was
+      folded over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+      perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he would
+      have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading before
+      facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service. But he
+      was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been bestowed upon
+      the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the contempt hurled by
+      his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon Commerce as represented
+      in Poland by the thrifty German <i>emigre</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably
+      bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great height
+      as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact, he had
+      grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild early
+      sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething in its
+      midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London.
+      Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough,
+      he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile,
+      which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding
+      city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do not take me seriously,&rdquo; he said to his intimate friends; &ldquo;they do
+      not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live in
+      Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact that
+      he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times, when
+      the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to follow
+      him to the death&mdash;which is the way of the world. &ldquo;You have but to
+      hold up your hand,&rdquo; cries the faithful follower. But wise men know that
+      the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and
+      impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight
+      centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped
+      off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as
+      Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and
+      nothing could ever smooth him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and
+      the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he
+      said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked
+      Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but English,
+      and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest people in the
+      world&mdash;you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your pardon.
+      Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel in Kensington&mdash;will
+      you come? That is the address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner,
+      after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which
+      was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning
+      speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better
+      equipments with which to face the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at length; &ldquo;it will give me much pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was
+      there to need reflection in such a small question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At five o'clock,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea
+      you drink in this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People whose
+      lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the smallest jests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted by a
+      page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in Kensington. The
+      Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black. There is in some
+      Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn until Poland is
+      reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like her father and her
+      brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her being, such as is
+      often found in slightly made persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came as early as I could,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the clock
+      struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had
+      not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather
+      naïve statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and
+      glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a
+      chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is kind of you,&rdquo; she said, speaking English without the least
+      suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her life.
+      &ldquo;My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are not only
+      taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a minute. He has just
+      been called away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very kind of him to ask me to call,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite new
+      to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+      countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a man
+      who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going straight
+      towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come to pay an
+      idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush into
+      conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment in it. His
+      hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this as he took a
+      chair near the window. He was probably ten years older than herself, and
+      gave the impression of experience and of a deep knowledge of the world.
+      From living much alone he had acquired the habit of wondering whether it
+      was worth while to say that which came into his mind&mdash;which is a
+      habit fatal to social success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night,&rdquo; said the princess, following
+      the usual instinct that silence between strangers is intolerable. &ldquo;He
+      talked a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He accuses you of talking too little,&rdquo; said Wanda, with some spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid, princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is diplomacy?&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I think you are both great artists,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, as the
+      door opened and her father entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only come to ask you a question&mdash;a word,&rdquo; said the prince.
+      &ldquo;Heavens! your English language! I have a man down-stairs&mdash;a question
+      of business&mdash;and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the
+      meaning of the word jettison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, &ldquo;of course. How
+      foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will excuse me,
+      will you not? Wanda will give you some tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a person
+      so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word jettison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+      continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had found
+      him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their knowledge of
+      him. If he had only been that which is called a public man, a novelist or
+      a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his advertising would have
+      been done for him by others. For there was in him that unknown quantity
+      which the world must needs think magnificent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me all you know about him,&rdquo; said the princess in her
+      brisk way. &ldquo;He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts have
+      not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the sort of
+      person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love and marry,
+      or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married already, and his
+      wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy. But I don't. He has
+      no wife&mdash;unless he has two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care about his career,&rdquo; said the princess, lightly. &ldquo;I go deeper
+      than careers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay, blue
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man's career is only the surface of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then some men's lives are all surface,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this girl,
+      who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly clear and
+      decisive views upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have them do beyond going on when required and stopping
+      when expedient&mdash;and avoiding collisions?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally,&rdquo; she answered,
+      &ldquo;and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little happiness lay
+      that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as I
+      saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+      Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an infinite
+      patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you have come down to a mere career again,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not necessarily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you people discussing,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;so gravely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him, for he
+      had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, slowly. &ldquo;The princess was giving
+      me her views.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. &ldquo;They are
+      long views, those views of hers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and looked
+      out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which caused him
+      intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any man of strong
+      purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of thoughtful
+      attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the <i>Minnie</i>, crossing the
+      street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business acquaintance
+      of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill. He
+      had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and out of
+      the <i>Minnie's</i> hatches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.
+      The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and Wanda
+      mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception given by the
+      Orlays that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're going, of course?&rdquo; said the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to many such entertainments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I go to very few,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+      speculative way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission
+      of the usual &ldquo;Well, I must be off,&rdquo; or any such catch-word. He certainly
+      left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+      some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+      accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+      vehicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westminster Bridge,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down to
+      the steamboat-landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you want to go to?&rdquo; inquired the gruff, seafaring ticket-clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I can,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over the
+      rudder. He must have known that the <i>Minnie</i> was so constructed that
+      she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once. It
+      was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the passenger
+      traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having
+      leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was
+      natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart
+      seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage
+      of this affability to make inquiries about the <i>Minnie</i>. He knew,
+      perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side
+      worker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the Pool,
+      where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of steamers
+      lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority were
+      foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam
+      threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North
+      Sea fish-carriers, lay the <i>Minnie</i>, painted black, with nothing
+      brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby
+      green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+      fish-carrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to
+      take him to the <i>Minnie</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He must
+      have come down by the boat before yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the <i>Minnie</i>, and
+      banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+      tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face of
+      a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+      unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's you, Mr. Cartoner,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was passing in a steamer,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, quietly, &ldquo;and recognized
+      the <i>Minnie</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time you and
+      me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere stowed away
+      in a locker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VULTURES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; Miss Mangles was saying&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+      Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is possible, Jooly&mdash;it is possible,&rdquo; replied Mr. Joseph P.
+      Mangles, looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the window
+      of his private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+      invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+      evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This invitation,&rdquo; said the recipient, &ldquo;accompanied as it is by a friendly
+      note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in the fact that
+      we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point to it, Joseph. It
+      seems to indicate that England is prepared to give me a welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem&mdash;just that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into Northumberland
+      Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession of which Mr. Joseph
+      P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all things a capacity for
+      leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist was not ignorant in his
+      art. For he did not inform his sister that the invitation to which she
+      attached so flattering a national importance owed its origin to an
+      accidental encounter between himself and Lord Orlay&mdash;a friend of his
+      early senatorial days&mdash;in Pall Mall the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman and
+      few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her thoughts. Of
+      what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she receives an
+      invitation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jooly,&rdquo; Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's back&mdash;&ldquo;Jooly
+      is an impressive dresser when she tries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+      morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black cloth
+      garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like a Norfolk
+      jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She was a rhomboid,
+      in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist which so often
+      figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was black and shiny and
+      straight; it was drawn back from her rounded temples by hydraulic
+      pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose; it had grown baggy by much
+      speaking on public platforms&mdash;a fearsome thing in a woman. Her face
+      was large and round and white. Her eyes were dull. Long ago there must
+      have been depressing moments in the life of Julia P. Mangles&mdash;moments
+      spent in front of her mirror. But, like the woman of spirit that she was,
+      she had determined that, if she could not be beautiful, she could at all
+      events be great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and accepted
+      Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction that she owed
+      it to her greatness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they abstainers?&rdquo; she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+      over the causes she had championed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in Northumberland
+      Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than you
+      can chew,&rdquo; replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into the
+      vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of
+      himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort
+      of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the attitude who can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and no
+      one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us ask them all and be done with them,&rdquo; she said; and had said it for
+      thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no other
+      prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain&mdash;then plain Mr.
+      Orlay. She had never &ldquo;done with them,&rdquo; had never secured that peaceful
+      domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her husband's dream,
+      and would never secure it. For these were two persons, now old and
+      white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the great world, and had a
+      supreme contempt for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of rich
+      black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+      beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of pink
+      and self-effacing quietness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall know no one,&rdquo; she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+      shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even the waiters,&rdquo; replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious bass,
+      glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. &ldquo;But they will
+      soon know us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+      acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote, with
+      the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for a moment
+      near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it usually did, a
+      little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted Joseph Mangles. Over
+      the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister he bowed in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing to say to that great woman,&rdquo; he sometimes said. &ldquo;She is so
+      elevated that my voice will not reach her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+      moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was now
+      standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly admiring
+      her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I expected you had forgotten me,&rdquo; she said, when Deulin presented
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me&mdash;I have tried,&rdquo; he replied, with great earnestness; but
+      the complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not attach
+      any deep meaning to his remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember them
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not remember them all, mademoiselle&mdash;only a very, very few.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into the
+      room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there another in the room?&rdquo; inquired Deulin, looking around him with
+      some interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like one
+      of us, does she?&rdquo; And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather youthful
+      and inexperienced way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere,&rdquo; replied Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, then she is married?&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell three
+      semitones on the last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing,&rdquo; she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft light
+      of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you pity her?&rdquo; asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they not&mdash;for
+      convenience, I mean&mdash;not from . . . from inclination, like other
+      girls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise her
+      eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an instant on
+      Deulin's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, with a sharp sigh&mdash;and that was all. He bowed, and
+      turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for some
+      minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something special
+      to report, for they walked aside together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his efforts to
+      get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that unmatched hostess
+      at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the arrival of the latest
+      and the departure of the earliest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking for you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you, who always know where everybody
+      is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for him a moment
+      ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mangles is listening to the music in the library&mdash;comparatively
+      happy by himself behind a barricade of flowers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that preposterous woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen the Bukatys?&rdquo; inquired Lady Orlay. &ldquo;I called on them the
+      moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I have
+      never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away across
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked grave.
+      It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the old man,&rdquo; she said, with a change of tone. &ldquo;What is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a rebel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proscribed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+      remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+      ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier&mdash;more
+      arms than the national government could find men for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the man,&rdquo; said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the direction of
+      the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the girl&mdash;it is very sad&mdash;I like her very much. She is gay
+      and brave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;when a woman is gay and brave&mdash;and young&mdash;Heaven
+      help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Monsieur Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady&mdash;God keep
+      her,&rdquo; he said with a grave bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know. She
+      has a great capacity for making friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has already made a few&mdash;this evening,&rdquo; put in the Frenchman,
+      with a significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual enemy&mdash;of
+      a pretty girl&mdash;that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like that,
+      and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one less
+      experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some hidden
+      excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with the
+      frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed&mdash;but he laughed uneasily&mdash;and spread out his hands in
+      a gesture of bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mr. Mangles
+      has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes ago
+      old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook hands
+      with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures are
+      assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater&mdash;you and
+      Orlay&mdash;quietly moored beneath the trees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finally,&rdquo; continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, &ldquo;you
+      come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once or
+      twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something very like it&mdash;the
+      Vultures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+      silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are too discerning. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away,&rdquo; he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. &ldquo;I must
+      go and pack my trunks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night. Miss
+      Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive and the
+      world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words of
+      thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall hope to see you again,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Fraid not,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;we're going to travel on the Continent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When do you start?&rdquo; asked her ladyship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another one,&rdquo; muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And her
+      brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come to say good-bye,&rdquo; she said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going away again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will not tell me where you are going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said, was
+      very experienced and very discerning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to Russia, all of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AT THE FRONTIER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric illumination
+      of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw Express steamed
+      into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never heard of
+      Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train just
+      before these electric lights were reached&mdash;to take his chance of
+      crossing the frontier before morning&mdash;history will never tell! How
+      many have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station
+      with a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of the
+      officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing Alexandrowo&mdash;of
+      getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland&mdash;but by this route. Before
+      the train is at a standstill at the platform each one of the long corridor
+      carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white trousers, the green tunic
+      and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty of Russian law. Here,
+      whatever time of day or night, winter or summer, it is always as light as
+      day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity. There are always sentries
+      on the outer side of the train. The platform is a prison-yard&mdash;the
+      waiting rooms are prison-yards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and everywhere,
+      with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in baggage or
+      demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience will see the
+      traveller through. There is no fear of his being left in the huge station,
+      or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and rightful destination. But
+      with a passport that is old or torn, with a visa which bears any but a
+      recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted look, the voyager had better
+      take his chance of dropping from the footboard at speed, especially if it
+      be a misty night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so much
+      as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go through,
+      but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned within a large
+      room where the luggage is inspected, and they are deprived of their
+      passports. When the customs formalities are over they are allowed to find
+      the refreshment-room, and there console themselves with weak tea in
+      tumblers until such time as they are released.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great inspection-room,
+      with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to overflowing. The
+      majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be Germans. There were a
+      few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the others, had the
+      appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together&mdash;just as the women
+      drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who hoped against
+      hope that their passports were in order. For the most part, no one spoke,
+      though one German commercial traveller protested with so much warmth that
+      an examination of his trunks was nothing but an intrusion on the officer's
+      valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and feel at their ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's, was
+      an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of anybody,
+      and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin, whose train had
+      steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left it. He seemed to
+      know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be observed at the
+      frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge. He obeyed with a
+      silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned, black-capped porter
+      who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no attempt to escape an
+      examination of his luggage, and he avoided the refreshment-room tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate that
+      he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him. Then
+      he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
+      Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of the
+      examination-room. But they drifted together again&mdash;or, perhaps, the
+      younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
+      when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
+      chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
+      opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
+      young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
+      high-born Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Englishman?&rdquo; he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
+      oddly stiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought you were,&rdquo; said the other, who, though his clothes were English
+      and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
+      There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the head&mdash;a
+      sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence. He moved
+      his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who was seated
+      near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye to something
+      unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to his coffee with a
+      youthful spirit of enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this would be mildly amusing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;at say any other hour of the
+      twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do you
+      succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can sleep anywhere,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at him
+      inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Alexandrowo pretty well,&rdquo; the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+      &ldquo;and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on friendly
+      terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as&mdash;the
+      multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
+      sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but for
+      a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who you are,&rdquo; said Cartoner, quietly: &ldquo;I recognized you from your
+      likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours ago in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda?&rdquo; inquired the other, eagerly. &ldquo;Dear old Wanda! How is she? She was
+      the prettiest girl in the room, I bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all about them. But, first, tell me your name. Wanda
+      writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their friends&mdash;the
+      Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to have made mention
+      of it in her letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reginald Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I have heard of you&mdash;but not from Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused to reflect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. &ldquo;No, she never
+      mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known out of
+      England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin&mdash;you know Deulin?&mdash;has
+      spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other friends in common.
+      We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to meet you. You say you
+      know my name&mdash;yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that you should have
+      recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad you think I am
+      like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh&mdash;not that there was
+      anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at life
+      from a cheerful standpoint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion over
+      the cup. &ldquo;Cartoner,&rdquo; Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend, &ldquo;weighs
+      you, and naturally finds you wanting.&rdquo; It seemed that he was weighing
+      Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your father also,&rdquo; he said, at length. &ldquo;He was kind enough to ask
+      me to call, which I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London&mdash;no one, I
+      mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never
+      quite understood on the Continent&mdash;that if you go to London you must
+      speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done
+      with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does
+      not easily make friends&mdash;you must have been very civil to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;According to my lights, I was,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way,
+      &ldquo;that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man by
+      the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a
+      tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want,
+      and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however, to
+      admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod an
+      acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had
+      approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured words
+      of politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you&mdash;thank you,&rdquo; said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+      within his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my passport,&rdquo; he explained to Cartoner, lightly. &ldquo;All the rest of
+      you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful
+      privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they
+      are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo you
+      rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always try to,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+      environments, &ldquo;we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there
+      was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are a
+      landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three
+      foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent&mdash;who make us clean their
+      boots and then cast them at our heads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers
+      were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost
+      daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a
+      fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished,
+      giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which hangs
+      in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw,&rdquo; said Martin, as they walked
+      up the platform. &ldquo;My father and sister will be coming home before long,
+      and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the place
+      tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for you
+      when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as any.
+      And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the best
+      horses and the worst roads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, very much,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. &ldquo;I, of course, do not know how long
+      I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know from
+      one day to another what my movements may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears. &ldquo;No,
+      of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you will be
+      here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw now. But, of
+      course, there are difficulties&mdash;even the races present difficulties&mdash;there
+      is the military element.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+      passing to his carriage in front of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have the best horses,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;They have more money than we
+      have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so accustomed
+      to the recognition of his rank that he went first without question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, &ldquo;I had quite forgotten that it is your
+      business to know all about us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to remind you of it several times,&rdquo; answered Cartoner,
+      quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To shut me up, you mean?&rdquo; asked the younger man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned away
+      with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet
+      again in a few hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of the
+      station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice&mdash;of a rather high
+      timbre&mdash;in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor.
+      For, like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues.
+      The Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first,
+      his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German, or
+      perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the two
+      countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so little&mdash;England
+      and France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+      made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was
+      broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and
+      fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the
+      sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have
+      no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was
+      usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be
+      convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather cold, steady
+      man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost insatiable
+      ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption in his
+      profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after another as
+      occasion seemed to demand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+      even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+      possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+      useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+      arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+      successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+      difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+      only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+      until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+      figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+      o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin Bukaty,
+      after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the compartment,
+      closing the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking about it,&rdquo; he said, in his quick way, &ldquo;and it won't
+      do, you know&mdash;it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our friend.
+      It would never do for us to show special attention to you. Anywhere else
+      in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train
+      glided into Warsaw Station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to
+      me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as a
+      rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not know that I was coming,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A REMOTE CITY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+      Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which
+      for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At Cracow&mdash;the
+      tomb of many kings&mdash;it passes half round the citadel, a shallow,
+      sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the present
+      capital&mdash;Warsaw&mdash;it finds its way across the great plain, amid
+      the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and Masovia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking from
+      a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In Praga&mdash;a
+      hundred years ago&mdash;the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+      thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand
+      were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in the
+      square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of their
+      conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired upon
+      them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in cold
+      blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for three hours
+      in the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops, with
+      a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in the
+      world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street, and,
+      like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name&mdash;the
+      Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel de
+      l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where kings
+      and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered, where the
+      bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were carried
+      after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where the great
+      light from the West&mdash;Miss Julie P. Mangles&mdash;alighted one May
+      morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Told you,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was
+      within almost measurable distance of snappishness&mdash;&ldquo;told you you
+      would have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before
+      had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame of mind&mdash;on
+      their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury, Massachusetts, when
+      the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters for the Truth failed
+      to reach the railway depot because they happened on a fire in a straw-hat
+      manufactory on their way, and heard that the newest pattern of straw hat
+      was to be had for the picking up in the open street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+      London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when
+      she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble
+      position of the prophet&mdash;not without honor in his own country&mdash;who
+      cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is even worse than I anticipated,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, watching the
+      hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is worse, Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poland!&rdquo; replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+      with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+      worse countries than Poland in her day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles, slowly, &ldquo;that at this hour in the morning it
+      appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph,&rdquo; replied Miss Mangles,
+      looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a
+      bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel,
+      with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed
+      always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult still,
+      to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss Mangles was
+      conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as expert in the
+      lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform period, somewhat
+      alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the historic
+      staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a distinct
+      air of condescension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep
+      depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, &ldquo;what
+      languages you speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russian, French, Polish, German, English&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do to go on with,&rdquo; interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue. &ldquo;We'll
+      get along in English. My name is Mangles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and a
+      salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where
+      stood a couple of waiters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She
+      might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept
+      all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance of
+      having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the surface a
+      little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes seemed to
+      conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly theories, too,
+      which she often enunciated in her confidential manner; and one of these
+      was that one should always, in all places and at all times, be neat and
+      tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it noted in passing,
+      there have been many successful human careers based upon this simple rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress which
+      conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and the habit
+      of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs she gave a
+      little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along the broad
+      corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and nonchalantly
+      humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it appeared, as much at
+      home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, mademoiselle!&rdquo; he said, standing hat in hand before her, &ldquo;who could
+      have dreamed of such a pleasure&mdash;here and at this moment&mdash;in
+      this sad town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seemed gay enough&mdash;you were singing,&rdquo; answered Miss Cahere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps
+      you noticed it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear for
+      music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+      accomplishments, you know,&rdquo; said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in of
+      the shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his opinion
+      that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles and her
+      brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable to
+      feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She shook
+      hands, with her platform bow&mdash;from the waist&mdash;and passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo; said Joseph Mangles. &ldquo;Got here before us? Thought you'd turn up.
+      Dismal place, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have just arrived, I suppose?&rdquo; said Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please don't laugh at us!&rdquo; broke in Netty. &ldquo;Of course you can see
+      that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from heaven,&rdquo;
+       answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her hair. It
+      was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did not seem to
+      hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to her uncle.
+      Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long one, for the
+      Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know,&rdquo; she said, turning
+      again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation of
+      her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who blush
+      easily&mdash;at the right time. &ldquo;I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased to
+      have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have you
+      friends here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one,&rdquo; replied Deulin&mdash;&ldquo;the waiter who serves the Zakuska
+      counter down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman,
+      travelling for his health in France. He does not recognize me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you stay long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not intend to,&rdquo; replied Deulin, &ldquo;when I came out of my room this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?&rdquo; asked Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in Warsaw,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we shall meet again,&rdquo; broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+      halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number
+      on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. &ldquo;Always welcome,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it does,&rdquo; answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the Krakowski
+      Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was already astir,
+      while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying home from the
+      morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and churches on either
+      side. Every palace has its story; two of them were confiscated by the
+      Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown from the pavement,
+      might possibly have come from one of the windows. Every church has rung to
+      the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn&mdash;&ldquo;At Thy altar we raise our
+      prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country.&rdquo; Into almost all of
+      them the soldiers have forced their way to make arrests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The clocks
+      were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little sigh of
+      enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Heaven, forgive me!&rdquo; he said, with upturned eyes. &ldquo;I have already
+      told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I shall
+      find Cartoner out of bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+      Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+      through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned to the
+      right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower, quieter
+      thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna are mostly large,
+      with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for existence. They are let
+      out in flats, or in even smaller apartments, where quiet people live&mdash;professors,
+      lawyers, and other persons, who have an interest within themselves and are
+      not dependent on the passer-by for entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination to
+      the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second floor,
+      and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the Frenchman
+      nodded familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he up yet?&rdquo; he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This hour, monsieur,&rdquo; replied the servant, leading the way along a narrow
+      corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass into a
+      comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a writing-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a
+      book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair.
+      &ldquo;Don't let me disturb you,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Finish what you are doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;News?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at Deulin
+      gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously dissimilar&mdash;these
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked up&mdash;Lelewel's
+      <i>History of Poland</i>, in Polish. &ldquo;I trouble for your future, Cartoner.
+      You take life so seriously&mdash;you, who need not work at all. Even
+      uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a position to lend
+      money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reflected for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I have news of all sorts&mdash;news which
+      goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead of
+      going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning&mdash;Mangles
+      frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner&mdash;&rdquo; He paused,
+      and examined his own boots with a critical air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that, mon cher?&mdash;all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+      fool who excels all other fools.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to
+      put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin
+      watched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in hand&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+      you,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+      that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in
+      love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there
+      is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss
+      Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very nice,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the
+      letter before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I like about her is her quiet ways,&rdquo; suggested Deulin, tentatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+      Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares,
+      must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose and
+      took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More lies!&rdquo; he murmured, humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SAND-WORKERS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska&mdash;the street running
+      down from the Cracow Faubourg to the river&mdash;there are always many
+      workers. It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here
+      lie the steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a
+      trade in timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that
+      float from the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here,
+      also, are loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+      spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand
+      which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts
+      hopefully from the higher parts of the city&mdash;the widest, the newest,
+      the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard&mdash;down
+      the hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is
+      no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a
+      broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts from
+      the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers lean on
+      their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the middle or
+      brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that render
+      navigation next to impossible&mdash;a clean, hard sand, most excellent for
+      building purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of the mid-day dinner&mdash;for Polish hours are the hours
+      of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The
+      horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate
+      their gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was
+      late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene was
+      not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river.
+      Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once said
+      that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+      uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+      position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of the
+      bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach within
+      half a mile unperceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; one of the workmen was saying, &ldquo;those who know say that there will
+      inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day, why
+      not now? Why not this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+      oval-faced men&mdash;real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+      Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that
+      comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills;
+      others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which
+      betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The third time, they say, is lucky,&rdquo; answered a white-haired man, at
+      length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his
+      face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others
+      turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the river
+      towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees. Perhaps he was
+      thinking of those other times, which he must have seen fifty and twenty
+      years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with the dead bodies of
+      its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish with the same burden.
+      He may have seen the people shot down in the streets of Warsaw only twenty
+      years before. His eyes had the dull look which nearly always betokens some
+      grim vision never forgotten. He seemed a placid old man, and was known as
+      an excellent worker, though cruel to his horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He who had first spoken&mdash;a boatman known as Kosmaroff&mdash;was a
+      spare man, with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat
+      beard. He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no
+      outward appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was
+      quick and vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his
+      mouth gave an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the
+      eye. His smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very
+      rarely, a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been
+      a raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
+      watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the old
+      man as if hoping that more was coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it will be the third time,&rdquo; he said, when the other had lapsed into
+      a musing silence, &ldquo;though few of us have seen it with our own eyes. But we
+      have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of our
+      forefathers to guide us&mdash;though we cannot say that our forefathers
+      have told us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
+      father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall time it better,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;than last time. We have men watching
+      the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as an old man is
+      marked by those who are named in his will. If anything happened to
+      Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the dogs should
+      quarrel among themselves&mdash;the three dogs that have torn Poland to
+      pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was coming. England
+      and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred thousand men into Warsaw
+      before they turned to the English. That showed what they thought of us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
+      was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others
+      looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board of
+      directors&mdash;some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed
+      to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his
+      boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all very well for you,&rdquo; said one, a little fat man with beady eyes.
+      Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity to danger
+      of any sort&mdash;&ldquo;you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to lose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+      speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that a
+      man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is a
+      part of it running over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are many who can be aristocrats some day&mdash;with a little
+      good-fortune,&rdquo; he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I lost five at Praga,&rdquo; muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+      manner of the toiler. &ldquo;That is enough for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well to remember Praga,&rdquo; returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone.
+      &ldquo;It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word!
+      There is much to remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff glanced
+      sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring sullenly across
+      the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may be an aristocrat by descent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but what does that come to?
+      I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a Polish
+      aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always done it.
+      They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a hundred others,
+      who could go to France and live there peaceably in the sunshine. I could
+      do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here. They will finish by
+      losing everything&mdash;the little they have left&mdash;or else they will
+      win everything. And I know which they will do. They will win! The prince
+      is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when they have won will they remember?&rdquo; asked one of the two smaller
+      men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You
+      may rely on that. They know what each gives&mdash;whether freely or with a
+      niggard hand&mdash;and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
+      freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
+      expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+      stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+      than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with
+      an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat
+      there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
+      instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
+      each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by
+      that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+      dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+      regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+      number&mdash;a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed
+      him much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was
+      back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name hidden
+      in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a raftsman
+      plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish patriotism&mdash;a
+      mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made the usual grand
+      tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to Siberia and Paris and
+      London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in the sunshine; but he
+      preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor, and the bread that
+      tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom which stood in the
+      forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are others who cherish the
+      same belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;I have news for you. We are a
+      little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently
+      until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they acted
+      at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall
+      nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step
+      nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is
+      never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around
+      his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five
+      thousand rifles in Poland&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+      lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+      blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw!&rdquo; he added, significantly. &ldquo;So, if there are any who think that
+      the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now&mdash;and take the
+      consequences.&rdquo; He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is ammunition enough,&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, &ldquo;to close the
+      account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+      conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;because I am likely to go to Cracow before
+      long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain events may
+      be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly&mdash;such as the death
+      of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the declaration
+      of war by any of the great powers. There is always something seething on
+      the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake. The Warsaw papers
+      will not have the news; but the <i>Czas</i> and the other Cracow journals
+      will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the Galician papers when
+      you want to, despite their censors and their police!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was
+      his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river
+      boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out into
+      a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers stirred
+      reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself&mdash;a long, lithe, wiry
+      figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must go back to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his
+      narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have
+      realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable
+      creation&mdash;a strong man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A WARNING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+      many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the
+      kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in
+      Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay
+      hands upon&mdash;that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in
+      protesting against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had
+      broken faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with the discontent
+      of those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while in Breslau it was
+      permitted to print and publish plain words deemed criminal in Cracow and
+      Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do over their carrion, and,
+      having secured a large portion, kept a jealous eye on their neighbor's
+      jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw, but a
+      few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a sufficiency,
+      while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of Breslau bequeathed to
+      her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and 1861 had worn out this lady,
+      who found the peace that passeth man's understanding while Poland was yet
+      in the horrors of a hopeless guerilla warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,&rdquo; the
+      old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the anniversary of
+      his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He mentioned it,
+      moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm frankness which was
+      somehow misunderstood, for the administration never placed him among the
+      suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking country, and the Poles,
+      expressing themselves in the roughest of European tongues, a plain-spoken
+      people. They spoke so plainly to Henry of Valois when he was their king
+      that one fine night he ran away to mincing France and gentler men. When,
+      under rough John Sobieski, they spoke with their enemy in the gate of
+      Vienna, their meaning was quite clear to the Moslem understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands respect
+      in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a conciliatory
+      attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without one of their kind
+      within her boundaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of your
+      petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he happens to
+      be living at the moment!&rdquo; he had boldly said to a great personage from St.
+      Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in the capital. It was,
+      moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had actually stretched a point or
+      two for the Prince Bukaty on more than one occasion. Like many outspoken
+      people, he passed for a barker and not a biter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town and
+      submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in the
+      Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+      Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian flag,
+      which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from time
+      immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see in the
+      great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that his
+      predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness, which were
+      his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered to the loquacious curator, &ldquo;I know. You tell me nothing
+      that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince Bukaty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young man
+      who had great possessions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment, but
+      because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on the
+      Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And to whom
+      can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+      sympathy. And that was all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+      was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+      Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind high
+      railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which entrance
+      is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality, and only
+      unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet brougham in which
+      the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is just round the corner of
+      the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski Gardens&mdash;a quiet spot in
+      this most noisy town. The building is a low one, with a tiled roof and
+      long windows, heavily framed, of which the smaller panes and thick
+      woodwork suggest the early days of window-glass. Inside, the house is the
+      house of a poor man. The carpets are worn thin; the furniture, of a
+      sumptuous design, is carefully patched and mended. The atmosphere has that
+      mournful scent of better days&mdash;now dead and past. It is the odor of
+      monarchy, slowly fading from the face of a world that reeks of cheap
+      democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air of the rooms&mdash;the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+      humanity on wood and texture&mdash;suggested that older comfort which has
+      been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+      wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had acted
+      without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the house must
+      have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back from the school
+      in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality of her own. The
+      difference she brought to the house was a certain brightness and a sort of
+      experimental femininity, which reigned supreme until her English governess
+      came back again to live as a companion with her pupil. Wanda moved the
+      furniture, turned the house round on its staid basis, and made a hundred
+      experiments in domestic economy before she gave way to her father's habits
+      of life. Then she made that happiest of human discoveries, which has the
+      magic power of allaying at one stroke the eternal feminine discontent
+      which has made the world uneasy since the day that Eve idled in that
+      perfect garden&mdash;she found that she was wanted in the world!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too obvious to
+      require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and now that old age
+      was coming, that health was failing and wealth had vanished, Poland would
+      have none of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+      with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions that
+      only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil desires and
+      answer questions is the best happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called a
+      palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and rarely
+      stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste; was fond of
+      travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning eye upon his
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made use
+      of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of the
+      house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading round from
+      the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office in the busier
+      part of Kotzebue Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+      accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are well
+      lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only as the
+      Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the custom to go
+      abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski is more crowded
+      after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had walked some distance
+      behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin unlocked the gate of the
+      garden and passed in, leaving the gate open with the key in the lock. In a
+      minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the gate after him, and gave the key
+      back to its owner on the steps of the garden door of the house, where
+      Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in hand. They did it without comment or
+      instruction, as men carry out a plan frequently resorted to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to a
+      door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were warmth and
+      comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end, beneath the lamp
+      and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were sitting. They were
+      in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought Kos to see you,&rdquo; said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+      towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with that
+      ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He apparently gave
+      no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from which the original
+      black had long since been washed away by the waters of the Vistula. He
+      wore his working-clothes as if they were the best habit for this or any
+      other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it in the old-world fashion,
+      which has survived to this day in Poland. But the careless manner in which
+      he raised her fingers to his lips would have showed quite clearly to a
+      competent observer that neither Wanda nor any other woman had ever touched
+      his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will excuse my getting up,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;My gout is bad
+      to-night. You will have something to eat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, I have eaten,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up, lighting
+      with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will take a glass of port,&rdquo; said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+      indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had his
+      after-dinner wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with a
+      glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he was
+      almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related, not only
+      in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff represented a
+      family long since deemed extinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+      good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to stir
+      them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable position,
+      &ldquo;you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move too quickly.
+      That is what I always preach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff.
+      &ldquo;You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to your opinion
+      that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to misunderstandings.
+      Plain speaking and clear understanding was the message you sent me&mdash;the
+      text of your last sermon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's wineglass,
+      which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that he drank his
+      health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was not my text&mdash;that was Wanda's,&rdquo; answered the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. &ldquo;Is that so? Then I will take
+      it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to Dresden and to London,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;and a woman
+      always sees much more than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By-the-way,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner&mdash;the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+      London,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;Who is he? Why should he not be here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you who he is,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light in
+      his eyes. &ldquo;He is the man that the English send when they suspect that
+      something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has a trick
+      of finding things out&mdash;that man. Such is his reputation, at all
+      events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of yours,
+      by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an American
+      here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There is either
+      something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that something may
+      move in Poland before long. These men are here to find out. They must find
+      out nothing from us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach much
+      importance to these foreigners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; went on Kosmaroff, &ldquo;they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+      says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+      ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So will
+      Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him trouble.
+      He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay, because he knows
+      that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is different. There are
+      never any surprises for the English in matters that Cartoner has in hand.
+      He reports on events before they have happened, which is a different
+      story. I merely warn you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no instructions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;Except the usual one&mdash;patience!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, &ldquo;we shall be patient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+      comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+      winter months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But be careful,&rdquo; he added, addressing Martin more particularly, &ldquo;of this
+      man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know&mdash;you understand.
+      And no one must know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You met him in London, you say?&rdquo; he said to the prince. &ldquo;What did you
+      think of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought him&mdash;a quiet man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Wanda?&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her&mdash;&ldquo;she who
+      sees so much. What did she think of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid of him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+      called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades beneath
+      the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across from one
+      quarter of the town to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father at
+      such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still fresh
+      upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking the green
+      turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in the morning
+      these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any other park in
+      any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the alleys mostly to
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the leaves
+      were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the brief,
+      uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in Northern
+      latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out early, and was
+      sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that divides the gardens in
+      two from end to end. She was waiting for Martin, who had been called back
+      at the door of the palace and had promised to follow in a few minutes. He
+      had a hundred engagements during the day, a hundred friends among those
+      unfortunate scions of noble houses who will not wear the Russian uniform,
+      who cannot by the laws of their caste engage in any form of commerce, and
+      must not accept a government office&mdash;who are therefore idle, without
+      the natural Southern sloth that enables Italians and Spaniards to do
+      nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser than Martin. Girls
+      generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But the wisdom ceases to
+      grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old women. Wanda was, in a
+      sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She had, as he himself
+      acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into which his natural
+      heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As to the discontent in
+      which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes and their friends into
+      many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it, just as some families are
+      brought up to consumption and the anticipation of an early death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda was
+      much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger. Debt and
+      impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her father daily
+      needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his happiness more and
+      more upon his port wine and that ease which is only to be enjoyed by an
+      easy mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly heeded
+      the passers-by, though&mdash;for the feminine instincts were strong in her&mdash;she
+      looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on the Jew who
+      hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the richer quarter of
+      the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the Franoiszkanska. The latter,
+      perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin and his heedlessness; the former
+      made her think of&mdash;she knew not what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King of
+      Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the garden.
+      She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was unlike that of
+      the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It was more like the
+      gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw wear a uniform. That is
+      why they are there. There was a suggestion of determination in the walk of
+      this Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived her.
+      She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the precise moment
+      when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably upon experience that
+      Wanda based her theory that women see twice as much as men. She saw him
+      turn, without hesitation, away from her down a narrower alley leading to
+      the right. It was his intention to avoid her. But the only turning he
+      could take was that leading to the corner of Kotzebue Street, and Martin
+      was at the other end of it, coming towards him. Cartoner was thus caught
+      in the narrow alley. Wanda sat still and watched the two men. She suddenly
+      knew in advance what would happen, as it is often vouchsafed to the human
+      understanding to know at a moment's notice what is coming; and she had a
+      strange, discomforting sense that these minutes were preordained&mdash;that
+      Martin and Cartoner and herself were mere puppets in the hands of Fate,
+      and must say and do that which has been assigned to them in an unalterable
+      scheme of succeeding events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+      without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to continue
+      his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the Englishman's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it matter?&rdquo; Martin was saying. &ldquo;There is no one to see us here,
+      at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda, sitting on
+      the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's attitude
+      and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner yielded, for it
+      was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin&mdash;so determined,
+      so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned and came
+      towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew that it was
+      written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had something to say to
+      her which it was safer to say than to leave to be silently understood and
+      perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient sigh. She had always ruled
+      her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty, and this sense of
+      powerlessness was new to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+      way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, &ldquo;and went the other
+      way to avoid you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at her.
+      He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+      embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner and I,&rdquo; Prince Martin hastened to explain, &ldquo;travelled from
+      Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it, it
+      would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one would
+      naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland. That is why
+      he went the other way when he saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have been
+      the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But Cartoner kept
+      silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit&mdash;very rare among
+      men and almost unknown in women&mdash;of thinking before he spoke. Which
+      habit is deadly for that which is called conversation, because if one
+      decides not to give speech to the obvious and the unnecessary and the
+      futile there is in daily intercourse hardly anything left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself, &ldquo;in this
+      province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the best
+      strawberries from a basket,&rdquo; said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a question to be arranged beforehand,&rdquo; put in Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even by the governor-general of Poland?&rdquo; asked Wanda, looking
+      thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+      showered round them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even by the Czar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, I am told, means well!&rdquo; said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+      laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. &ldquo;Poor man!
+      It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's back that
+      one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+      walking-stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin and I are going for a tramp,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We like to get away from
+      the noise and the dust&mdash;and the uniforms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We attract less attention than if we stand,&rdquo; he explained. And Cartoner
+      took the seat offered. &ldquo;Such hospitality as our circumstances allow us to
+      offer you,&rdquo; commented the young prince, gayly, &ldquo;a clean stone seat on the
+      sunny side of a public garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But let us understand each other,&rdquo; put in Wanda, in her practical way,
+      and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes that saw so
+      much, &ldquo;since we are conspirators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall be,&rdquo;
+       said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'&rdquo; said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plot is simple enough,&rdquo; answered Martin, for Cartoner said nothing,
+      and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one more than the
+      other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the benefit of all
+      whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette&mdash;a little Russian
+      affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he spoke he jerked the
+      ash from time to time so that it should not fly and incommode his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The Bukatys
+      have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish nationality
+      which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to suppress for
+      nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria there is still a
+      Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs,
+      and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few old Lithuanian and Ruthenian
+      families extant. And rightly or wrongly, those in authority are kind
+      enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys for these survivals. Weeds, it
+      seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are really to blame or not is of no
+      consequence. It does not matter to the dog whether he deserves his bad
+      name or not&mdash;after he is hanged. But it is not good to be a Bukaty
+      and live in Poland just now, though some of us manage to have a good time
+      despite them all&mdash;eh, Wanda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+      answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was
+      part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for
+      fear some interruption should approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand,&rdquo; he continued, in his airy way, &ldquo;is a
+      most respectable man&mdash;in the employ of his country. That is what
+      damns Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great
+      reputation, to which I take off my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would never do,&rdquo; continued Martin, &ldquo;for us, the suspects, to be
+      avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some
+      capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no
+      consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are we to do?&rdquo; asked Wanda, practically. &ldquo;Let us have a clear
+      understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+      without haste&mdash;a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+      heart of the question. &ldquo;We must not meet in the streets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may not be as easy as it sounds,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;in a small city like
+      Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of avoiding
+      us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can, at all events, try,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, simply. After a pause (the
+      pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be Cartoner's turn
+      to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all that the Bukatys
+      could offer him in Warsaw. &ldquo;I can begin at once,&rdquo; he said, gravely. And he
+      took off his hat and went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+      silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+      down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+      pillars of that building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man of action, and not of words,&rdquo; commented Martin, who spoke first. &ldquo;I
+      like him. Come, let us go for our walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though
+      they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that
+      Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side of
+      that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+      Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking a
+      contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met. Paul
+      Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which could
+      scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the Frenchman to himself, &ldquo;there is our friend Reginald. He is
+      in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any woman ever marries that man,&rdquo; the Frenchman said to himself, &ldquo;she
+      will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then, women are
+      good at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+      awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was not
+      an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+      thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it is well
+      to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the post-office.
+      And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not to have them
+      sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities are kind enough to
+      exercise a parental censorship over the travellers' correspondence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+      house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It was
+      a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him was
+      more than he could undertake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CARTONER <i>VERSUS</i> FATE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It is,
+      moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the cause
+      of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the theory
+      that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled by a common
+      sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor of that Czar who
+      said to Poland: &ldquo;Gentlemen&mdash;no dreams,&rdquo; seems in part justified by
+      the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves brought nearer
+      together on the race-course than in any other social function in Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's rooms
+      after lunch one day towards the end of October. &ldquo;Come, and let us bury the
+      hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the grand-stand at the
+      Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his wife, all the
+      authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep sideways at each
+      other, and turn up their noses at each other's toilets. To such has
+      descended the great strife in eastern Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same thing,
+      and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in it. Come
+      with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where the
+      Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where these
+      fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too ready to
+      take their hearts there and lose them&mdash;but the Czar forbids it. And,
+      let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than a pair
+      of Polish eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a speculative
+      glance, and turned away to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is a fine day&mdash;St. Martin's summer. It is
+      Sunday, but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording
+      angel on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have no principles,&rdquo; said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+      looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+      principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for his
+      neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+      By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; pursued Deulin; &ldquo;and I am bored. That is why I want you to come
+      to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than
+      to go&mdash;especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the
+      world in racing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is why I am going,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don't like racing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am very fond of it,&rdquo; answered the Englishman, in the same absent
+      voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found at
+      the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive up the
+      broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow (where
+      bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness of the
+      land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while driving
+      through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is a grudge
+      that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland had been a
+      kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart of
+      the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At the
+      entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles, and
+      Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare among
+      travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen in
+      the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world over,
+      though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across a
+      Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots.
+      German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those
+      domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into the
+      world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and
+      unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the
+      management of the course&mdash;tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces
+      and white skins&mdash;energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in
+      white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold lace.
+      Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in his
+      dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying high his
+      astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a gleam of
+      something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of many races,
+      one of the market-places where men may greet each other who come from
+      different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are sons of the
+      empire which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north, the south,
+      the east, and the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my breath
+      away,&rdquo; said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many races. On
+      all sides one heard different languages&mdash;German, the sing-song
+      Russian&mdash;the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot
+      kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Germany?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bores me, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number of
+      men were congregated, but no ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Fatherland,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German once,
+      when I was in the army of the Loire&mdash;a most painful business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached the
+      gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without turning
+      towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock, and
+      above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey. The
+      head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the heads
+      of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only half in
+      the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before a
+      dog&mdash;all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move
+      above a snail's pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+      practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+      Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which they
+      knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and knocked
+      the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on at a gallop
+      now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a broken bridle, his
+      two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was swearing in English.
+      And he had need to, for through the paddock gate the crowd was densely
+      packed and he was charging into it on a maddened horse beyond control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+      Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head was
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let go! let go!&rdquo; cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+      Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. &ldquo;Let go!
+      I'll teach him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince
+      Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a
+      moment and saw him open his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am unhurt,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Help me up. No! sh&mdash;h! No, nothing is
+      broken; it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+      minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box No.
+      18, in the grand-stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and tell her,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+      &ldquo;Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that her
+      father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face of
+      all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his memory. As he
+      approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She was dressed in
+      black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only the Russians and
+      the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the surprise on her face and
+      in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew that there were a hundred eyes
+      watching him, a hundred ears waiting to catch his words when he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the prince has had a slight accident, and has sent
+      me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any report to
+      the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and was knocked
+      down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the club pavilion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+      understand and repeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we go to him?&rdquo; asked Wanda, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and would
+      come himself were he able to walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take us to him, monsieur?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal silence.
+      The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its forlorn, autumnal
+      flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked along it towards the
+      paddock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very good of you to come and tell us,&rdquo; said Martin, in English,
+      &ldquo;with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good, you know, to
+      do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was true what you said
+      about the prince being unhurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. &ldquo;He is rather badly shaken. I think you will
+      find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; exclaimed Martin. &ldquo;He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come in
+      here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in case of
+      accidents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+      minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+      distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had been
+      successfully accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+      which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+      waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything to
+      say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear understanding of
+      which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to be compassed by
+      silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind them came nearer and
+      nearer as the horses approached the winning-post. The members of the club
+      stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some with field-glasses, others
+      with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All eyes were turned in one
+      direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+      hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no need
+      for anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely to
+      go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit under the
+      awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand,&rdquo; Martin said,
+      as he approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See,&rdquo; he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying to
+      gather round the winning horse. &ldquo;See, it is already a thing of the past.
+      And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is no good
+      advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad name, eh? Thank
+      you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You and Deulin, they
+      say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my dear Wanda. It is
+      forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I will come back to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, &ldquo;I leave her to your care,&rdquo; he
+      turned and left them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at length Wanda spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are not so strong as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As what?&rdquo; he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As Fate, I suppose,&rdquo; she answered, and her eyes were grave as she looked
+      across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun was sinking
+      below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the horizon. Sunset
+      over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it Fate?&rdquo; she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By action. I have written for my recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not his
+      companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was still
+      looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she said, after a pause, &ldquo;it would have been better for you if we
+      had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said that you
+      had never had a check in your career. This is the first check. And it has
+      come through&mdash;knowing us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion with
+      patient, thoughtful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot deny it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he did not deny it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+      keenness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you asked for your recall?&rdquo; she asked, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+      leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking. And
+      across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the eyes of the
+      man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next box
+      to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate party of
+      foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because she cared for
+      sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her mind that one cannot
+      set about to elevate human nature without a knowledge of those depths to
+      which it sometimes descends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this,&rdquo; she said, when she had settled herself on the chair commanding
+      the best view, &ldquo;this is the turf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+      umbrella, &ldquo;is the turf. This is the grand-stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole,&rdquo; stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+      graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore illegible to
+      her, the scene in general, &ldquo;the whole constitutes the turf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who was
+      prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her delicate
+      and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself of an
+      autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these young men are on it,&rdquo; concluded Miss Mangles, with her usual
+      decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside&mdash;the
+      privilege of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark lashes
+      in the direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger; but some
+      of the young men happening to look up, she instantly became interested in
+      the Russian race-card which she could not read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very sad,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making up
+      her mind how best to take them in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't see the worst of 'em here,&rdquo; muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. &ldquo;It
+      isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief&mdash;on
+      the turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+      reformed&mdash;by the young women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle Joseph
+      inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather wistful
+      expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men below were
+      still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to see them. At
+      this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda was preoccupied,
+      and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several ladies leaned over
+      the low partitions and asked questions, which were unintelligible to
+      Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth that the Prince Bukaty
+      was not hurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+      brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+      called upon to transmit the information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Mangles, in an undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, Jooly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul Deulin,
+      who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the
+      feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these people.
+      This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it is most
+      unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger for the nudge
+      of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which convey the
+      gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin would serve to
+      enlighten these benighted people, and some little good might yet be done
+      by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval towards the turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin,&rdquo; she said, shaking
+      hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you are here,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;there can be no harm. It is only a
+      garden-party, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+      conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he had
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?&rdquo; inquired Jooly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, unless I am quite sure,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is,&rdquo; observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be gracious&mdash;&ldquo;there
+      is perhaps less harm in that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And less risk,&rdquo; explained Deulin gravely. &ldquo;But surely,&rdquo; he said, in a
+      lower tone, turning to Netty, &ldquo;you know the Princess Wanda? Did you not
+      meet her at Lady Orlay's?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+      perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and he
+      was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does not
+      remember&mdash;though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she met
+      at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+      comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be assured,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;that she has not seen you, or she would not
+      fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe. The
+      princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has just had
+      a slight mishap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this young lady remembers meeting you in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that divided
+      the two boxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down so
+      near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly expect you to recollect me,&rdquo; Netty hastened to say. &ldquo;You must
+      have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who were at
+      Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda, rather absently. &ldquo;Are there many?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we three
+      and&mdash;Mr. Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin Bukaty's
+      eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she had much
+      animation, and her eyes were bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is unmistakable. I
+      hope the prince is not hurt?&rdquo; she said, in her little, friendly,
+      confidential way to Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I introduce
+      him? Martin. Miss Cahere&mdash;my brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty wanted.
+      She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk to Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be so interesting,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to live in Warsaw and to be able
+      to help the poor people who are so down-trodden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do nothing of that sort,&rdquo; replied Wanda. &ldquo;It is only in books that
+      women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can do for
+      Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he likes for
+      dinner, and to housekeep generally&mdash;just as you do when you are at
+      home, no doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; protested Netty, &ldquo;but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+      distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I could
+      never housekeep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark, made
+      her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin saw it.
+      At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather vacantly in
+      another direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?&rdquo; said Wanda,
+      glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Wanda,&rdquo; put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, &ldquo;you surely
+      do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity. Miss Mangles
+      is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described in a prominent
+      journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care for the world, has
+      no time to think of an individual household.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;we have no settled home in America. We live
+      differently. We have not the comfort of European life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+      noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop of
+      the lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+      conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of the
+      use of his field-glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see,&rdquo; she said, in her confidential way, &ldquo;well enough for myself
+      with my own eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; she said to Wanda, when the race was over, &ldquo;that I saw Mr.
+      Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy he has,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our box.
+      I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on board. We
+      crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+      thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There was
+      in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set a machine
+      in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed to
+      come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Wanda,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;We must not keep him waiting. I can see him,
+      with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse,&rdquo; said Deulin,
+      &ldquo;and then return to the assistance of these ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+      explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching
+      the carriages after they had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gods forbid,&rdquo; he said, piously, to himself, &ldquo;that I should attempt to
+      interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda should
+      know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she knows now,
+      my shrewd princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from Wanda
+      as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on his heel,
+      to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng of people
+      moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black, and a shower
+      was impending.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well!&rdquo; he muttered, philosophically, &ldquo;they are capable of taking care
+      of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however, that
+      he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along by a
+      stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great gate, and
+      though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the other men, she
+      could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and his sister passed out
+      of the large gateway, and waited in the first available space beyond it.
+      Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of the crowd to the smaller gate,
+      and having passed it, decided to wait till her uncle, who undoubtedly must
+      have seen her, should come in search of her. She was not uneasy. All
+      through her life she had always found people, especially men, ready, nay,
+      anxious, to be kind to her. She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a
+      man came towards her. He was only a workman in his best suit of working
+      clothes. He had a narrow, sunburned face, and there was in his whole being
+      a not unpleasant suggestion of the seafaring life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, &ldquo;that
+      you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course, so
+      to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to find
+      your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. &ldquo;I think my
+      uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at him.
+      Perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, &ldquo;I will show you another way with pleasure.
+      Then that tall gentleman is not your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle,&rdquo; replied Netty, following her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. We are Americans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A diplomatist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my uncle is in the service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way; we
+      can pass through this alley and come to the large gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&mdash;you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me,&rdquo; said
+      Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this
+      interest, slightly changed his manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you are looking at my clothes,&rdquo; he said, rather less formally. &ldquo;In
+      Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a
+      Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street,
+      just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is pleasant
+      in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the great honor
+      of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will remember,&rdquo; answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that
+      his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew at once&mdash;at once,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you were English or
+      American.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Then there is a difference&mdash;&rdquo; said Netty, looking round for her
+      uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a difference&mdash;yes, assuredly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mirror will answer that question,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff, with his odd,
+      one-sided smile, &ldquo;more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There is
+      your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand in
+      his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, &ldquo;do not give him
+      anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SENTENCED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
+      which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it. The
+      average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of it,
+      through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+      leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
+      or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
+      growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+      foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+      cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
+      Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
+      could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
+      any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
+      memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
+      riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
+      uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
+      knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
+      shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
+      with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
+      that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads into
+      the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
+      iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in silence on
+      the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large iron-works,
+      which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in the Lazienki
+      Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+      side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of his
+      horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it
+      patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and
+      found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with
+      the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light
+      enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From the
+      distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long, low
+      roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+      iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that the
+      animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened
+      first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the wind.
+      It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few moments
+      there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and at the
+      right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it started
+      forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts of the
+      gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+      doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating cranes
+      and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was hurriedly bolting
+      the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open door, but before he
+      reached it a number of men ran out and fell on him like hounds upon a fox.
+      He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and striking the first-comer full in
+      the chest with his fist. He charged the next and knocked him over; but
+      from the third he retreated, leaping quickly to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;don't you know me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Cartoner!&rdquo; replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+      behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+      Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. &ldquo;You here!&rdquo; he said. And there was a
+      ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never heard
+      there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the meaning of
+      it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined men in moments
+      when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer side of human
+      nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which deals in battle
+      and sudden death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too risky,&rdquo; said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but
+      Cartoner heard it. &ldquo;We must kill him and be done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy feet of
+      the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner spoke,
+      quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had taken time to
+      reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had disadvantages, but
+      silence meant death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This near fore-shoe,&rdquo; he said in French, turning to his horse, &ldquo;is nearly
+      off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a foundry, is it
+      not? There must be a hammer and some nails about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there
+      was no loop-hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+      patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle
+      in front of him were in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! He's a brave man!&rdquo; muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's ear.
+      It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, hastily, &ldquo;this is a foundry. I can get you a hammer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced at
+      it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and he
+      was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might tell these men,&rdquo; he said, in French, &ldquo;of my mishap; perhaps one
+      of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately
+      hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+      French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly, so
+      as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped forward
+      to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for a
+      hammer and some nails&mdash;that his horse had nearly lost a shoe.
+      Cartoner had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated
+      the line of conduct he was to pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get a hammer&mdash;one of you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+      Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak&mdash;to say more than
+      was discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+      that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent. Never
+      comment on your own victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during
+      the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost shoe.
+      Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such dangerous
+      words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird. Behind, were
+      the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men, whose faces he
+      could not see, while the full light glared through the open doorway upon
+      his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw&mdash;a dark autumn night, and
+      eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical way, as persons in
+      face of death nearly always do count, with a cold deliberation, their
+      chances of life. He played his miserable little cards with all the skill
+      he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity
+      served him. For he acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that
+      it would be a mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they
+      were not Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed
+      him first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs&mdash;of
+      the most calculating race the world had produced&mdash;a little slow in
+      their calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time;
+      but she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is
+      fully evolved&mdash;long, long after reader and writer are dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+      muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors, which
+      were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked
+      inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very much obliged to you,&rdquo; said Cartoner to Martin, who went towards
+      the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from Kosmaroff the
+      gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+      climbed into the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saved your life!&rdquo; he said, in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to the
+      men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open doorway,
+      but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were concealed the arms
+      brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in the <i>Minnie</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than I bargained for,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, as he rode away from
+      the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and presently to
+      a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was astonishingly
+      fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent by Kosmaroff to
+      follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the chase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+      life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much,
+      and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was
+      steady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+      clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which
+      stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate. He
+      had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without
+      weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a
+      different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that
+      which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Cartoner,&rdquo; Deulin was in the habit of saying, &ldquo;takes certain things
+      so seriously, and other things&mdash;social things, to which I give most
+      careful attention&mdash;he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by
+      different routes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+      that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic
+      race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady
+      perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment of danger give me Cartoner,&rdquo; Deulin had once said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without words,
+      that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism and
+      frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering
+      attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each
+      other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got a job in Russia,&rdquo; he had stolidly told any one who asked him. &ldquo;Cold,
+      unhealthy place.&rdquo; He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual
+      interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of
+      his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may
+      spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great
+      republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what
+      has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must
+      know what is going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+      delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+      relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life&mdash;alone
+      with his failures and his small successes&mdash;content, it would seem, to
+      be a good servant in a great service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place
+      of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance, like
+      the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was deserted as
+      he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The concierge was
+      sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken an apartment.
+      All along the street the dvornik of every house thus takes his station at
+      the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all through the town. It
+      is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of
+      Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its
+      protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man
+      may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by
+      one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of
+      the house under his care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs,&rdquo; said the door-keeper to
+      Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps were
+      turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the letter must
+      be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up the lamp, and,
+      taking the letter from the table where it lay in a prominent position, sat
+      down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+      nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief
+      and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work intrusted
+      to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A TALE HALF TOLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living
+      upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to such
+      as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and jovial
+      gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere of strife
+      and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived, while the
+      unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall quite soon, not
+      daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope of alleviation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+      lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+      generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the grimmest
+      stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and
+      read his <i>Figaro</i> quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the safety of
+      the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is late,&rdquo; he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return to
+      dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced towards
+      the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin, whose daring
+      was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in leadership than
+      in strategy. As to her father, he had come through the sixties, and had
+      survived the persecution and the dangers of Wielopolski's day&mdash;he
+      could reasonably be expected to take care of himself. With regard to
+      herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's lot of watching others in a
+      danger which she could not share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in
+      riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust,
+      looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself
+      into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had any dinner?&rdquo; asked his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There was a
+      suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate, fleeting
+      shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs and
+      carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially English or
+      Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a firmer stem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something has happened,&rdquo; said Wanda, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+      attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+      momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland was
+      written on those deep-lined features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything wrong?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing that affects affairs,&rdquo; replied Martin. &ldquo;Everything is safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the
+      identical phrases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs,&rdquo; continued
+      Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to
+      convince himself. &ldquo;It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid
+      fright, I can tell you&mdash;especially me, for I was doubly interested.
+      Cartoner rode into our midst to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner?&rdquo; repeated the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened&mdash;we were
+      expecting some one else&mdash;he led his horse into our midst, with a
+      loose shoe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who saw him?&rdquo; asked the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kosmaroff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with Cartoner.
+      You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would have been a mistake,&rdquo; said the prince, reflectively. &ldquo;It was
+      the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in
+      driblets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It was
+      evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could not have
+      known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all&mdash;or nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could not have known all,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;That is an
+      impossibility.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he must have known nothing,&rdquo; put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at
+      one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know how much he perceived when he was in&mdash;as to his own
+      danger, I mean&mdash;for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady;
+      steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong,&rdquo; said
+      Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His
+      hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly
+      frightened. &ldquo;We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with
+      Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is more to his own danger than to any one else's,&rdquo; put in Wanda,
+      again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little of
+      the incident as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how do matters stand?&rdquo; inquired the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes to this,&rdquo; answered Martin, &ldquo;that Poland is not big enough to
+      hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to go,
+      or else&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the
+      color slowly faded from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else&mdash;what?&rdquo; she inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Wanda, who would have things plainly, &ldquo;that he would
+      assassinate him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+      sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+      wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national
+      government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince
+      made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that
+      that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to
+      stand in the way of success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues,&rdquo; said Martin, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened&mdash;as it is,
+      moreover, not my department&mdash;I cannot, personally, act in the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kosmaroff will obey nobody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then warn Cartoner,&rdquo; the prince said, in a final voice. His had always
+      been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot do it,&rdquo; said Martin, looking at Wanda. &ldquo;You know my position&mdash;how
+      I am watched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it,&rdquo; said Wanda&mdash;&ldquo;Paul
+      Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deulin could do it,&rdquo; said the prince, thoughtfully. &ldquo;But I never talk to
+      Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+      morning,&rdquo; said Wanda, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise. The
+      old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you run the risk of making people talk of you.
+      They may talk of us&mdash;of Martin and me&mdash;the world has talked of
+      the Bukatys for some centuries&mdash;but never of their women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will not talk of me,&rdquo; returned Wanda, composedly. &ldquo;I will see to
+      that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say that
+      he was not going to stay long in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He knew
+      that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, rising. &ldquo;I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us go
+      to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused half-way towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one thing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;which we should be wise to recollect&mdash;that
+      whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no farther. He is a
+      diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and to say nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!&rdquo; cried Martin, with his reckless
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the great
+      archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the
+      court-yard&mdash;where Hermani was assassinated&mdash;where the people
+      carried in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were
+      photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side
+      door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this
+      third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there.
+      He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Cahere&mdash;the American lady?&rdquo; she said. And the porter gave her
+      the number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her
+      thither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's room,
+      and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished. At the
+      head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned room,
+      where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this room, reading a
+      French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant, a well-trained person.
+      And a well-trained French servant is the best servant in the world. He
+      took it for granted that Wanda had come to see his master, and led the way
+      to the spacious drawing-room occupied by Deulin, who always travelled <i>en
+      prince</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend,&rdquo; he said, in
+      defence of his extravagant habits, &ldquo;and the only people to whom I want to
+      give it are those who will not accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+      found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
+      surprise in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Jean show you in?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
+      would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
+      Wanda. Even plain people have enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
+      which she was sitting. &ldquo;Yes! What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An unfortunate incident,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+      predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+      comes. Your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner,&rdquo; said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+      leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with the
+      necessity of reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has found out something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, la! la!&rdquo; exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper&mdash;giving voice to that
+      exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve for
+      a really serious mishap. &ldquo;I should have thought he knew better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I cannot tell you what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+      ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came to Martin's knowledge,&rdquo; explained Wanda, looking at him across
+      the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. &ldquo;Look a man
+      in the eyes when you tell him a lie,&rdquo; Deulin had once said to Cartoner,
+      &ldquo;but not a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that&mdash;&rdquo; Wanda
+      paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in
+      Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London. We all like him.
+      Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My father won't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table. His
+      touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+      execution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;I once took it upon myself to advise
+      Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
+      exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it&mdash;and
+      never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
+      and I was wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can do nothing, fair princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his life,&rdquo;
+       said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+      serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was neat
+      and gray and&mdash;shallow, as some thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for forty years and more I have watched men&mdash;and
+      women&mdash;do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite ceased
+      to affect my appetite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+      sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he said, as he followed her to the door. &ldquo;I will give him a
+      little hint&mdash;the merest ghost of a hint&mdash;will that do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+      Englishman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are reasons why I should not accompany you,&rdquo; said Deulin, opening
+      the door. &ldquo;Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which Wanda
+      had just vacated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the third woman who knows what she wants,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and yet I have
+      known thousands&mdash;thousands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      MUCH&mdash;OR NOTHING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference to his
+      good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become apparent
+      that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse themselves with
+      toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a long roll of
+      monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In some the
+      monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing space of
+      quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then
+      pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly
+      wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a
+      somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in
+      him. Thus the gods&mdash;with men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+      down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good
+      reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been
+      full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents&mdash;as the
+      hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part&mdash;with a
+      mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his being. He had
+      always known what he wanted, and had usually accomplished his desires with
+      the subtraction of that discount which is necessary to the accomplishment
+      of all human wishes. The gods had not helped him; but they had left him
+      alone, which is quite as good, and often better. And in human aid this
+      applies as well, which that domestic goddess, the managing female of the
+      family, would do well to remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
+      on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
+      crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had never
+      found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
+      apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him that
+      gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the sex of
+      this arbiter of human story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+      wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to avoid
+      the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two days
+      after the meeting at the Mokotow&mdash;the morning following the visit
+      paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe&mdash;Cartoner was early astir. He
+      drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
+      and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at ten minutes
+      past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of peasants&mdash;wild-looking
+      men in long coats and high boots, rough women in gay shades of red, in
+      short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+      capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted
+      the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman
+      Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe
+      on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting
+      room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class room was a little
+      emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-class
+      waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone. There was one person in
+      the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was Wanda. The gods were kind&mdash;or
+      cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going away?&rdquo; she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+      Cartoner looked at her in surprise. &ldquo;You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
+      you are going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+      yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all watched,&rdquo; said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. &ldquo;But
+      you are going away&mdash;that is all that matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
+      back this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+      which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers, they
+      were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the restaurant,
+      which is the more usual way of gaining access to the platform. She
+      probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to post a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave Warsaw,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it is not safe for you to stay here.
+      You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
+      for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
+      at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could not
+      hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There were
+      so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West which it
+      was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely bare; not so
+      much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had anything to say
+      to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this bare railway station
+      the place to say it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
+      He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
+      salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin would have warned you,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;but he did not dare to.
+      Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
+      had unwittingly run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not unwittingly,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He said
+      so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you much&mdash;&rdquo; she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+      here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything&mdash;but not from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin hinted at that,&rdquo; said Wanda, slowly, &ldquo;but I did not believe him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as if
+      there were more in him&mdash;more of him&mdash;than she had ever expected.
+      And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+      baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which was
+      as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes from
+      the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able to
+      look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true enough,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fate has made us enemies, princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
+      fate&mdash;in Poland. Besides&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
+      your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must go&mdash;you must go!&rdquo; she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+      great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
+      understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of gray
+      in his closely cut hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
+      world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily&mdash;quite gayly&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she broke off with a light laugh, &ldquo;on a volcano&mdash;it is the Bukatys.
+      We have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
+      window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father was
+      in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;what it is to be a Bukaty.&rdquo; And he smiled slowly
+      as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her manner,
+      in a flash, was different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will go?&rdquo; she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he turned
+      away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them, she glanced
+      again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of hatred, and
+      there is another cunning, much deeper. &ldquo;Say you will go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think you understand,&rdquo; she went on, changing her manner and her
+      ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own stolid, dumb
+      form of defence. &ldquo;You do not understand what a danger to us your presence
+      here is. It is needless to tell you all this,&rdquo; with a gesture she
+      indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred marks of a high
+      state of civilization, &ldquo;is skin deep. That things in Poland are not at all
+      what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated. We live from day to day
+      in uncertainty. And my father is such an old man; he has had such a
+      hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to look at his face&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he has
+      gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so happy
+      and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe. That is
+      why I ask you to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
+      was quite a simple person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
+      follow it, call no logic at all, &ldquo;you can do no good here, if all your
+      care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
+      have they refused your recall? It is so stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must do the best I can,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+      ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we must not quarrel,&rdquo; she said, gently. &ldquo;We must not misunderstand
+      each other,&rdquo; she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, &ldquo;for we have only
+      five minutes in all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here and now,&rdquo; he corrected, with a glance at the clock, &ldquo;we have only
+      five minutes. But the world is large.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you,&rdquo; she said quickly, &ldquo;but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+      forget I am a Russian subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
+      his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My presence in Warsaw,&rdquo; he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+      elucidating, &ldquo;is in reality no source of danger to you&mdash;to your
+      father and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin.
+      Do not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+      nobody&mdash;nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+      that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make history.
+      I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which may come to
+      pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If nothing happens
+      I report nothing. I have not to say what might have happened&mdash;life is
+      too short to record that. So you see my being in Warsaw is really of no
+      danger to your father and brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I see&mdash;I see!&rdquo; answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now.
+      The door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The
+      guard, in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting
+      the length of the train. &ldquo;But it was not on account of that that we asked
+      Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
+      Martin. It is required of them&mdash;a sort of family tradition. It is
+      their business in life&mdash;almost their pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my business in life&mdash;almost my pleasure,&rdquo; said Cartoner, with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is there no one at home&mdash;in England&mdash;that you ought to
+      think of?&rdquo; in an odd, sharp voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody,&rdquo; he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+      respecting himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her stood a
+      carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no corridor
+      carriages. Two minutes now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must not be seen together on the platform,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am only going
+      to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old servants
+      whom I go to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;for warning me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go,&rdquo; he added, after a moment's pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still she lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is so much to say,&rdquo; she said, half to herself. &ldquo;There is so much to
+      say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back. He
+      was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
+      eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right&mdash;whether there
+      was much to say&mdash;or nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE SENATORSKA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Miss Julie Mangles, &ldquo;in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+      one's hand on the true heart of the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's as may be, Jooly,&rdquo; replied her brother, &ldquo;but I take it that the
+      hearts of the women go to the Senatorska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
+      the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
+      their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright
+      images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a picture-gallery
+      of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to and fro with curved
+      backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the mark of eighteen hundred
+      years of persecution. No Christian would assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew
+      would be a Polish Jew if he could possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must
+      not leave the country, may not even quit his native town, unless it suits
+      a paternal government that he should go elsewhere. He has no personal
+      liberty, and may not exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall
+      wear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall,&rdquo; said Miss Mangles, &ldquo;write a paper on the Jewish question in
+      this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+      right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his
+      tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on the Semitic
+      question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a town-hall,
+      provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seen the Senatorska, Netty?&rdquo; he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+      Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go out into the Faubourg,&rdquo; her uncle explained, &ldquo;and just turn to the
+      left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
+      out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down&mdash;as
+      the paper itself recorded&mdash;the hot impressions of the moment,
+      gathered after a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their
+      impressions served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers
+      vividness to accuracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+      shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
+      and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
+      find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
+      Bond Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
+      Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest her
+      in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski&mdash;that weak
+      dreamer&mdash;built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
+      shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was passing
+      them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in the wares
+      of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of surprise, to
+      find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the Prince Martin
+      Bukaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid you did not remember me,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;You looked straight
+      at me, and did not seem to recognize me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+      should I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and then
+      looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+      remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. &ldquo;One meets a
+      great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find it
+      so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad,&rdquo; answered Martin, &ldquo;that you do not meet many people that you
+      like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people,&rdquo; urged Netty, in some
+      concern; &ldquo;I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind. Do
+      you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
+      kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
+      in yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
+      that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no!&rdquo; she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+      descriptive of a shrinking humility. &ldquo;Why should I? I have done nothing to
+      deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind&mdash;my
+      uncle and aunt&mdash;everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder
+      why it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell her,
+      and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could&mdash;if he dared. He had
+      never met anybody quite like Netty&mdash;so spontaneous and innocent and
+      easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
+      little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
+      answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had a
+      human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from under
+      her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes were
+      dark, almost as violets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ought I to be here?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Going about the streets alone, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not alone,&rdquo; answered Martin, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but&mdash;perhaps I ought to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In America, you know,&rdquo; said the voice from under the parasol, &ldquo;girls are
+      allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to be
+      careful, is it not?&mdash;to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
+      France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
+      the custom in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
+      that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes about
+      the streets as they do in England or America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can show you the best shops,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;such as they are. This is
+      Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good thing
+      I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love them,&rdquo; answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
+      next shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would naturally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea
+      in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of you to say that,&rdquo; said Netty, in a voice half-afraid,
+      half-reproachful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes,&rdquo; answered Martin, gayly.
+      He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with
+      Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
+      persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
+      this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
+      good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, &ldquo;I am much
+      interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done such
+      great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles&mdash;and the
+      poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nobles have come to great grief in Poland&mdash;that is all,&rdquo; replied
+      Martin, with a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is so sad,&rdquo; said Netty, with a shake of the head; &ldquo;but I am sure
+      it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
+      interested in Poland&mdash;you and your sister and your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are supposed to be,&rdquo; admitted Martin. &ldquo;But no one cares for Poland
+      now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of, and,
+      in England and America, Poland is forgotten now&mdash;and her history,
+      which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am sure you are wrong there,&rdquo; said Netty, earnestly. &ldquo;I know a
+      great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; asked Martin, looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, with downcast eyes. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; she said, after a pause,
+      with a sort of effort, &ldquo;we must not stand in front of this shop any
+      longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, &ldquo;as it is a
+      Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a
+      window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you will
+      not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in Warsaw
+      where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you must
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite serious,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We must fight with what weapons we have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, indicating the shops, &ldquo;these people, but not you. You
+      are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
+      anything from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because there is nothing to take,&rdquo; laughed Martin, gayly; &ldquo;we were ruined
+      long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when my father
+      was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not either; so I am
+      a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so sorry!&rdquo; she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short
+      sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped,
+      and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he
+      was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He
+      came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin&mdash;his
+      left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?&rdquo; he said to
+      Netty. &ldquo;I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if
+      you will permit it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+      Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not the
+      way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty desired
+      him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret
+      possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the flower-shop
+      kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a train
+      of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without
+      speaking. It was against his principles altogether. &ldquo;Never be silent with
+      a woman,&rdquo; he often said. &ldquo;She will only misconstrue it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was odd that I should meet you at that moment,&rdquo; he said, at length,
+      for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the
+      initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively
+      the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and
+      laughed. &ldquo;I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you at
+      a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if I
+      could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you, would
+      it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very kind of you,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;to think of me at the race-meeting
+      the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so interested in
+      the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely hair, and I think
+      her face is so interesting&mdash;a face with a history, is it not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, rather shortly, &ldquo;Wanda is a nice girl.&rdquo; He did not
+      seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the prince,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the old one, I mean&mdash;for this one,
+      Prince Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;quite a boy,&rdquo; replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back
+      over his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had
+      first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so sad that they are ruined&mdash;if they are really ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no doubt whatever about that,&rdquo; answered Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Netty, who was practical, &ldquo;could nothing induce him&mdash;the
+      young prince, I mean&mdash;to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+      accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates and
+      recover his position?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+      sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world
+      like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of
+      others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden&mdash;by
+      the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an
+      occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+      lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He will
+      never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory life. He
+      has too much history behind him, which is a state of things never quite
+      understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has not got it in
+      him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities, and Siberia&mdash;his
+      certain destination&mdash;is not a good mise-en-scene for your dream. No,
+      you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings here, though it is
+      natural that you should seek the ever-evasive remedy&mdash;another
+      privilege of youth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk as if you were so very old,&rdquo; said Netty, reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very, very old,&rdquo; he replied, with a laugh. &ldquo;And there is no remedy
+      for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,&rdquo; answered
+      Netty, lightly. &ldquo;I think you are quite capable of taking care of
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of evolving my own dreams?&rdquo; he inquired. But she made no answer, and
+      did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know so little,&rdquo; she said, after a pause, &ldquo;so very little of Poland or
+      Polish history. I suppose you know everything&mdash;you and Mr. Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine of
+      knowledge, while I&mdash;I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+      everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there is
+      a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+      successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not
+      prescribe for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know him sufficiently well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Besides, he requires no
+      sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+      satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is that so?&rdquo; he inquired. &ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+      believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+      interested in the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      JOSEPH'S STORY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; he had
+      said, &ldquo;to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect harmony.&rdquo;
+       He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at the Cukiernia
+      Lourse&mdash;a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the Cracow
+      Faubourg&mdash;which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and
+      there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love with
+      Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In her
+      presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say. But
+      afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It takes
+      years off one's life,&rdquo; said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner, as they
+      sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from the
+      second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some chance he
+      was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a Gallic love of
+      street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the window waiting for
+      the clock to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, &ldquo;and we can make our entry together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows was
+      well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into the
+      square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man arrive
+      at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following
+      Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the
+      hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took his
+      coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave them
+      into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is to take
+      charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant. When he
+      entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found the party
+      assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets at her
+      waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were talking
+      together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of the
+      hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money,&rdquo; said Mr. Mangles,
+      bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking at him with suspicion,&rdquo; admitted Deulin, &ldquo;but not on that
+      account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not I
+      who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was
+      looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you
+      as lively when he came in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not what I should call a vivacious man,&rdquo; said Mangles, looking dismally
+      across the room. &ldquo;There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he came
+      in perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, in a low voice. &ldquo;That is bad. There is usually
+      something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What beautiful violets,&rdquo; said he to Netty. &ldquo;Surely Warsaw did not produce
+      those?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they are pretty,&rdquo; answered Netty, making a little movement to show
+      the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her waist
+      was very round and slender. &ldquo;They came from that shop in the Senatorska or
+      the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I think, was the
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, slowly. &ldquo;Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+      violets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when dinner
+      was announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the
+      subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner, who sat
+      next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of steamer
+      gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted theory that
+      quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather labored
+      ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times as they
+      are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and to enjoy
+      themselves according to their lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information respecting
+      Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?&rdquo; he said,
+      noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+      traversed the whole length of the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?&rdquo;
+       asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few
+      chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress
+      meetings&mdash;and I may publish,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be in the interests of humanity,&rdquo; murmured Deulin, politely. &ldquo;It
+      would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest happy,
+      seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, &ldquo;that
+      you dislike political women.&rdquo; Heaven knows how she knew it. &ldquo;But I am
+      afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort
+      of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the
+      people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their chief quality is gameness,&rdquo; said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think the
+      princess is delightful&mdash;do you not think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be a great many stories,&rdquo; went on Netty, &ldquo;connected with the
+      story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know&mdash;of
+      people's lives, I mean&mdash;of all they have attempted and have failed to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his
+      lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry heart
+      for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was listening,
+      with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was weighing them
+      with a greater nicety than experienced social experts are in the habit of
+      exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was talking hard, as usual,
+      and listening at the same time; which is not by any means an easy thing to
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always think,&rdquo; continued Netty, &ldquo;that the princess has a story. There
+      must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere
+      terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced at
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+      utterances. &ldquo;Perhaps she is thinking of her brother&mdash;Prince Martin.
+      He is always getting into scrapes&mdash;ce jeune homme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your romantic heart,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;that makes you see so much that
+      perhaps does not exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a story,&rdquo; put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep voice,
+      &ldquo;I can tell you one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?&rdquo; began Mangles,
+      looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I believe to be the truth,&rdquo; assented the Frenchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story,&rdquo; continued Joseph, &ldquo;but they
+      won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city who was
+      like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country could be
+      made a great country again, as it was in the past&mdash;dreamed that the
+      peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into human
+      beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be an
+      independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament, she
+      would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France and
+      England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the treaty, they
+      would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew, would keep his
+      word. Comes from having a romantic heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against
+      this danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My country,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+      breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own
+      father and whip him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing
+      the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever heard the Polish hymn?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+      story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and across,
+      in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him dyspepsia this
+      time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+      magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of
+      Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise
+      our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jooly&mdash;pass the mustard,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a
+      sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+      Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked
+      with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of wrath,
+      cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us,
+      O Lord, our free country!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of the
+      beef.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the first verse, and the last,&rdquo; he said at length. &ldquo;And all
+      Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+      forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.
+      They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on
+      the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when they
+      came out&mdash;women and children, old men and maidens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
+      say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman, but for
+      once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal acclaim. For
+      no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather impatiently at her
+      brother, who was always surprising her by knowing more than she had given
+      him credit for, and by interesting her, despite herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dreamer was arrested,&rdquo; he continued, pushing away his plate, &ldquo;on some
+      trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
+      warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give his own
+      personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all formalities and
+      futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great difficulty obtained
+      permission to follow. They were young&mdash;last of the family. Better
+      that they should be the last&mdash;thought the paternal government of
+      Russia. But she had influential relatives&mdash;so she went. She found him
+      working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of bringing doctor's
+      certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill him. Could he not
+      obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the body-servant of the
+      governor of his district&mdash;man who had risen from the ranks&mdash;and
+      was refused. So he went to the mines again&mdash;and died. The wife had in
+      her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to escape. Then
+      the worst happened&mdash;she had a son, in prison, and all the care and
+      forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The pestilential
+      race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that prison brat had
+      been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was not beaten yet. They
+      took the child from his mother, and she fretted and died. He had nobody
+      now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but his foster-father&mdash;that
+      great and parental government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice story,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+      brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+      Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was
+      extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit
+      of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must
+      keep account of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
+      telling than the reading of it would require.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes,&rdquo; said the host, &ldquo;and take some
+      yourself. Story cannot interest you&mdash;must be ancient history. Well&mdash;after
+      all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped
+      up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was
+      historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that
+      humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another
+      private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who
+      he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the
+      dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in
+      Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
+      and dogged eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man's loose in Poland now,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was the end of the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+      person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
+      so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative&mdash;such men,
+      at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette from
+      time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible reason,
+      which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without the asking&mdash;namely,
+      that she was not going to allow men to claim the monopoly of tobacco.
+      There was the other reason, which prompts so many actions in these blatant
+      times&mdash;the unconscious reason that, in going counter to ancient
+      prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt for men, and meted out
+      a bitter punishment to the entire race for having consistently and
+      steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this evening,
+      upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over their
+      tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+      apartment&mdash;a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+      articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+      passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+      went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary to
+      custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre of
+      the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in the
+      passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china stove
+      opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and as she
+      did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung to. She
+      was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the room.
+      The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way cautiously
+      to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak&mdash;to ask who was
+      there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in books, but
+      it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself dumb until
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound.
+      Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive
+      persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small
+      slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the
+      door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve.
+      Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some one
+      infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she knew
+      by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one hand on
+      the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door. The light
+      from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment he
+      was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his
+      hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, mademoiselle!&rdquo; he said, in broken English. &ldquo;Then Heaven is kind&mdash;Heaven
+      is kind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing first
+      one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and Netty was
+      conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all her life she
+      had never known what it was to be really carried away until that moment.
+      She had never felt anything like it&mdash;had never seen a man like this&mdash;at
+      her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came,&rdquo; he said&mdash;and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+      see that no one approached&mdash;&ldquo;to see you, because I could not stay
+      away! You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can
+      love as well as a rich man&mdash;and perhaps better!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go! you must go!&rdquo; said Netty. And yet she would have been sorry
+      if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is that the ebb
+      must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she recollected Joseph
+      Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if he had heard his own story
+      through the door of communication between Mangles' bedroom and the
+      dining-room. For the other door, from the salon to the bedroom, stood wide
+      open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I have only seen you once,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I have not. I have
+      seen you often. But the first time I saw you&mdash;at the races&mdash;was
+      enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go&mdash;you must go!&rdquo; whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now&mdash;for
+      five minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+      passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The streets
+      are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming to these
+      rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is the
+      tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I won't go
+      till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; whispered Netty, hurriedly. &ldquo;I will come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment. Secondly&mdash;it
+      is to be feared&mdash;she wanted to go. It was the high-water mark. This
+      man carried her there and swept her off her feet&mdash;this working-man,
+      in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and get a cloak,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will meet you by the great fountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart
+      beating as it had never beaten before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that twisted
+      his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the
+      chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when
+      Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a near thing,&rdquo; he said to himself in Russian, which language he
+      had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. &ldquo;And I found
+      the only way out of that hideous danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+      Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+      confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+      which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it, and,
+      with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later he
+      lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+      moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in
+      couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff&mdash;for a
+      better motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's
+      brief summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern
+      plains lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was one
+      of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the
+      autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose she will come,&rdquo; he said in his mind, watching the gate through
+      which Netty must enter the gardens. &ldquo;It matters little if she does not.
+      For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must leave that to
+      the inspiration of the moment&mdash;and the moonlight. She is pretty
+      enough to make it easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards him&mdash;not
+      hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first clandestine
+      meeting&mdash;but with her head thrown back, and with an air of having
+      business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely to
+      attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going back at once,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It was very wrong to come. But you
+      frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to
+      come, and despise me for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promised,&rdquo; he whispered, eagerly; &ldquo;you promised me five minutes. Out
+      of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw soon, and
+      I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the memory of
+      these five minutes to last me all my life&mdash;these five minutes and
+      that minute&mdash;that one minute in the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone
+      bench, and raised it to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going away, too,&rdquo; she said. She was thinking also of that one
+      minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water mark.
+      &ldquo;We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting here till my
+      uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is not a business man,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested. &ldquo;What
+      is he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know whether
+      he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in America,
+      or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that we are
+      going on to St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without seeing
+      you? And the others&mdash;Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman, Cartoner&mdash;are
+      they going to St. Petersburg, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because a
+      solitary promenader was passing close by them. &ldquo;They never tell me either.
+      But . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to
+      see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see into
+      my heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+      waited for her to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;Why&mdash;tell me why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly,
+      and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill which
+      came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which Kosmaroff
+      trusted he got back into the straight path again at one bound&mdash;the
+      sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any wise man lose
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for you that he stays here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What a fool I was not to see
+      that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he has found it quite easy to do it,&rdquo; answered Netty, with an odd
+      laugh. &ldquo;No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is clever
+      and beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that to please me,&rdquo; she said at last. And her voice was quite
+      different&mdash;it was low and uneven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than you
+      in all the world. Heaven knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had
+      no faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who is there in Warsaw,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;whom any one could dream of
+      comparing with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner
+      compares with me&mdash;and even you must know that she is prettier than I
+      am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know it,&rdquo; protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. &ldquo;There is
+      no one in all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty,&rdquo; said Netty, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember I
+      saw them together at the races.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They knew each other in London,&rdquo; said Netty. &ldquo;They knew each other when I
+      first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
+      here since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
+      his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
+      Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
+      salon a few minutes earlier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it that he has fallen in love&mdash;or is it that he desires
+      information which she alone can give him?&rdquo; he asked at length. Which was,
+      after all, the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment
+      and in that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose hastily
+      and drew her cloak round her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I have been here much more than five minutes. Why
+      did you let me stay? Oh&mdash;why did you make me come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will come again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now that you have come once&mdash;you
+      cannot be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at
+      the foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
+      You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair, your
+      aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak French?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and she does not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good&mdash;then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye&mdash;and
+      remember that I love you&mdash;always, always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
+      side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
+      scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all fair&mdash;all fair,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+      convince himself. &ldquo;Besides&mdash;has the world been fair to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LIGHT TOUCH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty, having
+      a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way to that
+      weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions. She was not
+      old-fashioned in that respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first time
+      in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might do or
+      say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before. No one
+      in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That which the
+      lenient may call a school-girl escapade&mdash;a mere flight to the garden
+      for a few minutes&mdash;was scarcely sufficient to account for this
+      feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some
+      wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although Miss
+      Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long, innocent-looking
+      Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still some views of value to
+      be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+      soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced
+      with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave.
+      Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will come down to the door with you,&rdquo; said Deulin, in the passage. He
+      was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable instincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+      rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his hat
+      was back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a moonlight night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will walk with you part of the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+      hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to think
+      it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each other too
+      well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin, light
+      overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack, weighing
+      and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the Madrid Stick,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. &ldquo;You were with me when I
+      bought it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when you used it,&rdquo; added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he led
+      the way to the door. &ldquo;Generally keep your coat in the hall?&rdquo; he inquired,
+      casually, as they descended the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath
+      the brim of his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full and
+      almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without shadow
+      at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the right
+      instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow Faubourg,
+      which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the Jasna. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;let
+      us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the pavement of some queer
+      towns in our day, you and I. The typical Englishman, so dense, so silent,
+      so unobservant&mdash;who sees nothing and knows nothing and never laughs,
+      but is himself the laughing-stock of all the Latin races and the piece de
+      resistance of their comic papers. And I, at your service, the typical
+      Frenchman; all shrugs and gesticulations and mustache&mdash;of politeness
+      that is so insincere&mdash;of a heart that is so unstable. Ah! these
+      national characteristics of comic journalism&mdash;how the stupid world
+      trips over them on to its vulgar face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker, with
+      a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was unnatural to
+      one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the streets whenever
+      he walked there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in a
+      narrow street now&mdash;between the backs of high houses&mdash;and had
+      left the life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin
+      turned once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street.
+      He released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in
+      an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand in
+      an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening for
+      footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing the
+      direction from which they had just come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+      pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any coming from the other side?&rdquo; asked Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the doorway,&rdquo; whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+      steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+      Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+      pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow doorway that
+      had the air of being little used. The long blade of his sword-stick, no
+      thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's sheath-knife, and
+      narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. &ldquo;But you
+      need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight, and
+      so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+      scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know there
+      is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal life.
+      And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across the
+      pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with the flat
+      of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like a flash. He
+      ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together, and did not
+      know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and planted a kick in
+      the small of his adversary's back, sending him staggering against the
+      wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries of &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; and &ldquo;La!&rdquo;
+       breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the fencing-floor&mdash;performed
+      a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a marvel of agility and
+      quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm, hand, head, and leg;
+      forward, back-handed, from above and below. He never awaited their attack&mdash;but
+      attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who said that the surest way to defend
+      is to attack?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men. The
+      sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness, from
+      the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the air was
+      not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying note of
+      steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to the
+      opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow. Without
+      turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even if they are armed,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;they won't fire. They don't want
+      the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not suit
+      my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both have knives,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but they cannot get near me. Stay where you
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Haven't had a chance yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice before
+      in all the years that they had known each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the best,&rdquo; he said, half to himself, &ldquo;of dealing with a man who
+      keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner&mdash;here they come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went out to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+      Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their returning
+      to the attack&mdash;thus, with a cold-blooded courage&mdash;showed that
+      they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran
+      forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he could
+      not lay aside the little flourish&mdash;the quick, stiff pose&mdash;of the
+      fencer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+      lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further,
+      as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in
+      as if into a cheese.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila, mon ami,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had made
+      him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered on
+      the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck eyes at
+      his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly curling up,
+      and he had no control over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Deulin, in Polish, &ldquo;for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round towards
+      Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man turned and
+      ran, followed closely by his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones, and
+      came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully dropped
+      it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a muddy
+      splash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never use that hand again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Poor devil! I only hope he
+      was well paid for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you an old envelope?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of
+      the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall. And
+      Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore it
+      into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright steel
+      with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt, where the
+      government mark and the word &ldquo;Toledo&rdquo; were deeply engraved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless I keep it clean it sticks,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;And if you want it at
+      all, you want it in a hurry&mdash;like a woman's heart, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade back
+      into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure that
+      nothing was left there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The light was good,&rdquo; he said, appreciatively, &ldquo;and the ground favorable
+      for&mdash;for the autumn manoeuvres.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he broke into a gay laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let us go back into the more frequented streets. This
+      back way was not a success&mdash;only proves that it never does to turn
+      tail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know,&rdquo; asked Cartoner, &ldquo;that this was coming off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at the
+      Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were followed.
+      So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni, vidi, vici&mdash;you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while he
+      made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought we might escape by the quieter streets,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;For it is
+      our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be. Neither
+      could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each other's
+      business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many chances
+      and changes, to be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying
+      that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was like you, to come like that and take the risk,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and say
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will,
+      five years hence&mdash;ten years hence&mdash;when the time comes. I will
+      tell you then why I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can only be one reason why you did it,&rdquo; muttered the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool&mdash;the very best sort
+      of fool&mdash;and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to
+      me as I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to fight some one to-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Some one of the very
+      first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things to-night&mdash;and
+      the angels in heaven are talking of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky. But
+      there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were
+      sincere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming
+      in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately behind
+      them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant, alighting
+      quickly, came towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+      that,&rdquo; he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. &ldquo;You, Cartoner!
+      What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been dining with Mangles,&rdquo; explained Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,&rdquo; added
+      Cartoner. &ldquo;But we think we are going home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be on the spree,&rdquo; said Martin, with a laugh in his voice, and
+      none in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are,&rdquo; answered Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. &ldquo;Come&mdash;your
+      shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a
+      ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do it,&rdquo; whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the garden
+      of the Bukaty Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and
+      passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown
+      to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds that
+      sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+      house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+      though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. &ldquo;You find me in
+      sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception&mdash;a
+      semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an appearance.
+      It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till midnight. Mind
+      those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, for a few minutes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, and seeing a movement of
+      dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is better,&rdquo; he said, in an undertone. &ldquo;It will put them completely off
+      the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the
+      first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said the young prince, &ldquo;into the drawing-room. I see they have
+      left the lights on there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow
+      his guests to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holloa!&rdquo; he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+      conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+      flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back again already?&rdquo; asked Martin, in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda. &ldquo;There were some people there he did not want to
+      meet, so we came away again at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought they could not possibly be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They got there,&rdquo; answered Wanda, &ldquo;by some ill chance, from Petersburg,
+      just in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not such an ill chance, after all,&rdquo; said Deulin, &ldquo;since it gives us
+      the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is in his study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rather want to see him,&rdquo; said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;He will be glad to see you. It will
+      cheer him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly and
+      simply&mdash;so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans of
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+      warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+      brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+      Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and she
+      said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look at
+      him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with
+      quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his
+      habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wrong,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I said that fate could be hampered by
+      action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+      word &ldquo;here&rdquo; he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+      look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs no
+      telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to those
+      who have not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A clear understanding,&rdquo; he said abruptly, recalling her own words. &ldquo;That
+      is your creed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door with
+      deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done something
+      wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the thought, who can!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made another mistake,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Have been acting on it for years. I
+      thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an embassy&mdash;of
+      a viceroyalty, perhaps&mdash;when I was quite young, and thought the world
+      was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you. If it comes,
+      well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+      understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it doesn't come&rdquo;&mdash;he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb
+      that hung quiescent at his side&mdash;&ldquo;well and good. I shall have lived.
+      I shall have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the
+      happiest man in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+      profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+      been known to say more than he meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never has been anybody else,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;All that side of life
+      was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it, at Lady
+      Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world&mdash;you had come
+      across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there. At first I
+      did not believe. I thought it was a mistake&mdash;that we should drift
+      apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then that you
+      would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it&mdash;fought
+      against it&mdash;tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to
+      him since he entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There never can be anybody else,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How could there be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her breath.
+      She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as this one
+      fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth&mdash;that he was
+      thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can carry.
+      For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of love is
+      infinitely harder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew from the first,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that there is no hope. Whichever
+      way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her eyes to his at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew?&rdquo; she asked, speaking for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the history of Poland,&rdquo; he said, quietly. &ldquo;The country must have
+      your father&mdash;your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up
+      Poland&mdash;you know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+      together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+      absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to
+      life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which
+      raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you asked me,&rdquo; said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      should do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would one
+      day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you. There
+      would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it&mdash;and that would be
+      the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it so delicate as that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the frailest thing in the world&mdash;and the strongest,&rdquo; he
+      answered, with his thoughtful smile. &ldquo;It is a very delicate sort of&mdash;thought,
+      which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
+      succeed in keeping it even passably intact&mdash;and not one couple in a
+      million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from the
+      outer world, but from themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you learn all that?&rdquo; she asked, looking at him with her shrewd,
+      smiling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You taught me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a terribly high ideal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+      compromises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With its conscience,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;And look at the result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are good,&rdquo; she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+      gravity, &ldquo;as well as concise&mdash;and rather masterful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is clear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that a man who persuades a woman to marry against
+      her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is seeking her
+      unhappiness and his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;But you ask for a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask for love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; she said, going past that question, &ldquo;no obstacles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if one such object&mdash;quite a small one&mdash;should be found?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they must be content with love alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They seemed
+      to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so many
+      hasten and such numbers fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a way,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;of putting into words&mdash;so few words&mdash;what
+      others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they did&mdash;there
+      would, perhaps, be no marriages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There would be no unhappy ones,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is better to be content with love alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Content,&rdquo; was his sole answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their moments
+      were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten. Cartoner
+      had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour earlier, and his
+      life had been in peril&mdash;he had been down to the depths and up to the
+      heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that is your creed,&rdquo; she said at length. &ldquo;And there is no compromise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+      with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women
+      have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the
+      backbone of human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+      length of the long, lamp-lit room. &ldquo;You are strong&mdash;you are strong
+      for two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine, steely
+      strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime of which
+      the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of seeking
+      always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they had left
+      untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if two people had between them,&rdquo; she suggested, wonderingly, &ldquo;that
+      with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure
+      they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew that
+      they could never have more, could they be happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if they had to go on all their lives&mdash;and if one lived in London
+      and the other in Warsaw&mdash;Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They could still be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she&mdash;alone at one end of Europe&mdash;&rdquo; asked Wanda, with her
+      worldly-wise searching into detail&mdash;&ldquo;if she saw slowly vanishing
+      those small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care,
+      perhaps?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could still be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some misfortune,
+      and felt lonely and disappointed&mdash;and there was no one near to&mdash;to
+      take care of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could still be happy&mdash;if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he knew that she loved him,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were
+      tears in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you may know that,&rdquo; she said, suddenly descending from the uncertain
+      heights of generality. &ldquo;You may be quite sure of that. If that is what you
+      want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She looked
+      at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs at his
+      temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely protecting
+      and dimly maternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to go away from Warsaw,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I would rather you went
+      even if you say&mdash;that you are afraid to stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot say that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; she added, with her head held high, &ldquo;they would not believe you
+      if you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise you,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;not to run any risks, to take every care.
+      But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+      teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in that
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to make you a promise in return. It would give
+      me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to remember it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be
+      speaking unnecessarily loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise you,&rdquo; said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, &ldquo;never to marry
+      anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+      talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the
+      clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To your tents, O Israel!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+      Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had
+      laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;remember me in your prayers to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WHITE FEATHER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to
+      seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+      interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+      thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+      masses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view, it
+      would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the least
+      harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man is he who
+      stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat without
+      proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds
+      out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no
+      catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder
+      which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+      cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and
+      women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the
+      unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism.
+      There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat
+      alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the
+      night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he
+      would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He was
+      thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there came,
+      moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A
+      fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains
+      ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could
+      perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And in
+      the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the lives of
+      individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of affairs
+      that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which were affecting
+      the lives of those around him. More than any other do Frenchmen herd
+      together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in
+      Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move. He had a
+      friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the
+      Jerozolimska. This lady was a French Jewess, who had by some undercurrent
+      of Judaism drifted from Paris to Warsaw again and found herself once more
+      among her own people. The western world is ignorant of the strength of
+      Jewry in Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop. He
+      took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which Englishmen
+      have happily ceased to wear by day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One likes,&rdquo; he said to the stout Jewess, &ldquo;to talk one's own tongue in a
+      foreign land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+      Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped
+      past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the day,
+      and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower at the
+      corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in his
+      buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the
+      pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+      writing-table. &ldquo;Ah! if you were only idle, as I am&rdquo;&mdash;he paused, with
+      a sharp, little sigh&mdash;&ldquo;if you only could be idle, how much happier
+      you would be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Frenchman,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, without looking up, &ldquo;thinks that noise
+      means happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are happy&mdash;you pretend to happiness?&rdquo; inquired Deulin,
+      sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+      cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+      this morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't thank me&mdash;thank the gods,&rdquo; replied Deulin, with a sudden
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, &ldquo;what do you
+      want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I want?&rdquo; he inquired, innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When you
+      are most idle you are most occupied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it
+      with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+      towards the Column&mdash;the shady side, after the street has been watered&mdash;that
+      my soul desires,&rdquo; said the Frenchman, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When are you going?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought I
+      had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+      indefinitely for&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the upheaval,&rdquo; explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning&mdash;&rdquo; he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay
+      aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful
+      attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and
+      had his being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning I picked up a scrap of information.&rdquo; He drew towards him a
+      newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin. The
+      design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross, Deulin
+      threw the paper across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; no one knows that,&rdquo; replied Deulin. &ldquo;It is one of the very few
+      mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps,
+      with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content
+      to be known only by a mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+      which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a
+      pause. &ldquo;One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an upheaval.
+      But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo for many
+      years here. Suppose&mdash;suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their
+      own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the
+      creating of an opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anarchy?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ladies of the party call it Nihilism,&rdquo; replied the Frenchman, with an
+      inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay
+      a lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people. They
+      waited thirty years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And struck too hastily, after all,&rdquo; commented Deulin. &ldquo;Bukaty would not
+      link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But
+      there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait
+      longer, and are therefore less patient&mdash;men of a more modern stamp,
+      without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in
+      their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to
+      his lights,&rdquo; interrupted Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! since you say so,&rdquo; returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+      &ldquo;yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bon sang,&rdquo; said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying. &ldquo;He
+      is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train of
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you know of Kosmaroff?&rdquo; he said, studying his companion's face. &ldquo;You
+      know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where is
+      Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Warsaw,&rdquo; guessed Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin&mdash;towards London, by the same
+      token.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on
+      the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That parishioner is in London, too,&rdquo; he said, in his own tongue&mdash;and
+      the word means more in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the drawing
+      to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trying to get me out of Warsaw,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Giving me a graceful chance of
+      showing the white feather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+      guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force of
+      habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the time
+      of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train at that
+      instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of Kosmaroff,
+      and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The white feather,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is an emblem that neither you nor I need
+      trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a
+      national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly
+      independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the
+      tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of envy,
+      or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on the
+      table, &ldquo;here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling&mdash;here, in Warsaw.
+      Here&mdash;in Berlin or in London&mdash;is the man with the match that
+      will set it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in
+      the shadow that it casts before it, for the second&mdash;no, for the third
+      time in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done
+      so when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know
+      the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since your
+      humor is so odd. You stay or you go&mdash;but remember that it is in the
+      interests of others that you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of others?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go
+      or stay, as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+      deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing
+      that decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go,&rdquo; he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair with
+      a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had observed,
+      when he was most idle that this gentleman had important business in hand.
+      He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to be supposed, never
+      set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed that he must have
+      played the game in earnest at one time, must have thrown down his stake
+      and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no use for his gain, which is
+      a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you are right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And, at all events, you will see the
+      last of this sad city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+      matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+      superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
+      and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
+      this period in European history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I smell,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in the
+      street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret which
+      one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he added, with a sudden gravity, &ldquo;there is nothing in life
+      worth making a secret of&mdash;except one's income. There are many reasons
+      why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should happen&mdash;anything&mdash;anywhere&mdash;we
+      keep each other advised. Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Usual cipher,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My salutations to Lady Orlay,&rdquo; said Deulin, with a reflective nod. &ldquo;That
+      woman who can keep a secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you had none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows the secret&mdash;of my income,&rdquo; answered the Frenchman. &ldquo;Tell
+      her&mdash;no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+      leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well, do
+      as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have we met
+      and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired rooms! We
+      have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael, and have none
+      to care when we furl our tents and steal away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing but
+      the hired furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police will be in here five minutes after you are out,&rdquo; he said,
+      curtly. &ldquo;You have no message&mdash;&rdquo; He paused to pick up from the floor a
+      petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+      looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: &ldquo;No
+      message to any one in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You
+      are hard, Cartoner&mdash;hard as nails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his possessions&mdash;already
+      furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that he was loath to go;
+      for he was turning his back on danger, and few men worthy of the name do
+      that with alacrity, whatever their nationality may be; for gameness is not
+      solely a British virtue, as is supposed in English public schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+      others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      COEUR VOLANT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central European
+      Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If rain is
+      coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The clouds
+      gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is done. For
+      some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the trees of the
+      Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole world was dusty
+      and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain. It had come at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was ushered
+      into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices. He did an
+      unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing that he did
+      not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as she entered
+      the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with a sort of
+      shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were dreaming,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo; he answered, fervently. &ldquo;Dreams and white hairs&mdash;No,
+      I was listening to the rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+      daring her to doubt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda&mdash;it is gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards the
+      large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in the
+      fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless, slow
+      persistency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you not shut that door?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+      that strikes&mdash;that hopeless rain&mdash;a northern autumn evening!
+      There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a
+      woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and
+      drive in a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+      doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
+      glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched him
+      with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she knew
+      that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden anger,
+      or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow of
+      uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew that.
+      She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was in
+      reality about his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
+      her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. &ldquo;That is
+      more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
+      see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know if it will amuse you,&rdquo; answered Wanda, in her energetic
+      way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, &ldquo;but Mr.
+      Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
+      to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
+      same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Separately they are amusing enough,&rdquo; he said, slowly, &ldquo;but they do not
+      mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So has my father,&rdquo; put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young country
+      events move by jerks&mdash;that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+      somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are above that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of Poland,&rdquo;
+       she answered, gravely. &ldquo;They give everything. I have not much to give, you
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you have what every woman has&mdash;to sacrifice upon some
+      altar or another&mdash;your happiness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at him.
+      He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of that, at
+      least, she was sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happiness, or a hope of happiness,&rdquo; he went on, reflectively. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If you
+      gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
+      remembered by women, and very seldom by men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is common enough?&rdquo; he asked, absent-mindedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope! connais pas!&rdquo; he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. &ldquo;You must ask some
+      one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is why I am
+      so gay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all,&rdquo; he went on, as if seeking
+      to explain his own humor. &ldquo;Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
+      existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
+      fire to sit by. That is why I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
+      had something to tell her&mdash;that he had come for no other purpose.
+      And, that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that
+      it was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care
+      showed her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to
+      his character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
+      middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness of
+      younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart was
+      sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the world a
+      quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long and grim
+      a family history as the world has known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not feel lonely in this great room?&rdquo; he asked, looking round at
+      the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
+      that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think not,&rdquo; answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the room,
+      wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed down by the
+      sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts, usually
+      considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a feminine way of
+      skirting a subject&mdash;of walking round, as it were, and contemplating
+      it from various side issues, as if to find out the best approach to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst of Warsaw,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is its dulness. The theatres are
+      deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+      none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
+      amuse one's self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+      himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was sordid,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;One wondered how the performers could be
+      content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such an
+      undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
+      interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile&mdash;like
+      cracking nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away.
+      It was so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that
+      he must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
+      was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
+      they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
+      usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
+      had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
+      others who received the applause&mdash;the nut-cracker girl who
+      pirouetted, and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled
+      condescendingly. But the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing
+      at all, and quite forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression
+      of his patient face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one
+      was looking at him&mdash;which was only the truth. Then, when the applause
+      was over, he turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired&mdash;his
+      day's work done. And, I don't know why, I thought&mdash;of Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
+      have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+      thoughts, &ldquo;the world would get on very well without its talkers. No great
+      man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had to
+      tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose
+      to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his monologue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+      alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had any
+      doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in Wanda's
+      face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to know the
+      meaning of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am very glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. &ldquo;It is a
+      good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at half
+      an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which you
+      have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution, is
+      Cartoner's repose of manner&mdash;for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
+      not a devout man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have done what I asked you to do,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;some time ago,
+      and I am very grateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some time ago? It was only yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it? It seems more than that,&rdquo; said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his head
+      slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
+      quite suddenly,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;So he packed up and went. He had not much
+      to pack. We travel light&mdash;he and I. We have no despatch-boxes or
+      note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember and forget
+      in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Oh! I do my best,&rdquo; he said, lightly. &ldquo;But if you desire to forget
+      anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering and
+      contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that he was
+      short-sighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think I will wait for the Mangles,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Especially Julie.
+      I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and
+      contemplated the fire thoughtfully. &ldquo;You never talk politics, I know. With
+      the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of politicians. It is no
+      affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted Warsaw&mdash;you
+      understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of discretion,&rdquo;
+       said Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found us
+      all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her Netty&mdash;well,
+      because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. &ldquo;Have I concealed my
+      admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+      concealment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you have overdone the contempt,&rdquo; suggested Wanda. &ldquo;She is
+      probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+      test.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Deulin, in an explanatory way, &ldquo;Cartoner may have had
+      reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are the
+      only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people in the
+      passport-office&mdash;and the others, whose business it is to watch us
+      all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought it
+      all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So I took
+      it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by Cartoner. I
+      have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw. Cartoner
+      merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so he went at
+      once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he ignored the
+      little social trammels which the majority of mankind know much better than
+      they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He was too discreet
+      to call and say good-bye&mdash;knowing the ways of servants in this
+      country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by post,
+      knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+      pleasant laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wondering,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;why I am taking this unusual course. It is
+      not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his back.
+      It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
+      Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also, I
+      may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
+      to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At all events,&rdquo; said Wanda, shaking hands, &ldquo;you are cautious. You make no
+      promises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And therefore we break none,&rdquo; he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by Mr.
+      Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous and rather
+      shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles, standing well
+      in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting was over, and
+      then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as if he or she
+      were an assembly, he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princess,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to take
+      tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon to make
+      a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked two
+      cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to show
+      her independence&mdash;to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a&mdash;that
+      she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+      attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
+      sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
+      about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
+      foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
+      more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion that
+      they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of one of
+      the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+      tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
+      even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
+      on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
+      south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
+      knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in his
+      native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
+      Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
+      Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
+      variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
+      served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
+      it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
+      coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
+      run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those <i>articles
+      de luxe</i> which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There
+      is also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
+      shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a
+      large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a
+      white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
+      sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons of
+      his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
+      where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business, had
+      carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective brush,
+      which had last been used for red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
+      and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
+      respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on coster
+      carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge from it
+      later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants in
+      Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which tourists
+      are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of the fur and
+      feather of the country. There is also a small importation of American fur
+      to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers
+      from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy
+      work-people&mdash;men, women, and ancient children&mdash;also use this
+      door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the air again
+      after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship
+      with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women's
+      heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+      dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post is
+      nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian character
+      three words, which, being translated, read: &ldquo;The Brothers of Liberty.&rdquo; As
+      no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the Russian
+      characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would
+      necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one so
+      nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
+      would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
+      suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
+      afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that
+      hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's their lingo,&rdquo; said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+      emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the numbers
+      over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the furrier's
+      shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby imperilling
+      his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages from the Borough
+      Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece of his mind in the
+      choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse with man, and
+      received in turn winged words of such a forcible and original nature as to
+      send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's their lingo, right enough,&rdquo; said the captain, examining the tin
+      tablet a second time. &ldquo;That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+      nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+      critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-crowned
+      hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of disappointment. It
+      was not to come to such a house as this that he had put on what he called
+      his &ldquo;suit&rdquo;; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-cloth designed to be worn
+      as best in all climates and at all times. It was not in order to impress
+      such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that
+      he had unpacked from the state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and
+      of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of
+      Limehouse steeple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+      Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
+      signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the
+      threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron, who
+      looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name of Cable,&rdquo; said the captain, turning to expectorate on the pavement,
+      after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find themselves
+      on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards with an
+      interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Name of Cable,&rdquo; repeated the captain. &ldquo;Dirty!&rdquo; he added, just by way of
+      inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
+      which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
+      aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave ahead!&rdquo; he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English he
+      knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
+      bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And he
+      stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was a small,
+      square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where discarded
+      bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a sparrow. The room
+      was full of men&mdash;six or seven foreign faces were turned towards the
+      new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was familiar to Captain
+      Cable. It was the face of the man known on the Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will be
+      remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
+      appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
+      man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no other
+      face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark man with
+      gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something magnetic in it.
+      Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward things. He picked out
+      the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at its possessor as if
+      measuring himself against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a chair, captain,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+      standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+      which had seen better days&mdash;and company&mdash;and smoking a
+      cigarette. He was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in
+      his business, and he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap
+      clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long
+      descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the
+      fine, clean, hard bone of a fighting race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
+      to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his &ldquo;suit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you speak German, captain?&rdquo; inquired Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sailed with a crew of Germans,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;I understand a bit, and I
+      know a few words. I know the German for d&mdash;n your eyes, and handy
+      words like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, &ldquo;we had better
+      continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+      dealing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+      stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have not much to say to Captain Cable,&rdquo; replied the man who seemed to
+      be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor voice,
+      and was what the French call <i>chetif</i> in appearance&mdash;a weak man,
+      fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is essential in the first place,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that we should
+      understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the smaller
+      of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he looked out
+      of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself quite
+      clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
+      entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
+      understands very little of what we are saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+      figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
+      who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,&rdquo; continued
+      the speaker. &ldquo;Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and verbal
+      agreements should be quite clear&mdash;the human memory is so liable to be
+      affected by circumstances&mdash;and should be repeated several times in
+      the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
+      period of nearly twenty years, Poland&mdash;is ready again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is only awaiting her opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body, which
+      owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a penny
+      bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker took up
+      the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his finger and
+      thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been justifiable. It was a
+      sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the
+      pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two nations represented in
+      that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history is a fascinating study,
+      especially for those who make it. And this quiet man had made a little in
+      his day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An opportunity is not an easy thing to define,&rdquo; he said at length. &ldquo;Any
+      event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
+      opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
+      would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about just
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
+      worst of blindness&mdash;the blindness of vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on the
+      frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
+      useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough&mdash;in print&mdash;and
+      ready enough to fight&mdash;in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
+      journalism&mdash;in England they have too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another opportunity would be a social upheaval,&rdquo; said the Russian,
+      drumming on the table with his slim fingers. &ldquo;The time has not come for
+      that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head&mdash;and that
+      we can offer to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I have heard that talk for the last ten
+      years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
+      waited till he had finished speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;that is all I have to propose to you&mdash;but this time it is
+      more than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+      succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+      world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
+      five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
+      amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have her
+      opportunity&mdash;and a good one&mdash;in a month from now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+      suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was about
+      to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience, paused, he
+      knew not why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think,&rdquo; said the other, in his smooth, even voice&mdash;&ldquo;one month from
+      now, after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
+      different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
+      nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
+      party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
+      affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
+      we seek the approval of no man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch for
+      the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the judgment of
+      any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five thousand roubles,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;And in exchange I give you the
+      date&mdash;so that Poland may be ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly as
+      he had lost it. &ldquo;I decline&mdash;for myself and for the whole of Poland.
+      We play a cleaner game than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights&mdash;if
+      I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you do
+      not give&mdash;I should take you by the throat and throw you out into the
+      street for daring to make such a proposal to me,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a deserter from a Cossack regiment,&rdquo; suggested the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To me,&rdquo; repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
+      at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
+      again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Cable,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;you and I have met before, and I learned
+      enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for you, and
+      these men no company for you. I am going&mdash;will you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm agreeable,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+      into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that man?&rdquo; he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name,&rdquo; replied Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+      behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
+      the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger and
+      made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is who he is,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard of him,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I heard his voice&mdash;sort of
+      soft-spoken&mdash;on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+      refused the job and came out with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+      activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
+      awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
+      stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look for
+      the unexpected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain Cable
+      chartered the <i>Minnie</i> in the coasting trade, and after Christmas he
+      put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
+      Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
+      with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
+      sudden and untoward end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+      cold and wet weather. &ldquo;If the winter would only set in,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and dry
+      things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks almost to
+      the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would perhaps be more
+      endurable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and Cartoner
+      wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the Bukatys and
+      perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never reached Warsaw,
+      or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they were absorbed into
+      that playful post-office where little goes in and less comes out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+      likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+      relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;History is assuredly at a stand-still,&rdquo; said an old traveller one evening
+      at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. &ldquo;The world must be quiet
+      indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your head off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader, and
+      was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries in a
+      dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a deep
+      arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It came
+      in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little sailor
+      was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor household
+      without surprise or comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment, which
+      was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the social
+      scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until at last
+      you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates, while to
+      decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've always dealt square by each other, you and I,&rdquo; said the captain,
+      when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor, and
+      presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+      wall and shot me, sure as fate,&rdquo; he said, bringing his hand down on his
+      knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. &ldquo;That was ten years ago last
+      November, when the <i>Minnie</i> had been out of the builder's yard a
+      matter of six months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind. It
+      seemed that the building of the <i>Minnie</i> was not the epoch upon which
+      he reckoned his periods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's in Morrison's dry-dock now,&rdquo; said the captain, who in a certain way
+      was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
+      by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. &ldquo;You should go down and see
+      her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in the
+      mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry out
+      this plan, and included in it an inspection of the <i>Minnie's</i> new
+      boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
+      was never carried out after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have never
+      done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I believe,
+      that time&mdash;you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer Deulin&mdash;that
+      time, over yonder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who
+      never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know which
+      is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left
+      hand from their right; and others, again, who say&mdash;or shout&mdash;that
+      all men are created equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been done, Mr. Cartoner&mdash;that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+      that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
+      hoodwinked, tricked&mdash;same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do
+      you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
+      turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
+      always kept my hands&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner&mdash;you that has known me ten
+      years and more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll say that for you,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did me!&rdquo; cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+      down on the table, &ldquo;with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+      post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said he
+      was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government stuff.
+      And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government official. It
+      was&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
+      up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bombs!&rdquo; he concluded&mdash;&ldquo;bombs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
+      set down here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know me and you know the <i>Minnie</i>, Mr. Cartoner!&rdquo; continued the
+      angry sailor. &ldquo;She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
+      and&mdash;well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
+      man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
+      material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me out,
+      and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean stuff
+      up to now&mdash;plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the other.
+      Always honest&mdash;revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But bombs&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no place
+      on a polite page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,&rdquo; he
+      concluded. &ldquo;That is what I have got to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know the Seemannshaus there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+      docks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the place,&rdquo; said Captain Cable. &ldquo;Well, one night I was up there,
+      on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
+      day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
+      up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
+      go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons. You
+      can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way. A man
+      comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a voyage
+      when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and we
+      couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect, with
+      hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. He
+      remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'&mdash;well,
+      to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told
+      me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf.
+      Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading
+      gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have
+      known at the time. He had a man with him&mdash;forwarding agent, he called
+      him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke German, and the other
+      man translated as we went along. I couldn't rightly see the other man's
+      face. Little, dark man&mdash;with a queer, soft voice, like a woman
+      wheedlin'! Too d&mdash;d innocent, and I ought to have known it. Don't you
+      ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a match?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+      always did&mdash;this unvarnished gentleman from the sea&mdash;and asked
+      for what he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
+      an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside of
+      the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want it.
+      And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man said,
+      and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed. We went
+      into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases broke
+      adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it. Then I saw
+      that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in wadding so as to
+      save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides, no government sends
+      loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the moment I did not think
+      much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a new crew. There were
+      other things to think about. And, I tell you, when I got to port, a chap
+      with gold lace on him came aboard and took the stuff away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
+      after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what had
+      brought these past events back to his recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge,&rdquo; said Captain Cable,
+      &ldquo;because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted square
+      by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing, though, I
+      sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit of
+      information&mdash;you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
+      and smoke it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+      conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Safternoon,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I went to see some people about a little job
+      for the <i>Minnie</i>. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
+      forget to come down and see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see her,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Go on with your story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+      offer me. Foreigners&mdash;every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+      politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
+      been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that got
+      me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I. And then
+      I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark night.
+      'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting quiet all
+      the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken the job at
+      any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten, and yet never
+      thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still going on, up
+      jumps a man&mdash;the only man I knew there&mdash;name beginning with a K&mdash;don't
+      quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that that room was
+      no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the man, if I could
+      remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head&mdash;quarter-deck
+      fashion&mdash;as if he was a king or a Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and
+      walks out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. But blessed if I knew
+      what it was all about. 'Who's that man!' I asks when we were in the
+      street. And the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he
+      rubs out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'That's who that is,'
+      he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the soft
+      pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and after
+      a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes for
+      eternity were exceedingly small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too much for me,&rdquo; he said, after a pause. &ldquo;You that deal in
+      politics and the like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other man's name is Kosmaroff,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it&mdash;a Russian,&rdquo; answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking
+      at the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years.
+      He carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of a
+      life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the outward
+      signs of man and nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It beats me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I've told you all I can&mdash;all, perhaps,
+      that you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two
+      together already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it.
+      It makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the <i>Minnie's</i>
+      hatches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me uneasy, too,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Wait a minute till I put on
+      another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching the
+      small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to a swarree?&rdquo; asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I shall
+      find him, as you say, at a soiree,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+      having dashed up from the club stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By-the-way,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I shall not be able to come down and see the <i>Minnie</i>
+      this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going foreign?&rdquo; asked the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am going abroad again,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, and there was a sudden
+      ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of action
+      who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE SPRING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+      lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither so
+      hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one, and
+      Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady would
+      select to pass the cold months in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have my orders,&rdquo; said Mangles, rather grimly, &ldquo;and I must stay here
+      till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
+      Nice if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason or
+      another&mdash;reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+      conversation with her aunt&mdash;the ladies lingered on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The place is dull for you,&rdquo; said Mangles, &ldquo;now that Cartoner seems to
+      have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
+      any circle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
+      not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+      Atlantic,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I always found you with your heads close together
+      whenever I came on deck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think we sparkled much,&rdquo; said Joseph, with his under lip well
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very kind of Uncle Joseph,&rdquo; said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+      Mangles, &ldquo;to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would be
+      lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could we?
+      You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should not
+      enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant of;
+      and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
+      particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
+      that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came forward
+      with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for others which
+      all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+      impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+      little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for a
+      brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which
+      Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate
+      coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski
+      Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow; and
+      as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.
+      Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her
+      steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked by ice
+      now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring, though
+      navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he came&mdash;had
+      gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving only the
+      memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had raised her.
+      Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine heart, an
+      unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff, any more than
+      she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she should, in
+      consequence, give much thought to them both. There was, she felt,
+      something in both alike which she had not got at, and she naturally wanted
+      to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart drew her attention
+      to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She might be able to
+      alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no doubt, wanted to stir it
+      up, as it were, and see what the result would be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+      understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
+      people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
+      no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
+      these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
+      uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed in
+      his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself&mdash;and, no
+      doubt, found herself quite easy to convince&mdash;as other people do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
+      was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
+      right&mdash;whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she
+      could not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
+      in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
+      supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found out
+      her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now at
+      Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked much
+      about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a different thing.
+      He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless information. When
+      in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies, and went so far as to
+      take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To Netty he showed a hundred
+      attentions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot understand,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;why everybody is so kind to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is because you are so kind to everybody,&rdquo; he answered, with that air
+      of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
+      Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand Mr. Deulin,&rdquo; said Netty to her uncle one day. &ldquo;Why
+      does he stay here? What is he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+      deepest tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he would not tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Cartoner,&rdquo; continued Netty, &ldquo;I understood he was coming back, but
+      he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult to get
+      information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course, who
+      comes and who goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Course not,&rdquo; said Mangles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+      Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you wonder that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong. Mr.
+      Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so odd and
+      quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see them exchange
+      glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I distrust the
+      quietness of the people, and&mdash;uncle&mdash;Mr. Deulin's gayety&mdash;I
+      distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and
+      leave you here alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is a dull hole,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that is why I want you to go away.
+      It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a conquered
+      country before. All conquered countries are like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he never
+      again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But Netty's
+      curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would answer no
+      question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did Cartoner stay
+      away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the Bukaty Palace. She
+      made an excuse in some illustrated English and American magazines which
+      might interest the Princess Wanda. But there was no one at home. She
+      understood from the servant, who spoke a little German, that they had gone
+      to their country house, a few miles from Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather
+      had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip
+      of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who
+      held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with a sort
+      of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really broken, or if
+      this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first days in March&mdash;a
+      month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long sleep, and men pull
+      themselves together to new endeavor. The majority of great events in the
+      world's history have taken place in the spring months. Is not the Ides of
+      March written large in the story of this planet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came to
+      her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English make,
+      which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare, like the
+      face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was gay and
+      light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his admiration
+      for Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is three days,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;since I have seen you. And it seems like
+      three years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+      Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days
+      had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My uncle has been pressing us to go away,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;to the south of
+      France, to Nice, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Netty, after a pause, &ldquo;you see for yourself&mdash;we have
+      not gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a very selfish hope&mdash;but I hope you will stay,&rdquo; said Prince
+      Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure
+      caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is not
+      usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She looked,
+      besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at that
+      moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was only
+      natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew Wanda
+      to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which is the
+      difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was good,
+      and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and her was
+      to be treated with scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if at any time there is any reason why you
+      cannot stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should there be any reason&mdash;&rdquo; she began, and a quick
+      movement that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be
+      within hearing, made her stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know,&rdquo; she
+      said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her
+      horribly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+      persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better left
+      to men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost missed,&rdquo; he said gayly, &ldquo;an excellent opportunity of holding my
+      tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest
+      against being told anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only&mdash;be careful,&rdquo; she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course,
+      that brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful,
+      if it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake.
+      And at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But he
+      did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who
+      persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they will
+      vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be cowards. And
+      when the danger is there, and the woman is not&mdash;their vow is writ in
+      water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+      tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears
+      to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The
+      gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look
+      delicate and soft as a peach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not hear you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I will not. I will not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to hear
+      me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be an
+      outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go
+      well, and then I should be in a very different position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or, perhaps,
+      she was only putting together recollections which had all been thought out
+      before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She had only been in
+      Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet. But there were
+      terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty, that greatest of
+      all drawbacks, was the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you nothing now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But soon, before the summer, there
+      may be great changes in Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth
+      or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not
+      even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you mean,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;when you said 'Be careful'? What did you
+      mean&mdash;tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+      honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+      reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken her
+      hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her back.
+      She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear nervous
+      often rise to the occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know what I meant,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I do not know. You must not ask
+      me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and do
+      not ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a Bukaty
+      to be generous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I will ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SACRIFICE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things,
+      like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed
+      warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better
+      than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the thaw
+      comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field a
+      pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who can
+      set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely associated
+      in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green things, is
+      in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to drain off the
+      flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in these countries,
+      where men and women are booted to the knee, and every third house displays
+      the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left them, was
+      insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the smallest, used
+      once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for it stood in the
+      midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for it had been built in
+      the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and parvenu king built
+      himself the house in the valley of the Vistula, where he saw all his
+      greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim solitude which is the
+      inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the French architect is to be
+      detected even in this farm; for Poland, more frankly and consciously than
+      the rest of the world, drew all her inspiration and her art from France.
+      Did not France once send her a king? Was not Sobieski's wife a
+      Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that great fighter with her little
+      finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If ever a Frenchman was
+      artificially made from other racial materials, he was the last king of
+      Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a plain,
+      square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt had been made
+      at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been built in the
+      garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on the lawn, which
+      was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a meadow. The cows had
+      polished the sun-dial with their rough sides, while the passage of cold
+      winters and wet springs had left the plaster ornamentation mossy and
+      broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year. They
+      usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were needed.
+      The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and weaker in his
+      children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only remembered one.
+      The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his duty to care for
+      his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power the distress which
+      came upon them annually with the regularity of the recurring seasons. With
+      a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy taxation, and a standing bill
+      at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the village inn kept by another,
+      these peasants never had any money. And so far as human foresight can
+      perceive, there seems to be no reason why they ever should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince
+      seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world to
+      help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And, though
+      he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and not his
+      equals&mdash;as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only
+      succeeded in proving the contrary&mdash;he cared for their bodies as he
+      would have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry,
+      and he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could
+      not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying
+      his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers
+      who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine and
+      comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful nurse
+      could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the roof of
+      the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed upon the
+      front lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his knees,
+      the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house to house,
+      giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical advice,
+      listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor crops, of bad
+      seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his great laugh and
+      some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these Poles, through it
+      all. &ldquo;Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants,&rdquo; said Napoleon, that keenest
+      searcher of the human heart, who knew them a hundred years ago when their
+      troubles were comparatively fresh. And it is an odd thing that adversity
+      rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often strengthens it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough
+      work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her
+      father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being&mdash;like him, she was
+      intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They
+      liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round
+      their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather, and
+      longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the restless
+      spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who had stirred
+      all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow lay
+      thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines. In the
+      stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike the only
+      sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking beneath its
+      burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and forest for some
+      weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This frost cannot last,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;The spring must come soon, and
+      then we shall have to go back to the world and its business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief frost
+      was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was essentially
+      of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went the spirit of
+      unrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on
+      foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have had nothing to eat,&rdquo; said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+      weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity; a
+      man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship. He
+      had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough
+      sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots nearly
+      to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his eyebrows.
+      He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped his face from
+      time to time as the ice melted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+      know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of the
+      house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not go hungry from this house,&rdquo; said the prince, with his rather
+      fierce laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will get you what you want,&rdquo; said Wanda, lighting a candle. &ldquo;There are
+      no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only the
+      farmer and his wife&mdash;and my maid, who is English, and silent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+      waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the
+      homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the
+      manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all
+      societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at any
+      academy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you have finished,&rdquo; said Wanda, &ldquo;you can talk of your affairs. I
+      shall leave you to yourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there is not much to say,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I have done no good
+      on my journey. Things make no progress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expect too much,&rdquo; said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass
+      of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. &ldquo;You expect the
+      world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember
+      that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never
+      make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward for five
+      years, and then falling through, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+      bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+      table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had
+      never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry&mdash;not, as many do,
+      to pass the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In fact, it
+      is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her
+      also. But, please, do not stand,&rdquo; he added, turning to her. &ldquo;I have all I
+      want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king&mdash;or a
+      beggar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;about that Englishman, Cartoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on Kosmaroff's
+      sudden appearance at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, in a steady voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows more than it is safe to know&mdash;safe for us&mdash;or for
+      himself. One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a
+      pity, perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects
+      the lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the
+      life of one. This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate
+      concern in it&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have also no power,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;over those whose affair it is&mdash;you
+      understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the attitude
+      of the European powers, our&mdash;well, I suppose I may say&mdash;our
+      foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to us&mdash;they
+      were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words&mdash;and who are our
+      enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the foreign powers
+      know. It seems they must know something. It seems that Cartoner&mdash;knows
+      everything. So it is reported in Cracow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Cracow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;they are all words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are certain men, it appears,&rdquo; continued Kosmaroff, &ldquo;in the service
+      of the governments&mdash;in one service it is called 'foreign affairs,' in
+      another the 'secret service'&mdash;whose mission it is to find themselves
+      where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They are, in jest,
+      called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would conclude. And the
+      Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore, the powers know
+      something. At Cracow, it is said&mdash;I ask your pardon for repeating it&mdash;that
+      they know, and that Cartoner knows what he knows&mdash;through the
+      Bukatys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak. Wanda,
+      who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was looking at
+      Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not taken by
+      surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and had warned
+      her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment, a thrill of
+      pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than any she had
+      had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff spoke made her
+      his friend for the rest of her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a
+      brave man. It happens that I know that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He knows as well as I
+      do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left London
+      I heard&mdash;for we have friends everywhere&mdash;that he had got his
+      passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back, so
+      you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these
+      suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control
+      over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin
+      had betrayed anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I or Martin would be assassinated,&rdquo; said the prince with his loud laugh.
+      &ldquo;I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the methods of
+      the sixties&mdash;suspicion and assassination. It has always been the ruin
+      of Poland&mdash;that method.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have no feelings with regard to this man?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff,
+      sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong glance, as
+      if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him untouched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever,&rdquo; answered the prince. &ldquo;He is a mere passing acquaintance.
+      He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him&mdash;you can tell your
+      friends&mdash;it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that
+      have been made for Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what they are,&rdquo; broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. &ldquo;They see a
+      mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with Cartoner.
+      Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to have called
+      on you at your hotel in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend,&rdquo; said the
+      prince, &ldquo;and I tell you, he shall be dropped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is more than that,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, &ldquo;that Martin and I
+      are put upon our good behavior&mdash;that our lives are safe only so long
+      as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having
+      any communication with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kosmaroff was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was clear
+      that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one hope. He
+      looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and had
+      satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this,&rdquo; he said, after a silence, &ldquo;because no one else dared to
+      tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you have
+      done&mdash;all that you are ready to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes. Everything must be done for Poland,&rdquo; said the prince,
+      suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's life
+      had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the princess says the same?&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, rising also, and raising
+      her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I say the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE PINE-WOODS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man, and
+      covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
+      prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which had
+      once owned his ancestor as lord and master&mdash;in those days when a
+      noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim for
+      an injured sheep to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a noble,
+      he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen, perhaps, enough
+      in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him that women&mdash;and
+      even Polish women&mdash;should take no part in politics. He believed in a
+      wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is better not to know.
+      He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the next morning, and Wanda
+      asked no questions. She had not slept until nearly morning, and had heard
+      her father bolt the doors after the departure of the ex-Cossack. She had
+      heard Kosmaroff's light and quick step on the frozen snow as he started on
+      his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
+      the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was bright
+      and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow from
+      melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous evening,
+      and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was young and
+      strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that had always been
+      &ldquo;game,&rdquo; that had always faced the world with unflinching eyes, and had
+      never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had lived a life of
+      hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and witnessed the ruin
+      or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could laugh with the merry,
+      while with the mourner it was his habit to purse up his lips beneath the
+      grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words, not of condolence, but of
+      stimulation to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt, to
+      carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified fight
+      against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have a grievance,&rdquo; he always said to those who brought their tales
+      of woe to his ears, &ldquo;air it as much as you like, but speak up, and do not
+      whine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority of
+      grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of Poland,
+      and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears there is no
+      cure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall make a long round to-day,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when he was in the
+      saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots covering
+      his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old face looking
+      out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. &ldquo;It may be the last time this
+      winter. The spring must come soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he went away at an easy canter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest farm,
+      had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her father's
+      departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the pine-woods. The
+      trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the time of thaw, when
+      the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere, gains in weight and
+      breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as beneath the tread of
+      some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace the trees which in the
+      colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing their burden without
+      complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence like
+      that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living in the
+      twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a stealthy habit&mdash;the
+      smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the beasts of prey ever
+      alert for their natural enemy&mdash;man. The birds kept for the most part
+      to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the crops and the few, far
+      cottages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy forest-paths
+      were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her. In the nursery
+      she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never seen them. They
+      might be near or far; they might be watching through the avenues of
+      straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it had been the delight
+      of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the footprints of the wolves&mdash;near
+      the house, in the garden, right up to the nursery window. They had
+      gradually acquired the indifference of the peasants who work in the
+      fields, or the woodmen at their labors amid the trees, who are aware that
+      the silent, stealthy eyes are watching them, and work on without fear. The
+      prince had taught the children fearlessness, or, perhaps, it was in their
+      blood, and needed no education. He had taught them to look upon the beasts
+      of the forests not as enemies, but as quiet, watching friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning her
+      head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the peasants
+      were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all events, the Bukatys
+      were free to come and go. In cities they were watched, their footsteps
+      dogged by human wolves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and of
+      Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right angles
+      to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give passage to the
+      narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the woodman's cottage, and so
+      flat is the face of the earth that the distant trees are like the masts of
+      ships half-hidden by the curve of the world. It seems as if one could walk
+      on and on forever, or drop from hunger and fatigue and lie unheeded for
+      years in some forgotten corner. In the better-kept forests the paths are
+      staked and numbered, or else it would be impossible to know the way amid
+      such millions of trees&mdash;all alike, all of the same height. But the
+      prince was too poor to vie with the wealthy land-owners of Silesia, and
+      his forests were ill-kept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+      passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a tree
+      had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the open
+      space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was taken
+      by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow behind her.
+      She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason had returned
+      home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed her. But it was not
+      the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she had quite realized that it was he,
+      he was on his feet leading his horse towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+      inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to them a
+      few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are sometimes
+      vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments stolen from
+      heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to a few favored
+      ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the large majority of
+      mankind, never at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you come?&rdquo; asked Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see you,&rdquo; replied this man of few words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away all
+      her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical strength, he
+      had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and carried it easily. For
+      he always seemed to know how to meet every emergency and face every
+      trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief that he was not
+      in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break had he been
+      anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers that surrounded
+      them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand reasons why they should
+      not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood between them. But it was
+      only for a moment&mdash;a moment borrowed from eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that the only reason?&rdquo; she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+      that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their real
+      world at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do not
+      know&mdash;&rdquo; And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+      such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left to
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he answered with a short laugh. &ldquo;I know. I am going away
+      to-night&mdash;to St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the fears
+      that she had half expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad.&rdquo; She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile. &ldquo;I
+      am so glad you are going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new anxiety,
+      which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather know that you were safe in England,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;even if I
+      were never to see you again. But,&rdquo; and she looked up at him with a sort of
+      pride in her eyes&mdash;that long-drawn pride of race which is strong to
+      endure&mdash;&ldquo;but you must never be hampered by a thought of me. I want
+      you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake your head. All
+      men say the same of you&mdash;they are afraid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I am not,&rdquo; she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness was real
+      enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the multitude. It
+      lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the eager world which,
+      presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never recognizes it, but
+      continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches, noise and laughter,
+      even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind to
+      them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such moments
+      fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be expressed on
+      paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+      snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+      unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid of
+      selfishness, and they looked for happiness&mdash;not in an immediate
+      gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+      hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and bridge
+      the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword. Loyalty to
+      self, to duty, and to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that should
+      stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore duty, which
+      is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres, Foresight,
+      Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of that madness, a
+      brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her lover should be wise,
+      should be careful for the future, should take her life into his hands with
+      a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right to do so&mdash;a right, not
+      to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered the privilege of that
+      which is called a great passion and admired as such&mdash;but a right to
+      shape, guard, and keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps, made
+      him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to consider the
+      feelings of others and to place them before his own, which, of course, is
+      quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which was his reading of Love,
+      and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March morning and pieced
+      together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive way, seemed to
+      content her. She seemed to gather from it that he loved her precisely as
+      she wished to be loved, and that, come what might, she had already enough
+      to make her life happier than the lives of most women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the spring
+      was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which they could
+      not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had become possessed
+      at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff. It touched those
+      things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not from Wanda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that
+      they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not go any nearer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are sure no one saw you when
+      you came?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For he
+      had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+      footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+      very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+      Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
+      again unobserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he knew&mdash;indeed, Wanda had told him&mdash;the dangers that
+      surrounded him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater
+      for Martin and the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only what you foresaw,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;when&mdash;when we first
+      understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is worse than I foresaw,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in Poland
+      when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They could not
+      even write to each other while Wanda should be within the circle of the
+      Russian postal service. There was but the one link between them&mdash;Paul
+      Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin had brought
+      about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met Cartoner at
+      Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into the streets.
+      Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St. Petersburg
+      train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and go for a ride
+      into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in town, but at their
+      country house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see them,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;A man living on a volcano may surely play
+      with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
+      Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
+      catastrophe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in her
+      veins&mdash;that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+      hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity for
+      all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
+      waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
+      Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
+      solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of Poland,
+      for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees most of
+      the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years after Wanda
+      and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A BY-WAY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
+      the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
+      of the cemetery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely away
+      from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his horse with
+      a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those days ten years
+      earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this white-haired dandy was
+      a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful business of killing Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+      ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the
+      direct way to St. Petersburg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hired a horse and rode out to meet you,&rdquo; he said, gayly&mdash;he was
+      singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the streets&mdash;and
+      he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine. He is not a
+      nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+      Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the mean time,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What
+      are we to do? It is one o'clock&mdash;and I have the inside of a
+      Frenchman. We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a
+      new republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so
+      quickly that the world stands breathless&mdash;but we always breakfast
+      before mid-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+      which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last
+      trump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not show
+      mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got accustomed
+      to me there. They think I am a harmless old man&mdash;a dentist, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+      &ldquo;I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a close
+      cab with the blinds down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there were
+      matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a monstrosity going to a fair,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I shall go with you. I
+      will even lunch with you at the station&mdash;a station steak and a beery
+      table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and those
+      who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished audience
+      like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am with you.
+      But let us be quick&mdash;and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?&rdquo; he asked,
+      finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the lower
+      parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked the
+      higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler sex in dealing with
+      certain delicate matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I only saw the princess,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said Deulin, at length, gravely, &ldquo;if that happens which you
+      expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for&mdash;I shall seek
+      out Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty
+      or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty
+      before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that
+      confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things are
+      stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets&mdash;when friends and
+      foes are seeking each other in vain&mdash;you need not seek me or think
+      about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember
+      that. I shall have eloped&mdash;with Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bukaty and I,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;do not talk of these things
+      together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when the
+      first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you have
+      only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are&mdash;and I
+      will tell you where&mdash;we are. We are old birds at this sport&mdash;you
+      and I&mdash;and we know how to take care of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved
+      streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once
+      occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the
+      Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near a
+      market-place, and within hearing of the chink of small coin. In the cities
+      of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier erected
+      between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a narrow
+      street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different hopes,
+      aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and neighbors
+      are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel stood between
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe from
+      recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for the men
+      hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen thought of
+      gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely looked in
+      order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles&mdash;as if there
+      were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no beyond; nothing
+      but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which has lasted
+      nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out, seems to gain
+      in strength as the world grows older.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go by the back ways,&rdquo; said Cartoner, &ldquo;and need never see any of
+      our world in Warsaw at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in an
+      atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little used for
+      wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live is of so retail
+      a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in mysterious cloth
+      bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were obliged to go slowly
+      through the groups, who never raised their heads, or seemed to speak above
+      a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they talk of&mdash;what do they think&mdash;all day?&rdquo; said
+      Cartoner. And, indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of
+      surreptitiousness. Even the children are sad, and stand about in
+      melancholy solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would sooner be a dog,&rdquo; answered Deulin, with a shake of the shoulders,
+      as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. &ldquo;Sooner a dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+      take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed
+      men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode
+      in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor
+      and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to
+      make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at
+      some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes
+      as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the
+      case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive&mdash;the
+      little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common
+      officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform
+      unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand,
+      the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better
+      regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention of
+      themselves in the background. But these well-intentioned efforts were of
+      small avail; for racial things are stronger than human endeavor or the
+      careful foresight of statesmen. Here in Warsaw the Muscovite, the Pole,
+      the Jew&mdash;herding together in the same streets, under the same roof,
+      obedient to one law, acknowledging one sovereign&mdash;were watching each
+      other, hating each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each
+      foot-passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired
+      droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath
+      the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn. On
+      the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense of
+      looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the
+      Russian-speaking police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not mind them,&rdquo; said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+      booking-office. &ldquo;It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are doing no
+      harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our passports hold
+      out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For they have been through
+      my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe&mdash;I know when my things
+      have been touched&mdash;they or some one else. Perhaps Kosmaroff; who
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings as
+      only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+      musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord half
+      by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper meaning. He
+      ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied him on the
+      criminal paucity of his menu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like the
+      smell of goat. So give us beef&mdash;your railway beef, which has
+      travelled so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed and
+      cut up by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly failed
+      as a stoker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by a
+      doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+      underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+      Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew him so
+      well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his indifference.
+      While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to time at his
+      companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with a hundred minute
+      instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been here
+      once before,&rdquo; answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+      Paris,&rdquo; said Deulin. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I learned Polish when I was young&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+      objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot from
+      whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with large,
+      deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if that
+      time is ill-spent,&rdquo; he said, airily. &ldquo;That is why the virtuous are such
+      poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the others&mdash;'nous
+      autres'&mdash;it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal column to
+      our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age when virtue is
+      almost a necessity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; he said, sharply, &ldquo;you are devilish absent-minded. It is a
+      bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on your mind.
+      And having nothing on its own mind&mdash;or no mind to have anything on&mdash;it
+      hates you for your airs of superiority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table in
+      front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He tasted the
+      vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders with an air or
+      reconciliation to the inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a young&mdash;a very young diplomatist&mdash;an old scoundrel
+      in gold spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to
+      appear content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that rule
+      to this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not hurt
+      you. It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into the
+      steady, meditating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you assume a reserve which one might think
+      unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not think
+      worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate, that&mdash;well&mdash;there
+      is nothing left but silence. And silence is sometimes dangerous. Not as
+      dangerous as speech, I allow&mdash;but dangerous, nevertheless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two schools
+      went out to meet each other&mdash;the old school of diplomacy, all words;
+      the new, all silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said the Frenchman. &ldquo;I once knew a man into whose care was given
+      the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater responsibility,
+      by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation, even of one of the two
+      greatest nations in the world. And that is a care which you and I have had
+      upon our shoulders for a brief hour here and there. It was the old story;
+      for it was the happiness of a woman. God knows the man meant well! But he
+      bungled it. Bon Dieu&mdash;how he bungled it! He said too little. Ever
+      since he has talked too much. She was a Polish woman, by-the-way, and that
+      has left a tenderness, nay, a raw place, in my heart, which smarts at the
+      sound of a Polish word. For I was the man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; asked Cartoner, &ldquo;what do you want to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; answered the other, quick as thought. &ldquo;I only tell you the
+      story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said that has
+      not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a woman&mdash;even
+      the strongest&mdash;may not be able to bear such a strain as you can
+      bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+      attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had set
+      before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover with a
+      flourish full of promise&mdash;&ldquo;you know that I would give into your care
+      unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune, or&mdash;well&mdash;a
+      daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make a mistake. And
+      if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive you&mdash;never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?&rdquo; he asked, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do in
+      Warsaw,&rdquo; replied Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not another word&mdash;they cost you so much, a few words&mdash;I
+      understand perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+      cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake&mdash;I
+      tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE QUIET CITY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He had
+      chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least tolerant of
+      advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he hated to make a
+      change, he had in one or two instances parted with old and trusted
+      servants&mdash;friends of his boyhood&mdash;rather than forgo one item of
+      his policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of their long
+      friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way of thinking,
+      for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not agree with you, but I will serve you,&rdquo; had answered one of
+      these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+      needed, accepted such service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by looking
+      down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and, mingling there
+      on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man or the clever man&mdash;or
+      that rare being, the man who is both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not. Alexander
+      II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in a position to
+      confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as it were, a
+      ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than a board of
+      directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely the men he
+      wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw them up. How,
+      otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual thing. He looked
+      round among his relations, and, failing them, the friends of his youth.
+      For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the whole world to choose from,
+      has no larger a choice than any bourgeois looking round his own small
+      world for a satisfactory executor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his first
+      task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down to the
+      upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a useless war
+      in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+      liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with
+      his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand aloof
+      on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds as still
+      uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was untenable.
+      &ldquo;Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away,&rdquo; his advisers told
+      him. &ldquo;With the serf she cannot endure,&rdquo; he answered And twenty-two
+      millions of men were set free. In this act he stood almost alone; for
+      hardly a single minister was with him heart and soul, though many obeyed
+      him loyally enough against their own convictions. Many honestly thought
+      that this must be the end of the Russian Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their point
+      of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while counsel from
+      afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things from another
+      stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the human
+      race, men of different breed and color, of the three great contending
+      religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a nervous,
+      impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down with the weight
+      of his great responsibility. His father died in his arms, broken-hearted,
+      bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies of five European nations,
+      hated of all the world, despised of all mankind. Even to-day there is a
+      sinister sound in the very name of Russian. Men turn to look twice at one
+      who comes from that stupendous empire. It is said that an hereditary
+      melancholy broods beneath the weightiest earthly crown. History tells that
+      none wearing it has ever reached a hale old age. Soldiers still hearty,
+      still wearing the sword they have carried through half a dozen campaigns,
+      bow to-day in the Winter Palace before their sovereign, having taken the
+      oath of allegiance to four successive Czars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+      great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to find
+      that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon to prove
+      beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the surface of a
+      vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably spring up wheat or
+      tares&mdash;a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific growth of evil. He
+      made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of his people. With a
+      stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to despotic rule. Yet he
+      hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This tall, pale, gentle,
+      determined man was a man of courage. When the time came he faced the
+      consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want of me?&rdquo; he asked, the very moment after he had been
+      saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+      giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and thoughtful
+      after each attempt upon his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening&mdash;that
+      the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in history
+      that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was full of
+      Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the Emperor
+      realized that he must fight&mdash;and fight alone, for no nation in Europe
+      would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the veil of
+      ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of civilization. They
+      had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was no holding them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world was
+      in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to his own
+      internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European difficulties.
+      England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration of neutrality,
+      was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the dog waiting on the
+      threshold, was ready to side with the winner&mdash;for a consideration. No
+      wonder this man was always weary. It is said that all through his reign he
+      received and despatched telegrams at any hour of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+      liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There are
+      many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and look
+      twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with one hand
+      while grasping with the other that which is really the property of their
+      neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+      cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: &ldquo;Gentlemen, let us have no
+      more dreams.&rdquo; Eleven years later he reminded an influential deputation of
+      Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words, commending the
+      caution to their attention again. He paid frequent visits to Warsaw on one
+      excuse or another. This dreamer would have no dreaming in his dominion.
+      This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard. The chief interest in the
+      study of a human life lies around the inexplicable. If we were quite
+      consistent we should be entirely dull. No one knows why this liberal
+      autocrat was mean to Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
+      travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found as
+      he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of the
+      people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few years
+      earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own strength.
+      They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because they had been
+      commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had followed with
+      understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the signing of the
+      treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were men, and no longer
+      driven beasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long northern
+      twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was reflected on
+      the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of the Admiralty
+      shot up into a cloudless sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the streets
+      through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost deserted. It
+      was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the drive in the
+      Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in another quarter of
+      the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most spacious capital in the
+      world, where there is more room than the inhabitants can occupy, where the
+      houses are too large and the streets too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of
+      course, frozen, and its broken surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while
+      the snow was spotted with rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into
+      numberless paths and crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It
+      had no history yet. The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow.
+      All St. Petersburg is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest
+      city in the world, excepting Venice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The river
+      showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were still in
+      use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of the city
+      which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and leading out
+      of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets where quiet
+      people live&mdash;lawyers and merchants, professors at the university or
+      at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges facing the river and
+      looking across it towards the English Quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+      proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
+      house like any other in the street&mdash;like any other in any other
+      street. For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
+      world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and there
+      by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter and St.
+      Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St. Isaac's&mdash;the
+      largest cathedral in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+      door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His was
+      a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this time,
+      when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave the
+      dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he raised
+      his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman asked for
+      was within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the second floor. You will remember the door,&rdquo; he said, over his
+      shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the house,
+      leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by a
+      clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured recognition
+      when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the way along a narrow
+      passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain bareness of wall and
+      floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened the door of a room and
+      stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
+      brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He was in
+      the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he stood up,
+      pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got other
+      work to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am at the same work. And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see,&rdquo; replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
+      foot and seating himself again before the fire. &ldquo;I am here still, where
+      you left me&rdquo;&mdash;he paused to make a brief calculation&mdash;&ldquo;five years
+      ago. I stayed here all through the war&mdash;all through the Berlin
+      Congress, when it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But I
+      stayed. Tallow! It does not sound heroic, but the world must have its
+      tallow. And there is a simplicity about commerce, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a short laugh&mdash;the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+      failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had a
+      ring of other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you put me up?&rdquo; asked Cartoner. &ldquo;Only for a few days, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms,&rdquo; replied the
+      other, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each other
+      had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has lasted
+      since childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gad!&rdquo; exclaimed the other, &ldquo;we are in a queer way. I went to the opera
+      the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and the house
+      was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his sleigh now, so
+      that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get him&mdash;they'll
+      get him! And he knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fools!&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are worse than fools,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;The man is down, and
+      they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints. His
+      policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia. He is
+      the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he
+      abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this earth,
+      Cartoner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, &ldquo;students who cannot learn&mdash;workmen
+      who will not work&mdash;women whom no one will marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It makes
+      one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, &ldquo;I have had nothing to eat since breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all you have to tell me about yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PAYMENT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had been
+      arrested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the beginning of the end,&rdquo; men said. &ldquo;They will now catch the
+      others. The new reign of terror is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jeliaboff himself&mdash;a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+      chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff Station&mdash;said
+      that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an arrested criminal,
+      was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+      Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+      walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+      approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in the
+      secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics no
+      longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+      stimulated emotion of the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+      persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty, had
+      studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a glimpse of
+      him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his habits and his
+      daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If it was known that he
+      would pass through a certain street, he was now allowed a monopoly of that
+      thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the Winter Palace than he could help.
+      If the Czar was seen to approach, men hurried in the opposite direction;
+      women called their children to them. He was a leper among his own people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not go to the opera to-morrow,&rdquo; one lady would say to another. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that the Czar is to be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia,&rdquo; men said to one another; &ldquo;the
+      street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski Prospect; it is
+      honeycombed by mines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others shrink
+      from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his cloak. But
+      some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties he remained
+      faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully recognized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the world
+      knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a cloudless
+      sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their winter covering of
+      snow. The houses always look too large for their inmates, the streets too
+      wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg was planned on too large a
+      scale by the man who did everything largely, and made his window looking
+      out upon Europe a bigger window than the coldness of his home would allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+      spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the hands of
+      Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world, proving even to
+      the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had at heart the advance
+      of Russia&mdash;the greater liberty of his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his usual
+      visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her palace at
+      two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen Cossacks. His
+      officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known which way he would
+      take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He knew the streets as
+      thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had always walked in them
+      unattended, unheeded, and unknown&mdash;had always mixed with his
+      subjects. This was no French monarch living in an earthly heaven above his
+      people. He knew&mdash;always had known&mdash;what men said to each other
+      in the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+      Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+      Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies. The
+      road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a quiet enough
+      thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across the frozen canal.
+      The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the snow was old and
+      soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there were gardens between
+      the road and the waterways, but most of its length was bounded by a low
+      wall and a railing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St. Petersburg
+      are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other city in the world.
+      A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement, hurrying along and
+      whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of delivery. He hardly glanced
+      at the carriage that sped past him. Perhaps he saw a man looking over the
+      low wall at the approach of the cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the bomb thrown
+      and heard the deafening report. Though none can say what he heard or saw
+      at that minute, for he was dead the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+      horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The Czar
+      stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow. He
+      stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
+      afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
+      anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack&mdash;at the dead baker-boy.
+      The pavement and the road were strewn with wounded&mdash;some lying quite
+      still, others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs.
+      It was very cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+      captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been weaker,
+      he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went towards
+      him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of those few
+      moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the terror of it
+      seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part in this
+      tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were walking in
+      their sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!&rdquo; cried more than one
+      voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard this
+      strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in the
+      lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound to the
+      heights of immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a crowd
+      of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went towards
+      the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of the
+      shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+      hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the Czar.
+      He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to the
+      canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along it
+      towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed son of the
+      serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones between them&mdash;at
+      the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his slavery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+      white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt took
+      note of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very stones
+      of the pavement were displaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One leg
+      was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful. He
+      uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the end&mdash;the payment. He discharged his debt without a
+      murmur. He had done the right&mdash;against the counsel of the wise,
+      against his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his
+      father's teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He
+      had done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of
+      Russia. And this was the payment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other&mdash;the man who had thrown the bomb&mdash;was already dead.
+      The terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white
+      smoke, and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great
+      Assize. It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not
+      stammer in the presence of his Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was left
+      to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could to
+      succor him&mdash;though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+      beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+      literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+      brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the first
+      explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the dying man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+      again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
+      The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
+      hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures&mdash;the
+      instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
+      share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+      could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+      killer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the second
+      explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events brought
+      about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to be
+      watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he took
+      one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way from the
+      crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the slow accuracy
+      that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information obtained from one
+      source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain Cable, in St.
+      Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's opportunity. A
+      sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of the evil, not in
+      Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men called his luck
+      had brought him within sound of the first explosion by the side of the
+      Catherine Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+      hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the zone,
+      as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The driver
+      was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face. Here was
+      a man who had heard nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+      heavy leather apron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The telegraph office,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+      urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about their
+      ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking Sunday
+      exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
+      his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
+      made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
+      knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
+      great only when we look back at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the streets
+      of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by mistake or
+      on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand things to be
+      remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right word, or the word
+      that came nearest to the emergency of this moment? Could he telegraph that
+      the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him living, but assuredly
+      feeling his way across the last frontier? The Czar must assuredly be dead
+      before a telegram despatched now could reach England. It was a risk. But
+      Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to combine with an infinite
+      patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at a given moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+      behind their caging&mdash;stiff and formal within their semi-military
+      uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+      inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
+      could be despatched from Russia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
+      Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to London&mdash;a
+      single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer. The
+      first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second were
+      not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He walked
+      slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute there,
+      he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any one wish
+      to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried up the
+      steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and eyes in
+      which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by persistently
+      turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was allowed to enter,
+      he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he passed, which Captain
+      Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The two men looked at each
+      other in the twilight between the doors. Each knew that the other knew.
+      Then the little man passed in. The front of his black coat had a white
+      stain upon it, as if he had been holding a loaf of bread under his arm.
+      Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it afterwards, when he learned that
+      the bombs which seem to have been sown broadcast in the streets of St.
+      Petersburg that day were painted white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+      crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+      mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+      earthly throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LOVE-LETTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+      Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the snow
+      had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the garden
+      walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of the small
+      branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of spring were
+      assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
+      It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
+      Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially, perhaps,
+      for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of the world to
+      deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater pleasure of the
+      other half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
+      to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
+      experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
+      failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
+      an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
+      sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to what
+      she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
+      different from other men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange interview
+      with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a conviction that he
+      had merely to come again, and he would regain at once the place he had so
+      suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She knew that he was in the
+      background of her mind, as it were, and might come forward at any moment.
+      She often walked down the Bednarska to the river, and displayed much
+      interest in the breaking up of the ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
+      It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young man
+      dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that there was
+      really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked a mystery. Of
+      course it was most interesting that he should be a prince. Even Aunt
+      Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after speaking of
+      the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It was a great
+      pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh when she
+      thought of their poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
+      Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough when
+      he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in
+      the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had
+      to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so
+      long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually resolved themselves
+      into something very much like an understanding, if not a distinct
+      appointment. All people engaging in the game of love should be warned that
+      it is a game which never stands still, but must move onward or backward.
+      You may play it one day in jest, and find that it must be played in
+      earnest next time. You may never take it up just where you left it, for
+      the stake must always be either increasing or diminishing. And this is
+      what makes it rather an interesting game. For you may never tell what it
+      may grow to, and while it is in progress, none ever believe that it will
+      have an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a poor
+      one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it is a
+      thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections in such
+      practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it is young
+      men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens with whom
+      they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is oblivious to
+      the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to be the
+      business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is in love
+      with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes she does
+      not even go so far as that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+      maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning. The
+      faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+      yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at all
+      events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is leaden-footed
+      in this backward country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she felt
+      angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had ever been
+      before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was cold. Down
+      the whole length of the gardens there was only one other occupant of the
+      polished stone benches&mdash;an old man, sitting huddled up in his shabby
+      sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in the dull
+      realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+      Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+      entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+      gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+      fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+      almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+      hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate of
+      the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did not
+      come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all ways
+      before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old palace
+      of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the two
+      principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens, near to
+      the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+      except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+      satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her, but
+      Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not even
+      bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded note at
+      her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+      know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they had
+      gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
+      unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must not speak to you,&rdquo; Martin wrote, &ldquo;for there is danger in it&mdash;not
+      to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is for
+      to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the Europe.
+      I have already provided for your safety. There is great news, but no one
+      knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking of you, and&mdash;no!
+      I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say it&mdash;who
+      knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but I must
+      not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave something
+      on the seat that I may keep until I see you again&mdash;your glove or a
+      flower, to be my talisman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the length
+      of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes. She
+      rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no longer
+      current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between two young
+      persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+      covert-coating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
+      and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to make
+      up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling her of
+      those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew that events
+      were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of the Bukatys.
+      Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince would be the
+      first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown had gone by
+      ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She thoughtfully
+      removed them, and sat looking straight in front of her&mdash;absorbed in
+      maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first in Poland, Prince
+      Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets on the stone seat.
+      Martin had turned now though he was still far away. She looked towards
+      him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor. She knew that. She had
+      fully gauged the honor of more than one man; had found it astonishingly
+      reliable. The honor of women was quite a different question. That which
+      Prince Martin said in the day of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in
+      other circumstances. &ldquo;Besides&mdash;&rdquo; And she smiled a thoughtful smile of
+      conscious power as she bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange
+      her furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of snow
+      at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked at the
+      bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked slowly
+      away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting beneath the
+      leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat huddled
+      within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was no one
+      near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now going
+      towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed beneath its
+      arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone seat and take
+      up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste. Any one may pick up
+      a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a pretty girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
+      Kotzebue gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty had
+      been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery. He
+      turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until he was
+      out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the arches of
+      the covered passages of the palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down on the
+      seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the passers-by
+      had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near enough to
+      notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across the bank of
+      gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which Netty had thrown
+      there. He brought them back to the stone seat and spread them out there,
+      like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an expert at such things; for
+      in a moment he had them in order, and had pieced together the upper half
+      of the paper. Moreover, he must have been a linguist; the note was written
+      in English, and this Warsaw waif of the public gardens seemed to read it
+      without difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night,&rdquo; he read, and
+      instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient clothing. It
+      was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a flurry, as if there
+      were more to be done before nightfall than he could possibly compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
+      Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
+      palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
+      with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned into
+      the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
+      composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
+      Mangles there&mdash;not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;thought I might meet you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
+      conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
+      Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
+      he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark for
+      some minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mail is in,&rdquo; he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
+      the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something had
+      happened. &ldquo;Have you had important news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had nothing by the mail,&rdquo; he answered, looking straight in front of him.
+      And Netty asked no more questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your aunt Jooly,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;has had an interesting mail.
+      She has been offered the presidency&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the United States?&rdquo; asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+      Joseph paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; he answered, with deep gravity. &ldquo;Of the Massachusetts Women
+      Bachelors' Federation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll accept,&rdquo; opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a great honor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are different sorts of greatness,&rdquo; Joseph replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road to
+      allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school, and
+      still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
+      themselves in the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think it is like the blue-ribbon army,&rdquo; he said, when he returned to
+      Netty's side. &ldquo;The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer the
+      abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+      membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
+      will induce 'em to resign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Aunt Julie pleased?&rdquo; asked Netty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almighty,&rdquo; was the brief reply. &ldquo;And she will accept it. She will marry
+      the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually marries
+      him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms&mdash;the men that
+      help women to make fools of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed to have
+      a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty suspected
+      that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
+      Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;she'll give him his
+      choice between dismissal and&mdash;and earthly paradise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+      along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware of.
+      His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a way
+      through a crowded world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some order;
+      that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THIN ICE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the prince in?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Is he busy?&rdquo; he added, when the servant had
+      stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only shrugged
+      his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never busy.
+      Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a German
+      newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each other
+      since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's wrinkled and
+      drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able to perceive.
+      The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other side of the
+      fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of movement and
+      demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others who were intimate
+      with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+      then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the glow
+      of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made, with both
+      hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know?&rdquo; said the prince, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+      cipher telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner?&rdquo; said the prince, interrogatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend this&mdash;pleasing
+      denouement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince gave a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How well,&rdquo; he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+      reflectively&mdash;&ldquo;how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+      telegraph to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sometimes do each other a good turn,&rdquo; explained Deulin, rather curtly.
+      &ldquo;It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope that&mdash;it
+      was soon over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+      beneath his shaggy brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on this
+      occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made us&mdash;plain
+      men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number of enemies,
+      of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man was a thief.
+      He was a great man and in a great position, which only made him the
+      greater thief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is dead,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause, &ldquo;and there is an end to it. I do
+      not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be dead;
+      and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian,&rdquo; said Deulin,
+      gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
+      which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
+      happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me or
+      to approve of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one effective
+      lesson&mdash;to judge no man,&rdquo; put in Deulin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember,&rdquo; continued the prince, &ldquo;I deplore the method. I understand it
+      was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy. You
+      will see&mdash;we shall both see, if we live long enough&mdash;that this
+      is a mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have
+      not even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They
+      have approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
+      business. But&mdash;well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of
+      every mishap to one's enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thin ice!&rdquo; he said, warningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; laughed the other. &ldquo;You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist&mdash;a
+      man who is afraid to look over a wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by less
+      obvious means,&rdquo; corrected the Frenchman. &ldquo;One must not be seen looking
+      over one's neighbor's wall&mdash;that is the first commandment of
+      diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are you here?&rdquo; asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+      chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
+      flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
+      that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I came here to pry into your affairs&mdash;to turn our
+      friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report
+      to my government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave
+      unsaid, before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes,&rdquo; answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends
+      glared at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough
+      in other days. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes! but why are you here this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions, I
+      want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck into
+      a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And&mdash;who
+      knows?&mdash;you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
+      in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
+      cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push Wanda
+      into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can help
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda!&rdquo; said the prince, in some surprise&mdash;&ldquo;Wanda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You forget&mdash;you Bukatys always have forgotten&mdash;the women.
+      Warsaw is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work&mdash;to-night's
+      work&mdash;is no work for Wanda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night's work! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;But I am
+      not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
+      as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
+      guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
+      is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
+      think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+      thumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did not know that you had broken your heart&mdash;more than once&mdash;long
+      ago,&rdquo; he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once,&rdquo; he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+      Wanda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin, lightly, &ldquo;that is an old affair. That happened when she
+      used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's old
+      loves, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
+      time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
+      perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
+      ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
+      through it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once,&rdquo; repeated Deulin. &ldquo;I propose what any other young lover would
+      propose to do&mdash;to run away with her from Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin looked at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty&mdash;a young girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+      gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take her
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
+      that can make her do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+      this thing for me. I come back in half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from Warsaw
+      to-day?&rdquo; asked the prince. &ldquo;What we know others must know now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
+      will find my way to the door, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you see Wanda as you go,&rdquo; called out the prince, as Deulin closed the
+      door behind him, &ldquo;send her to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+      drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He held
+      out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A telegram,&rdquo; she said, looking at it. &ldquo;But I cannot make out its meaning.
+      I never saw or heard of that word before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the end
+      of time,&rdquo; answered Deulin, lightly. &ldquo;It is from a reliable source.
+      Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+      wishes to say to you in his study now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nothing!&rdquo; put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+      &ldquo;Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question of
+      empires and kingdoms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+      could ask him a question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+      passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man in the street,&rdquo; he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
+      Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
+      city know nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will know at the frontier,&rdquo; answered the prince, &ldquo;and it is there
+      that you will have difficulties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is there that we shall overcome them,&rdquo; he replied, gayly. &ldquo;It is
+      there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+      matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
+      will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I have
+      a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment. He
+      came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+      suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid his
+      old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches which
+      are nearly always better left unsaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must ask you,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, &ldquo;to drive
+      round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
+      up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
+      not come back. One never knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had run
+      with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the faces of
+      the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and to-morrow
+      would be as the seed of grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
+      their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races always
+      seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all beyond a
+      passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of enjoyment in
+      the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than usual, Deulin
+      thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be fully occupied
+      with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes at last, is really
+      more surprising than the unexpected itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance hall
+      was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between twelve
+      and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know nothing; but
+      others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+      first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you do about the Mangles?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;We cannot let them
+      remain here unwarned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin reflected for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had forgotten them,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;In times of stress one finds out
+      one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+      Mangles, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
+      her&mdash;&ldquo;yes, do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Odd people women are,&rdquo; said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
+      He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
+      almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I looked into Mangles's salon,&rdquo; he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+      beside her again. &ldquo;He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
+      They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool&mdash;that
+      Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+      predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture of
+      good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men. He
+      seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They know,&rdquo; he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the Austrian
+      railway carriage. &ldquo;They all know. Look at their stupid, perturbed faces.
+      We have slipped across the frontier before they have decided whether they
+      are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah! what a thing it is to have
+      a smile to show the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or a grin,&rdquo; he added, after a long pause, &ldquo;that passes for one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FOR ANOTHER TIME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in; the
+      persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+      Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn would
+      see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature more
+      alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the south
+      of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there are three
+      roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and autumn. During
+      the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are under water. They
+      are only passable and worthy of the name of road in winter, when the
+      sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the middle road&mdash;which is the worst and the least frequented&mdash;a
+      number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The road
+      is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such deep
+      ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on either
+      side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for the
+      transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter it is
+      the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+      pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+      harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary hay-carts
+      of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more frequented road
+      nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The carts were going
+      towards the city now, but they were empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+      standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in his
+      working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare limbs.
+      He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet. He had
+      reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely have made
+      him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere outward things
+      were of no account. Every now and then he turned his head, half
+      impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him. The wheels
+      made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the carts
+      groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into the larger
+      Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on horseback, under
+      the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The horseman was riding
+      slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare horse. He was in a rough
+      peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth, drawn in at the waist, and
+      split from heel to band, for use in the saddle. They wear such coats still
+      in Poland and Galicia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a man's
+      trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are punctual,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was nearly asleep in the saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat such
+      as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he leaned
+      forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not cold?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I feel as if I should never be cold again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
+      must take care of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So must you,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+      between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than in
+      face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which the French
+      call <i>camaraderie</i>, which was not the outcome of a long friendship.
+      Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have had a common
+      ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight, with royal blood
+      in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of the fair Bukatys,
+      whose women had always been beautiful, and their men always reckless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
+      for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound of
+      approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and struck
+      it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded hollow,
+      like a drum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you had little sleep last night,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff when Martin
+      yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;We may get some&mdash;to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what to do,&rdquo; said Martin to these in turn. &ldquo;Come to the
+      iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
+      you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to the
+      military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in line. You
+      are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the river on this
+      side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line, dropping your
+      load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you are stopped on
+      the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking what you have in
+      your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them; and while they are
+      looking into your carts you must kill them quietly with the knife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+      merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and that
+      was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and had perhaps
+      waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of promise in his
+      curt hilarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+      Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking to
+      the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs by the
+      river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+      pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
+      workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
+      rain, no one passed that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+      bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the lower
+      lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the iron-foundry
+      are on the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+      horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
+      at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I saw a glint under the wall,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff. &ldquo;There&mdash;there
+      it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the gleam of those
+      distant lights on a bayonet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go forward,&rdquo; said Martin, &ldquo;and see who it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+      beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
+      out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo; echoed Martin. &ldquo;But this is a high-road.&rdquo; And he moved
+      nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
+      gleamed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you cannot pass this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my friend&mdash;&rdquo; began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he
+      never finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle
+      on the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+      Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment his
+      rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now in
+      the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
+      breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which was
+      not Kosmaroff's cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First blood,&rdquo; he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
+      hands upon its mane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;how he smelled of bad cigarettes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+      mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he is dead enough,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I broke his neck. Did you not
+      hear it go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I heard it. But what was he doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is yet to be found out,&rdquo; was the reply, in a sharp, strained voice.
+      &ldquo;This is Cartoner's work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt it,&rdquo; whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+      doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
+      the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He had
+      always been lucky and successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means,&rdquo; answered the man who had never been either, &ldquo;that the place is
+      surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have failed&mdash;this
+      time. Take the horses back towards the barracks&mdash;and wait for me
+      where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and make
+      sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they have
+      taken me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+      bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working clothes
+      were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will get over the wall here. Bring your horse
+      against the wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched across
+      the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand in your stirrups,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;and hold one arm up rigid
+      against the wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+      himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing on
+      Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready? I am going to spring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+      light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
+      could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he whispered, and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when he
+      heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff, breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving. He was,
+      it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a gallop,
+      stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin had to use
+      his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder they splashed
+      on in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went right in,&rdquo; gasped Kosmaroff. &ldquo;The arms are gone. The place is full
+      of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an ambuscade.
+      We have failed&mdash;failed&mdash;this time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men,&rdquo; said
+      Martin. &ldquo;We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are full of hope&mdash;you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am full of hope&mdash;still,&rdquo; answered Martin. He had more to
+      lose than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
+      these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from the
+      city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+      marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure,&rdquo; he then said, &ldquo;that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+      wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize me. It
+      is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is different. If
+      they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know who procured
+      them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere,&rdquo; said Martin, with
+      a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; went on Kosmaroff, &ldquo;if they will have arrested your
+      father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace now
+      awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; answered Martin gayly, &ldquo;it does not matter much about that. What I
+      am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
+      How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+      found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+      military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If the
+      arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous soldiers; for
+      they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a grievance to be wiped
+      out. They were only the nucleus of a great rising, organized carefully and
+      systematically&mdash;the brand to be thrown amid the straw. They were to
+      surprise and hold the two strongholds in Warsaw, while the whole country
+      was set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and the parties to the treaty
+      which Russia had systematically broken were appealed to and urged to
+      assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so wild as many that have
+      succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+      their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for another time&mdash;it is for another time!&rdquo; said Kosmaroff and
+      Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+      darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The streets
+      had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers, who, at a
+      given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers came
+      in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who shuffled
+      along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street in groups of
+      two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their houses. And the
+      conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a miserable fiasco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+      firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+      hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
+      and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and the
+      water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great length
+      of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the alert
+      night and day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the large,
+      flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling, and
+      climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been endowed
+      with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at midnight, but
+      the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark. The moon above
+      the clouds was almost full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one chance of escape,&rdquo; Kosmaroff had said&mdash;&ldquo;the river.
+      Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve. I
+      will get a boat. Have you money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a few roubles&mdash;I never had many,&rdquo; answered Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get more if you can&mdash;get some food if you can&mdash;a bottle of
+      vodka may make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+      Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+      earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives.
+      Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city. He
+      passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others
+      slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the soldiers,
+      brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at the street corners.
+      And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+      station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in a
+      low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized the
+      voice as that of a friend&mdash;a young Cossack officer who had lunched
+      with him two days earlier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had found
+      out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light filtering
+      through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father was probably
+      sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-fire, meditating
+      over the failure which he must have realized by now from a note hurriedly
+      sent by one of the few servants whom they could trust. Martin knew that
+      Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that would find her. This was one
+      of the hundred details to which the prince himself had attended. He had
+      been a skilled organizer in the days when he had poured arms and
+      ammunition into Poland across the Austrian frontier, and his hand had not
+      lost its cunning. All Poland was seamed by channels through which
+      information could be poured at any moment day or night, just as water is
+      distributed over the land of an irrigated farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+      bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of his
+      coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were more
+      likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+      houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for the
+      steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one end of
+      this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where as often
+      as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage that Martin
+      directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers and watchers here
+      night and day; for the traffic of a great river never ceases, and those
+      whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water, and tide must get their
+      sleep when they can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where the
+      steps are&mdash;river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+      the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge which
+      are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a sleepless
+      interest in the prospects of a flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he also
+      had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he had a fit
+      of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and at the most
+      deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps, coughing at
+      intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from the land, but
+      across the moving floes from the direction of the bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The water is running freely,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;through the middle arch. I have a
+      boat out there on the ice. Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the river
+      that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was lying on the
+      ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge, almost at the edge
+      of the water, which could be heard gurgling and lapping as it flowed
+      towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice. It was so dark that
+      Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell against the boat before he
+      saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a primeval simplicity of build
+      used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+      unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander now,
+      and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to carry her to the edge, but do not stand upright.
+      We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no one will come
+      out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles away before dawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times; for
+      there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last they
+      reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must lie down in the bottom of the boat,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff, &ldquo;and take
+      our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left, towered
+      the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great building
+      which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight. For the
+      castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having been partially
+      withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon these lights were left
+      behind, and the outline of the citadel, half buried in trees, could be
+      dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city behind, and were borne on the
+      breast of the river into the outer darkness beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a piece of bread,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am famished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had yet
+      to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the Vistula
+      came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be not only
+      ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the mills; here and
+      there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and then a dead horse; a
+      door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a few boats; a hundred
+      trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne to the distant sea on
+      muddy waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself as
+      comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as a
+      rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat heading
+      down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then&mdash;wet, tired out,
+      conscious of failure, sick at heart&mdash;he fell asleep, too, in the
+      hands of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The prince
+      had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared away, and a
+      full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky above the level
+      land. They were passing through a plain now, broken here and there by
+      pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with big, low-roofed farms
+      standing back on the slightly rising ground. It was almost morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was shivering
+      too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His spirits were proof
+      even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great pace
+      in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow, others gray
+      and muddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know where we are,&rdquo; he answered, after a pause. &ldquo;We have passed
+      Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish my
+      teeth wouldn't chatter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have secured mine with a piece of bread,&rdquo; mumbled Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot travel during the day,&rdquo; he said, after a long examination of
+      the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. &ldquo;We shall not
+      be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon, and I am
+      afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come to some large
+      islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We must wait with
+      him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass through Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the ice
+      was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the little
+      strength of both was required to work the boat through the floes towards
+      the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and boasted that they
+      could not have found a safer hiding-place in all Poland, which, indeed,
+      seemed true enough. For none but expert and reckless boatmen would attempt
+      to cross the river now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-day,
+      and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the prince
+      at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to await them
+      at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that their escape was
+      being arranged, but they must await further instructions before quitting
+      their hiding-place. After the lapse of four days these further orders came
+      by the same sure channel, which was independent of the Russian
+      post-offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through that
+      town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they would find
+      Captain Cable, in the <i>Minnie</i>, anchored in the stream ready for sea.
+      The instructions were necessarily short. There were no explanations
+      whatever. There was no news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there. The
+      story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities. There are
+      persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day. There are
+      others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The arms are in use
+      in Central Asia at the present time, though their pattern is already
+      considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to walk along the
+      Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of it a large
+      building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling into disrepair.
+      If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet the patrol from the
+      neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards this road and the
+      river-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to wait
+      two days until the weather changed&mdash;until the moon, now well on the
+      wane, did not rise before midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still encumbered
+      by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the evenings were cold,
+      and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-lands. This soon enveloped
+      them, and they swept on unseen. None could have followed them into the
+      mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+      strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at every
+      hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the night,
+      before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to approach
+      the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they navigated chiefly
+      by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound of church clocks, the
+      street cries of a town&mdash;these were Kosmaroff's degrees of latitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are getting near,&rdquo; he said, in little more than a whisper. &ldquo;What is
+      the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+      sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes at
+      a great pace. It is still of a vast width&mdash;one of the largest rivers
+      in Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mist was very thick here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low, regular
+      thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to halt.
+      They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to locate
+      sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to have come
+      from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind them this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, or we fire!&rdquo; it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp whistle,
+      which was answered by two or three others. There were at least three boats
+      close at hand, seeking to locate each other before they fired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+      distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+      oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a suppressed
+      laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-post,
+      fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where Martin lay
+      concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward and
+      peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the officers
+      were calling to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it&mdash;a boat or a floating tree?&rdquo; they heard them ask each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement in
+      the bottom of the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bullet,&rdquo; answered Martin. &ldquo;It came through the side of the boat, low
+      down. It struck me in the back&mdash;the spine. I cannot move my legs. But
+      I have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the hole the
+      bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have passed
+      through Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+      danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+      Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and with a
+      jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an envelope,
+      closed and doubled over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put that in your pocket,&rdquo; he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?&rdquo; asked Martin, suddenly,
+      after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her that, or get it to her,&rdquo; said Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Martin, answering the unasked question, &ldquo;I am badly hit,
+      unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And his voice was still cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a letter
+      from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in a rather
+      rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in that ancient
+      city. He also thought it probable that she would make a stay in England
+      pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; wrote Deulin, &ldquo;that you will soon be on your way home. I
+      think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+      events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through Dantzic
+      on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot. The
+      writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the letter
+      as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as it were, of
+      this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient to go to Dantzic
+      and to see Captain Cable there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel. He
+      left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange Brucke, where
+      the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was not
+      pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more or less
+      his own master while travelling, and could break his journey at Dantzic
+      quite as easily as at Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none but
+      small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was deeply
+      versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable small vessels
+      to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner knew that he would find the <i>Minnie</i> not in dock, but in one
+      of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+      convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And Captain
+      Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the <i>Minnie</i>
+      just above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels lie in
+      mid-stream. The <i>Minnie</i> was deeply laden and lay anchored bow and
+      stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was ready for
+      sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor heralded her
+      departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners, love to do. It
+      adds to their sense of importance, and this was a modern quality little
+      cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his steam aggressively in
+      evidence. The <i>Minnie</i> did not catch the eye of the river-side idler,
+      but conveyed the impression that she was a small, insignificant craft
+      minding her own business, and would be much obliged if you would mind
+      yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from the
+      steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+      clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of a
+      shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+      Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come below,&rdquo; he said, without enthusiasm. &ldquo;It wasn't you that I was
+      expecting. I tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which smelled of
+      petroleum, as usual. The <i>Minnie</i> was a hospitable ship, according to
+      her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a tumbler with a corner
+      of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant swing-back bench at the
+      far side of the table, and sat down opposite to Cartoner himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was up the Baltic,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Pit props. Got a full cargo on board.
+      Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let slip to come
+      to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard. That's all I'm going
+      to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all I want to know,&rdquo; answered Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!&rdquo; shouted Cable, suddenly, with a
+      bang of his little, thick fist on the table. &ldquo;I've been thinking since I
+      lay here&mdash;been sleeping badly, and took the anchor watch meself&mdash;what
+      I want to know is whether I'm to be treated gentlemanly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo; inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+      seemed to pacify the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he admitted, &ldquo;I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+      seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+      something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take any
+      bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I can assure you on that point,&rdquo; said Cartoner. &ldquo;Nobody who had
+      to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in Dantzic. But I
+      do not know whom you are to take on board here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May be as you can guess,&rdquo; suggested the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think I can guess,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you won't tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. When do you expect them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll answer that and ask you another,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, getting a
+      yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. &ldquo;That's port&mdash;ship-chandler's
+      port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night. They'll
+      likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night. And now I'll
+      ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in Dantzic River, Mr.
+      Cartoner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do&mdash;Paul Deulin.
+      Like to read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+      contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than even
+      to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wouldn't,&rdquo; he answered. He scratched his head reflectively, and
+      looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the
+      ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got your luggage in the boat alongside?&rdquo; he asked, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It's at the station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard. You'll
+      come aboard and see this thing through, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for his
+      luggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mate's receipt?&rdquo; inquired the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest as
+      he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No stint of the wine,&rdquo; he said, and went out on deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted himself to
+      the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the afternoon. For the
+      captain had been up all night, and fully expected to see no bed the
+      following night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb,&rdquo; he
+      said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the anchor
+      watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to Cartoner, and
+      did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch three nights in
+      succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the deck side by side,
+      treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the same
+      reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope he is pleased with himself,&rdquo; he said, as he stood at the stern rail,
+      looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. &ldquo;For it is his doing,
+      you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're tricky&mdash;the
+      French. He's a tricky man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin, &ldquo;he
+      is a tricky man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without speaking.
+      Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a boat yonder,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;coming down quiet, under the lee of the
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+      great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards them.
+      Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+      laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of the
+      boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide with
+      perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand by,&rdquo; said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+      uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with two
+      turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the steamer as a
+      kitten may nestle against its mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his hand on
+      the rail of the <i>Minnie</i>. His head came up over the rail, and he
+      peered into Cartoner's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+      exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance which
+      he never expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to go to sea this tide,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where is the other man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;Help me to lift
+      him on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why can't he come on board himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he is dead,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice. And
+      he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one arm and
+      held him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so weak!&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;so weak! I am famished!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+      fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the boat
+      that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort held him
+      towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail. Thus they got
+      him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed through it to that
+      which was grandly called the captain's state-room. They laid him on the
+      locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff, supporting himself against
+      the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+      face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the inevitable
+      decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+      starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+      hundred unasked questions in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; asked Cartoner, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not me.
+      He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the night
+      before last. He died before the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! tut!&rdquo; muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of pity.
+      &ldquo;There was the makings of a man in him,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;the makings of a
+      man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common as
+      to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a
+      moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid of
+      a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take him out to sea and bury him there,&rdquo; said Cable, at length, &ldquo;if
+      so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at sea,
+      and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the only thing to be done,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that will do. He will lay quiet enough there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath the
+      sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll turn the hands out,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and we'll get to sea on the ebb. But
+      I'll have to send ashore for a pilot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, &ldquo;you need not do
+      that. I can take you out to sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and Cartoner
+      alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had been the
+      friend of both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you answer me a question?&rdquo; asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can,&rdquo; was the reply, economical of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you on the 13th of March?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In St. Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I do not understand you,&rdquo; said Kosmaroff. &ldquo;I don't understand how we
+      failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing,&rdquo; answered Cartoner. &ldquo;But I conclude you have failed,
+      since you are here&mdash;and he is there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed towards Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I had nothing to do with it,&rdquo; said Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot expect me to believe that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care,&rdquo; replied the English diplomat, gently, &ldquo;whether you
+      believe it or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+      Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you one thing,&rdquo; he said, in a hard, low voice. &ldquo;It will not
+      do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I will take
+      any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and me in Poland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I am sent there I shall go,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. And there crept to one
+      side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck giving
+      his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole paused on
+      the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin again with his
+      hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it on the
+      cabin-table between them. &ldquo;A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss Cahere.
+      There is no message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dawn was in the sky before the <i>Minnie</i> swept out past the
+      pier-head light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed
+      down in the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern,
+      jumping and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up under
+      the quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and Cartoner drew
+      near to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much to be
+      said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and answered. But
+      none of the three had the intention of doing either one or the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a passage home,&rdquo; said Cable, gruffly, &ldquo;cut your boat adrift.
+      You're welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;I am going back to Poland to try again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of the
+      only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      we shall meet again soon,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;in Poland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; replied Cartoner. &ldquo;I am under orders for Madrid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat. Then
+      he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+      thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain,&rdquo; he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+      seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from the
+      shelter of his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, mister,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift, and
+      he sat down to the oars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff headed
+      his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the promise of a
+      stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging over Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a month
+      later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace and stood
+      his ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to keep
+      their acquaintances in the right place&mdash;that is to say, in the
+      background of her life. With this object in view, she had an &ldquo;at home&rdquo;
+       day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not stay
+      too long. To-day was not that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I ought not to have come this afternoon,&rdquo; explained Netty, with a
+      rather shy haste, as she shook hands. &ldquo;But I could not wait until next
+      Tuesday, because we sail that day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are going home again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush still
+      in her cheeks&mdash;&ldquo;yes, and I am engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do we know the&mdash;gentleman?&rdquo; asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+      with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+      exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in this
+      idyl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; answered Netty. &ldquo;He is not unknown in London. His name is
+      Burris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, &ldquo;the comp&mdash;&rdquo; Then she remembered that to call
+      a fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. &ldquo;The
+      millionaire?&rdquo; she concluded, rather lamely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe he is very rich,&rdquo; admitted Netty, &ldquo;though, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course not,&rdquo; Lady Orlay hastened to say. &ldquo;I congratulate you, and
+      wish you every happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word to
+      him. He took it promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading of
+      the hands&mdash;&ldquo;I wish you all the happiness&mdash;that money can buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his shoulder
+      turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which was to be
+      Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be her father, but
+      he was a millionaire twice over&mdash;in London and New York. He had,
+      moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of which details appeared
+      from time to time in the illustrated monthly magazines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I shall hope to be in London every year,&rdquo; said Netty, &ldquo;and to see all
+      the friends who have been so kind to us&mdash;you and Lord Orlay and Mr.
+      Deulin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Reginald Cartoner,&rdquo; suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+      shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes. And it
+      came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question, but
+      did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner was in
+      the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that Deulin had
+      brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until Martin effected his
+      escape and joined his sister in England. She only knew what the world now
+      knew&mdash;that Price Martin Bukaty had died and been buried at sea. It
+      was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be interested
+      in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice, seeking to
+      recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had taken an envelope
+      from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had thrown it on the fire,
+      where it was smouldering now on the coals. It was a soiled and worn
+      envelope, as if it had passed through vicissitudes; there seemed to be
+      something inside it which burned and gave forth an aromatic odor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave. When
+      the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite forgot
+      to be polite?&rdquo; she said to Deulin. &ldquo;Is it a letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a love-token,&rdquo; answered the Frenchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Netty Cahere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was still
+      neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the fire and
+      was there consumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a smell of violets,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay, looking down into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are violets&mdash;from Warsaw,&rdquo; admitted Deulin. &ldquo;Wanda is in?&rdquo; he
+      asked, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have received a letter from her father,&rdquo; said Deulin, with his hand on
+      the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+      mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried her
+      head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner followed her
+      into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard from your father at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of unfolding
+      it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going to give it to
+      Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay walked to the other
+      end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was about to follow her,
+      when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he stayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The letter begins,&rdquo; said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+      professional preliminary&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given by the
+      man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain Cable quite well.
+      When we met him at the Signal House, at Northfleet, I little thought that
+      he would be called upon to render the last earthly service to my son. So
+      it was he who read the last words. And Martin was buried in the Baltic.
+      You, my old friend, know all that I have given to Poland. The last gift
+      has been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope to write to Cartoner,
+      but not now. He is not a man to attach much importance to words. He is, I
+      think, a man to understand silence. At present I cannot write, as I am
+      virtually a prisoner in my own house. From a high quarter I have received
+      a gracious intimation that my affairs are under the special attention of a
+      beneficent monarch, and that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a
+      sentence of perpetual confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be
+      deemed sufficient punishment for&mdash;not having been found out. But my
+      worst enemies are my own party. Nothing can now convince them that Martin
+      and I did not betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is freely coupled
+      with ours. So they believe. So it will go down to history, and nothing
+      that we can say will make any difference. That I find myself in company
+      with Cartoner in this error only strengthens the feeling of friendship, of
+      which I was conscious when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake, never
+      to cross this frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making any sign
+      of friendship towards me or mine.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin,
+      for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial
+      moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause
+      for an instant before he could proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then follow,&rdquo; he said, rather uneasily, &ldquo;certain passages to myself which
+      I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health. Better,
+      indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough old man, and
+      may live to give much trouble yet.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, you see, he seems very cheerful,&rdquo; he said, as if it was the letter
+      that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket. &ldquo;He
+      seems to be getting on very well without you, you perceive,&rdquo; he added,
+      smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There was in his voice and
+      manner a dim suggestion of the losing game, consciously played.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I read the letter for myself?&rdquo; asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+      steady hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his pocket
+      and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group standing near
+      the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an imperceptible movement of
+      his eyebrows, as of one who had made an attempt and failed. They waited in
+      silence while Wanda read the letter, and at length she handed it back to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I read it differently. It is not only the world which
+      appears differently to two different people, even a letter may have two
+      meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+      deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a
+      broken-hearted man,&rdquo; she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during
+      which Wanda seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even
+      Deulin had nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps
+      Cartoner had already done so by his own life, without any words at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to Warsaw to-night,&rdquo; she said at last to Lady Orlay, &ldquo;if you
+      will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack gratitude.
+      But&mdash;you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, I understand,&rdquo; replied the woman who had known happiness. And
+      she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?&rdquo; said Wanda. As
+      she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none other. It
+      was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom she submitted
+      the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it before these people. As
+      if she took a subtle pride in showing them that he was what she knew him
+      to be. She was sure of her lover; which is, perhaps, happiness enough for
+      this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duty is best, is it not?&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the only thing,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+      partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic and
+      active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mind is made up?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;You go to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements for
+      the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you across
+      the frontier, you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Cartoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you? When do you go to Spain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then good-bye.&rdquo; The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was at
+      the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the door
+      behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood and
+      looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's eyes. But
+      Deulin's smile was sadder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the end,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;the end!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Lady Orlay; &ldquo;it is not. It cannot be. I have never known a
+      great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+      happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the end,
+      Paul. Heaven is kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused, and,
+      facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself, commanding her
+      attention to his long life and story. &ldquo;Sometimes, milady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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diff --git a/old/vltrs10.txt b/old/vltrs10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0f4afb
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
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+Title:  THE VULTURES
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+Author:  Henry Seton Merriman
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+Release Date: March, 2003  [Etext #3805]
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+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VULTURES
+A NOVEL
+
+by HENRY SETON MERRIMAN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ALL AT SEA
+
+Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad
+Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall,
+thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls'
+school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead,
+sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world
+was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin
+first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now
+moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was
+a dry, hard person, who had suffered from nothing but chronic
+dyspepsia--had suffered from it for fifty years or so.
+
+"Fine weather," he said. "Women will be coming on deck--hang the fine
+weather."
+
+And his voice was deep and low like a growl.
+
+"Joseph," said Miss Mangles, "growls over his meals like a dog."
+
+The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
+leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
+man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
+Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
+large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
+better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
+his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
+characteristics are conducive to hostility.
+
+The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
+feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
+to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
+There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
+When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
+did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.
+
+There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business
+men--Joseph P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a
+sea of commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four
+days that had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither
+made anything, or sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket
+ready for production at a moment's notice, setting forth name and
+address and trade. Neither was to be suspected of a desire to repel
+advances, and yet both were difficult to get on with. For human
+confidences must be mutual. It is only to God that man can continue
+telling, telling, telling, and getting never a word in return. These
+two men had nothing to tell their fellows about themselves; so the
+other passengers drifted away into those closely linked corporations
+characteristic of steamer life and left them to themselves--to each
+other.
+
+And they had never said things to each other--had never, as it were,
+got deeper than the surface of their daily life.
+
+Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk
+under a strong forehead. His eyelids had that peculiarity which is
+rarely seen in the face of a man who is a nonentity. They were quite
+straight, and cut across the upper curve of the pupil. This gave a
+direct, stern look to dreamy eyes, which was odd. After a pause, he
+turned slowly, and looked down at his companion with a vague
+interrogation in his glance. He seemed to be wondering whether Mr.
+Mangles had spoken. And Mangles met the glance with one of steady
+refusal to repeat his remark. But Mangles spoke first, after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "the women will be on deck soon--and my sister Jooly.
+You don't know Jooly?"
+
+He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.
+
+"I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon,"
+said Cartoner. "She had a blue ribbon round her throat. She was
+pretty."
+
+"That wasn't Jooly," said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.
+
+"Who was it?" asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who
+have no self-consciousness--who are absorbed, but not in themselves,
+as are the majority of men and women.
+
+"My niece, Netty Cahere."
+
+"She is pretty," said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have
+meant much to feminine ears.
+
+"You'll fall in love with her," said Mangles, lugubriously. "They all
+do. She says she can't help it."
+
+Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not. He made no
+reply.
+
+"Distresses her very much," concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting
+his cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard
+side of his mouth. Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in
+Miss Netty Cahere. He was a man having that air of detachment from
+personal environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human
+heart, more especially in feminine hearts. People wanted to know what
+there was in Cartoner's past that gave him so much to think about in
+the present.
+
+The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck.
+She was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven
+young man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic. He
+was speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an
+expression of puzzled protest on her pretty face. She had wondering
+blue eyes and a complexion of the most delicate pink and white which
+never altered. She was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly
+deprecating manner, as if her own opinion of herself were small, and
+she wished the world to accept her at that valuation. She made no sign
+of having perceived her uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth
+officer, who reluctantly mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking
+back as he went.
+
+Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.
+
+"She don't like smoke," he growled.
+
+Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette
+after it. He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or
+stay, when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to
+notice that he was not alone.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that that was one of the officers of the ship,
+though he was very young--quite a boy. He was telling me about his
+mother. It must be terrible to have a near relation a sailor."
+
+She spoke in a gentle voice, and it was evident that she had a heart
+full of sympathy for the suffering and the poor.
+
+"I wish some of my relations were sailors," replied Mr. Mangles, in
+his deepest tones. "Could spare a whole crew. Let me introduce my
+friend, Mr. Cartoner--Miss Cahere."
+
+He completed the introduction with an old-fashioned and ceremonious
+wave of the hand. Miss Cahere smiled rather shyly on Cartoner, and it
+was his eyes that turned away first.
+
+"You have not been down to meals," he said, in his gentle, abrupt way.
+
+"No; but I hope to come now. Are there many people? Have you friends
+on board?"
+
+"There are very few ladies. I know none of them."
+
+"But I dare say some of them are nice," said Miss Cahere, who
+evidently thought well of human nature.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+And Cartoner lapsed into his odd and somewhat disconcerting
+thoughtfulness.
+
+Miss Cahere continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes--dark
+lashes around blue eyes--with a guileless and wondering admiration. He
+certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet
+air which bespeaks good breeding.
+
+"Have you seen the ship on the other side?" she asked, after a pause;
+"a sailing ship. You cannot see it from here."
+
+As she spoke she made a little movement, as if to show him the spot
+from whence the ship was visible. Cartoner followed her meekly, and
+Mr. Mangles, left behind in his deck-chair, slowly sought his cigar-
+case.
+
+"There," said Miss Cahere, pointing out a sail on the distant horizon.
+"One can hardly see it now. When I first came on deck it was much
+nearer. That ship's officer pointed it out to me."
+
+Cartoner looked at the ship without much enthusiasm.
+
+"I think," said Miss Cahere, in a lower voice--she had a rather
+confidential manner--"I think sailors are very nice, don't you? But
+. . . well, I suppose one ought not to say that, ought one?"
+
+"It depends what you were going to say."
+
+Miss Cahere laughed, and made no reply. Her laugh and a glance seemed,
+however, to convey the comfortable assurance that whatever she had
+been about to say would not have been applicable to Cartoner himself.
+She glanced at his trim, upright figure.
+
+"I think I prefer soldiers," she said, thoughtfully.
+
+Cartoner murmured something inaudible, and continued to gaze at the
+ship he had been told to look at.
+
+"Did you know my uncle before you came on board, or were you brave
+enough to force him to speak? He is so silent, you know, that most
+people are afraid of him. I suppose you had met him before."
+
+"No. It was a mere accident. We were neither of us ill. We were both
+hungry, and hurried down to a meal. And the stewards placed us next to
+each other."
+
+Which was a long explanation, without much information in it.
+
+"Oh, I thought perhaps you were in the diplomatic service," said Miss
+Cahere, carelessly.
+
+For an instant Cartoner's eyes lost all their vagueness. Either Miss
+Cahere had hit the mark with her second shot, or else he was making a
+mental note of the fact that Mr. Mangles belonged to that amiable body
+of amateurs, the American Diplomatic Corps.
+
+Mr. Mangles had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house
+for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the
+weather side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position
+untenable. Without explanation, and for her own good, he led the way
+to a warmer quarter. But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught
+Miss Cahere, and held her there in a pretty attitude, with her two
+hands upraised to her hat, looking at him with frank and laughing
+eyes, and waiting for him to come to her assistance. The same gust of
+wind made the steamer lurch so that Cartoner had to grasp Miss
+Cahere's arm to save her from falling.
+
+"Thank you," she said, quietly, and with downcast eyes, when the
+incident had passed. For in some matters she held old-fashioned
+notions, and was not one of the modern race of hail-fellow-well-met
+girls who are friendly in five minutes with men and women alike.
+
+When she came within sight of her uncle, she suddenly hurried towards
+him, and made an affectionate, laughing attempt to prevent his
+returning his cigar-case to his jacket pocket. She even took
+possession of the cigar-case, opened it, and with her own fingers
+selected a cigar.
+
+"No," she said, firmly, "you are going to smoke again at once. Do you
+think I did not see you throw away the other? Mr. Cartoner--is it not
+foolish of him? Because I once said, without reflecting, that I did
+not care about the smell of tobacco, he never lets me see him smoke
+now."
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand affectionately on the old man's
+shoulder and looked down at him.
+
+"As if it mattered whether I like it or not," she said. "And I do like
+it--I like the smell of your cigars."
+
+Mr. Mangles looked from Cartoner to his niece with an odd smile, which
+was perhaps the only way in which that lean countenance could express
+tenderness.
+
+"As if it mattered what I think," she said, humbly, again.
+
+"Always like to conciliate a lady," said Mr. Mangles, in his deep
+voice.
+
+"Especially when that lady is dependent on you for her daily bread and
+her frocks," answered Netty, in an affectionate aside, which Cartoner
+was, nevertheless, able to overhear.
+
+"Where is your aunt Jooly?" inquired the old man, hurriedly. "I
+thought she was coming on deck."
+
+"So she is," answered Netty. "I left her in the saloon. She is quite
+well. She was talking to some people."
+
+"What, already?" exclaimed the lady's brother. And Netty nodded her
+head with a mystic gravity. She was looking towards the saloon
+stairway, from whence she seemed to expect Miss Mangles.
+
+"My sister Jooly, sir," explained Mr. Mangles to Cartoner, "is no
+doubt known to you--Miss Julia P. Mangles, of New York City."
+
+Cartoner tried to look as if he had heard the name before. He had
+lived in the United States during some months, and he knew that it is
+possible to be famous in New York and quite without honor in
+Connecticut.
+
+"Perhaps she has not come into your line of country?" suggested Mr.
+Mangles, not unkindly.
+
+"No--I think not."
+
+"Her line is--at present--prisons."
+
+"I have never been in prison," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No doubt you will get experience in course of time," said Mr.
+Mangles, with his deep, curt laugh. "No, sir, my sister is a lecturer.
+She gets on platforms and talks."
+
+"What about?" asked Cartoner.
+
+Mr. Mangles described the wide world, with a graceful wave of his
+cigar.
+
+"About most things," he answered, gravely; "chiefly about women, I
+take it. She is great on the employment of women, and the payment of
+them. And she is right there. She has got hold of the right end of the
+stick there. She had found out what very few women know--namely, that
+when women work for nothing, they are giving away something that
+nobody wants. So Jooly goes about the world lecturing on women's
+employment, and pointing out to the public and the administration many
+ways in which women may be profitably employed and paid. She leaves it
+to the gumption of the government to discover for themselves that
+there is many a nice berth for which Jooly P. Mangles is eminently
+suited, but governments have no gumption, sir. And--"
+
+"Here is Aunt Julie," interrupted Miss Cahere, walking away.
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a short sigh, and lapsed into silence.
+
+As Miss Cahere went forward, she passed another officer of the ship,
+the second in command, a dogged, heavy man, whose mind was given to
+the ship and his own career. He must have seen something to interest
+him in Netty Cahere's face--perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-
+lashed eyes--for he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden,
+dull light in his face.
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNAL HOUSE
+
+Where Gravesend merges into Northfleet--where the spicy odors of
+chemical-fertilizing works mingle with the dry dust of the cement
+manufactories which throw their tall chimneys into an ever-gray sky--
+there stands a house known as the Signal House. Why it is so called no
+one knows and very few care to inquire. It is presumably a square
+house of the Jacobean period--presumably because it is so hidden by
+trees, so wrapped in grimy ivy, so dust-laden and so impossible to get
+at, that its outward form is no longer to be perceived.
+
+It is within sound of the bells that jingle dismally on the heads of
+the tram-car horses, plying their trade on the high-road, and yet it
+is haunted. Its two great iron gates stand on the very pavement, and
+they are never opened. Indeed, a generation or two of painters have
+painted them shut, and grime and dirt have laid their seals upon the
+hinges. A side gate gives entrance to such as come on foot. A door in
+the wall, up an alley, is labelled "Tradesman's Entrance," but the
+tradesmen never linger there. No merry milkman leaves the latest
+gossip with his thin, blue milk on that threshold. The butcher's
+chariot wheels never tarry at the corner of that alley. Indeed, the
+local butcher has no chariot. His clients mostly come in a shawl, and
+take their purchases away with them wrapped in a doubtful newspaper
+beneath its folds. The better-class buyers wear a cloth cricketing
+cap, coquettishly attached to a knob of hair by a hat-pin.
+
+The milkman, moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He
+goes slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny before
+he tips his measure.
+
+This, in a word, is a poor district, where no one would live if he
+could live elsewhere, with the Signal House stranded in the midst of
+it--a noble wreck on a barren, social shore. For the Signal House was
+once a family mansion; later it was described as a riverside
+residence, then as a quaint and interesting demesne. Finally its price
+fell with a crash, and an elderly lady of weak intellect was sent by
+her relations to live in it, with two servants, who were frequently to
+be met in Gravesend in the evening hours, at which time, it is to be
+presumed, the elderly lady of weak intellect was locked in the Signal
+House alone. But the house never had a ghost. Haunted houses very
+seldom have. The ghost was the mere invention of some kitchen-maid.
+
+Haunted or not, the house stood empty for years, until suddenly a
+foreigner took it--a Russian banker, it was understood. A very nice,
+pleasant-spoken little gentleman this foreigner, who liked quiet and
+the river view. He was quite as broad as he was long, though he was
+not preposterously stout. There was nothing mysterious about him. He
+was well known in the City. He had merely mistaken an undesirable
+suburb for a desirable one, a very easy mistake for a foreigner to
+make; and he was delighted at the cheapness of the house, the
+greenness of the old lawn, the height of the grimy trees within the
+red brick wall.
+
+He lived there all one summer, and the cement smoke got into his
+throat in the autumn and gave him asthma, for which complaint he had
+obviously been designed by Providence, for he had no neck. He used the
+Signal House occasionally from Saturday till Monday. Then he gave it
+up altogether, and tried to sell it. It stood empty for some years,
+while the Russian banker extended his business and lived virtuously
+elsewhere. Then he suddenly began using the house again as a house of
+recreation, and brought his foreign servants, and his foreign friends
+and their foreign servants, to stay from Saturday till Monday.
+
+And all these persons behaved in an odd, Continental way, and played
+bowls on the lawn at the back of the house on Sundays. The neighbors
+could hear them but could see nothing, owing to the thickness of the
+grimy trees and the height of the old brick wall. But no one worried
+much about the Signal House; for they were a busy people who lived all
+around, and had to earn their living, in addition to the steady and
+persistent assuagement of a thirst begotten of cement dust and the
+pungent smell of bone manure. One or two local amateurs had made sure
+of the fact that there was nothing in the house that would repay a
+burglarious investigation, which, added to the fact that the police
+station is only a few doors off, tended to allay a natural curiosity
+as to the foreign gentleman's possessions.
+
+When he came he drove in a close cab from Gravesend Station, and
+usually told the cabman when his services would again be required. He
+came thus with three friends one summer afternoon, some years ago, and
+came without luggage. The servants, who followed in a second cab,
+carried some parcels, presumably of refreshments. These grave
+gentlemen were, it appeared, about to enjoy a picnic at the Signal
+House--possibly a tea-picnic in the Russian fashion.
+
+The afternoon was fine, and the gentlemen walked in the garden at the
+back of the house. They were walking thus when another cab stopped at
+the closed iron gate, and the banker hurried, as fast as his build
+would allow, to open the side door and admit a seafaring man, who
+seemed to know his bearings.
+
+"Well, mister," he said, in a Northern voice, "another of your little
+jobs?"
+
+The two men shook hands, and the banker paid the cabman. When the
+vehicle had gone the host turned to his guest and replied to the
+question.
+
+"Yes, my fren'," he said, "another of my little jobs. I hope you are
+well, Captain Cable?"
+
+But Captain Cable was not a man to waste words over the social
+conventions. He was obviously well--as well as a hard, seafaring life
+will make a man who lives simply and works hard. He was a short man,
+with a red face washed very clean, and very well shaven, except for a
+little piece of beard left fantastically at the base of his chin. His
+eyes were blue and bright, like gimlets. He may have had a soft heart,
+but it was certainly hidden beneath a hard exterior. He wore a thick
+coat of blue pilot-cloth, not because the July day was cold, but
+because it was his best coat. His hat was carefully brushed and of
+hard, black felt. It had perhaps been the height of fashion in
+Sunderland five years earlier. He wore no gloves--Captain Cable drew
+the line there. As for the rest, he had put on that which he called
+his shore-going rig.
+
+"And yourself?" he answered, mechanically.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," replied the polite banker, who, it will
+have been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the
+reader. The truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously
+Russian that the plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of
+consonants. "It is an affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet
+you, but I think they do not speak English, except your colleague, the
+other captain, who speaks a little--a very little."
+
+As he spoke he led the way to the garden, where three gentlemen were
+awaiting them.
+
+"This is Captain Cable," he said, and the three gentlemen raised their
+hats, much to the captain's discomfiture. He did not hold by foreign
+ways; but he dragged his hat off and then expectorated on the lawn,
+just to show that he felt quite at home. He even took the lead in the
+conversation.
+
+"Tell 'em," he said, "that I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a
+speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me hands are
+clean."
+
+He held them out and they were not, so he must have spoken
+metaphorically.
+
+The banker translated, addressing himself to one of his companions,
+rather markedly and with much deference.
+
+"You're speakin' French," interrupted Captain Cable.
+
+"Yes, my fren', I am. Do you know French?"
+
+"Not me," returned Captain Cable, affably. "They're all one to me.
+They're all damn nonsense."
+
+He was, it seemed, that which is called in these days of blatant
+patriotism a thorough Englishman, or a true Blue, according to the
+social station of the speaker.
+
+The gentleman to whom the translation had been addressed smiled. He
+was a tall and rather distinguished-looking man, with bushy white hair
+and mustache. His features were square-cut and strong. His eyes were
+dark, and he had an easy smile. He led the way to some chairs which
+had been placed near a table at the far end of the lawn beneath a
+cedar-tree, and his manner had something faintly regal in it, as if in
+his daily life he had always been looked up to and obeyed without
+question.
+
+"Tell him that we also are plain men with clean hands," he said.
+
+And the banker replied:
+
+"Oui, mon Prince."
+
+But the interpretation was taken out of his mouth by one of the
+others, the youngest of the group--a merry-eyed youth, with a fluffy,
+fair mustache and close-cropped, flaxen hair.
+
+"My father," he said, in perfect English, "says that we also are plain
+men, and that your hands will not be hurt by touching ours."
+
+He held out his hand as he spoke, and refused to withdraw it until it
+had been grasped, rather shame-facedly, by Captain Cable, who did not
+like these effusive foreign ways, but, nevertheless, rather liked the
+young man.
+
+The banker ranged the chairs round the table, and the oddly assorted
+group seated themselves. The man who had not yet spoken, and who sat
+down last, was obviously a sailor. His face was burned a deep brown,
+and was mostly hidden by a closely cut beard. He had the slow ways of
+a Northerner, the abashed manner of a merchant skipper on shore. The
+mark of the other element was so plainly written upon him that Captain
+Cable looked at him hard and then nodded. Without being invited to do
+so they sat next to each other at one side of the table, and faced the
+three landsmen. Again Captain Cable spoke first.
+
+"Provided it's nothing underhand," he said, "I'm ready and willing.
+Or'nary risks of the sea, Queen's enemies, act o' God--them's my
+risks! I am uninsured. Ship's my own. I don't mind explosives--"
+
+"There are explosives," admitted the banker.
+
+"Then they must be honest explosives, or they don't go below my
+hatches. Explosives that's to blow a man up honest, before his face."
+
+"There are cartridges," said the young man who had shaken hands.
+
+"That'll do," said the masterful sailor. And pointing a thick finger
+towards the banker, added, "Now, mister," and sat back in his chair.
+
+"It is a very simple matter," explained the banker, in a thick, suave
+voice. "We have a cargo--a greater part of it weight, though there is
+some measurement--a few cases of light goods, clothing and such. You
+will load in the river, and all will be sent to you in lighters. There
+is nothing heavy, nothing large. There is also no insurance, you
+understand. What falls out of the slings and is lost overside is
+lost."
+
+The banker paused for breath.
+
+"I understand," said Captain Cable. "It's the same with me and my
+ship. There is no insurance, no tricking underwriters into unusual
+risks. It's neck or nothing with me."
+
+And he looked hard at the breathless banker, with whom it was, in this
+respect, nothing.
+
+"I understand right enough," he added, with an affable nod to the
+three foreigners.
+
+"You will sail from London with a full general cargo for Malmo or
+Stockholm, or somewhere where officials are not wide-awake. You meet
+in the North Sea, at a point to be fixed between yourselves, the
+/Olaf/, Captain Petersen--sitting by your side."
+
+Captain Cable turned and gravely shook hands with Captain Petersen.
+
+"Thought you was a seafaring man," he said. And Captain Petersen
+replied that he was "Vair pleased."
+
+"The cargo is to be transshipped at sea, out of sight of land or
+lightship. But that we can safely leave to you, Captain Cable."
+
+"I don't deny," replied the mariner, who was measuring Captain
+Petersen out of the corner of his eye, "that I have been there
+before."
+
+"You can then go up the Baltic in ballast to some small port--just a
+sawmill, at the head of a fjord--where I shall have a cargo of timber
+waiting for you to bring back to London. When can you begin loading,
+captain?"
+
+"To-morrow," replied the captain. "Ship's lying in the river now, and
+if these gentlemen would like to see her, she's as handy a--"
+
+"No, I do not think we shall have time for that!" put in the banker,
+hastily. "And now we must leave you and Captain Petersen to settle
+your meeting-place. You have your charts?"
+
+By way of response the captain produced from his pocket sundry folded
+papers, which he laid tenderly on the table. For the last ten years he
+had been postponing the necessity of buying new charts of certain
+sections of the North Sea. He looked round at the high walls and the
+overhanging trees.
+
+"Hope the wind don't come blustering in here much," he said,
+apprehensively, as he unfolded the ragged papers with great caution.
+
+The fair-haired young man drew forward his chair, and Cable, seeing
+the action, looked at him sharply.
+
+"Seafaring man?" he inquired, with a weight of doubt and distrust in
+his voice.
+
+"Not by profession, only for fun."
+
+"Fun? Man and boy, I've used the sea forty years, and I haven't yet
+found out where the fun comes in!"
+
+"This gentleman," explained the banker, "his Ex--Mr.--" He paused, and
+looked inquiringly at the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Martin."
+
+"Mr. Martin will be on board the /Olaf/ when you meet Captain Petersen
+in the North Sea. He will act as interpreter. You remember that
+Captain Petersen speaks no English, and you do not know his language.
+The two crews, I understand, will be similarly placed. Captain
+Peterson undertakes to have no one on board speaking English. And your
+crew, my fren'?"
+
+"My crew comes from Sun'land. Men that only speak English, and
+precious little of that," replied Captain Cable.
+
+He had his finger on the chart, but paused and looked up, fixing his
+bright glance on the face of the white-haired gentleman.
+
+"There's one thing--I'm a plain-spoken man myself--what is there for
+us two--us seafaring men?"
+
+"There is five hundred pounds for each of you," replied the white-
+haired gentleman for himself, in slow and careful English.
+
+Captain Cable nodded his grizzled head over the chart.
+
+"I like to deal with a gentleman," he said, gruffly.
+
+"And so do I," replied the white-haired foreigner, with a bow.
+
+Captain Cable grunted audibly.
+
+
+
+III
+
+A SPECIALTY
+
+A muddy sea and a dirty gray sky, a cold rain and a moaning wind.
+Short-capped waves breaking to leeward in a little hiss of spray. The
+water itself sandy and discolored. Far away to the east, where the
+green-gray and the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in
+the breeze--Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of
+wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs,
+like a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is
+broad daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving,
+night and day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended
+once in three weeks. The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the
+screen, which is ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp,
+is lubricated, and the beacon is left to its solitude and its work.
+
+There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning
+mill is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is
+probably an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank. This is
+one of the waste-places of the world--a place left clean on sailors'
+charts; no one passes that way. These banks are as deadly as many
+rocks which have earned for themselves a dreaded name in maritime
+story. For they never relinquish anything that touches them. They are
+soft and gentle in their embrace; they slowly suck in the ship that
+comes within their grasp. Their story is a long, grim tale of
+disaster. Their treasure is vast and stored beneath a weight, half
+sand, half water, which must ever baffle the ingenuity of man. Fog,
+the sailors' deadliest foe, has its home on these waters, rising on
+the low-lying lands and creeping out to sea, where it blows to and fro
+for weeks and weeks together. When all the world is blue and sunny,
+fog-banks lie like a sheet of cotton-wool on these coasts.
+
+"Barrin' fogs--always barrin' fogs!" Captain Cable had said as his
+last word on leaving the Signal House. "If ye wait a month, never move
+in a fog in these waters, or ye'll move straight to Davy Jones!"
+
+And chance favored him, for a gale of wind came instead of a fog, one
+of those May gales that sweep down from the northwest without warning
+or reason.
+
+At sunset the /Olaf/ had crept cautiously in from the west--a high-
+prowed, well-decked, square-rigged steamer of the old school, with her
+name written large amidships and her side-lights set aft. Captain
+Petersen was a cautious man, and came on with the leadsman working
+like a clock. He was a man who moved slowly. And at sea, as in life,
+he who moves slowly often runs many dangers which a greater confidence
+and a little dash would avoid. He who moves slowly is the prey of
+every current.
+
+Captain Petersen steamed in behind the beacon. He sighted the windmill
+very carefully, very correctly, very cautiously. He described a half-
+circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then he
+steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the
+beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he
+rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped
+dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then
+Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the
+high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The /Olaf/ was anchored
+at the head of a submarine bay. She had shoal water all round her, and
+no vessel could get at her unless it came as she had come. The sun
+went down, and the red-gray clouds in the stormy west slowly faded
+into night. There was no land in sight. Even the whirligig windmill
+was below the horizon now. Only the three-legged beacon stood near,
+turning its winking, wondering eye round the waste of waters.
+
+Here the /Olaf/ rode out the gale that raged all through the night,
+and in the morning there was no peace, for it still rained and the
+northwest wind still blew hard. There was no depth of water, however,
+to make a sea big enough to affect large vessels. The /Olaf/ rode
+easily enough, and only pitched her nose into the yellow sea from time
+to time, throwing a cloud of spray over the length of her decks, like
+a bird at its bath.
+
+Soon after daylight the Prince Martin Bukaty came on deck, gay and
+lively in his borrowed oilskins. His blue eyes laughed in the shadow
+of the black sou'wester tied down over his eyes, his slight form was
+lost in the ample folds of Captain Petersen's best oilskin coat.
+
+"It remains to be seen," he said, peering out into the rain and spray,
+"whether that little man will come to us in this."
+
+"He will come," said Captain Petersen.
+
+Prince Martin Bukaty laughed. He laughed at most things--at the
+timidity and caution of this Norse captain, at good weather, at bad
+weather, at life as he found it. He was one of those few and happy
+people who find life a joy and his fellow-being a huge joke. Some will
+say that it is easy enough to be gay at the threshold of life; but
+experience tells that gayety is an inward sun which shines through all
+the changes and chances of a journey which has assuredly more bad
+weather than good. The gayest are not those who can be pointed out as
+the happiest. Indeed, the happiest are those who appear to have
+nothing to make them happy. Martin Bukaty might, for instance, have
+chosen a better abode than the stuffy cabin of a Scandinavian cargo-
+boat and cheerier companions than a grim pair of Norse seamen. He
+might have sought a bluer sky and a bluer sea, and yet he stood on the
+dripping deck and laughed. He clapped Captain Petersen on the back.
+
+"Well, we have got here and we have ridden out the worst of it, and we
+haven't dragged our anchors and nobody has seen us, and that
+exceedingly amusing little captain will be here in a few hours. Why
+look so gloomy, my friend?"
+
+Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.
+
+"We are putting our necks within a rope," he said.
+
+"Not your neck--only mine," replied Martin. "It is a necktie that one
+gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so
+free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine!
+The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because
+there is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game
+all his life--that old man, eh?"
+
+"It is all very well for you," said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning
+his gloomy eyes towards his companion. "A prince does not get shot or
+hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas."
+
+"Ah! you think that," said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. "One can
+never tell."
+
+Then he broke into a laugh.
+
+"Come!" he said, "I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come
+on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of
+a man."
+
+"If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is
+over," grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion
+forward.
+
+"He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness."
+
+"He is probably afraid--" Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
+laboriously on to the rail.
+
+"Of what?" inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.
+
+"Of a woman."
+
+And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
+aloft.
+
+They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time
+in breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself
+together for that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale.
+Then Captain Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead.
+On the gray horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It
+was a steamer approaching before the wind.
+
+Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the
+water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the
+beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till the
+rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He
+disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again
+astern of the /Olaf/, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan
+of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very
+different kind of sailor to the careful captain of the /Olaf/. His low
+decks were clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--
+green and white. As the little steamer came down he suddenly slackened
+speed, and waved his hand as he stood alone on the high bridge.
+
+Then two or three oilskin-clad figures crept forward into the spray
+that still broke over the bows. The crew of the /Olaf/, crowding to
+the rail, looked down on the deeply laden little vessel from the
+height of their dry and steady deck. They watched the men working
+quickly almost under water on the low forecastle, and saw that it was
+good. Captain Cable stood swaying on the bridge--a little, square
+figure in gleaming oilskins--and said no word. He had a picked crew.
+
+He passed ahead of the /Olaf/ and anchored there, paying out cable as
+if he were going to ride out a cyclone. The steamer had no name
+visible, a sail hanging carelessly over the stern completely hid name
+and port of registry. Her forward name-boards had been removed.
+Whatever his business was, this seaman knew it well.
+
+No sooner was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a
+boat, and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian
+profanity. "He is going to try and get to us!" he said,
+pessimistically, and went forward to give the necessary orders. He
+knew his business, too, this Northern sailor, and when, after a long
+struggle, the boat containing Captain Cable and two men came within
+reach, a rope--cleverly thrown--coiled out into the flying scud and
+fell across the captain's face.
+
+A few minutes later he scrambled on to the deck of the /Olaf/ and
+shook hands with Captain Petersen. He did not at once recognize Prince
+Martin, who held out his hand.
+
+"Glad to see you, Captain Cable," he said. Cable finished drying the
+salt water from his face with a blue cotton handkerchief before he
+shook hands.
+
+"Suppose you thought I wasn't coming," he said, suspiciously.
+
+"No, I knew you would."
+
+"Glad to see me for my own sake?" suggested the captain, grimly
+smiling.
+
+"Yes, it always does one good to see a man," answered Prince Martin.
+
+"They tell me you're a prince."
+
+"That is all."
+
+The captain measured him slowly with his eyes.
+
+"Makings of a man as well, perhaps," he said, doubtfully. Then he
+turned to cast an eye over the /Olaf/.
+
+"Tin-kettle of a thing!" he observed, after a pause.
+
+"My little cargo won't be much in her great hold. Hatches are too
+small. Now, I'm all hatch. Can't open up in this weather. We can turn
+to and get our running tackle bent. It'll moderate before the evening,
+and if it does we can work all night. Will your Rile Highnes' be ready
+to work all night?"
+
+"I shall be ready whenever your High Mightiness is."
+
+The captain gave a gruff laugh.
+
+"Dammy, you're the right sort!" he muttered, looking aloft at the
+rigging with that contempt for foreign tackle which is essentially the
+privilege of the British sailor.
+
+Cable gave certain orders, announced that he would send four men on
+board in the afternoon to bend the running tackle "ship-shape and
+Bristol fashion," and refused to remain on board the /Olaf/ for
+luncheon.
+
+"We've got a bit of steak," he said, conclusively, and clambered over
+the side into his boat. In confirmation of this statement the odor of
+fried onions was borne on the breeze a few minutes later from the
+small steamer to the large one.
+
+The men from Sunderland came on board during the afternoon--men who,
+as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly
+small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised
+in harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman
+or a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was
+successfully bent, and in the evening the weather moderated.
+
+There was a half-moon, which struggled through the clouds soon after
+dark, and by its light the little English steamer sidled almost
+noiselessly under the shadow of her large companion. Captain Cable's
+crew worked quickly and quietly, and by nine o'clock that work was
+begun which was to throw a noose round the necks of Prince Bukaty,
+Prince Martin, Captain Petersen, and several others.
+
+Captain Cable divided the watches so that the work might proceed
+continuously. The dawn found the smaller steamer considerably
+lightened, and her captain bright and wakeful at his post. All through
+the day the transshipping went on. Cases of all sizes and all weights
+were slung out of the capacious hatches of the one to sink into the
+dark hold of the other vessel, and there was no mishap. Through the
+second night the creaking of the blocks never ceased, and soon after
+daylight the three men who had superintended the work without resting
+took a cup of coffee together in the cabin of the /Olaf/.
+
+"Likely as not," said Captain Cable, setting down his empty cup, "we
+three'll not meet again. I have had dealings with many that I've never
+seen again, and with some that have been careful not to know me if
+they did see me."
+
+"We can never tell," said Martin, optimistically.
+
+"Of course," the captain went on, "I can hold me tongue. That's
+agreed--we all hold our tongues, whatever the newspapers may be likely
+to pay for a word or two. Often enough I've read things in the
+newspaper that I could put a different name to. And that little ship
+of mine has had a hand in some queer political pies."
+
+"Yes," answered Martin, with his gay laugh, "and kept it clean all the
+same."
+
+"That's as may be. And now I'll say good-bye. I'll be calling on your
+father for my money in three days' time--barrin' fogs. And I'll tell
+him I left you well. Good-bye, Petersen; you're a handy man. Tell him
+he's a handy man in his own langwidge, and I'll take it kindly."
+
+Captain Cable shook hands, and clattered out of the cabin in his great
+sea-boots.
+
+Half an hour later the /Olaf/ was alone on that shallow sea, which
+seemed lonelier and more silent than ever; for when a strong man quits
+a room he often bequeaths a sudden silence to those he leaves behind.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TWO OF A TRADE
+
+"His face reminds one of a sunny graveyard," a witty Frenchwoman had
+once said of a man named Paul Deulin. And it is probable that Deulin
+alone could have understood what she meant. Those who think in French
+have a trick of putting great thoughts into a little compass, and, as
+the hollow ball of talk is tossing to and fro, it sometimes rings for
+a moment in a deeper note than many ears are tuned to catch.
+
+The careless word seized the attention of one man who happened to hear
+it--Reginald Cartoner, a listener, not a talker--and made that man
+Paul Deulin's friend for the rest of his life. As there is /point de
+culte sans mystere/, so also there can be no lasting friendship
+without reserve. And although these two men had met in many parts of
+the world--although they had in common more languages than may be
+counted on the fingers--they knew but little of each other.
+
+If one thinks of it, a sunny graveyard, bright with flowers and the
+gay green of spring foliage, is the shallowest fraud on earth,
+endeavoring to conceal beneath a specious exterior a thousand
+tragedies, a whole harvest of lost illusions, a host of grim human
+comedies. On the other hand, this is a pious fraud; for half the world
+is young, and will discover the roots of the flowers soon enough.
+
+Cartoner had met Deulin in many strange places. Together they had
+witnessed queer events. Accredited to a new president of a new
+republic, they once had made their bow, clad in court dress, and
+official dignity, to the man whom they were destined to see a month
+later hanging on his own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the
+spare-bedroom window of the new presidency. They had acted in concert;
+they had acted in direct opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell
+Deulin that if he persisted in his present course of action the
+government which he (Cartoner) represented would not be able to look
+upon it with indifference, which is the language of diplomacy, and
+means war.
+
+For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices,
+and it was their business to be found where the carcass is.
+
+"The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
+in one place at a time," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty
+years his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the
+wheel had rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves
+far from that place where their services were urgently needed.
+
+"If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only
+during a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they
+are." Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw
+a ready, imperturbable smile.
+
+Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
+captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may
+be vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to
+assure a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly.
+Deulin, during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze
+of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who
+have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot
+one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a
+lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each
+other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces,
+but men have manufactured their own thoughts.
+
+Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
+was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
+professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
+
+"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
+side. If I did not, he would go past."
+
+This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
+England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
+a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that
+direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.
+Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall,
+avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are
+content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover,
+such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often
+happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.
+
+Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune,
+or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall,
+spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm
+possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner
+of a great land-owner. He shook hands in silence, then turned and
+walked with Cartoner.
+
+"I permit myself a question," he said. "When did you return from
+Cuba?"
+
+"I landed at Liverpool last night."
+
+Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and
+down. Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be
+buried behind those smiling eyes.
+
+"I am in London, as you see," said Deulin, as if he had been asked a
+question. "I am awaiting orders. Something is brewing somewhere, one
+may suppose. Your return to London seems to confirm such a suspicion.
+Let us hope we may have another little . . . errand together--eh?"
+
+As he spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman
+who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to
+look curiously at the two men.
+
+"You are dressed in your best clothes," said Deulin, after a pause;
+"you are going to pay calls."
+
+"I am going to call on one of my old chiefs."
+
+"Then I will ask your permission to accompany you. I, too, have put on
+a new hat. I am idle. I want something to do. Mon Dieu, I want to talk
+to a clean and wholesome Englishwoman, just for a change. I know all
+your old chiefs, my friend. I know where you have been every moment
+since you made your mark at this business. One watches the quiet men--
+eh?"
+
+"She will be glad to see you," said Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"Ah! She is always kind, that lady; for I guess where we are going.
+She might have been a great woman . . . if she had not been a happy
+one."
+
+"I always go to see them when I am in town," said Cartoner, who
+usually confined his conversation to the necessaries of daily
+intercourse.
+
+"And he--how is he?"
+
+"He is as well as can be expected. He has worked so hard and so long
+in many climates. She is always anxious about him."
+
+"It is the penalty a woman pays," said Deulin. "To love and to be
+consumed by anxiety--a woman's life, my friend. Oddly enough, I should
+have gone there this afternoon, whether I had met you or not. I want
+her good services--again."
+
+And the Frenchman shrugged his shoulders with a laugh, as if suddenly
+reminded of some grievous error in his past life.
+
+"I want her to befriend some friends of mine, if she has not done so
+already. For she knows them, of course. They are the Bukatys. Of
+course, you know the history of the Bukatys of Warsaw."
+
+"I know the history of Poland," answered Cartoner, looking straight in
+front of him with reflective eyes. He had an odd way of carrying his
+head a little bent forward, as if he bore behind his heavy forehead a
+burden of memories and knowledge of which his brain was always
+conscious--as a man may stand in the centre of a great library, and
+become suddenly aware that he has more books than he can ever open and
+understand.
+
+"Of course you do; you know a host of things. And you know more
+history that was ever written in books. You know more than I do, and
+Heaven knows that I know a great deal. For you are a reader, and I
+never look into a book. I know the surface of things. The Bukatys are
+in London. I give you that--to put in your pipe and smoke. Father and
+son. It is not for them that I seek Lady Orlay's help. They must take
+care of themselves--though they will not do that. It does not run in
+the family, as you know, who read history books."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Cartoner, pausing before crossing to the corner of
+St. James's Street, in the manner of a man whose life had not been
+passed in London streets. For it must be remembered that English
+traffic is different to the traffic of any other streets in the world.
+
+"There is a girl," pursued the Frenchman. "Families like the Bukatys
+should kill their girls in infancy. Not that Wanda knows it; she is as
+gay as a bird, and quite devoted to her father, who is an old ruffian
+--and my very dear friend."
+
+"And what do you want Lady Orlay to do for Princess Wanda?" inquired
+Cartoner, with a smile. It was always a marvel to him that Paul Deulin
+should have travelled so far down the road of life without losing his
+enthusiasm somewhere by the way.
+
+"That I leave to Lady Orlay," replied Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+neat umbrella, which imperilled the eyesight of a passing baker-boy,
+who abused him. Whereupon Deulin turned and took off his hat and
+apologized.
+
+"Yes," he said, ignoring the incident, "I would not presume to
+dictate. All I should do would be to present Wanda to her. 'Here is a
+girl who has the misfortune to be a Bukaty; who has no mother; who has
+a father who is a plotter and an old ruffian--a Polish noble, in fact
+--and a brother who is an enthusiast, and as brave as only a prince
+can be.' I should say, 'You see that circumstances have thrown this
+girl upon the world, practically alone--on the hard, hard upper-class
+world--with only one heart to break. It is only men who have a whole
+row of hearts on a shelf, and, when one is broken, they take down
+another, made, perhaps, of ambition, or sport, or the love of a
+different sort of woman--and, vogue la galere, they go on just as well
+as they did before.'"
+
+"And my accomplished aunt . . ." suggested Cartoner.
+
+"Would laugh at me, I know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's
+laugh than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man
+of common-sense, though deadly dull in conversation."
+
+As if to prove the truth of this assertion, Deulin was himself silent
+until they had ascended St. James's Street and turned to the left in
+Piccadilly; and, sure enough, Cartoner had nothing to say. At last he
+broke the silence, and made it evident that he had been placidly
+following the stream of his own thoughts.
+
+"Who is Joseph P. Mangles?" he asked, in his semi-inaudible monotone.
+
+"An American gentleman--the word is applicable in its best sense--who
+for his sins, or the sins of his forefathers, has been visited with
+the most terrible sister a man ever had."
+
+"So much I know."
+
+Deulin turned and looked at his companion.
+
+"Then you have met him--that puts another complexion on your
+question."
+
+"I have just crossed the Atlantic in the next chair to him."
+
+"And that is all you know about him?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Then Joseph P. Mangles is getting on."
+
+"What is he?" repeated Cartoner.
+
+"He is in the service of his country, my friend, like any other poor
+devil--like you or me, for instance. He spends half of his time
+kicking his heels in New York, or wherever they kick their heels in
+America. The rest of his time he is risking his health, or possibly
+his neck, wherever it may please the fates to send him. If he had been
+properly trained, he might have done something, that Joseph P.
+Mangles; for he can hold his tongue. But he took to it late, as they
+all do in America. So he has come across, has he? Yes, the storm-birds
+are congregating, my silent friend. There is something in the wind."
+
+Deulin raised his long, thin nose into the dusty May air and sniffed
+it.
+
+"Was that girl with them?" he inquired presently--"Miss Netty Cahere?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I always make love to Miss Cahere--she likes it best."
+
+Cartoner stared straight in front of him, and made no comment. The
+Frenchman gave a laugh, which was not entirely pleasant. It was rare
+that his laugh was harsh, but such a note rang in it now. They did not
+speak again until they had walked some distance northward of
+Piccadilly, and stopped before a house with white window-boxes.
+Several carriages stood at the other side of the road against the
+square railings.
+
+"Is it her day?" inquired Deulin.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Deulin made a grimace expressive of annoyance.
+
+"And we shall see a number of people we had better not see. But, since
+we are here, let us go in--with a smile on the countenance, eh? my
+brave Cartoner."
+
+"And a lie on the tongue."
+
+"There I will meet you, too," replied Deulin, looking into his card-
+case.
+
+They entered the house, and, as Deulin had predicted, there found a
+number of people assembled, who noted, no doubt, that they had come
+together. It was observable that this was not a congregation of
+fashionable or artistic people; for the women were dressed quietly,
+and the men were mostly old and white-haired. It was also dimly
+perceptible that there was a larger proportion of brain in the room
+than is allotted to the merely fashionable, or to that shallow mixture
+of the dramatic and pictorial, which is usually designated the
+artistic world. Moreover, scraps of conversation reached the ear that
+led the hearer to conclude that the house was in its way a miniature
+Babel.
+
+The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to
+shake hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a
+vivacious group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already
+perceived Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the
+crowd. He seemed to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at
+length went to meet Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those
+slight and indefinable family resemblances which start up at odd
+moments became visible.
+
+"I want you particularly to-morrow night," said the lady; "I have some
+people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening."
+
+And she turned to say good-bye to a departing guest. Deulin was at
+Cartoner's elbow again.
+
+"Here," he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own
+tongue, "I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre
+Bukaty," he added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy,
+white hair, and the air of a mediaeval chieftain, "allow me to present
+my old friend Cartoner."
+
+The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow.
+Deulin still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to
+turn towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes.
+She had a manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an
+English girl of open air and active tastes.
+
+"Princess Wanda," said the Frenchman, "my friend Mr. Cartoner."
+
+The eager eyes came round to Cartoner's face, of which the gravity
+seemed suddenly reflected in them.
+
+"He is the best linguist in Europe," said Deulin, in a gay whisper;
+"even Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels."
+
+And he himself spoke in Polish.
+
+Princess Wanda met Cartoner's serious eyes again, and in that place,
+where human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books
+was folded over.
+
+
+
+V
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a
+perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he
+would have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading
+before facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway
+service. But he was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have
+been bestowed upon the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and
+the contempt hurled by his British prototype upon Dissent was cast
+upon Commerce as represented in Poland by the thrifty German /emigre/.
+
+The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost
+invariably bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from
+his great height as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a
+matter of fact, he had grown to manhood in the years immediately
+preceding those wild early sixties, when all Europe was at
+loggerheads, and Poland seething in its midst, as lava seethes in the
+crater of a volcano.
+
+The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in
+London. Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and,
+oddly enough, he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was
+not an exile, which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he
+who has no abiding city generally considers himself exempt from the
+duties of citizenship.
+
+"They do not take me seriously," he said to his intimate friends;
+"they do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we
+shall see."
+
+And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live
+in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact
+that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden
+times, when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing
+readiness to follow him to the death--which is the way of the world.
+"You have but to hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But
+wise men know that the hand must have something in it. The prince had
+been young and impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when
+that which for eight centuries had been one of the important kingdoms
+of the world was wiped off the face of Europe, like writing off a
+slate. He was not a ruffian, as Deulin had described him; but he was a
+man who had been ruffled, and nothing could ever smooth him.
+
+He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning
+and the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a
+man, he said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He
+liked Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
+
+"It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but
+English, and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest
+people in the world--you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg
+your pardon. Well, then, come and see me to-morrow. We are in a hotel
+in Kensington--will you come? That is the address."
+
+And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the
+corner, after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a
+moment, which was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at
+with lightning speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain.
+There are few better equipments with which to face the world.
+
+"Yes," he said at length; "it will give me much pleasure."
+
+The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What
+was there to need reflection in such a small question?
+
+"At five o'clock," he said. "We can give you a cup of the poisonous
+tea you drink in this country."
+
+And he went away laughing heartily at the small witticism. People
+whose lives are anything but a joke are usually content with the
+smallest jests.
+
+It was scarcely five o'clock the next day when Cartoner was conducted
+by a page-boy to the Bukatys' rooms in the quiet old hotel in
+Kensington. The Princess Wanda was alone. She was dressed in black.
+There is in some Varsovian families a heritage of mourning to be worn
+until Poland is reinstated. She was slightly but strongly made. Like
+her father and her brother, there was a suggestion of endurance in her
+being, such as is often found in slightly made persons.
+
+"I came as early as I could," said Cartoner, and, as he spoke, the
+clock struck.
+
+The princess smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she
+had not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a
+rather na�ve statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little
+odd, and glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she
+turned towards a chair. He was quite grave and honest.
+
+"That is kind of you," she said, speaking English without the least
+suspicion of accent; for she had had an English governess all her
+life. "My father will take it to mean that you wanted to come, and are
+not only taking pity on lonely foreigners. He will be here in a
+minute. He has just been called away."
+
+"It was very kind of him to ask me to call," replied Cartoner.
+
+There was a simple directness in his manner of speech which was quite
+new to the Princess Wanda. She had known few Englishmen, and her own
+countrymen had mostly the manners of the French. She had never met a
+man who conveyed the impression of purpose and of the habit of going
+straight towards his purpose so clearly as this. Cartoner had not come
+to pay an idle visit. She wondered why he had come. He did not rush
+into conversation, and yet his silence had no sense of embarrassment
+in it. His hair was turning gray above the temples. She could see this
+as he took a chair near the window. He was probably ten years older
+than herself, and gave the impression of experience and of a deep
+knowledge of the world. From living much alone he had acquired the
+habit of wondering whether it was worth while to say that which came
+into his mind--which is a habit fatal to social success.
+
+"Monsieur Deulin dined with us last night," said the princess,
+following the usual instinct that silence between strangers is
+intolerable. "He talked a great deal of you."
+
+"Ah, Deulin is a diplomatist. He talks too much."
+
+"He accuses you of talking too little," said Wanda, with some spirit.
+
+"You see, there are only two methods of leaving things unsaid,
+princess."
+
+"Which is diplomacy?" she suggested.
+
+"Which is diplomacy."
+
+"Then I think you are both great artists," she said, with a laugh, as
+the door opened and her father entered the room.
+
+"I only come to ask you a question--a word," said the prince.
+"Heavens! your English language! I have a man down-stairs--a question
+of business--and he speaks the oddest English. Now what is the meaning
+of the word jettison?"
+
+Cartoner gave him the word in French.
+
+"Ah!" cried the prince, holding up his two powerful hands, "of course.
+How foolish of me not to guess. In a moment I will return. You will
+excuse me, will you not? Wanda will give you some tea."
+
+And he hurried out of the room, leaving Cartoner to wonder what a
+person so far removed above commerce could have to do with the word
+jettison.
+
+The conversation returned to Deulin. He was a man of whom people spoke
+continually, and had spoken for years. In fact, two generations had
+found him a fruitful topic of conversation without increasing their
+knowledge of him. If he had only been that which is called a public
+man, a novelist or a singer, his fortune would have been easy. All his
+advertising would have been done for him by others. For there was in
+him that unknown quantity which the world must needs think
+magnificent.
+
+"I want you to tell me all you know about him," said the princess in
+her brisk way. "He is the only old man I have ever seen whose thoughts
+have not grown old too. And, of course, one wonders why. He is the
+sort of person who might do anything surprising. He might fall in love
+and marry, or something like that, you know. Papa says he is married
+already, and his wife is in a mad asylum. He says there is a tragedy.
+But I don't. He has no wife--unless he has two."
+
+"I know nothing of that side of his life. I only know his career."
+
+"I do not care about his career," said the princess, lightly. "I go
+deeper than careers."
+
+She looked at Cartoner with a wise nod and a shrewd look in her gay,
+blue eyes.
+
+"A man's career is only the surface of his life."
+
+"Then some men's lives are all surface," said Cartoner.
+
+Wanda gave a little, half-pitying, half-contemptuous jerk of her head.
+
+"Some men have the soul of an omnibus-horse," she replied.
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, looking gravely the while at this
+girl, who seemed to know so much of life and to have such singularly
+clear and decisive views upon it.
+
+"What would you have them do beyond going on when required and
+stopping when expedient--and avoiding collisions?" he inquired.
+
+"I should like them to break the omnibus up occasionally," she
+answered, "and take a wrong turning sometimes, just to see if a little
+happiness lay that way."
+
+"Yes," he laughed. "You are a Pole and a Bukaty. I knew it as soon as
+I saw you."
+
+"One must do something. We were talking of such things last night, and
+Monsieur Deulin said that his ideal combination in a man was an
+infinite patience and a sudden premeditated recklessness."
+
+"Now you have come down to a mere career again," said Cartoner.
+
+"Not necessarily."
+
+The prince came into the room again at this moment.
+
+"What are you people discussing," he asked, "so gravely?"
+
+He spoke in French, which was the language that was easiest to him,
+for he had been young when it was the fashion in Poland to be French.
+
+"I do not quite know," answered Cartoner, slowly. "The princess was
+giving me her views."
+
+"I know," retorted the old man, with his rather hollow laugh. "They
+are long views, those views of hers."
+
+Cartoner was still standing near the window. He turned absently and
+looked out, down into the busy street. There he saw something which
+caused him intense surprise, though he did not show it; for, like any
+man of strong purpose, his face had but one expression, and that of
+thoughtful attention. He saw Captain Cable, of the /Minnie/, crossing
+the street, having just quitted the hotel. This was the business
+acquaintance of Prince Bukaty's, who had come to speak of jettison.
+
+Cartoner knew Captain Cable well, and his specialty in maritime skill.
+He had seen war waged before now with material which had passed in and
+out of the /Minnie's/ hatches.
+
+The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him
+away. The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met,
+and Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the
+reception given by the Orlays that evening.
+
+"You're going, of course?" said the prince.
+
+"Yes, I am going."
+
+"You go to many such entertainments?"
+
+"No, I go to very few," replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his
+speculative way.
+
+Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic
+omission of the usual "Well, I must be off," or any such catch-word.
+He certainly left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world
+expects.
+
+He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for
+some distance. Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and
+accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his
+vehicle.
+
+"Westminster Bridge," he said.
+
+He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly
+down to the steamboat-landing.
+
+"Where do you want to go to?" inquired the gruff, seafaring ticket-
+clerk.
+
+"As far as I can," was the reply.
+
+A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over
+the rudder. He must have known that the /Minnie/ was so constructed
+that she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at
+once. It was six o'clock, and a spring tide was running out. All the
+passenger traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-
+hand, having leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket,
+in which, as was natural in one whose life was passed on running
+water, his whole heart seemed to be absorbed. Cartoner was friendly,
+but did not take advantage of this affability to make inquiries about
+the /Minnie/. He knew, perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man
+on earth than a river-side worker.
+
+The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the
+Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number
+of steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The
+majority were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a
+steam threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.
+
+In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of
+North Sea fish-carriers, lay the /Minnie/, painted black, with nothing
+brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a
+shabby green. She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated
+fish-carrier.
+
+Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman
+to take him to the /Minnie/.
+
+"Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir," he said. "He
+must have come down by the boat before yours."
+
+A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the /Minnie/, and
+banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was
+tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable's front door.
+
+The sailor's grim face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face
+of a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep,
+unwashed wrinkles took a kindlier curve.
+
+"It's you, Mr. Cartoner," he said. "Glad to see you."
+
+"I was passing in a steamer," answered Cartoner, quietly, "and
+recognized the /Minnie/."
+
+"I take it friendly of you, Mr. Cartoner, remembering the rum time you
+and me had together. Come below. I've got a drop of wine somewhere
+stowed away in a locker."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VULTURES
+
+"I suppose," Miss Mangles was saying--"I suppose, Joseph, that Lady
+Orlay has been interested in the work without our knowing it?"
+
+"It is possible, Jooly--it is possible," replied Mr. Joseph P.
+Mangles, looking with a small, bright, speculative eye out of the
+window of his private sitting-room in a hotel in Northumberland
+Avenue.
+
+Miss Mangles was standing behind him, and held in her hand an
+invitation-card notifying that Lady Orlay would be at home that same
+evening from nine o'clock till midnight.
+
+"This invitation," said the recipient, "accompanied as it is by a
+friendly note explaining that the shortness of the invitation lies in
+the fact that we only arrived the day before yesterday, seems to point
+to it, Joseph. It seems to indicate that England is prepared to give
+me a welcome."
+
+"On the face of it, Jooly, it would seem--just that."
+
+Mr. Mangles continued to gaze with a speculative eye into
+Northumberland Avenue. If, as Cartoner had suggested, the profession
+of which Mr. Joseph P. Mangles was a tardy ornament, needed above all
+things a capacity for leaving things unsaid, the American diplomatist
+was not ignorant in his art. For he did not inform his sister that the
+invitation to which she attached so flattering a national importance
+owed its origin to an accidental encounter between himself and Lord
+Orlay--a friend of his early senatorial days--in Pall Mall the day
+before.
+
+Miss Mangles stood with the card in her hand and reflected. No woman
+and few men would need to be told, moreover, the subject of her
+thoughts. Of what, indeed, does every woman think the moment she
+receives an invitation?
+
+"Jooly," Mr. Mangles had been heard to say behind that lady's back--
+"Jooly is an impressive dresser when she tries."
+
+But the truth is that Jooly did not always try. She had not tried this
+morning, but stood in the conventional hotel room dressed in a black
+cloth garment which had pleats down the front and back and a belt like
+a Norfolk jacket. Miss Mangles was large and square-shouldered. She
+was a rhomboid, in fact, and had that depressing square-and-flat waist
+which so often figures on the platform in a great cause. Her hair was
+black and shiny and straight; it was drawn back from her rounded
+temples by hydraulic pressure. Her mouth was large and rather loose;
+it had grown baggy by much speaking on public platforms--a fearsome
+thing in a woman. Her face was large and round and white. Her eyes
+were dull. Long ago there must have been depressing moments in the
+life of Julia P. Mangles--moments spent in front of her mirror. But,
+like the woman of spirit that she was, she had determined that, if she
+could not be beautiful, she could at all events be great.
+
+One self-deception leads to another. Miss Mangles sat down and
+accepted Lady Orlay's invitation in the full and perfect conviction
+that she owed it to her greatness.
+
+"Are they abstainers?" she asked, reflectively, going back in her mind
+over the causes she had championed.
+
+"Nay," replied Joseph, winking gravely at a policeman in
+Northumberland Avenue.
+
+"Perhaps Lord Orlay is open to conviction."
+
+"If you tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than
+you can chew," replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing
+into the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the
+presence of himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed
+to take a sort of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the
+attitude who can.
+
+Lady Orlay's entertainments were popularly said to be too crowded, and
+no one knew this better than Lady Orlay.
+
+"Let us ask them all and be done with them," she said; and had said it
+for thirty years, ever since she had begun a social existence with no
+other prospects than that which lay in her husband's brain--then plain
+Mr. Orlay. She had never "done with them," had never secured that
+peaceful domestic leisure which had always been her dream and her
+husband's dream, and would never secure it. For these were two
+persons, now old and white-haired and celebrated, who lived in the
+great world, and had a supreme contempt for it.
+
+The Mangleses were among the first to arrive, Julia in a dress of rich
+black silk, with some green about it, and a number of iridescent
+beetle-wings serving as a relief. Miss Netty Cahere was a vision of
+pink and self-effacing quietness.
+
+"We shall know no one," she said, with a shrinking movement of her
+shoulders as they mounted the stairs.
+
+"Not even the waiters," replied Joseph Mangles, in his lugubrious
+bass, glancing into a room where tea and coffee were set out. "But
+they will soon know us."
+
+They had not been in the room, however, five minutes before an
+acquaintance entered it, tall and slim, like a cheerful Don Quixote,
+with the ribbon of a great order across his shirt-front. He paused for
+a moment near Lord and Lady Orlay, and his entrance caused, as it
+usually did, a little stir in the room. Then he turned and greeted
+Joseph Mangles. Over the large, firm hand of that gentleman's sister
+he bowed in silence.
+
+"I have nothing to say to that great woman," he sometimes said. "She
+is so elevated that my voice will not reach her."
+
+Deulin then turned to where Miss Cahere had been standing. But she had
+moved away a few paces, nearer to a candelabrum, under which she was
+now standing, and a young officer in full German uniform was openly
+admiring her, with a sort of wonder on his foolish, Teutonic face.
+
+"Ah! I expected you had forgotten me," she said, when Deulin presented
+himself.
+
+"Believe me--I have tried," he replied, with great earnestness; but
+the complete innocence of her face clearly showed that she did not
+attach any deep meaning to his remark.
+
+"You must see so many people that you cannot be expected to remember
+them all."
+
+"I do not remember them all, mademoiselle--only a very, very few."
+
+"Then tell me, who is that lovely girl you bowed to as you came into
+the room?"
+
+"Is there another in the room?" inquired Deulin, looking around him
+with some interest.
+
+"Over there, with the fair hair, dressed in black."
+
+"Ah! talking to Cartoner. Yes. Do you think her beautiful?"
+
+"I think she is perfectly lovely. But somehow she does not look like
+one of us, does she?" And Miss Cahere lowered her voice in a rather
+youthful and inexperienced way.
+
+"She is not like one of us, Miss Cahere," replied Deulin.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we are plebeians, and she is a princess."
+
+"Oh, then she is married?" exclaimed Miss Cahere, and her voice fell
+three semitones on the last word.
+
+"No. She is a princess in her own right. She is a Pole."
+
+Miss Cahere gave a little sigh.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, looking at the Princess Wanda, with a soft
+light of sympathy in her gentle eyes.
+
+"Why do you pity her?" asked Deulin, glancing down sharply.
+
+"Because princesses are always obliged to marry royalties, are they
+not--for convenience, I mean--not from . . . from inclination, like
+other girls?"
+
+And Miss Cahere's eyelids fluttered, but she did not actually raise
+her eyes towards her interlocutor. An odd smile flickered for an
+instant on Deulin's lips.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a sharp sigh--and that was all. He bowed, and
+turned away to speak to a man who had been waiting at his elbow for
+some minutes. This also was a Frenchman, who seemed to have something
+special to report, for they walked aside together.
+
+It was quite late in the evening before Deulin succeeded in his
+efforts to get a few moments' speech with Lady Orlay. He found that
+unmatched hostess at leisure in the brief space elapsing between the
+arrival of the latest and the departure of the earliest.
+
+"I was looking for you," she said; "you, who always know where
+everybody is. Where is Mr. Mangles? An under-secretary was asking for
+him a moment ago."
+
+"Mangles is listening to the music in the library--comparatively happy
+by himself behind a barricade of flowers."
+
+"And that preposterous woman?"
+
+"That preposterous woman is in the refreshment-room."
+
+Thus they spoke of the great lecturer on Prison Wrongs.
+
+"You have seen the Bukatys?" inquired Lady Orlay. "I called on them
+the moment I received your note from Paris. They are here to-night. I
+have never seen such a complexion. Is it characteristic of Poland?"
+
+"I think so," replied Deulin, with unusual shortness, looking away
+across the room.
+
+Lady Orlay's clever eyes flashed round for a moment, and she looked
+grave. It was as if she had pushed open the door of another person's
+room.
+
+"I like the old man," she said, with a change of tone. "What is he?"
+
+"He is a rebel."
+
+"Proscribed?"
+
+"No--they dare not do that. He was a great man in the sixties. You
+remember how in the great insurrection an unfailing supply of arms and
+ammunition came pouring into Poland over the Austrian frontier--more
+arms than the national government could find men for."
+
+"Yes, I remember that."
+
+"That is the man," said Deulin, with a nod of his head in the
+direction of the Prince Bukaty, who was talking and laughing near at
+hand.
+
+"And the girl--it is very sad--I like her very much. She is gay and
+brave."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, "when a woman is gay and brave--and young--Heaven
+help us."
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur Deulin."
+
+"And when she is gay and brave, and . . . old . . . milady--God keep
+her," he said with a grave bow.
+
+"I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know.
+She has a great capacity for making friends."
+
+"She has already made a few--this evening," put in the Frenchman, with
+a significant gesture of his gloved hand.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual enemy
+--of a pretty girl--that is all."
+
+He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like
+that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one
+less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some
+hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with
+the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He laughed--but he laughed uneasily--and spread out his hands in a
+gesture of bewilderment.
+
+"What is what?"
+
+Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
+
+"Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly," she said. "Mr.
+Mangles has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few
+minutes ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en
+amateur, shook hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity.
+All the Vultures are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that
+my husband sees it."
+
+"Ah! you and yours are safe now. You are in the backwater--you and
+Orlay--quietly moored beneath the trees."
+
+"Finally," continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption,
+"you come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only
+once or twice during nearly fifty years. It means war, or something
+very like it--the Vultures."
+
+She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room. After a short
+silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said. "You are too discerning. Good-bye."
+
+"You are going--?"
+
+"Away," he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space. "I
+must go and pack my trunks."
+
+Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night.
+Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered
+impressive and the world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a
+few timid words of thanks.
+
+"We shall hope to see you again," said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.
+
+"'Fraid not," he answered; "we're going to travel on the Continent."
+
+"When do you start?" asked her ladyship.
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"Another one," muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart. And
+her brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.
+
+"You have come to say good-bye," she said to him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are going away again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will not tell me where you are going."
+
+"I cannot," answered Cartoner.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said,
+was very experienced and very discerning.
+
+"You are going to Russia, all of you."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AT THE FRONTIER
+
+Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric
+illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw
+Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have
+never heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
+
+How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train just
+before these electric lights were reached--to take his chance of
+crossing the frontier before morning--history will never tell! How
+many have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway
+station with a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching
+eye of the officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of
+passing Alexandrowo--of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland--
+but by this route. Before the train is at a standstill at the platform
+each one of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the
+dirty white trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots,
+and the majesty of Russian law. Here, whatever time of day or night,
+winter or summer, it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing
+use of electricity. There are always sentries on the outer side of the
+train. The platform is a prison-yard--the waiting rooms are prison-
+yards.
+
+With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and
+everywhere, with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in
+baggage or demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and
+patience will see the traveller through. There is no fear of his being
+left in the huge station, or of his going anywhere but to his avowed
+and rightful destination. But with a passport that is old or torn,
+with a visa which bears any but a recent date, with a restless eye or
+a hunted look, the voyager had better take his chance of dropping from
+the footboard at speed, especially if it be a misty night.
+
+Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so
+much as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go
+through, but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned
+within a large room where the luggage is inspected, and they are
+deprived of their passports. When the customs formalities are over
+they are allowed to find the refreshment-room, and there console
+themselves with weak tea in tumblers until such time as they are
+released.
+
+The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great inspection-
+room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to overflowing.
+The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be Germans. There
+were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the others, had
+the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together--just as the women
+drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who hoped
+against hope that their passports were in order. For the most part, no
+one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested with so
+much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an
+intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh
+and feel at their ease.
+
+Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's,
+was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of
+anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin,
+whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left
+it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to
+be observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his
+knowledge. He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the
+white-aproned, black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of
+him. He made no attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and
+he avoided the refreshment-room tea.
+
+Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
+that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know
+him. Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his
+profile. Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far
+corner of the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or,
+perhaps, the younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all
+events, he who, when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-
+room, drew forward a chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner
+had placed himself.
+
+He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case.
+He opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a
+fair young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy
+complexion of a high-born Briton.
+
+"Englishman?" he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner
+was oddly stiff.
+
+"Thought you were," said the other, who, though his clothes were
+English and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an
+Englishman. There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque
+turn of the head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side
+of existence. He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a
+Russian officer who was seated near, and did it absently, as if
+mechanically closing his eye to something unsightly and conducive to
+discomfort. Then he turned to his coffee with a youthful spirit of
+enjoyment.
+
+"All this would be mildly amusing," he said, "at say any other hour of
+the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
+you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?"
+
+"I can sleep anywhere," replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
+him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
+talk.
+
+"I know Alexandrowo pretty well," the other volunteered, nevertheless,
+"and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on
+friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as--the
+multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have
+the sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere."
+
+He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but
+for a card.
+
+"I know who you are," said Cartoner, quietly: "I recognized you from
+your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours
+ago in London."
+
+"Wanda?" inquired the other, eagerly. "Dear old Wanda! How is she? She
+was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet."
+
+He leaned across the table.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "all about them. But, first, tell me your name.
+Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their
+friends--the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to
+have made mention of it in her letters."
+
+"Reginald Cartoner."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of you--but not from Wanda."
+
+He paused to reflect.
+
+"No," he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. "No, she never
+mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known out
+of England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin--you know
+Deulin?--has spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other
+friends in common. We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to
+meet you. You say you know my name--yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that
+you should have recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very
+glad you think I am like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort
+than I am, you know."
+
+And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh--not that there was
+anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at
+life from a cheerful standpoint.
+
+Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion
+over the cup. "Cartoner," Paul Deulin had once said to a common
+friend, "weighs you, and naturally finds you wanting." It seemed that
+he was weighing Prince Martin Bukaty now.
+
+"I saw your father also," he said, at length. "He was kind enough to
+ask me to call, which I did."
+
+"That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London--no one, I
+mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is
+never quite understood on the Continent--that if you go to London you
+must speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be
+done with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My
+father does not easily make friends--you must have been very civil to
+him."
+
+"According to my lights, I was," admitted Cartoner.
+
+Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in
+the morning.
+
+"The truth is," continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless
+way, "that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the
+wounded man by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho,
+and there is a tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation
+with a bad want, and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody
+is ready, however, to admit that we have been confoundedly badly
+treated."
+
+He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod
+an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who
+had approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some
+murmured words of politeness.
+
+"Thank you--thank you," said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope
+within his pocket.
+
+"It is my passport," he explained to Cartoner, lightly. "All the rest
+of you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the
+doubtful privilege of being known here, and being a suspected
+character. So they are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you,
+at Alexandrowo you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with
+the crowd, I suppose."
+
+"I always try to," replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
+
+"You see," went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their
+environments, "we cannot forget that we were a great nation before
+there was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire.
+We are a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings
+to three foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent--who make us clean
+their boots and then cast them at our heads."
+
+The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the
+passengers were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It
+was almost daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to
+start, with a fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of
+Germany had vanished, giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort
+and melancholy which hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific
+coast.
+
+"I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw," said Martin, as they
+walked up the platform. "My father and sister will be coming home
+before long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to
+make the place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have
+a horse for you when you want it. You know we have good horses in
+Warsaw, as good as any. And the only way to see the country is from
+the saddle. We have the best horses and the worst roads."
+
+"Thanks, very much," replied Cartoner. "I, of course, do not know how
+long I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never
+know from one day to another what my movements may be."
+
+"No," replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears.
+"No, of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope
+you will be here for them. In our small way, it is the season in
+Warsaw now. But, of course, there are difficulties--even the races
+present difficulties--there is the military element."
+
+He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was
+passing to his carriage in front of them.
+
+"They have the best horses," he explained. "They have more money than
+we have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is."
+
+He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so
+accustomed to the recognition of his rank that he went first without
+question.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a laugh, "I had quite forgotten that it is your
+business to know all about us."
+
+"I have tried to remind you of it several times," answered Cartoner,
+quietly.
+
+"To shut me up, you mean?" asked the younger man.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned
+away with a laugh.
+
+"Good-night," he said. "Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall
+meet again in a few hours."
+
+He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of the
+station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice--of a rather high
+timbre--in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor.
+For, like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of
+tongues. The Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several
+languages: first, his own; then the language of the conqueror, either
+Russian or German, or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak
+the tongue of the two countries that promised so much for Poland and
+performed so little--England and France.
+
+Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
+made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It
+was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was
+green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing
+eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The
+Englishman seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an
+impressionable man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat
+at such times as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends
+to be a rather cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent
+manner an almost insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an
+entire absorption in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of
+one language after another as occasion seemed to demand.
+
+He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
+even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
+possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
+useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
+arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
+successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
+difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
+only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
+until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
+figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
+o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin
+Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the
+compartment, closing the door behind him.
+
+"I have been thinking about it," he said, in his quick way, "and it
+won't do, you know--it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our
+friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you.
+Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not
+in Warsaw."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, "I understand."
+
+He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the
+train glided into Warsaw Station.
+
+In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
+
+"All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name
+to me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick
+enough, as a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen
+times."
+
+He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
+
+"She did not know that I was coming," he said.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN A REMOTE CITY
+
+The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the
+Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that
+which for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe.
+At Cracow--the tomb of many kings--it passes half round the citadel, a
+shallow, sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the
+present capital--Warsaw--it finds its way across the great plain, amid
+the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and
+Masovia.
+
+Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking
+from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In Praga
+--a hundred years ago--the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen
+thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two
+thousand were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles
+assembled in the square in front of the castle to protest against the
+tyranny of their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian
+soldiery fired upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to
+disperse. Again, in cold blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw
+massacre continued for three hours in the streets.
+
+Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops,
+with a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city
+in the world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal
+street, and, like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name--
+the Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the
+Hotel de l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part,
+where kings and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was
+murdered, where the bodies of the first five victims of the Russian
+soldiery were carried after the massacre and there photographed, and,
+finally, where the great light from the West--Miss Julie P. Mangles--
+alighted one May morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
+
+"Told you," said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul
+was within almost measurable distance of snappishness--"told you you
+would have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once
+before had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame
+of mind--on their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury,
+Massachusetts, when the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful
+Waiters for the Truth failed to reach the railway depot because they
+happened on a fire in a straw-hat manufactory on their way, and heard
+that the newest pattern of straw hat was to be had for the picking up
+in the open street.
+
+There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles.
+London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head
+when she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the
+ignoble position of the prophet--not without honor in his own country
+--who cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
+
+"This is even worse than I anticipated," said Miss Mangles, watching
+the hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
+
+"What is worse, Jooly?"
+
+"Poland!" replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet
+with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed
+worse countries than Poland in her day.
+
+"I allow," said Mr. Mangles, slowly, "that at this hour in the morning
+it appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?"
+
+"Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph," replied Miss
+Mangles, looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel
+concierge with a bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping
+him strictly in his place.
+
+Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of
+travel, with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss
+Cahere seemed always to know how to say or do the right thing, or,
+more difficult still, to keep the right silence. Either this, or the
+fact that Miss Mangles was conscious of having convinced her hearers
+that she was as expert in the lighter swordplay of debate as in the
+rolling platform period, somewhat alleviated the lady's humor, and she
+turned towards the historic staircase, which had run with the blood of
+Jew and Pole, with a distinct air of condescension.
+
+"Tell me," said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of
+deep depression which only added to the incongruity of his French,
+"what languages you speak."
+
+"Russian, French, Polish, German, English--"
+
+"That'll do to go on with," interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue.
+"We'll get along in English. My name is Mangles."
+
+Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms
+and a salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs,
+where stood a couple of waiters.
+
+Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat.
+She might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have
+slept all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the
+appearance of having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty
+had on the surface a little manner of self-depreciating flurry which
+sometimes seemed to conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little
+worldly theories, too, which she often enunciated in her confidential
+manner; and one of these was that one should always, in all places and
+at all times, be neat and tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet.
+And, be it noted in passing, there have been many successful human
+careers based upon this simple rule.
+
+She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress
+which conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and
+the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs
+she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along
+the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and
+nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it
+appeared, as much at home here as in London or Paris or New York.
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" he said, standing hat in hand before her, "who
+could have dreamed of such a pleasure--here and at this moment--in
+this sad town?"
+
+"You seemed gay enough--you were singing," answered Miss Cahere.
+
+"It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat.
+Perhaps you noticed it?"
+
+"No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear
+for music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no
+accomplishments, you know," said Netty, with a little humble drawing-
+in of the shoulders.
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his
+opinion that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles
+and her brother.
+
+Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable
+to feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best.
+She shook hands, with her platform bow--from the waist--and passed on.
+
+"Hallo!" said Joseph Mangles. "Got here before us? Thought you'd turn
+up. Dismal place, eh?"
+
+"You have just arrived, I suppose?" said Deulin.
+
+"Oh, please don't laugh at us!" broke in Netty. "Of course you can see
+that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!"
+
+"You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from
+heaven," answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at
+her hair. It was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But
+she did not seem to hear, for she had turned away quickly and was
+speaking to her uncle. Deulin accompanied them along the corridor,
+which is a long one, for the Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
+
+"You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know," she said,
+turning again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an
+explanation of her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate
+persons who blush easily--at the right time. "I am sure Uncle Joseph
+will be pleased to have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no
+one in Warsaw. Have you friends here?"
+
+"Only one," replied Deulin--"the waiter who serves the Zakuska counter
+down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman, travelling
+for his health in France. He does not recognize me now."
+
+"Will you stay long?"
+
+"I did not intend to," replied Deulin, "when I came out of my room
+this morning."
+
+"But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?" asked
+Netty.
+
+"Not in Warsaw," was the reply.
+
+"Suppose we shall meet again," broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment,
+halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the
+number on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. "Always
+welcome," he said. "Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I
+suppose."
+
+"I suppose it does," answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
+
+He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the
+Krakowski Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was
+already astir, while the shops were opening and buyers already
+hurrying home from the morning markets. It is a broad street, with
+palaces and churches on either side. Every palace has its story; two
+of them were confiscated by the Russian government because a bomb,
+which was thrown from the pavement, might possibly have come from one
+of the windows. Every church has rung to the strains of the forbidden
+Polish hymn--"At Thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O
+Lord, our free country." Into almost all of them the soldiers have
+forced their way to make arrests.
+
+Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The
+clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little
+sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
+
+"Just Heaven, forgive me!" he said, with upturned eyes. "I have
+already told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder
+whether I shall find Cartoner out of bed?"
+
+He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay
+Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived
+through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned to
+the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower,
+quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna are
+mostly large, with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for
+existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments,
+where quiet people live--professors, lawyers, and other persons, who
+have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the
+passer-by for entertainment.
+
+Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination
+to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second
+floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the
+Frenchman nodded familiarly.
+
+"Is he up yet?" he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
+
+"This hour, monsieur," replied the servant, leading the way along a
+narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass
+into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a
+writing-table.
+
+"Good-morning," said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up
+a book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-
+chair. "Don't let me disturb you," he continued. "Finish what you are
+doing."
+
+"News?" inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at Deulin
+gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously
+dissimilar--these friends.
+
+"Bah!" returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked up--
+Lelewel's /History of Poland/, in Polish. "I trouble for your future,
+Cartoner. You take life so seriously--you, who need not work at all.
+Even uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a
+position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of
+that!"
+
+He reflected for a moment.
+
+"Yes," he said, after a pause, "I have news of all sorts--news which
+goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead of
+going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning--Mangles
+frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner--" He paused,
+and examined his own boots with a critical air.
+
+"I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?"
+
+"Fifty."
+
+"All that, mon cher?--all that? Old enough to play the part of an old
+fool who excels all other fools."
+
+Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something
+to put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while
+Deulin watched him.
+
+"I say," said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in
+hand--"what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty
+Cahere?"
+
+"I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with
+you," was the reply.
+
+The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I have known you a good many years, and have gathered
+that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be
+in love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if
+there is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I
+saw Miss Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?"
+
+"Very nice," replied Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at
+the letter before him.
+
+"What I like about her is her quiet ways," suggested Deulin,
+tentatively.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter.
+Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him
+unawares, must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the
+Frenchman rose and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with
+Cartoner that evening.
+
+Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
+
+"More lies!" he murmured, humbly.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SAND-WORKERS
+
+At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska--the street running down
+from the Cracow Faubourg to the river--there are always many workers.
+It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here lie
+the steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a
+trade in timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that
+float from the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up.
+Here, also, are loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near
+the water.
+
+A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the
+spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the
+sand which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska
+starts hopefully from the higher parts of the city--the widest, the
+newest, the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard
+--down the hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But
+there is no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy
+ruts and a broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy
+sand-carts from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the
+sand-workers lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged
+from the middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many
+banks that render navigation next to impossible--a clean, hard sand,
+most excellent for building purposes.
+
+It was the hour of the mid-day dinner--for Polish hours are the hours
+of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The
+horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and
+ate their gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-
+seeds. It was late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow
+haze. The scene was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly,
+is a dismal river. Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who
+knew it well, once said that it is a country to die for, but not to
+live in.
+
+It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their
+uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their
+position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of
+the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach
+within half a mile unperceived.
+
+"Yes," one of the workmen was saying, "those who know say that there
+will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some
+day, why not now? Why not this time?"
+
+His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built,
+oval-faced men--real Poles; others had the narrower look of the
+Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face
+that comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-
+hills; others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head,
+which betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
+
+"The third time, they say, is lucky," answered a white-haired man, at
+length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in
+his face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The
+others turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced
+across the river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown
+trees. Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must
+have seen fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga
+paved with the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river
+run sluggish with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot
+down in the streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had
+the dull look which nearly always betokens some grim vision never
+forgotten. He seemed a placid old man, and was known as an excellent
+worker, though cruel to his horses.
+
+He who had first spoken--a boatman known as Kosmaroff--was a spare
+man, with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat
+beard. He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no
+outward appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was
+quick and vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent,
+his mouth gave an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards
+towards the eye. His smile was what the French call a pale smile. At
+times, but very rarely, a gleam of recklessness passed through his
+dark eyes. He had been a raftsman, and was reputed to be the most
+daring of those little-known watermen at flood-times and in the early
+thaw. He glanced towards the old man as if hoping that more was
+coming.
+
+"Yes, it will be the third time," he said, when the other had lapsed
+into a musing silence, "though few of us have seen it with our own
+eyes. But we have other means of remembering. We have also the
+experience of our forefathers to guide us--though we cannot say that
+our forefathers have told us--"
+
+He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga;
+his father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
+
+"We shall time it better," he said, "than last time. We have men
+watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as an
+old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything
+happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the
+dogs should quarrel among themselves--the three dogs that have torn
+Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was
+coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred
+thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That
+showed what they thought of us!"
+
+The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of
+some was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit.
+Others looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled
+a board of directors--some of them knew too little, others too much.
+It seemed to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark
+by his boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
+
+"It is all very well for you," said one, a little fat man with beady
+eyes. Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity
+to danger of any sort--"you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing
+to lose!"
+
+Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the
+speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth
+that a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken
+word is a part of it running over.
+
+"There are many who can be aristocrats some day--with a little good-
+fortune," he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
+
+"I lost five at Praga," muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued
+manner of the toiler. "That is enough for me."
+
+"It is well to remember Praga," returned Kosmaroff, in a hard
+monotone. "It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept
+their word! There is much to remember!"
+
+And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff
+glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring
+sullenly across the river.
+
+"I may be an aristocrat by descent," he said, "but what does that come
+to? I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a
+Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always
+done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a
+hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the
+sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here.
+They will finish by losing everything--the little they have left--or
+else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They
+will win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know
+that!"
+
+"And when they have won will they remember?" asked one of the two
+smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
+
+"If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.
+You may rely on that. They know what each gives--whether freely or
+with a niggard hand--and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They
+give freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats;
+but they expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!"
+
+The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
+stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
+than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger,
+with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As
+they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff
+played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest
+vibration out of each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not
+untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to
+organize the souls of men.
+
+Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
+dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
+regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
+number--a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed
+him much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he
+was back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name
+hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was,
+a raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of
+Polish patriotism--a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He
+had made the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had
+been to Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as
+he said, in the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray skies,
+manual labor, and the bread that tastes of dampness. For he believed
+that a kingdom which stood in the forefront for eight centuries cannot
+die. There are others who cherish the same belief.
+
+"This time," he went on, after a pause, "I have news for you. We are a
+little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait
+patiently until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last
+time they acted at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that,
+but we shall nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives.
+We are a step nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin
+Bukaty again. He is never slow to put his head in the noose, and
+laughs with the rope around his neck. And he has succeeded again, for
+he has the luck. We have five thousand rifles in Poland--"
+
+He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some
+lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes
+blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
+
+"In Warsaw!" he added, significantly. "So, if there are any who think
+that the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now--and take the
+consequences." He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
+
+No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
+
+"And there is ammunition enough," continued Kosmaroff, "to close the
+account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!"
+
+His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the
+conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
+
+"I tell you this," he went on, "because I am likely to go to Cracow
+before long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain
+events may be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly--such as
+the death of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck,
+the declaration of war by any of the great powers. There is always
+something seething on the Indian frontier, and one day the English
+will awake. The Warsaw papers will not have the news; but the /Czas/
+and the other Cracow journals will tell you soon enough, and you can
+all see the Galician papers when you want to, despite their censors
+and their police!"
+
+A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This
+was his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
+
+At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the
+river boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches
+broke out into a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the
+workers stirred reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
+
+Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself--a long, lithe, wiry
+figure.
+
+"Come," he said. "We must go back to work."
+
+He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at
+his narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must
+have realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and
+indefinable creation--a strong man.
+
+
+
+X
+
+A WARNING
+
+It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved
+many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in
+the kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others,
+again in Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice
+could not lay hands upon--that gay justice of 1832, which declared
+that, in protesting against the want of faith of their conquerors, the
+Poles had broken faith. The Austrian government had sympathized with
+the discontent of those Poles who had fallen under Russian sway, while
+in Breslau it was permitted to print and publish plain words deemed
+criminal in Cracow and Warsaw. The dogs, in a word, behaved as dogs do
+over their carrion, and, having secured a large portion, kept a
+jealous eye on their neighbor's jaw.
+
+The Bukatys had lost all in Poland except a house or two in Warsaw,
+but a few square miles of fertile land in Galicia brought in a
+sufficiency, while Wanda had some property in the neighborhood of
+Breslau bequeathed to her by her mother. The grim years of 1860 and
+1861 had worn out this lady, who found the peace that passeth man's
+understanding while Poland was yet in the horrors of a hopeless
+guerilla warfare.
+
+"Russia owes me twenty years of happiness and twenty million rubles,"
+the old prince was in the habit of saying, and each year on the
+anniversary of his wife's death he reckoned up afresh this debt. He
+mentioned it, moreover, to Russian and Pole alike, with that calm
+frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration
+never placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-
+speaking country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest
+of European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to
+Henry of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away
+to mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski,
+they spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was
+quite clear to the Moslem understanding.
+
+The Prince Bukaty had a touch of that rough manner which commands
+respect in this smooth age, and even Russian officials adopted a
+conciliatory attitude towards this man, who had known Poland without
+one of their kind within her boundaries.
+
+"You cannot expect an old man such as I to follow all the changes of
+your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he
+happens to be living at the moment!" he had boldly said to a great
+personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported
+in the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the law had
+actually stretched a point or two for the Prince Bukaty on more than
+one occasion. Like many outspoken people, he passed for a barker and
+not a biter.
+
+It does not fall to the lot of many to live in a highly civilized town
+and submit to open robbery. Prince Bukaty lived in a small palace in
+the Kotzebue street, and when he took his morning stroll in the Cracow
+Faubourg he passed under the shadow of a palace flying the Russian
+flag, which palace was his, and had belonged to his ancestors from
+time immemorial. He had once made the journey to St. Petersburg to see
+in the great museum there the portraits of his fathers, the books that
+his predecessors had collected, the relics of Poland's greatness,
+which were his, and the greatness thereof was his.
+
+"Yes," he answered to the loquacious curator, "I know. You tell me
+nothing that I do not know. These things are mine. I am the Prince
+Bukaty!"
+
+And the curator of St. Petersburg went away, sorrowful, like the young
+man who had great possessions.
+
+For Russia had taken these things from the Bukatys, not in punishment,
+but because she wanted them. She wanted offices for her bureaucrats on
+the Krakowski Przedmiescie, in Warsaw, so she took Bukaty Palace. And
+to whom can one appeal when Caesar steals?
+
+Poland had appealed to Europe, and Europe had expressed the deepest
+sympathy. And that was all!
+
+The house in the Kotzebue had the air of an old French town-house, and
+was, in fact, built by a French architect in the days of Stanislaus
+Augustus, when Warsaw aped Paris. It stands back from the road behind
+high railings, and, at the farther end of a paved court-yard, to which
+entrance is gained by two high gates, now never opened in hospitality,
+and only unlocked at rare intervals for the passage of the quiet
+brougham in which the prince or Wanda went and came. The house is just
+round the corner of the Kotzebue, and therefore faces the Saski
+Gardens--a quiet spot in this most noisy town. The building is a low
+one, with a tiled roof and long windows, heavily framed, of which the
+smaller panes and thick woodwork suggest the early days of window-
+glass. Inside, the house is the house of a poor man. The carpets are
+worn thin; the furniture, of a sumptuous design, is carefully patched
+and mended. The atmosphere has that mournful scent of better days--now
+dead and past. It is the odor of monarchy, slowly fading from the face
+of a world that reeks of cheap democracy.
+
+The air of the rooms--the subtle individuality which is impressed by
+humanity on wood and texture--suggested that older comfort which has
+been succeeded by the restless luxury of these times.
+
+The prince was, it appeared, one of those men who diffuse tranquillity
+wherever they are. He had moved quietly through stirring events; had
+acted without haste in hurried moments. For the individuality of the
+house must have been his. Wanda had found it there when she came back
+from the school in Dresden, too young to have a marked individuality
+of her own. The difference she brought to the house was a certain
+brightness and a sort of experimental femininity, which reigned
+supreme until her English governess came back again to live as a
+companion with her pupil. Wanda moved the furniture, turned the house
+round on its staid basis, and made a hundred experiments in domestic
+economy before she gave way to her father's habits of life. Then she
+made that happiest of human discoveries, which has the magic power of
+allaying at one stroke the eternal feminine discontent which has made
+the world uneasy since the day that Eve idled in that perfect garden--
+she found that she was wanted in the world!
+
+The prince did not tell her so. Perhaps his need of her was too
+obvious to require words. He had given his best years to Poland, and
+now that old age was coming, that health was failing and wealth had
+vanished, Poland would have none of him.
+
+There was no Poland. At this moment Wanda burst upon him, so to speak,
+with a hundred desires that only he could fulfil, a hundred questions
+that only he could answer. And, as wise persons know, to fulfil
+desires and answer questions is the best happiness.
+
+Father and daughter lived a quiet life in the house that was called a
+palace by courtesy only. For Martin was made of livelier stuff, and
+rarely stayed long at home. He came and went with a feverish haste;
+was fond of travel, he said, and the authorities kept a questioning
+eye upon his movements.
+
+There are two doors to the Bukaty Palace. As often as not, Martin made
+use of the smaller door giving entrance to the garden at the back of
+the house, which garden could also be entered from an alley leading
+round from the back of the bank, which stands opposite the post-office
+in the busier part of Kotzebue Street.
+
+He came in by this door one evening and did not come alone, for he was
+accompanied by a man in working-clothes. The streets of Warsaw are
+well lighted and well guarded by a most excellent police, second only
+as the Russians are to the police of London. It is therefore the
+custom to go abroad at night as much as in the day, and the Krakowski
+is more crowded after dark than during the afternoon. Kosmaroff had
+walked some distance behind Prince Martin in the streets. Martin
+unlocked the gate of the garden and passed in, leaving the gate open
+with the key in the lock. In a minute Kosmaroff followed, locked the
+gate after him, and gave the key back to its owner on the steps of the
+garden door of the house, where Martin was awaiting him, latch-key in
+hand. They did it without comment or instruction, as men carry out a
+plan frequently resorted to.
+
+Martin led the way into the house, along a dimly lighted corridor, to
+a door which stood ajar. Outside the night was cold; within were
+warmth and comfort. Martin went into the long room. At the far end,
+beneath the lamp and near an open wood fire, the prince and Wanda were
+sitting. They were in evening dress, and the prince was dozing in his
+chair.
+
+"I have brought Kos to see you," said Martin, and, turning, he looked
+towards the door. The convict's son, the convict, came forward with
+that ease which, to be genuine, must be quite unconscious. He
+apparently gave no thought to his sandy and wrinkled top-boots, from
+which the original black had long since been washed away by the waters
+of the Vistula. He wore his working-clothes as if they were the best
+habit for this or any other palace. He took Wanda's hand and kissed it
+in the old-world fashion, which has survived to this day in Poland.
+But the careless manner in which he raised her fingers to his lips
+would have showed quite clearly to a competent observer that neither
+Wanda nor any other woman had ever touched his heart.
+
+"You will excuse my getting up," said the prince. "My gout is bad
+to-night. You will have something to eat?"
+
+"Thank you, I have eaten," replied Kosmaroff, drawing forward a chair.
+
+Martin put the logs together with his foot, and they blazed up,
+lighting with a flickering glow the incongruous group.
+
+"He will take a glass of port," said the prince, turning to Wanda, and
+indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had
+his after-dinner wine.
+
+Wanda poured out the wine and handed it to Kosmaroff, who took it with
+a glance and a quick smile of thanks, which seemed to indicate that he
+was almost one of the family. And, indeed, they were closely related,
+not only in the present generation, but in bygone days. For Kosmaroff
+represented a family long since deemed extinct.
+
+"I have come," he said, "to tell you that all is safe. Also to bid you
+good-bye. As soon as I can get employment I shall go down to Thorn to
+stir them up there. They are lethargic at Thorn."
+
+"Ah!" laughed the prince, moving his legs to a more comfortable
+position, "you young men! You think everybody is lethargic. Don't move
+too quickly. That is what I always preach."
+
+"And we are ready enough to listen to your preaching," answered
+Kosmaroff. "You will admit that I came here to-night in obedience to
+your opinion that too much secrecy is dangerous because it leads to
+misunderstandings. Plain speaking and clear understanding was the
+message you sent me--the text of your last sermon."
+
+With his quick smile Kosmaroff touched the rim of the prince's
+wineglass, which stood at his elbow, and indicated by a gesture that
+he drank his health.
+
+"That was not my text--that was Wanda's," answered the prince.
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff, looking towards Wanda. "Is that so? Then I will
+take it. I believe in Wanda's views of life. She has a vast
+experience."
+
+"I have been to Dresden and to London," answered Wanda, "and a woman
+always sees much more than a man."
+
+"Always?" asked Kosmaroff, with his one-sided smile.
+
+"Always."
+
+But Kosmaroff had turned towards the prince in his quick, jerky way.
+
+"By-the-way," he asked, "what is Cartoner doing in Warsaw?"
+
+"Cartoner--the Englishman who speaks so many languages? We met him in
+London," answered the prince. "Who is he? Why should he not be here?"
+
+"I will tell you who he is," answered Kosmaroff, with a sudden light
+in his eyes. "He is the man that the English send when they suspect
+that something is going on which they can turn to good account. He has
+a trick of finding things out--that man. Such is his reputation, at
+all events. Paul Deulin is another, and he is here. He is a friend of
+yours, by-the-way; but he is not dangerous, like Cartoner. There is an
+American here, too. His instructions are Warsaw and Petersburg. There
+is either something moving in Russia or else the powers suspect that
+something may move in Poland before long. These men are here to find
+out. They must find out nothing from us."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders indifferently. He did not attach
+much importance to these foreigners.
+
+"Of course," went on Kosmaroff, "they are only watchers. But, as Wanda
+says, some people see more than others. The American, Mangles, who has
+ladies with him, will report upon events after they have happened. So
+will Deulin, who is an idler. He never sees that which will give him
+trouble. He does not write long despatches to the Quai d'Orsay,
+because he knows that they will not be read there. But Cartoner is
+different. There are never any surprises for the English in matters
+that Cartoner has in hand. He reports on events before they have
+happened, which is a different story. I merely warn you."
+
+As he spoke, Kosmaroff rose, glancing at the clock.
+
+"There are no instructions?"
+
+"None," answered the prince. "Except the usual one--patience!"
+
+"Ah yes," replied Kosmaroff, "we shall be patient."
+
+He did not seem to think that it might be easier to be patient in this
+comfortable house than on the sand-hills of the Vistula in the coming
+winter months.
+
+"But be careful," he added, addressing Martin more particularly, "of
+this man Cartoner. He will not betray, but he will know--you
+understand. And no one must know!"
+
+He shook hands with Martin and Wanda and then with the prince.
+
+"You met him in London, you say?" he said to the prince. "What did you
+think of him?"
+
+"I thought him--a quiet man."
+
+"And Wanda?" continued Kosmaroff, lightly, turning to her--"she who
+sees so much. What did she think of him?"
+
+"I was afraid of him!"
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AN AGREEMENT TO DIFFER
+
+The Saxon Gardens are in the heart of Warsaw, and, in London, would be
+called a park. At certain hours the fashionable world promenades
+beneath the trees, and at all times there is a thoroughfare across
+from one quarter of the town to another.
+
+Wanda often sat there in the morning or walked slowly with her father
+at such times as the doctor's instructions to take exercise were still
+fresh upon his memory. There are seats beneath the trees, overlooking
+the green turf and the flowers so dear to the Slavonian soul. Later in
+the morning these seats are occupied by nurses and children, as in any
+other park in any other city. But from nine to ten Wanda had the
+alleys mostly to herself.
+
+The early autumn had already laid its touch upon the trees, and the
+leaves were brown. The flowers, laboriously tended all through the
+brief, uncertain summer, had that forlorn look which makes autumn in
+Northern latitudes a period of damp depression. Wanda had gone out
+early, and was sitting at the sunny side of the broad alley that
+divides the gardens in two from end to end. She was waiting for
+Martin, who had been called back at the door of the palace and had
+promised to follow in a few minutes. He had a hundred engagements
+during the day, a hundred friends among those unfortunate scions of
+noble houses who will not wear the Russian uniform, who cannot by the
+laws of their caste engage in any form of commerce, and must not
+accept a government office--who are therefore idle, without the
+natural Southern sloth that enables Italians and Spaniards to do
+nothing gracefully all day long. Wanda was wiser than Martin. Girls
+generally are infinitely wiser than young men. But the wisdom ceases
+to grow later in life, and old men are wiser than old women. Wanda
+was, in a sense, Martin's adviser, mentor, and friend. She had, as he
+himself acknowledged, already saved him from dangers into which his
+natural heedlessness and impetuosity would have led him. As to the
+discontent in which all Poland was steeped, which led the princes and
+their friends into many perils, Wanda had been brought up to it, just
+as some families are brought up to consumption and the anticipation of
+an early death.
+
+In her eminently practical, feminine way of looking at things, Wanda
+was much more afraid of Martin running into debt than into danger.
+Debt and impecuniosity would be so inconvenient at this time, when her
+father daily needed some new comfort, and daily depended for his
+happiness more and more upon his port wine and that ease which is only
+to be enjoyed by an easy mind.
+
+Wanda was thinking of these things in the Saski Gardens, and hardly
+heeded the passers-by, though--for the feminine instincts were strong
+in her--she looked with softer eyes on the children than she did on
+the Jew who hurried past, with bent back and a bowed head, from the
+richer quarter of the town to his own mysterious purlieus of the
+Franoiszkanska. The latter, perhaps, recalled the thoughts of Martin
+and his heedlessness; the former made her think of--she knew not what.
+
+She was looking towards the colonnade that marks the site of the King
+of Saxony's palace, when Cartoner came through the archway into the
+garden. She recognized him even at this distance, for his walk was
+unlike that of the nervous, quick-moving Pole or the lurking Jew. It
+was more like the gait of a Russian; but all the Russians in Warsaw
+wear a uniform. That is why they are there. There was a suggestion of
+determination in the walk of this Englishman.
+
+He came down the wide alley towards her, and then suddenly perceived
+her. She saw this without actually looking at him, and knew the
+precise moment when he first caught sight of her. It was presumably
+upon experience that Wanda based her theory that women see twice as
+much as men. She saw him turn, without hesitation, away from her down
+a narrower alley leading to the right. It was his intention to avoid
+her. But the only turning he could take was that leading to the corner
+of Kotzebue Street, and Martin was at the other end of it, coming
+towards him. Cartoner was thus caught in the narrow alley. Wanda sat
+still and watched the two men. She suddenly knew in advance what would
+happen, as it is often vouchsafed to the human understanding to know
+at a moment's notice what is coming; and she had a strange,
+discomforting sense that these minutes were preordained--that Martin
+and Cartoner and herself were mere puppets in the hands of Fate, and
+must say and do that which has been assigned to them in an unalterable
+scheme of succeeding events.
+
+She watched the two men meet and shake hands, in the English fashion,
+without raising their hats. She could see Cartoner's movements to
+continue his way, and Martin's detaining hand slipped within the
+Englishman's arm.
+
+"What does it matter?" Martin was saying. "There is no one to see us
+here, at this hour in the morning. We are quite safe. There is Wanda,
+sitting on the seat, waiting for me. Come back with me."
+
+And Wanda could divine the words easily enough from her brother's
+attitude and gestures. It ought to have surprised her that Cartoner
+yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin--
+so determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he
+turned and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm.
+She knew that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that
+he had something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave
+to be silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an
+impatient sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the
+Palace Bukaty, and this sense of powerlessness was new to her.
+
+While they approached, Martin continued to talk in his eager, laughing
+way, and Cartoner smiled slowly as he listened.
+
+"I saw you," he said to Wanda, as he took off his hat, "and went the
+other way to avoid you."
+
+And, having made this plain statement, he stood silently looking at
+her. He looked into her eyes, and she met his odd, direct gaze without
+embarrassment.
+
+"Cartoner and I," Prince Martin hastened to explain, "travelled from
+Berlin together, and we agreed then that, much as we might desire it,
+it would be inconvenient for me to show him that attention which one
+would naturally want to show to an Englishman travelling in Poland.
+That is why he went the other way when he saw you."
+
+Wanda looked at Cartoner with her quick, shrewd smile. It would have
+been the obvious thing to have confirmed this explanation. But
+Cartoner kept silent. He had acquired, it seemed, the fatal habit--
+very rare among men and almost unknown in women--of thinking before he
+spoke. Which habit is deadly for that which is called conversation,
+because if one decides not to give speech to the obvious and the
+unnecessary and the futile there is in daily intercourse hardly
+anything left.
+
+"You see," said Martin, who always had plenty to say for himself, "in
+this province of Russia we are not even allowed to choose our own
+friends."
+
+"Even in a free country one does not pick one's friends out, like the
+best strawberries from a basket," said Wanda.
+
+"Not a question to be arranged beforehand," put in Cartoner.
+
+"Not even by the governor-general of Poland?" asked Wanda, looking
+thoughtfully at the falling leaves which a sudden gust of wind had
+showered round them.
+
+"Not even by the Czar."
+
+"Who, I am told, means well!" said Martin, ironically, and with a gay
+laugh, for irony and laughter may be assimilated by the young. "Poor
+man! It must be terrible to know that people are saying behind one's
+back that one means well! I hope no one will ever say that of me."
+
+Wanda had sat down again, and was stirring the dead leaves with her
+walking-stick.
+
+"Martin and I are going for a tramp," she said. "We like to get away
+from the noise and the dust--and the uniforms."
+
+But Martin sat down beside her and made room for Cartoner.
+
+"We attract less attention than if we stand," he explained. And
+Cartoner took the seat offered. "Such hospitality as our circumstances
+allow us to offer you," commented the young prince, gayly, "a clean
+stone seat on the sunny side of a public garden."
+
+"But let us understand each other," put in Wanda, in her practical
+way, and looked from one man to the other with those gay, blue eyes
+that saw so much, "since we are conspirators."
+
+"The better we understand each other the better conspirators we shall
+be," said Cartoner.
+
+"I notice you don't ask, 'What is the plot?'" said Wanda.
+
+"The plot is simple enough," answered Martin, for Cartoner said
+nothing, and looked straight in front of him. He did not address one
+more than the other, but explained the situation, as it were, for the
+benefit of all whom it might concern. He had lighted a cigarette--a
+little Russian affair, all gold lettering and mouthpiece, and as he
+spoke he jerked the ash from time to time so that it should not fly
+and incommode his sister.
+
+"Rightly or wrongly, we are suspected of being malcontents. The
+Bukatys have in the past been known to foster that spirit of Polish
+nationality which it has been the endeavor of three great countries to
+suppress for nearly a century. Despite Russia, Prussia, and Austria
+there is still a Polish language and a Polish spirit; despite the
+Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns there are still a few
+old Lithuanian and Ruthenian families extant. And rightly or wrongly,
+those in authority are kind enough to blame, among others, the Bukatys
+for these survivals. Weeds, it seems, are hard to kill. Whether we are
+really to blame or not is of no consequence. It does not matter to the
+dog whether he deserves his bad name or not--after he is hanged. But
+it is not good to be a Bukaty and live in Poland just now, though some
+of us manage to have a good time despite them all--eh, Wanda?"
+
+And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister's arm. But she did not
+answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which
+was part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to
+side for fear some interruption should approach.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand," he continued, in his airy way, "is
+a most respectable man--in the employ of his country. That is what
+damns Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a
+great reputation, to which I take off my hat."
+
+And he saluted gayly Cartoner's reputation.
+
+"It would never do," continued Martin, "for us, the suspects, to be
+avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in
+some capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is
+of no consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember."
+
+"But what are we to do?" asked Wanda, practically. "Let us have a
+clear understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and
+without haste--a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the
+heart of the question. "We must not meet in the streets."
+
+"That may not be as easy as it sounds," said Wanda, "in a small city
+like Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of
+avoiding us?"
+
+"I can, at all events, try," answered Cartoner, simply. After a pause
+(the pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be
+Cartoner's turn to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all
+that the Bukatys could offer him in Warsaw. "I can begin at once," he
+said, gravely. And he took off his hat and went away.
+
+It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in
+silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come,
+down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the
+pillars of that building.
+
+"A man of action, and not of words," commented Martin, who spoke
+first. "I like him. Come, let us go for our walk."
+
+And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking,
+though they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed
+that Cartoner's silence was contagious.
+
+He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side
+of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph
+Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and
+smoking a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had
+they met. Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the
+shops, which could scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
+
+"Ah!" said the Frenchman to himself, "there is our friend Reginald. He
+is in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance."
+
+He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather
+slowly.
+
+"If any woman ever marries that man," the Frenchman said to himself,
+"she will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then,
+women are good at that."
+
+And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shop-windows.
+
+Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters
+awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was
+not an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and
+thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it is
+well to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the post-
+office. And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not to
+have them sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities are
+kind enough to exercise a parental censorship over the travellers'
+correspondence.
+
+Cartoner's letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country
+house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It
+was a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to
+him was more than he could undertake.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+CARTONER /VERSUS/ FATE
+
+It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It
+is, moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the
+cause of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the
+theory that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled
+by a common sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor
+of that Czar who said to Poland: "Gentlemen--no dreams," seems in part
+justified by the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find
+themselves brought nearer together on the race-course than in any
+other social function in Warsaw.
+
+"Come," cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner's
+rooms after lunch one day towards the end of October. "Come, and let
+us bury the hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the
+grand-stand at the Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and
+his wife, all the authorities and their wives, and these ladies will
+peep sideways at each other, and turn up their noses at each other's
+toilets. To such has descended the great strife in eastern Europe."
+
+"You think so."
+
+"Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same
+thing, and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake
+in it. Come with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw,
+where the Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the
+other; where these fine Russian officers glance longingly across the
+way, only too ready to take their hearts there and lose them--but the
+Czar forbids it. And, let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous
+in the world than a pair of Polish eyes."
+
+He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a
+speculative glance, and turned away to the window.
+
+"Come," he said. "It is a fine day--St. Martin's summer. It is Sunday,
+but no matter. All you Englishmen think that there is no recording
+angel on the Continent. You leave him behind at Dover."
+
+"Oh, I have no principles," said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and
+looking round absent-mindedly for his hat.
+
+"You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in
+principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for
+his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles?
+By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nor I," pursued Deulin; "and I am bored. That is why I want you to
+come to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay
+away than to go--especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who
+lead the world in racing."
+
+"That is why I am going," said Cartoner.
+
+"Then you don't like racing?"
+
+"Yes, I am very fond of it," answered the Englishman, in the same
+absent voice, as he led the way towards the door.
+
+In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be
+found at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the
+drive up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the
+Mokotow (where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the
+nakedness of the land), for the simple reason that speech is
+impossible while driving through the streets of the worst-paved city
+in Europe. Which is a grudge that the traveller may bear against
+Russia, for if Poland had been a kingdom she would assuredly have
+paved the streets of her capital.
+
+The race-course is not more than fifteen minutes' drive from the heart
+of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At
+the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the
+turnstiles, and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the
+trick, so rare among travellers, of doing this in any country without
+attracting undue attention.
+
+It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen
+in the garb of their caste, which is to-day the same all the world
+over, though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still
+come across a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat
+and top-boots. German tradesmen and their families formed here and
+there one of those domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland
+sends out into the world's trading centres. And moving amid these, as
+quietly and unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who
+virtually had the management of the course--tall, fair, clean men,
+with sunburned faces and white skins--energetic, refined, and strong.
+They were mostly in white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue
+breeches, and much gold lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved
+with long, free strides in his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily
+ornamented with silver, carrying high his astrakhan cap, and looking
+round him with dark eyes that had a gleam of something wild and
+untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of many races, one of the
+market-places where men may greet each other who come from different
+hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are sons of the empire
+which to-day gathers within one ring-fence the north, the south, the
+east, and the west.
+
+"France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my
+breath away," said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many
+races. On all sides one heard different languages--German, the sing-
+song Russian--the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot
+kill.
+
+"And Germany?" inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
+
+"Bores me, my friend."
+
+He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number
+of men were congregated, but no ladies.
+
+"The Fatherland," he added, "the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German
+once, when I was in the army of the Loire--a most painful business."
+
+He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached
+the gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without
+turning towards him, he grasped Cartoner's arm.
+
+"Look!" he said, "look!"
+
+There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock,
+and above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a
+jockey. The head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared
+above the heads of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its
+jockey only half in the saddle.
+
+The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep
+before a dog--all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could
+not move above a snail's pace.
+
+Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long
+practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and
+Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which
+they knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides,
+and knocked the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came
+on at a gallop now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a
+broken bridle, his two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man
+was swearing in English. And he had need to, for through the paddock
+gate the crowd was densely packed and he was charging into it on a
+maddened horse beyond control.
+
+Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but
+Cartoner's greater weight came an instant later, and the horse's head
+was down.
+
+"Let go! let go!" cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and
+Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. "Let go!
+I'll teach him!"
+
+And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the
+Prince Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his
+side in a moment and saw him open his eyes.
+
+"I am unhurt," he said. "Help me up. No! sh--h! No, nothing is broken;
+it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a
+minute. Go, one of you, and tell Wanda that I am unhurt. She is in box
+No. 18, in the grand-stand."
+
+He spoke in French, to Deulin more particularly.
+
+"Go and tell her," said the Frenchman, over his shoulder, in English.
+"Some busy fool has probably started off by this time to tell her that
+her father is killed. You will find us in the club-house when you come
+back."
+
+So Cartoner went to the grand-stand to seek Wanda there, in the face
+of all Warsaw, with his promise to avoid her still fresh in his
+memory. As he approached he saw her in the second tier of boxes. She
+was dressed in black and white, as she nearly always was. It was only
+the Russians and the Germans who wore gay colors. He could see the
+surprise on her face and in Martin's eyes as he approached, and knew
+that there were a hundred eyes watching him, a hundred ears waiting to
+catch his words when he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "the prince has had a slight accident, and has
+sent me to tell you that he is unhurt, in case you should hear any
+report to the contrary. He was unable to avoid a fractious horse, and
+was knocked down. Mr. Deulin is with him, and they have gone to the
+club pavilion."
+
+He spoke rather slowly in French, so that all within ear-shot could
+understand and repeat.
+
+"Shall we go to him?" asked Wanda, rising.
+
+"Only to satisfy yourself. I assure you he is unhurt, princess, and
+would come himself were he able to walk."
+
+Wanda rose, and turned to take her cloak from the back of her chair.
+
+"Will you take us to him, monsieur?" she said.
+
+And the three quitted the grand-stand together in a rather formal
+silence. The next race was about to start, and the lawn, with its
+forlorn, autumnal flower-beds, was less crowded now as they walked
+along it towards the paddock.
+
+"It was very good of you to come and tell us," said Martin, in
+English, "with the whole populace looking on. It will do you no good,
+you know, to do a kindness to people under a cloud. I suppose it was
+true what you said about the prince being unhurt?"
+
+"Almost," answered Cartoner. "He is rather badly shaken. I think you
+will find it necessary to go home, but there is no need for anxiety."
+
+"Oh no!" exclaimed Martin. "He is a tough old fellow. You cannot come
+in here, you know, Wanda. It is against the Jockey Club laws, even in
+case of accidents."
+
+He stood at the gate of the club enclosure as he spoke.
+
+"Wait here," he said, "with Cartoner, and I will be back in a few
+minutes."
+
+So Cartoner and Wanda were left in the now deserted paddock, while the
+distant roar of voices announced that the start for the next race had
+been successfully accomplished.
+
+Wanda looked rather anxiously towards the little square pavilion into
+which her brother was hurrying, and Cartoner only looked at Wanda. He
+waited till she should speak, and she did not appear to have anything
+to say at that moment. Perhaps in this one case that clear
+understanding of which she was such a pronounced advocate was only to
+be compassed by silence, and not by speech. The roar of voices behind
+them came nearer and nearer as the horses approached the winning-post.
+The members of the club stood rigid beneath the pavilion awning, some
+with field-glasses, others with knitted brows and glittering eyes. All
+eyes were turned in one direction, except Wanda's and Cartoner's.
+
+Then, when the race was over and the roar had subsided, Martin came
+hurrying back, and one glance at his face told them that there was no
+need for anxiety.
+
+"He is laughing in there over a glass of cognac. He refuses absolutely
+to go home, and he wants me to help him up the stairs. He will sit
+under the awning, he says. And we are to go back to the grand-stand,"
+Martin said, as he approached.
+
+"See," he added, pointing to the paddock where the crowd was hurrying
+to gather round the winning horse. "See, it is already a thing of the
+past. And he wants it to be so. He wants no fuss made about it. It is
+no good advertising the fact of the existence of a dog with a bad
+name, eh? Thank you all the same, Cartoner, for your good offices. You
+and Deulin, they say, averted a catastrophe. The incident is over, my
+dear Wanda. It is forgotten by all except us. Wait here a minute and I
+will come back to you."
+
+With a nod to Cartoner, as if to say, "I leave her to your care," he
+turned and left them again.
+
+Then at length Wanda spoke.
+
+"You see," she said, "you are not so strong as--"
+
+"As what?" he asked, seeing that she sought a word.
+
+"As Fate, I suppose," she answered, and her eyes were grave as she
+looked across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun
+was sinking below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the
+horizon. Sunset over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments.
+
+"Is it Fate?" she asked, with a sudden change of manner.
+
+"Even Fate can be hampered in its movements, princess," answered
+Cartoner.
+
+"By what?"
+
+"By action. I have written for my recall."
+
+He was looking towards the pavilion. It seemed that it was he, and not
+his companion, who was now anxious for Martin to return. Wanda was
+still looking across the course towards the sinking sun.
+
+"You have asked to be recalled from Warsaw?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then," she said, after a pause, "it would have been better for you if
+we had not met at Lady Orlay's, in London. Monsieur Deulin once said
+that you had never had a check in your career. This is the first
+check. And it has come through--knowing us."
+
+Cartoner made no answer, but stood watching the door of the pavilion
+with patient, thoughtful eyes.
+
+"You cannot deny it," she said.
+
+And he did not deny it.
+
+Then she turned her head, and looked at him with clever, speculative
+keenness.
+
+"Why have you asked for your recall?" she asked, slowly.
+
+And still Cartoner made no answer. He was without rival in the art of
+leaving things unsaid. Then Martin came to them, laughing and talking.
+And across the course, amid the tag-rag and bobtail of Warsaw, the
+eyes of the man called Kosmaroff watched their every movement.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
+
+When Martin and Wanda returned to the grand-stand they found the next
+box to theirs, which had hitherto been empty, occupied by a sedate
+party of foreigners. Miss Mangles had come to the races, not because
+she cared for sport, but because she had very wisely argued in her
+mind that one cannot set about to elevate human nature without a
+knowledge of those depths to which it sometimes descends.
+
+"And this," she said, when she had settled herself on the chair
+commanding the best view, "this is the turf."
+
+"That," corrected Mr. Mangles, pointing down to the lawn with his
+umbrella, "is the turf. This is the grand-stand."
+
+"The whole," stated Miss Mangles, rather sadly, and indicating with a
+graceful wave of her card, which was in Russian and therefore
+illegible to her, the scene in general, "the whole constitutes the
+turf."
+
+Joseph P. Mangles sat corrected, and looked lugubriously at Netty, who
+was prettily and quietly dressed in autumnal tints, which set off her
+delicate and transparent complexion to perfection. Her hair was itself
+of an autumnal tint, and her eyes of the deep blue of October skies.
+
+"And these young men are on it," concluded Miss Mangles, with her
+usual decision. One privilege of her sex she had not laid aside--the
+privilege of jumping to conclusions. Netty glanced beneath her dark
+lashes in the direction indicated by Miss Mangles's inexorable finger;
+but some of the young men happening to look up, she instantly became
+interested in the Russian race-card which she could not read.
+
+"It is very sad," she said.
+
+Miss Mangles continued to look at the young men severely, as if making
+up her mind how best to take them in hand.
+
+"Don't see the worst of 'em here," muttered Mr. Mangles, dismally. "It
+isn't round about the grand-stand that young men come to grief--on the
+turf. That contingent is waiting to be called up into the boxes, and
+reformed--by the young women."
+
+Netty looked gently distressed. At times she almost thought Uncle
+Joseph inclined to be coarse. She looked across the lawn with a rather
+wistful expression, eminently suited to dark blue eyes. The young men
+below were still glancing up in her direction, but she did not seem to
+see them. At this moment Wanda and Martin returned to their box. Wanda
+was preoccupied, and sat down without noticing the new-comers. Several
+ladies leaned over the low partitions and asked questions, which were
+unintelligible to Netty, and the news was spread from mouth to mouth
+that the Prince Bukaty was not hurt.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles looked at the brother and sister beneath his heavy
+brows. He knew quite well who they were, but did not consider himself
+called upon to transmit the information.
+
+"Even the best people seem to lend their countenance to this," said
+Miss Mangles, in an undertone.
+
+"You are right, Jooly."
+
+But Miss Mangles did not hear. She was engaged in bowing to Paul
+Deulin, who was coming up the steps. She was rather glad to see him.
+for the feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all
+these people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable,
+and it is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to
+hunger for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong
+glance which convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized.
+Paul Deulin would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some
+little good might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of
+disapproval towards the turf.
+
+"One would scarcely expect to see you here, Mr. Deulin," she said,
+shaking hands, with a playful shake of the head.
+
+"Since you are here," he answered, "there can be no harm. It is only a
+garden-party, after all."
+
+And he bowed over Netty's head with an empressement which would have
+conveyed to any one more versed in the ways of men the reason why he
+had come.
+
+"Do you bet, Mr. Deulin?" inquired Jooly.
+
+"Never, unless I am quite sure," he answered.
+
+"There is," observed Miss Mangles, who was inclined to be gracious--
+"there is perhaps less harm in that."
+
+"And less risk," explained Deulin gravely. "But surely," he said, in a
+lower tone, turning to Netty, "you know the Princess Wanda? Did you
+not meet her at Lady Orlay's?"
+
+Netty had already displayed some interest in Martin Bukaty, which was
+perhaps indiscreet. For a young man's vanity is singularly alert, and
+he was quite ready to return the interest with interest, so to speak.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "we met her at Lady Orlay's. But I think she does
+not remember--though she seemed to recollect Mr. Cartoner, whom she
+met at the same time."
+
+Deulin looked at her with his quick smile as he nodded a little,
+comprehending nod, and Netty's eyes looked into his innocently.
+
+"Be assured," he answered, "that she has not seen you, or she would
+not fail to remember you. You are sitting back to back, you observe.
+The princess is rather distrait with thoughts of her father, who has
+just had a slight mishap."
+
+He bent forward as he spoke and touched Wanda on the shoulder.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "this young lady remembers meeting you in London."
+
+Wanda turned and, rising, held her hand over the low barrier that
+divided the two boxes.
+
+"Of course," she said, "Miss Cahere. You must excuse my sitting down
+so near to you without seeing you. I was thinking of something else."
+
+"I hardly expect you to recollect me," Netty hastened to say. "You
+must have met so many people in London. Is it not odd that so many who
+were at Lady Orlay's that night should be in Warsaw to-day?"
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, rather absently. "Are there many?"
+
+"Why, yes. Mr. Deulin was there, and yourself and the prince and we
+three and--Mr. Cartoner."
+
+She looked round as she spoke for Cartoner, but only met Martin
+Bukaty's eyes fixed upon her with open admiration. When speaking she
+had much animation, and her eyes were bright.
+
+"I am sure you are here with your brother. The likeness is
+unmistakable. I hope the prince is not hurt?" she said, in her little,
+friendly, confidential way to Wanda.
+
+"No, he is not hurt, thank you. Yes, that is my brother. May I
+introduce him? Martin. Miss Cahere--my brother."
+
+And the introduction was effected, which was perhaps what Netty
+wanted. She did not take much notice of Martin, but continued to talk
+to Wanda.
+
+"It must be so interesting," she said, "to live in Warsaw and to be
+able to help the poor people who are so down-trodden."
+
+"But I do nothing of that sort," replied Wanda. "It is only in books
+that women can do anything for the people of their country. All I can
+do for Poland is to see that one old Polish gentleman gets what he
+likes for dinner, and to housekeep generally--just as you do when you
+are at home, no doubt."
+
+"Oh," protested Netty, "but I am not so useful as that. That is what
+distresses me. I seem to be of no use to anybody. And I am sure I
+could never housekeep."
+
+And some faint line of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark,
+made her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin
+saw it. At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather
+vacantly in another direction.
+
+"I suppose Miss Mangles does all that when you are at home?" said
+Wanda, glancing towards the great woman, who was just out of ear-shot.
+
+"My dear Wanda," put in Deulin, in a voice of gravest protest, "you
+surely do not expect that of a lady who housekeeps for all humanity.
+Miss Mangles is one of our leaders of thought. I saw her so described
+in a prominent journal of Smithville, Ohio. Miss Mangles, in her care
+for the world, has no time to think of an individual household."
+
+"Besides," said Netty, "we have no settled home in America. We live
+differently. We have not the comfort of European life."
+
+And she gave a little sigh, looking wistfully across the plain. Martin
+noticed that she had a pretty profile, and the tenderest little droop
+of the lips.
+
+At this moment a race, the last on the card, put a stop to further
+conversation, and Netty refused, very properly, to deprive Martin of
+the use of his field-glasses.
+
+"I can see," she said, in her confidential way, "well enough for
+myself with my own eyes."
+
+And Martin looked into the eyes, so vaunted, with much interest.
+
+"I am sure," she said to Wanda, when the race was over, "that I saw
+Mr. Cartoner a short time ago. Has he gone?"
+
+"I fancy he has," was the reply.
+
+"He did not see us. And we quite forgot to tell him the number of our
+box. I only hope he was not offended. We saw a great deal of him on
+board. We crossed the Atlantic in the same ship, you know."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes. And one becomes so intimate on a voyage. It is quite
+ridiculous."
+
+Deulin, leaning against the pillar at the back of the box, was
+thoughtfully twisting his grizzled mustache as he watched Netty. There
+was in his attitude some faint suggestion of an engineer who has set a
+machine in motion and is watching the result with a contemplative
+satisfaction.
+
+Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were
+allowed to come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince
+Bukaty's.
+
+"Come, Wanda," said Martin. "We must not keep him waiting. I can see
+him, with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure."
+
+"I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse," said
+Deulin, "and then return to the assistance of these ladies."
+
+He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he
+explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood
+watching the carriages after they had gone.
+
+"The gods forbid," he said, piously, to himself, "that I should
+attempt to interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well
+that Wanda should know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I
+think she knows now, my shrewd princess."
+
+And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from
+Wanda as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on
+his heel, to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense
+throng of people moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky
+was black, and a shower was impending.
+
+"Ah, well!" he muttered, philosophically, "they are capable of taking
+care of themselves."
+
+And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however,
+that he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along
+by a stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great
+gate, and though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the
+other men, she could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and his
+sister passed out of the large gateway, and waited in the first
+available space beyond it. Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of
+the crowd to the smaller gate, and having passed it, decided to wait
+till her uncle, who undoubtedly must have seen her, should come in
+search of her. She was not uneasy. All through her life she had always
+found people, especially men, ready, nay, anxious, to be kind to her.
+She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a man came towards her. He
+was only a workman in his best suit of working clothes. He had a
+narrow, sunburned face, and there was in his whole being a not
+unpleasant suggestion of the seafaring life.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap,
+"that you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong
+course, so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I
+help you to find your father?"
+
+"Thank you," answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. "I think
+my uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get
+at him. Perhaps--"
+
+"Yes," answered Kosmaroff, "I will show you another way with pleasure.
+Then that tall gentleman is not your father?"
+
+"No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle," replied Netty, following her companion.
+
+"Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?"
+
+"Yes. We are Americans."
+
+"A diplomatist?"
+
+"Yes, my uncle is in the service."
+
+"And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This
+way; we can pass through this alley and come to the large gate."
+
+"But you--you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me," said
+Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving
+this interest, slightly changed his manner.
+
+"Ah! you are looking at my clothes," he said, rather less formally.
+"In Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I
+am a Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska
+Street, just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it
+is pleasant in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me
+the great honor of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes, I will remember," answered Netty, who did not seem to notice
+that his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.
+
+"I knew at once--at once," he said, "that you were English or
+American."
+
+"Ah! Then there is a difference--" said Netty, looking round for her
+uncle.
+
+"There is a difference--yes, assuredly."
+
+"What is it?" asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her
+voice.
+
+"Your mirror will answer that question," replied Kosmaroff, with his
+odd, one-sided smile, "more plainly than I should ever dare to do.
+There is your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go."
+
+Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his
+hand in his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.
+
+"No," said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, "do not give
+him anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little
+English."
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+SENTENCED
+
+Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the
+horizon which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he
+is in it. The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must
+walk out of it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how
+the city lies.
+
+Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
+leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs
+more or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-
+paved, growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
+foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
+cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which
+a Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of
+emergency could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not
+defend it from any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through
+Praga, of grimmest memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly
+he rode by the riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the
+country is less uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward
+by the Vistula, and knew the various roads and paths that led to
+Wilanow.
+
+One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight
+was shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie
+parallel with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and
+soon struck that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska,
+which leads into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-
+refineries and the iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and
+he rode in silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of
+the large iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of
+the idlers in the Lazienki Park.
+
+Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land
+side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of
+his horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at
+it patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse
+forward and found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he
+walked on, with the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There
+was just light enough to show him that it was nearly six.
+
+The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From
+the distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a
+long, low roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.
+
+Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the
+iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that
+the animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which
+opened first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently
+in the wind. It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After
+a few moments there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly
+withdrawn, and at the right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his
+whip, so that it started forward against the door and thrust it open,
+despite the efforts of the gate-keeper, who staggered back into the
+dimly lighted yard.
+
+Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open
+doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating
+cranes and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was
+hurriedly bolting the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open
+door, but before he reached it a number of men ran out and fell on him
+like hounds upon a fox. He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and
+striking the first-comer full in the chest with his fist. He charged
+the next and knocked him over; but from the third he retreated,
+leaping quickly to one side.
+
+"Bukaty!" he cried; "don't you know me?"
+
+"You, Cartoner!" replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men
+behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in
+Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. "You here!" he said. And there
+was a ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had
+never heard there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and
+knew the meaning of it. For his work had brought him into contact with
+refined men in moments when their refinement only serves to harden
+that grimmer side of human nature of which half humanity is in happy
+ignorance, which deals in battle and sudden death.
+
+"It is too risky," said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish,
+but Cartoner heard it. "We must kill him and be done with it."
+
+There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy
+feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then
+Cartoner spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that
+he had taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For
+all had disadvantages, but silence meant death.
+
+"This near fore-shoe," he said in French, turning to his horse, "is
+nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a
+foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about."
+
+Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought
+there was no loop-hole.
+
+Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his
+patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-
+circle in front of him were in the dark.
+
+"Good! He's a brave man!" muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's
+ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, hastily, "this is a foundry. I can get you a
+hammer."
+
+His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced
+at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless,
+and he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.
+
+"You might tell these men," he said, in French, "of my mishap; perhaps
+one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am
+desperately hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow."
+
+He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and
+French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke
+slowly, so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff
+stepped forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was
+nearly off.
+
+Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for
+a hammer and some nails--that his horse had nearly lost a shoe.
+Cartoner had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even
+indicated the line of conduct he was to pursue.
+
+"Get a hammer--one of you," said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and
+Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak--to say more than was
+discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing
+that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent.
+Never comment on your own victory.
+
+Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as
+during the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the
+lost shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid
+such dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a
+bird. Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of
+men, whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through
+the open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw--a
+dark autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a
+mechanical way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count,
+with a cold deliberation, their chances of life. He played his
+miserable little cards with all the skill he possessed, and his
+knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity served him. For he
+acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that it would be a
+mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they were not
+Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed him
+first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs--of the
+most calculating race the world had produced--a little slow in their
+calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time; but
+she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is
+fully evolved--long, long after reader and writer are dust.
+
+Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a
+muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors,
+which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper
+looked inquiringly at Kosmaroff.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Cartoner to Martin, who went
+towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from
+Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.
+
+Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner
+climbed into the saddle.
+
+"Saved your life!" he said, in a whisper.
+
+"I know," answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to
+the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open
+doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were
+concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in
+the /Minnie/.
+
+"More than I bargained for," he muttered to himself, as he rode away
+from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and
+presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was
+astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent
+by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up
+the chase.
+
+Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his
+life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him
+much, and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the
+bridle was steady.
+
+He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road
+clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor,
+which stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap
+nor gate. He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise
+both, without weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he
+read his duty in a different sense to that understood by other men was
+no doubt only that which this tolerant age calls a matter of
+temperament.
+
+"That Cartoner," Deulin was in the habit of saying, "takes certain
+things so seriously, and other things--social things, to which I give
+most careful attention--he ignores. And yet we often reach the same
+end by different routes."
+
+Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and
+that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the
+Gallic race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a
+steady perseverance and slow, sure steps.
+
+"In a moment of danger give me Cartoner," Deulin had once said.
+
+On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without
+words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism
+and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its
+wondering attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never
+helped each other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
+
+Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
+
+"Got a job in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him.
+"Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the
+casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the
+attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels
+within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any
+degree affecting the great republic. America can afford to content
+herself with the knowledge of what has happened or is happening.
+Countries nearer to the field of action must know what is going to
+happen.
+
+Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and
+delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and
+relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life--
+alone with his failures and his small successes--content, it would
+seem, to be a good servant in a great service.
+
+He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet
+place of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political
+importance, like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The
+square was deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his
+rooms. The concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where
+he had taken an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every
+house thus takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And
+it is so all through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among
+others into the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the
+north cast the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is
+watered by the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without
+having his movements carefully noted by one who is directly
+responsible to the authorities for the good name of the house under
+his care.
+
+"The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs," said the door-keeper to
+Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps
+were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the
+letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up
+the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a
+prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
+
+It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be
+nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in
+brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work
+intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid
+verbosity.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TALE HALF TOLD
+
+The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called
+living upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life,
+and to such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful
+and jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same
+atmosphere of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit
+had survived, while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face
+to the wall quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there
+could be no hope of alleviation.
+
+The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some
+lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His
+generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the
+grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a
+poor man and read his /Figaro/ quite placidly, like any bourgeois in
+the safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to
+time.
+
+"He is late," he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return
+to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced
+towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin,
+whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in
+leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through the
+sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of
+Wielopolski's day--he could reasonably be expected to take care of
+himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's
+lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.
+
+It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in riding-
+costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust, looked
+out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself into
+a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.
+
+"Had any dinner?" asked his father.
+
+Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There
+was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate,
+fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her
+limbs and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is
+essentially English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller
+flower on a firmer stem.
+
+"Something has happened," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"Yes," replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.
+
+The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his
+attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were
+momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland
+was written on those deep-lined features.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing that affects affairs," replied Martin. "Everything is safe."
+
+Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost
+the identical phrases.
+
+"I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs," continued
+Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious
+to convince himself. "It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a
+horrid fright, I can tell you--especially me, for I was doubly
+interested. Cartoner rode into our midst to-night."
+
+"Cartoner?" repeated the prince.
+
+"Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened--we were
+expecting some one else--he led his horse into our midst, with a loose
+shoe."
+
+"Who saw him?" asked the prince.
+
+"Every one."
+
+"Kosmaroff?"
+
+"Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with
+Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing."
+
+"That would have been a mistake," said the prince, reflectively. "It
+was the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take
+life in driblets."
+
+"That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It
+was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could
+not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all--or
+nothing."
+
+"He could not have known all," said the prince. "That is an
+impossibility."
+
+"Then he must have known nothing," put in Wanda, with a laugh, which
+at one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.
+
+"I do not know how much he perceived when he was in--as to his own
+danger, I mean--for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady;
+steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong,"
+said Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-
+handkerchief. His hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or
+had been badly frightened. "We had a bad half-hour after he left,
+especially with Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the
+truth of it."
+
+"That is more to his own danger than to any one else's," put in Wanda,
+again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as
+little of the incident as possible.
+
+"Then how do matters stand?" inquired the prince.
+
+"It comes to this," answered Martin, "that Poland is not big enough to
+hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to
+go, or else----"
+
+Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively,
+the color slowly faded from her face.
+
+"Or else--what?" she inquired.
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles."
+
+"You mean," said Wanda, who would have things plainly, "that he would
+assassinate him?"
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no
+sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the
+wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous
+national government of which the members remain to this day unknown.
+The prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.
+
+"We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game
+that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be
+allowed to stand in the way of success."
+
+"It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues," said Martin,
+uneasily.
+
+"Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened--as it is,
+moreover, not my department--I cannot, personally, act in the matter."
+
+"Kosmaroff will obey nobody else."
+
+"Then warn Cartoner," the prince said, in a final voice. His had
+always been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another,
+come.
+
+"I cannot do it," said Martin, looking at Wanda. "You know my
+position--how I am watched."
+
+"There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it," said Wanda--"Paul
+Deulin."
+
+"Deulin could do it," said the prince, thoughtfully. "But I never talk
+to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between
+us."
+
+"Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow
+morning," said Wanda, quietly.
+
+"You?" asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise.
+The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.
+
+"Remember," he said, "that you run the risk of making people talk of
+you. They may talk of us--of Martin and me--the world has talked of
+the Bukatys for some centuries--but never of their women."
+
+"They will not talk of me," returned Wanda, composedly. "I will see to
+that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say
+that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw."
+
+The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He
+knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.
+
+"Well," he said, rising. "I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let
+us go to bed."
+
+He paused half-way towards the door.
+
+"There is one thing," he said, "which we should be wise to recollect--
+that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no farther. He
+is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and to say
+nothing."
+
+"Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!" cried Martin, with his
+reckless laugh.
+
+There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the
+great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into
+the court-yard--where Hermani was assassinated--where the people
+carried in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses
+were photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is
+a side door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was
+to this third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the
+porter there. He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was
+not ignorant of it.
+
+"Miss Cahere--the American lady?" she said. And the porter gave her
+the number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort
+her thither.
+
+Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's
+room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had
+wished. At the head of the second staircase there is a little glass-
+partitioned room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In
+this room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's
+servant, a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is
+the best servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had
+come to see his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room
+occupied by Deulin, who always travelled /en prince/.
+
+"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in
+defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want
+to give it are those who will not accept it."
+
+Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
+found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash
+of surprise in his eyes.
+
+"Did Jean show you in?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie.
+It would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have
+enemies, Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."
+
+Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.
+
+"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table
+near which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"
+
+"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."
+
+"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
+predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
+comes. Your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Martin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
+leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
+the necessity of reply.
+
+"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"
+
+"He has found out something."
+
+"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
+exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
+for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."
+
+"And I cannot tell you what it is."
+
+"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
+ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him
+across the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes.
+"Look a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said
+to Cartoner, "but not a woman."
+
+"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda
+paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
+way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
+Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.
+We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My
+father won't--"
+
+Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table. His
+touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
+execution.
+
+"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to
+advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice
+with exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it
+--and never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was
+right, and I was wrong."
+
+He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with
+both hands.
+
+"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."
+
+"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his
+life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
+serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was
+neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.
+
+"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched men
+--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite
+ceased to affect my appetite."
+
+Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
+sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.
+
+"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a
+little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?"
+
+"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.
+
+"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
+Englishman."
+
+Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.
+
+"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin,
+opening the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way
+round."
+
+He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which
+Wanda had just vacated.
+
+"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I
+have known thousands--thousands."
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MUCH--OR NOTHING
+
+If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference to
+his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become
+apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse
+themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a
+long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events.
+In some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long
+breathing space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no
+more seen.
+
+A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will
+then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.
+The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed
+in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all
+interest in him. Thus the gods--with men.
+
+Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
+down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers
+good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it
+had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents
+--as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part--
+with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his
+being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually
+accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which
+is necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had
+not helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good,
+and often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that
+domestic goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to
+remember.
+
+The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the
+fly on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed
+to crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he
+had never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now,
+without apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly
+accorded him that gracious and inconsequent attention which has
+forever decided the sex of this arbiter of human story.
+
+Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
+wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to
+avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do.
+Two days after the meeting at the Mokotow--the morning following the
+visit paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe--Cartoner was early
+astir. He drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past
+eight train, and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to
+arrive at ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of
+peasants--wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women
+in gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their
+husbands.
+
+This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
+capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw
+attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the
+humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in
+some parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into
+the third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-
+class room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted
+shades of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in
+alone. There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in.
+It was Wanda. The gods were kind--or cruel.
+
+"You are going away?" she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
+Cartoner looked at her in surprise. "You have seen Monsieur Deulin,
+and you are going away."
+
+"No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
+yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
+again."
+
+"We are all watched," said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh.
+"But you are going away--that is all that matters."
+
+"I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall
+be back this afternoon."
+
+Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
+which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers,
+they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the
+restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the
+platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier
+to post a letter.
+
+"You must leave Warsaw," she said; "it is not safe for you to stay
+here. You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it
+imperative for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in
+danger."
+
+She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on
+duty at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and
+could not hear them even if he understood English, which was
+improbable. There were so many other languages at this meeting-place
+of East and West which it was essential for him to comprehend. The
+room was absolutely bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in
+it. It these two had anything to say to each other this was assuredly
+the moment, and this bare railway station the place to say it in.
+
+Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his
+shoulders. He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this
+conventional salutation.
+
+"Martin would have warned you," she went on, "but he did not dare to.
+Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which
+you had unwittingly run."
+
+"Not unwittingly," said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He
+said so little that his meaning needed careful search.
+
+"I cannot tell you much--" she began, and he interrupted her at once.
+
+"Stop," he said, "you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
+here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything--but not from you."
+
+"Martin hinted at that," said Wanda, slowly, "but I did not believe
+him."
+
+And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was
+as if there were more in him--more of him--than she had ever expected.
+And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
+baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which
+was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes
+from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always
+able to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
+
+"It is true enough," he said, "fate has made us enemies, princess."
+
+"You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger
+than fate--in Poland. Besides----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something
+in your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall."
+
+And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
+
+"It has been refused."
+
+"But you must go--you must go!" she said, quickly. She glanced at the
+great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make
+him understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams
+of gray in his closely cut hair.
+
+"You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in
+the world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily--quite
+gayly--" she broke off with a light laugh, "on a volcano--it is the
+Bukatys. We have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of
+our nursery window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that
+day. My father was in the streets. And ever since we have been
+accustomed to unsettled times."
+
+"I know," said Cartoner, "what it is to be a Bukaty." And he smiled
+slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly
+her manner, in a flash, was different.
+
+"Then you will go?" she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he
+turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them,
+she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of
+hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. "Say you will go!"
+
+And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
+
+"I do not think you understand," she went on, changing her manner and
+her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own
+stolid, dumb form of defence. "You do not understand what a danger to
+us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this," with a
+gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred
+marks of a high state of civilization, "is skin deep. That things in
+Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are
+implicated. We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is
+such an old man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You
+have only to look at his face--"
+
+"I know," admitted Cartoner.
+
+"It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he
+has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so
+happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe.
+That is why I ask you to go."
+
+"Yes, I know," answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed
+clever, was quite a simple person.
+
+"Besides," said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit
+to follow it, call no logic at all, "you can do no good here, if all
+your care and attention are required for the preservation of your
+life. Why have they refused your recall? It is so stupid."
+
+"I must do the best I can," replied Cartoner.
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
+ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
+
+"But we must not quarrel," she said, gently. "We must not
+misunderstand each other," she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh,
+"for we have only five minutes in all the world."
+
+"Here and now," he corrected, with a glance at the clock, "we have
+only five minutes. But the world is large."
+
+"For you," she said quickly, "but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
+forget I am a Russian subject."
+
+But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening
+of his face.
+
+"My presence in Warsaw," he said, as if the train of thought needed no
+elucidating, "is in reality no source of danger to you--to your father
+and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do
+not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
+nobody--nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
+that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make
+history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which
+may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If
+nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have
+happened--life is too short to record that. So you see my being in
+Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother."
+
+"Yes, I see--I see!" answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now.
+The door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The
+guard, in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was
+strutting the length of the train. "But it was not on account of that
+that we asked Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my
+father and Martin. It is required of them--a sort of family tradition.
+It is their business in life--almost their pleasure."
+
+"It is my business in life--almost my pleasure," said Cartoner, with a
+smile.
+
+"But is there no one at home--in England--that you ought to think of?"
+in an odd, sharp voice.
+
+"Nobody," he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
+respecting himself.
+
+Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her
+stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were
+no corridor carriages. Two minutes now.
+
+"We must not be seen together on the platform," she said. "I am only
+going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old
+servants whom I go to see."
+
+She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to
+speak.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "for warning me."
+
+And that was all.
+
+"You must go," he added, after a moment's pause.
+
+Still she lingered.
+
+"There is so much to say," she said, half to herself. "There is so
+much to say."
+
+The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the
+back. He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful
+wonder in his eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right--
+whether there was much to say--or nothing.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+IN THE SENATORSKA
+
+"It is," said Miss Julie Mangles, "in the Franciszkanska that one lays
+one's hand on the true heart of the people."
+
+"That's as may be, Jooly," replied her brother, "but I take it that
+the hearts of the women go to the Senatorska."
+
+For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked
+down the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the
+Jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted
+with bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a
+picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to
+and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the
+mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would
+assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could
+possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not
+even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that
+he should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not
+exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
+
+"I shall," said Miss Mangles, "write a paper on the Jewish question in
+this country."
+
+And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
+right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his
+tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on the
+Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a
+town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
+
+"Seen the Senatorska, Netty?" he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
+Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
+
+"Go out into the Faubourg," her uncle explained, "and just turn to the
+left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
+are."
+
+Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty
+set out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down--as
+the paper itself recorded--the hot impressions of the moment, gathered
+after a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their
+impressions served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers
+vividness to accuracy.
+
+Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
+shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's
+instructions, and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an
+easy street to find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising,
+like either end of Bond Street.
+
+The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix,
+and Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to
+interest her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--that
+weak dreamer--built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet.
+The shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was
+passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in
+the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of
+surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the
+Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+"I was afraid you did not remember me," said Martin. "You looked
+straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me."
+
+"Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
+should I?"
+
+And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and
+then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
+
+"Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
+remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting."
+
+"Of course," said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. "One
+meets a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you
+not find it so?"
+
+"I am glad," answered Martin, "that you do not meet many people that
+you like."
+
+"Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people," urged Netty, in
+some concern; "I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so
+kind. Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is
+much more kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not
+think so?"
+
+"I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would
+come in yours."
+
+And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol
+with that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a
+share.
+
+"Oh no!" she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
+descriptive of a shrinking humility. "Why should I? I have done
+nothing to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so
+kind--my uncle and aunt--everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I
+wonder why it is?"
+
+And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell
+her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could--if he dared. He
+had never met anybody quite like Netty--so spontaneous and innocent
+and easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and
+yet so little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite
+easy to answer; and were not stupid little questions about the
+weather, but had a human interest in them, especially when she looked
+up like that from under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her
+face, and her eyes were dark, almost as violets.
+
+"Ought I to be here?" she asked. "Going about the streets alone, I
+mean?"
+
+"You are not alone," answered Martin, with a laugh.
+
+"No, but--perhaps I ought to be."
+
+And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
+
+"In America, you know," said the voice from under the parasol, "girls
+are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best
+to be careful, is it not?--to follow the customs of the country, I
+mean. In France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask
+you what is the custom in Warsaw."
+
+Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
+
+"In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven
+forbid that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one
+goes about the streets as they do in England or America."
+
+As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his
+side.
+
+"I can show you the best shops," he said, "such as they are. This is
+Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good
+thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?"
+
+"I love them," answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to
+the next shop.
+
+"You would naturally."
+
+"Why?" asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of
+tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
+
+"Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the
+eyes?"
+
+"It is very kind of you to say that," said Netty, in a voice half-
+afraid, half-reproachful.
+
+"It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes," answered Martin,
+gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get
+on with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many
+lively persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of
+gravity, and this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was
+religious and very good.
+
+"You know," said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, "I am much
+interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done
+such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles--and
+the poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?"
+
+"The nobles have come to great grief in Poland--that is all," replied
+Martin, with a short laugh.
+
+"And it is so sad," said Netty, with a shake of the head; "but I am
+sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you
+are interested in Poland--you and your sister and your father."
+
+"We are supposed to be," admitted Martin. "But no one cares for Poland
+now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of,
+and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now--and her history,
+which is the saddest history of any nation in the world."
+
+"But I am sure you are wrong there," said Netty, earnestly. "I know a
+great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
+them."
+
+"Are you?" asked Martin, looking down at her.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with downcast eyes. "Come," she said, after a
+pause, with a sort of effort, "we must not stand in front of this shop
+any longer."
+
+"Especially," he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, "as it is a
+Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up
+in a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland
+you will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops
+in Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops
+that you must go."
+
+Netty looked at him doubtfully.
+
+"I am quite serious," he said. "We must fight with what weapons we
+have."
+
+"Yes," she answered, indicating the shops, "these people, but not you.
+You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to
+take anything from you."
+
+"Because there is nothing to take," laughed Martin, gayly; "we were
+ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when
+my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not
+either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own."
+
+"I am so sorry!" she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked
+it.
+
+Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short
+sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She
+stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin
+perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if
+they had just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand
+stretched out to Martin--his left hand, which conveyed the fact that
+he was an old and familiar friend.
+
+"I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?" he said
+to Netty. "I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with
+you, if you will permit it."
+
+And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while
+Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not
+the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty
+desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a
+secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the
+flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
+
+A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a
+train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty
+without speaking. It was against his principles altogether. "Never be
+silent with a woman," he often said. "She will only misconstrue it."
+
+"It was odd that I should meet you at that moment," he said, at
+length, for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never
+took the initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and
+submissively the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He
+broke off and laughed. "I was going to say that it was odd that I
+should have met you at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it
+would be odder still if I could manage to meet you at a moment when I
+was not thinking of you, would it not?"
+
+"It was very kind of you," said Netty, "to think of me at the race-
+meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so
+interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely
+hair, and I think her face is so interesting--a face with a history,
+is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, rather shortly, "Wanda is a nice girl." He did
+not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
+
+"And the prince," she said, "the old one, I mean--for this one, Prince
+Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?"
+
+"Oh yes--quite a boy," replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back
+over his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he
+had first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
+
+"It is so sad that they are ruined--if they are really ruined."
+
+"There is no doubt whatever about that," answered Deulin.
+
+"But," said Netty, who was practical, "could nothing induce him--the
+young prince, I mean--to abandon all these vague political dreams and
+accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates
+and recover his position?"
+
+"You mean," said Deulin, "the domestic felicities. Your fine and
+sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the
+world like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the
+lives of others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are
+forbidden--by the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I
+like to catch an occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear
+young lady."
+
+Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her
+lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
+
+"Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He
+will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory
+life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things
+never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has
+not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic
+felicities, and Siberia--his certain destination--is not a good mise-
+en-scene for your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your
+fellow-beings here, though it is natural that you should seek the
+ever-evasive remedy--another privilege of youth."
+
+"You talk as if you were so very old," said Netty, reproachfully.
+
+"I am very, very old," he replied, with a laugh. "And there is no
+remedy for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age."
+
+"I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,"
+answered Netty, lightly. "I think you are quite capable of taking care
+of yourself."
+
+"And of evolving my own dreams?" he inquired. But she made no answer,
+and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
+
+"I know so little," she said, after a pause, "so very little of Poland
+or Polish history. I suppose you know everything--you and Mr.
+Cartoner?"
+
+"Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine of
+knowledge, while I--I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with
+everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there
+is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly
+successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you
+not prescribe for him?"
+
+Netty smiled gravely.
+
+"I hardly know him sufficiently well," she said. "Besides, he requires
+no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a
+fortune."
+
+Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own
+satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
+
+"Ah! is that so?" he inquired. "Who told you that?"
+
+But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to
+believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very
+interested in the matter.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+JOSEPH'S STORY
+
+Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. "It is well," he had
+said, "to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect
+harmony." He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at
+the Cukiernia Lourse--a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the
+Cracow Faubourg--which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then
+and there had arranged that they should dine with him.
+
+"I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love
+with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In
+her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to
+say. But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow.
+It takes years off one's life," said Deulin, confidentially, to
+Cartoner, as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had
+departed.
+
+As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from
+the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some
+chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a
+Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the
+window waiting for the clock to strike.
+
+"I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive," he said to
+himself, "and we can make our entry together."
+
+It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows
+was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into
+the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man
+arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been
+following Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side
+door of the hotel.
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took
+his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave
+them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it
+is to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the
+restaurant. When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes
+later he found the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white,
+with some violets at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and
+Cartoner, who were talking together, and Deulin found himself
+relegated to the society of the hospitable Joseph at the other end of
+the room.
+
+"You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money," said Mr.
+Mangles, bluntly.
+
+"I was looking at him with suspicion," admitted Deulin, "but not on
+that account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it
+is not I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand.
+No, I was looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did
+he strike you as lively when he came in?"
+
+"Not what I should call a vivacious man," said Mangles, looking
+dismally across the room. "There was a sort of ripple on his serene
+calm as he came in perhaps."
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, in a low voice. "That is bad. There is usually
+something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you
+know."
+
+They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
+
+"What beautiful violets," said he to Netty. "Surely Warsaw did not
+produce those?"
+
+"Yes, they are pretty," answered Netty, making a little movement to
+show the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also.
+Her waist was very round and slender. "They came from that shop in the
+Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I
+think, was the name."
+
+And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, slowly. "Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of
+violets?"
+
+"I love them."
+
+Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when
+dinner was announced.
+
+"It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska," said
+Mr. Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made
+the subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner,
+who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of
+steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted
+theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
+
+Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather
+labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such
+times as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel
+comfortable, and to enjoy themselves according to their lights.
+
+Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information
+respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
+
+"And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?" he said,
+noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
+
+"I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and
+traversed the whole length of the street."
+
+"And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?"
+asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
+
+"I have."
+
+And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a
+few chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for
+fifteen hundred years.
+
+"I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's
+Congress meetings--and I may publish," she said.
+
+"It would be in the interests of humanity," murmured Deulin, politely.
+"It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations."
+
+Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest
+happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be
+described.
+
+"I know," she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice,
+"that you dislike political women." Heaven knows how she knew it. "But
+I am afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not
+the sort of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal
+interest in the people. I think I have never met people with quite the
+same qualities."
+
+"Their chief quality is gameness," said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think
+the princess is delightful--do you not think so?"
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
+
+"There must be a great many stories," went on Netty, "connected with
+the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know--of
+people's lives, I mean--of all they have attempted and have failed to
+do."
+
+Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on
+his lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry
+heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was
+listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was
+weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts
+are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was
+talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not
+by any means an easy thing to do.
+
+"I always think," continued Netty, "that the princess has a story.
+There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or
+somewhere terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking."
+
+And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she
+glanced at Cartoner.
+
+"Perhaps," put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn
+utterances. "Perhaps she is thinking of her brother--Prince Martin. He
+is always getting into scrapes--ce jeune homme."
+
+But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at
+all.
+
+"It is your romantic heart," said Deulin, "that makes you see so much
+that perhaps does not exist."
+
+"If you want a story," put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep
+voice, "I can tell you one."
+
+And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
+
+"Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?" began
+Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great
+eyebrows.
+
+"Which I believe to be the truth," assented the Frenchman.
+
+"Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story," continued Joseph, "but
+they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city
+who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country
+could be made a great country again, as it was in the past--dreamed
+that the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be
+turned into human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that
+Poland should be an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a
+Polish Parliament, she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the
+powers, headed by France and England, promised to see that Russia kept
+to the terms of the treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody
+out of all that crew, would keep his word. Comes from having a
+romantic heart."
+
+And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her
+against this danger.
+
+"My country," he went on, "didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of
+breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his
+own father and whip him."
+
+And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as
+representing the other side in that great misunderstanding.
+
+"Ever heard the Polish hymn?" he asked, abruptly. He was not a good
+story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and
+across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him
+dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
+
+"'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the
+magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield
+of Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we
+raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
+
+"Jooly--pass the mustard," he said.
+
+Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a
+sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those
+Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
+
+"'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields
+soaked with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us?
+God of wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer:
+deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"
+
+And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of
+the beef.
+
+"That is the first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all
+Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are
+forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in
+Siberia. They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a
+chalk mark on the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were
+arrested when they came out--women and children, old men and maidens."
+
+Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something
+to say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman,
+but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal
+acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather
+impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing
+more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her,
+despite herself.
+
+"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pushing away his plate, "on
+some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was
+no warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give
+his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all
+formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great
+difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of the
+family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal
+government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.
+She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of
+bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably
+kill him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made
+the body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen
+from the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and
+died. The wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a
+prisoner to escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison,
+and all the care and forethought of the paternal government went for
+nothing. The pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The
+ancestors of that prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the
+paternal government was not beaten yet. They took the child from his
+mother, and she fretted and died. He had nobody now to care for him,
+or even to know who he was, but his foster-father--that great and
+parental government."
+
+Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in
+his eyes.
+
+"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
+brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
+Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race
+was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who
+is a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know.
+Somebody must keep account of 'em."
+
+The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in
+the telling than the reading of it would require.
+
+"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take some
+yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history. Well--
+after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government
+slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that
+was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with
+that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met
+another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and
+told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has
+weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a
+dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that
+face if they saw it now."
+
+Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched
+chin and dogged eyes.
+
+"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.
+
+And that was the end of the story.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
+person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men,
+who, so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such
+men, at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to
+value.
+
+Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette
+from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible
+reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without the
+asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the
+monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many
+actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going
+counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt
+for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for
+having consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to
+herself.
+
+Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this
+evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long
+over their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.
+
+The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
+apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
+articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
+passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
+went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary
+to custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the
+centre of the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-
+jet in the passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square
+china stove opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the
+room, and as she did so the door behind her, which was on graduated
+hinges, swung to. She was in the dark, but she knew where the stove
+was.
+
+Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the
+room. The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way
+cautiously to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak--to ask
+who was there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in
+books, but it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find
+herself dumb until now.
+
+Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying
+sound. Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many
+diminutive persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the
+door, her small slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the
+fugitive touched the door-handle she stretched out her hand and
+grasped a rough sleeve. Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty
+fought in the dark with some one infinitely stronger and heavier than
+herself. That it was a man she knew by the scent of tobacco and of
+rough working-clothes. She had one hand on the handle, and in a moment
+turned it and threw open the door. The light from without flooded the
+room, and the man leaped back.
+
+It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment
+he was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched
+his hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.
+
+"You, mademoiselle!" he said, in broken English. "Then Heaven is kind
+--Heaven is kind!"
+
+In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing
+first one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and
+Netty was conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all
+her life she had never known what it was to be really carried away
+until that moment. She had never felt anything like it--had never seen
+a man like this--at her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not
+free them.
+
+"I came," he said--and all the while he had one eye on the passage to
+see that no one approached--"to see you, because I could not stay
+away! You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can
+love as well as a rich man--and perhaps better!"
+
+"You must go! you must go!" said Netty. And yet she would have been
+sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is
+that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she
+recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if he
+had heard his own story through the door of communication between
+Mangles' bedroom and the dining-room. For the other door, from the
+salon to the bedroom, stood wide open.
+
+"You think I have only seen you once," said Kosmaroff. "I have not. I
+have seen you often. But the first time I saw you--at the races--was
+enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!"
+
+"You must go--you must go!" whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.
+
+"I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now--for five
+minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many
+passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The
+streets are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming
+to these rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is
+the tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I
+won't go till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes!" whispered Netty, hurriedly. "I will come!"
+
+Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment.
+Secondly--it is to be feared--she wanted to go. It was the high-water
+mark. This man carried her there and swept her off her feet--this
+working-man, in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.
+
+"Go and get a cloak," he said. "I will meet you by the great
+fountain."
+
+And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her
+heart beating as it had never beaten before.
+
+Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that
+twisted his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to
+the chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas
+when Netty's hand was actually on the handle.
+
+"It was a near thing," he said to himself in Russian, which language
+he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. "And
+I found the only way out of that hideous danger."
+
+As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of
+Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in
+confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers
+which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it,
+and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment
+later he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's
+box on his arm.
+
+It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows
+moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly
+in couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a
+better motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St.
+Martin's brief summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these
+northern plains lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.
+
+Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was
+one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against
+the autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.
+
+"I suppose she will come," he said in his mind, watching the gate
+through which Netty must enter the gardens. "It matters little if she
+does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must
+leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is
+pretty enough to make it easy."
+
+In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards him--
+not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first
+clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of
+having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less
+likely to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke
+first.
+
+"I am going back at once," she said. "It was very wrong to come. But
+you frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of
+me to come, and despise me for it?"
+
+"You promised," he whispered, eagerly; "you promised me five minutes.
+Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw
+soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the
+memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five
+minutes and that minute--that one minute in the hotel."
+
+And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the
+stone bench, and raised it to his lips.
+
+"We are going away, too," she said. She was thinking also of that one
+minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water
+mark. "We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting here
+till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is
+engaged."
+
+"But he is not a business man," said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested.
+"What is he doing here?"
+
+"I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know
+whether he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business
+in America, or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know
+that we are going on to St. Petersburg."
+
+"And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without
+seeing you? And the others--Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman,
+Cartoner--are they going to St. Petersburg, too?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because
+a solitary promenader was passing close by them. "They never tell me
+either. But . . ."
+
+"But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps,
+to see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only
+see into my heart!"
+
+And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and
+waited for her to answer.
+
+"Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it."
+
+"Ah!" said Kosmaroff. "Why--tell me why?"
+
+But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue
+assuredly, and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With
+that skill which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in
+which Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at
+one bound--the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and
+any wise man lose himself.
+
+"It is for you that he stays here," he said. "What a fool I was not to
+see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?"
+
+"I think he has found it quite easy to do it," answered Netty, with an
+odd laugh. "No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who
+is clever and beautiful."
+
+"There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw."
+
+And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.
+
+"You say that to please me," she said at last. And her voice was quite
+different--it was low and uneven.
+
+"I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than
+you in all the world. Heaven knows it."
+
+And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he
+had no faith.
+
+"But who is there in Warsaw," he asked, "whom any one could dream of
+comparing with you?"
+
+"I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr.
+Cartoner compares with me--and even you must know that she is prettier
+than I am."
+
+"I do not know it," protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. "There
+is no one in all the world."
+
+"There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty," said Netty, curtly.
+
+"Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I
+remember I saw them together at the races."
+
+"They knew each other in London," said Netty. "They knew each other
+when I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have
+often met here since."
+
+Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of
+him, his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have
+forgotten Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered
+it in the salon a few minutes earlier.
+
+"Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires
+information which she alone can give him?" he asked at length. Which
+was, after all, the most natural thought that could come to him at
+that moment and in that place. For every man must see the world
+through his own eyes.
+
+Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose
+hastily and drew her cloak round her.
+
+"I must go," she said; "I have been here much more than five minutes.
+Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?"
+
+And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.
+
+"You will come again," he said. "Now that you have come once--you
+cannot be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the
+river, at the foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a
+word in passing. You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with
+the black hair, your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps.
+Do you speak French?"
+
+"Yes--and she does not."
+
+"Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and
+remember that I love you--always, always!"
+
+He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards
+the side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he
+could scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.
+
+"It is all fair--all fair," said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
+convince himself. "Besides--has the world been fair to me?"
+
+Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A LIGHT TOUCH
+
+Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty,
+having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given
+way to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the
+emotions. She was not old-fashioned in that respect.
+
+But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first
+time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she
+might do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that
+before. No one in the world could say that she had ever been
+imprudent. That which the lenient may call a school-girl escapade--a
+mere flight to the garden for a few minutes--was scarcely sufficient
+to account for this feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she
+decided, with some wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of
+Paul Deulin again.
+
+Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although Miss
+Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long, innocent-
+looking Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still some views
+of value to be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.
+
+Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously
+soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he
+announced with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his
+leave. Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.
+
+"I will come down to the door with you," said Deulin, in the passage.
+He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable
+instincts.
+
+At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped
+rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his
+hat was back again.
+
+"It is a moonlight night," he said. "I will walk with you part of the
+way."
+
+He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were
+hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to
+think it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each
+other too well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his
+thin, light overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from
+the rack, weighing and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.
+
+"That is the Madrid Stick," said the Frenchman. "You were with me when
+I bought it."
+
+"And when you used it," added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he
+led the way to the door. "Generally keep your coat in the hall?" he
+inquired, casually, as they descended the steps.
+
+"Sometimes," replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways
+beneath the brim of his hat.
+
+It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full
+and almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances
+without shadow at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as
+does the river.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, taking Cartoner's arm, and leading him to the
+right instead of the left; for Cartoner was going towards the Cracow
+Faubourg, which was the simplest but not the shortest way to the
+Jasna. "Yes--let us go by the quiet streets, eh? We have walked the
+pavement of some queer towns in our day, you and I. The typical
+Englishman, so dense, so silent, so unobservant--who sees nothing and
+knows nothing and never laughs, but is himself the laughing-stock of
+all the Latin races and the piece de resistance of their comic papers.
+And I, at your service, the typical Frenchman; all shrugs and
+gesticulations and mustache--of politeness that is so insincere--of a
+heart that is so unstable. Ah! these national characteristics of comic
+journalism--how the stupid world trips over them on to its vulgar
+face!"
+
+As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker,
+with a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was
+unnatural to one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the
+streets whenever he walked there.
+
+Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in
+a narrow street now--between the backs of high houses--and had left
+the life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin
+turned once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the
+street. He released Cartoner's arm, through which he had slipped his
+left hand in an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with
+his right hand in an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned,
+as if listening for footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on
+his heels, facing the direction from which they had just come.
+
+Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the
+pavement.
+
+"Any coming from the other side?" asked Deulin.
+
+"No."
+
+"In the doorway," whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite
+steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady
+Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was
+pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow doorway
+that had the air of being little used. The long blade of his sword-
+stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's sheath-
+knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the
+moonlight.
+
+"Here," he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. "But
+you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!"
+
+With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight,
+and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could
+scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know
+there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in
+animal life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped
+across the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek
+with the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner
+like a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered
+together, and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his
+foot and planted a kick in the small of his adversary's back, sending
+him staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp
+cries of "Ah!" and "La!" breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the
+fencing-floor--performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a
+marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm,
+hand, head, and leg; forward, back-handed, from above and below. He
+never awaited their attack--but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who
+said that the surest way to defend is to attack?
+
+The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men.
+The sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness,
+from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the
+air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying
+note of steel.
+
+The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to
+the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow.
+Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in
+the doorway.
+
+"Even if they are armed," said Deulin, "they won't fire. They don't
+want the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would
+not suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now."
+
+While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
+
+"Both have knives," he said, "but they cannot get near me. Stay where
+you are."
+
+"All right," said Cartoner. "Haven't had a chance yet."
+
+And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice
+before in all the years that they had known each other.
+
+"That's the best," he said, half to himself, "of dealing with a man
+who keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner--here they come."
+
+And he went out to meet them.
+
+But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together,
+Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their
+returning to the attack--thus, with a cold-blooded courage--showed
+that they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He
+ran forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment
+he could not lay aside the little flourish--the quick, stiff pose--of
+the fencer.
+
+His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down
+lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it
+further, as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he
+pushed it in as if into a cheese.
+
+"Voila, mon ami," he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had
+made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
+
+The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife
+clattered on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with
+horror-struck eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like
+tendrils, were slowly curling up, and he had no control over them.
+
+"And now," said Deulin, in Polish, "for you."
+
+He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round
+towards Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man
+turned and ran, followed closely by his companion.
+
+Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones,
+and came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully
+dropped it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a
+muddy splash.
+
+"He will never use that hand again," he said. "Poor devil! I only hope
+he was well paid for it."
+
+"Doubt it."
+
+Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.
+
+"Have you an old envelope?" he inquired.
+
+Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope
+of the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his
+recall. And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with
+it. He tore it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he
+polished the bright steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil
+point to the hilt, where the government mark and the word "Toledo"
+were deeply engraved.
+
+"Unless I keep it clean it sticks," he explained. "And if you want it
+at all, you want it in a hurry--like a woman's heart, eh?"
+
+He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade
+back into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure
+that nothing was left there.
+
+"The light was good," he said, appreciatively, "and the ground
+favorable for--for the autumn manoeuvres."
+
+And he broke into a gay laugh.
+
+"Come," he said. "Let us go back into the more frequented streets.
+This back way was not a success--only proves that it never does to
+turn tail."
+
+"How did you know," asked Cartoner, "that this was coming off?"
+
+"Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at the
+Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were
+followed. So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni,
+vidi, vici--you understand?"
+
+And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while
+he made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.
+
+"I thought we might escape by the quieter streets," he went on. "For
+it is our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be.
+Neither could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each
+other's business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through
+many chances and changes, to be friends."
+
+They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke,
+saying that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.
+
+"It was like you, to come like that and take the risk," he said, "and
+say nothing."
+
+But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.
+
+"As to that," he said, "silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you
+will, five years hence--ten years hence--when the time comes. I will
+tell you then why I did it."
+
+"There can only be one reason why you did it," muttered the
+Englishman.
+
+"Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool--the very best sort
+of fool--and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to
+me as I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship."
+
+And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
+
+"I should like to fight some one to-night," he said. "Some one of the
+very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things
+to-night--and the angels in heaven are talking of me."
+
+In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky.
+But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he
+were sincere.
+
+As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt
+gleaming in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped
+immediately behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only
+occupant, alighting quickly, came towards them.
+
+"There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like
+that," he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
+
+He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
+
+"You!" he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. "You,
+Cartoner! What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?"
+
+"We have been dining with Mangles," explained Deulin.
+
+"And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,"
+added Cartoner. "But we think we are going home."
+
+"You seem to be on the spree," said Martin, with a laugh in his voice,
+and none in his eyes.
+
+"We are," answered Deulin.
+
+"Come," said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. "Come--your
+shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at
+a ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them."
+
+"Do it," whispered Deulin's voice from behind.
+
+And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the
+garden of the Bukaty Palace.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
+
+Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key,
+and passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had
+grown to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild
+winds that sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed
+their leaves.
+
+A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the
+house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as
+though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. "You find
+me in sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception--
+a semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an
+appearance. It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home
+till midnight. Mind those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of
+course."
+
+And he hurried on again to open the next door.
+
+"Thank you, for a few minutes," answered Deulin, and seeing a movement
+of dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.
+
+"It is better," he said, in an undertone. "It will put them completely
+off the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it."
+
+So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for
+the first time.
+
+"Come," said the young prince, "into the drawing-room. I see they have
+left the lights on there."
+
+He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to
+allow his guests to pass.
+
+"Holloa!" he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the
+room.
+
+At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the
+conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some
+flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.
+
+"Back again already?" asked Martin, in surprise.
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda. "There were some people there he did not want
+to meet, so we came away again at once."
+
+"But I thought they could not possibly be there."
+
+"They got there," answered Wanda, "by some ill chance, from
+Petersburg, just in time."
+
+And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.
+
+"It is not such an ill chance, after all," said Deulin, "since it
+gives us the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?"
+
+"He is in his study."
+
+"I rather want to see him," said Deulin, looking at Martin.
+
+"Come along, then," was the answer. "He will be glad to see you. It
+will cheer him up."
+
+And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly
+and simply--so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans
+of Heaven.
+
+Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the
+warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her
+brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to
+Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and
+she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.
+
+He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not
+look at him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at
+her with quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point,
+as was his habit.
+
+"I was wrong," he said, "when I said that fate could be hampered by
+action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again."
+
+He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the
+word "here" he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange
+look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs
+no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to
+those who have not.
+
+"A clear understanding," he said abruptly, recalling her own words.
+"That is your creed."
+
+She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door with
+deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done
+something wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the
+thought, who can!
+
+"I made another mistake," he said. "Have been acting on it for years.
+I thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an
+embassy--of a viceroyalty, perhaps--when I was quite young, and
+thought the world was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I
+saw you. If it comes, well and good. I should like it. Not for my own
+sake."
+
+She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear
+understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!
+
+"If it doesn't come"--he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that
+hung quiescent at his side--"well and good. I shall have lived. I
+shall have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the
+happiest man in the world."
+
+He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult
+profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never
+been known to say more than he meant.
+
+"There never has been anybody else," he continued. "All that side of
+life was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled
+it, at Lady Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world--
+you had come across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you
+there. At first I did not believe. I thought it was a mistake--that we
+should drift apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I
+knew then that you would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out
+of it--fought against it--tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all
+came to."
+
+She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken
+to him since he entered the room.
+
+"There never can be anybody else," he said. "How could there be?"
+
+And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her
+breath. She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as
+this one fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth--that
+he was thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul
+can carry. For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy
+of love is infinitely harder.
+
+"I knew from the first," he continued, "that there is no hope.
+Whichever way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of
+telling me that."
+
+She turned her eyes to his at last.
+
+"You knew?" she asked, speaking for the first time.
+
+"I know the history of Poland," he said, quietly. "The country must
+have your father--your father needs you. I could not ask you to give
+up Poland--you know that."
+
+They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time
+together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in
+absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes
+to life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship
+which raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to
+attain.
+
+"If you asked me," said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile--"I
+should do it."
+
+"And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would
+one day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you.
+There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it--and that
+would be the end."
+
+"Is it so delicate as that?" she asked.
+
+"It is the frailest thing in the world--and the strongest," he
+answered, with his thoughtful smile. "It is a very delicate sort of--
+thought, which is given to two people to take care of. And they never
+seem to succeed in keeping it even passably intact--and not one couple
+in a million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come
+from the outer world, but from themselves."
+
+"Where did you learn all that?" she asked, looking at him with her
+shrewd, smiling eyes.
+
+"You taught me."
+
+"But you have a terribly high ideal."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+She shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
+compromises."
+
+"With its conscience," said Cartoner. "And look at the result."
+
+"Then you are good," she returned, looking at him with a speculative
+gravity, "as well as concise--and rather masterful."
+
+"It is clear," he said, "that a man who persuades a woman to marry
+against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is
+seeking her unhappiness and his own."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "But you ask for a great deal."
+
+"I ask for love."
+
+"And," she said, going past that question, "no obstacles."
+
+"No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside."
+
+"And if one such object--quite a small one--should be found?"
+
+"Then they must be content with love alone."
+
+Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They
+seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so
+many hasten and such numbers fall.
+
+"You have a way," she said, "of putting into words--so few words--what
+others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they
+did--there would, perhaps, be no marriages."
+
+"There would be no unhappy ones," said Cartoner.
+
+"And it is better to be content with love alone?"
+
+"Content," was his sole answer.
+
+Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their
+moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten.
+Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour
+earlier, and his life had been in peril--he had been down to the
+depths and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act
+quickly.
+
+"So that is your creed," she said at length. "And there is no
+compromise?"
+
+"None," he answered.
+
+And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal
+with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling
+women have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such
+are the backbone of human nature.
+
+"Ah!" she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the
+length of the long, lamp-lit room. "You are strong--you are strong for
+two."
+
+He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine,
+steely strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime
+of which the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of
+seeking always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they
+had left untouched.
+
+"And if two people had between them," she suggested, wonderingly,
+"that with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and
+were sure they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other,
+but knew that they could never have more, could they be happy?"
+
+"They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world," he
+answered.
+
+"And if they had to go on all their lives--and if one lived in London
+and the other in Warsaw--Warsaw?"
+
+"They could still be happy."
+
+"If she--alone at one end of Europe--" asked Wanda, with her worldly-
+wise searching into detail--"if she saw slowly vanishing those small
+attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care, perhaps?"
+
+"She could still be happy."
+
+"And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some
+misfortune, and felt lonely and disappointed--and there was no one
+near to--to take care of him?"
+
+"He could still be happy--if--"
+
+"If--?"
+
+"If he knew that she loved him," replied Cartoner, slowly.
+
+Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there
+were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Oh! you may know that," she said, suddenly descending from the
+uncertain heights of generality. "You may be quite sure of that. If
+that is what you want."
+
+"That is what I want."
+
+As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She
+looked at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs at
+his temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely
+protecting and dimly maternal.
+
+"I want you to go away from Warsaw," she said. "I would rather you
+went even if you say--that you are afraid to stay."
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"Besides," she added, with her head held high, "they would not believe
+you if you did."
+
+"I promise you," he answered, "not to run any risks, to take every
+care. But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without
+seeing you."
+
+She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her
+teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in
+that direction.
+
+"I should like," she said, "to make you a promise in return. It would
+give me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to
+remember it."
+
+The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to
+be speaking unnecessarily loud.
+
+"I promise you," said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, "never to marry
+anybody else."
+
+And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and
+talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at
+the clock.
+
+"To your tents, O Israel!" he said.
+
+Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment
+Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he
+had laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his
+hand.
+
+"Wanda," he said, "remember me in your prayers to-night!"
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE WHITE FEATHER
+
+It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to
+seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to
+interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a
+thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the
+masses.
+
+Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view,
+it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the
+least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man is
+he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat
+without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated,
+who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has
+happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in
+that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident
+must ever evoke.
+
+Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French
+cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men
+and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was
+probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot
+in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most
+vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at
+Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and
+thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture have been the
+first to condemn. He was thinking of the affairs of others, and into
+his thoughts there came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals,
+but of nations. A fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that
+so long as the trains ran punctually and meals were served at regular
+intervals he could perceive no difference between one form of
+government and another. And in the majority of instances the fate of
+nations rarely affects the lives of individuals.
+
+Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of
+affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which
+were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other do
+Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-
+countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they
+happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small
+feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French
+Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris to
+Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The
+western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.
+
+Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop.
+He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which
+Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.
+
+"One likes," he said to the stout Jewess, "to talk one's own tongue in
+a foreign land."
+
+And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter.
+Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour
+slipped past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early
+in the day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought
+a flower at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and
+placed it in his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle,
+and walked the pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a
+younger generation.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his
+writing-table. "Ah! if you were only idle, as I am"--he paused, with a
+sharp, little sigh--"if you only could be idle, how much happier you
+would be!"
+
+"A Frenchman," replied Cartoner, without looking up, "thinks that
+noise means happiness."
+
+"Then you are happy--you pretend to happiness?" inquired Deulin,
+sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a
+cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
+
+"Yes, thank you," replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay
+this morning.
+
+"Don't thank me--thank the gods," replied Deulin, with a sudden
+gravity.
+
+"Well," said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, "what do
+you want?"
+
+Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
+
+"What do I want?" he inquired, innocently.
+
+"Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When
+you are most idle you are most occupied."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of
+it with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
+
+"There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking
+towards the Column--the shady side, after the street has been watered
+--that my soul desires," said the Frenchman, at length.
+
+"When are you going?" asked Cartoner, softly.
+
+"I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought
+I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on
+indefinitely for----"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the upheaval," explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his
+cigarette.
+
+"This morning--" he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay
+aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful
+attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved
+and had his being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
+
+"This morning I picked up a scrap of information." He drew towards him
+a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin.
+The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross,
+Deulin threw the paper across the table.
+
+"You know that man?"
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Cartoner.
+
+"No; no one knows that," replied Deulin. "It is one of the very few
+mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up."
+
+Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking,
+perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was
+still content to be known only by a mark.
+
+"Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors
+which, happily, have never reached the newspaper," said Deulin, after
+a pause. "One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an
+upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo
+for many years here. Suppose--suppose, my friend, that they
+manufacture their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of
+malcontents as to the creating of an opportunity."
+
+"Anarchy?" inquired Cartoner.
+
+"The ladies of the party call it Nihilism," replied the Frenchman,
+with an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man
+to gainsay a lady.
+
+"Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people.
+They waited thirty years."
+
+"And struck too hastily, after all," commented Deulin. "Bukaty would
+not link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little.
+But there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford
+to wait longer, and are therefore less patient--men of a more modern
+stamp, without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless
+sincere enough in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way--"
+
+"The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according
+to his lights," interrupted Cartoner.
+
+"Ah! since you say so," returned Deulin, with a significant gesture,
+"yes."
+
+"Bon sang," said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying.
+"He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists."
+
+But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own
+train of thought.
+
+"So you know of Kosmaroff?" he said, studying his companion's face.
+"You know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy.
+Where is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that."
+
+"In Warsaw," guessed Cartoner.
+
+"Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin--towards London, by the same
+token."
+
+Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn
+on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
+
+"That parishioner is in London, too," he said, in his own tongue--and
+the word means more in French.
+
+Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the
+drawing to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.
+
+"Trying to get me out of Warsaw," he said. "Giving me a graceful
+chance of showing the white feather."
+
+Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at
+guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force
+of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting
+the time of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a
+train at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the
+heels of Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from
+Warsaw.
+
+"The white feather," he said, "is an emblem that neither you nor I
+need trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is
+a national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be
+singularly independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the
+woman at the tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are
+afraid?"
+
+And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of
+envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
+
+"Look here," he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on
+the table, "here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling--here, in Warsaw.
+Here--in Berlin or in London--is the man with the match that will set
+it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the
+shadow that it casts before it, for the second--no, for the third time
+in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done
+so when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must
+know the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice,
+since your humor is so odd. You stay or you go--but remember that it
+is in the interests of others that you go."
+
+"Of others?"
+
+"Yes--of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go
+or stay, as you like."
+
+Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not
+deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now
+weighing that decision.
+
+"I will go," he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair
+with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had
+observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important
+business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is
+to be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It
+seemed that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must
+have thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then
+had no use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever
+be.
+
+"I dare say you are right," he said. "And, at all events, you will see
+the last of this sad city."
+
+Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
+matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
+superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and
+here and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men
+foresaw at this period in European history.
+
+"I smell," he said, "something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in
+the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a
+secret which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no
+secrets."
+
+He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
+
+"Because," he added, with a sudden gravity, "there is nothing in life
+worth making a secret of--except one's income. There are many reasons
+why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should
+happen--anything--anywhere--we keep each other advised. Is it not so?"
+
+"Usual cipher," answered Cartoner.
+
+"My salutations to Lady Orlay," said Deulin, with a reflective nod.
+"That woman who can keep a secret."
+
+"I thought you had none."
+
+"She knows the secret--of my income," answered the Frenchman. "Tell
+her--no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
+leave?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well,
+do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have
+we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and
+hired rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of
+Ishmael, and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away."
+
+He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing
+but the hired furniture.
+
+"The police will be in here five minutes after you are out," he said,
+curtly. "You have no message--" He paused to pick up from the floor a
+petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
+looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No
+message to any one in Warsaw?"
+
+"No," answered Cartoner.
+
+"No--you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are
+hard, Cartoner--hard as nails."
+
+Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his
+possessions--already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural
+that he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and
+few men worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their
+nationality may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is
+supposed in English public schools.
+
+Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
+
+"Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye."
+
+And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
+
+"The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
+others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
+together."
+
+And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
+gone.
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+COEUR VOLANT
+
+In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central
+European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
+rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
+clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
+done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
+trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
+world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of
+rain. It had come at last.
+
+In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
+ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own
+devices. He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so
+absorbing that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of
+Wanda's dress as she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down
+to the present with a sort of shock.
+
+"You were dreaming," she said.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "Dreams and white hairs-- No,
+I was listening to the rain."
+
+He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
+daring her to doubt him.
+
+"I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone."
+
+He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
+the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
+the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
+slow persistency.
+
+"Can you not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
+that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
+a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
+should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive
+in a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw."
+
+Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
+doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the
+streaming glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it.
+Wanda watched him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived
+among men; and she knew that it is not only women who have
+unaccountable humors, a sudden anger, or a quick and passing access of
+tenderness. There was a shadow of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come
+to tell her something. She knew that. She remembered that when this
+diplomatist looked most idle he was in reality about his business.
+
+"There," he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking
+at her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent.
+"That is more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me?
+Do you not see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?"
+
+"I do not know if it will amuse you," answered Wanda, in her energetic
+way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, "but Mr.
+Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening."
+
+Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he
+seemed to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps,
+thinking the same.
+
+"Separately they are amusing enough," he said, slowly, "but they do
+not mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles."
+
+"So has my father," put in Wanda, rather significantly.
+
+"Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young
+country events move by jerks--that the man who is nobody to-day may be
+somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you are above that sort of thing."
+
+"I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of
+Poland," she answered, gravely. "They give everything. I have not much
+to give, you see."
+
+"I suppose you have what every woman has--to sacrifice upon some altar
+or another--your happiness!"
+
+Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at
+him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of
+that, at least, she was sure.
+
+"Happiness, or a hope of happiness," he went on, reflectively.
+"Perhaps one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same
+thing. If you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is
+not always remembered by women, and very seldom by men."
+
+"Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events."
+
+"What is common enough?" he asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+"Hope."
+
+"Hope! connais pas!" he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. "You must ask
+some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is
+why I am so gay."
+
+And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
+
+"The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all," he went on, as if
+seeking to explain his own humor. "Rain and cold and half a dozen
+drawbacks to existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life
+to turn to and a fire to sit by. That is why I am here."
+
+And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that
+he had something to tell her--that he had come for no other purpose.
+And, that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her
+that it was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and
+care showed her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new
+side to his character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who
+have passed middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the
+sensitiveness of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that
+Wanda's heart was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though
+she showed the world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always
+shown through as long and grim a family history as the world has
+known.
+
+"Do you not feel lonely in this great room?" he asked, looking round
+at the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the
+portraits that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
+
+"No, I think not," answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
+room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
+down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for
+the first time.
+
+Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
+usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
+feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
+contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
+approach to it.
+
+"The worst of Warsaw," he said, "is its dulness. The theatres are
+deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
+none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One
+must amuse one's self."
+
+He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
+himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
+
+"It was sordid," he continued. "One wondered how the performers could
+be content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and
+such an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however,
+who interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like
+cracking nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath
+away. It was so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the
+courage that he must have had. And there was a large, modest man who
+interested me. It was really he who did all the work. It was he who
+caught the others when they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was
+very steady and he was usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels
+on a swinging trapeze. He had the lives of the others in his hands at
+every moment. But it was the others who received the applause--the
+nut-cracker girl who pirouetted, and the vain man who tapped his chest
+and smiled condescendingly. But the big man stood in the background,
+scarcely bowing at all, and quite forgetting to smile. One could see
+from the expression of his patient face that he knew it did not matter
+what he did for no one was looking at him--which was only the truth.
+Then, when the applause was over, he turned and walked away, heavy-
+shouldered and rather tired--his day's work done. And, I don't know
+why, I thought--of Cartoner."
+
+She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never
+would have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
+
+"Yes," said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
+thoughts, "the world would get on very well without its talkers. No
+great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in
+history?"
+
+Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had
+to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and
+Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his
+monologue.
+
+"I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
+alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw."
+
+Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had
+any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in
+Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to
+know the meaning of that.
+
+"Gone!" she said. "I am very glad."
+
+"Yes," answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. "It is a
+good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at
+half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner
+which you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than
+absolution, is Cartoner's repose of manner--for me, bien entendu. But,
+then, I am not a devout man."
+
+"Then you have done what I asked you to do," said Wanda, "some time
+ago, and I am very grateful."
+
+"Some time ago? It was only yesterday."
+
+"Was it? It seems more than that," said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his
+head slowly.
+
+"I was able to give him some information which made him change his
+plans quite suddenly," he explained. "So he packed up and went. He had
+not much to pack. We travel light--he and I. We have no despatch-boxes
+or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember and
+forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets
+anything."
+
+"And you?" asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
+
+"I? Oh! I do my best," he said, lightly. "But if you desire to forget
+anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
+life."
+
+He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering
+and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that
+he was short-sighted.
+
+"I do not think I will wait for the Mangles," he said. "Especially
+Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way--" He paused,
+and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. "You never talk politics, I
+know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of
+politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted
+Warsaw--you understand?"
+
+"I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of
+discretion," said Wanda.
+
+"Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found
+us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her
+Netty--well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming
+passion."
+
+"And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. "Have I concealed
+my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
+concealment."
+
+"Perhaps you have overdone the contempt," suggested Wanda. "She is
+probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
+test."
+
+"You see," said Deulin, in an explanatory way, "Cartoner may have had
+reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are
+the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the
+people in the passport-office--and the others, whose business it is to
+watch us all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you
+brought it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and
+Martin. So I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to
+do so by Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one
+in Warsaw. Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go
+at once; so he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of
+purpose, he ignored the little social trammels which the majority of
+mankind know much better than they know their Bible, and follow much
+more closely. He was too discreet to call and say good-bye--knowing
+the ways of servants in this country. He will be much too discreet to
+send a conge card by post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-
+office."
+
+He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
+pleasant laugh.
+
+"You are wondering," he said, "why I am taking this unusual course. It
+is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his
+back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin
+with, Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be
+misunderstood. Also, I may do the same at any moment myself. We are
+here to-day and gone to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and
+sometimes we forget them."
+
+"At all events," said Wanda, shaking hands, "you are cautious. You
+make no promises."
+
+"And therefore we break none," he answered, as he crossed the
+threshold.
+
+He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by
+Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous and
+rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles,
+standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first
+greeting was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an
+individual as if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.
+
+"Princess," he said, "my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to
+take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon
+to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked
+two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to
+show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--
+that she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache."
+
+And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
+attempt to oppose the progress of women.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
+
+It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of
+the sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which
+hangs about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands
+of foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and
+nothing more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the
+delusion that they have seen life and London when they have passed the
+portals of one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
+
+There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
+tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does
+not even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate
+Pump, on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and
+on the south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would
+wish to knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who
+opened it in his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his
+life between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the
+Caucasus. Galician, Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a
+linguistic basis, while variations of the same added to Russian and
+German for those who have served in one army or another, would
+probably be useful.
+
+There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of
+them, it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by
+a queer coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful
+process. They run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of
+those /articles de luxe/ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco
+and gum. There is also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India
+Dock Road, where the shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers
+congregate, there is quite a large fur store, of which the window,
+clad in faded red, is adorned by a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a
+fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed sea-gull with a singularly knowing
+squint.
+
+There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
+of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a
+country where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your
+business, had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and
+a defective brush, which had last been used for red.
+
+On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the
+warehouse and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes
+quite a respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn
+hither on coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this
+door to emerge from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to
+enterprising merchants in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other
+northern cities from which tourists are in the habit of carrying home
+mementoes in the shape of the fur and feather of the country. There is
+also a small importation of American fur to be dressed and treated and
+re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers from whom the American
+globe-trotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy work-people--men,
+women, and ancient children--also use this door, entering by it in the
+morning, and only coming into the air again after dark. They have
+yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship with fur has made
+them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women's heads are
+burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
+
+The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
+dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
+is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
+character three words, which, being translated, read: "The Brothers of
+Liberty." As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads
+the Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some
+disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to
+think that any one so nearly related to liberty should choose to live
+in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased
+were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with
+such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind
+the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the
+furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
+
+"That's their lingo," said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
+emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
+numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
+furrier's shop.
+
+He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
+imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
+from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
+of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily
+intercourse with man, and received in turn winged words of such a
+forcible and original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward
+behind his cart.
+
+"That's their lingo, right enough," said the captain, examining the
+tin tablet a second time. "That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman."
+
+He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
+nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
+critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-
+crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of
+disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he had
+put on what he called his "suit"; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-
+cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all times. It
+was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly live
+behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the state-
+room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape, such
+as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
+
+The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
+Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the
+outward signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood
+squarely on the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in
+a dirty apron, who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
+
+"Name of Cable," said the captain, turning to expectorate on the
+pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to
+find themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned
+forwards with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
+
+"Name of Cable," repeated the captain. "Dirty!" he added, just by way
+of inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note
+without which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
+
+This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man
+stood aside.
+
+"Heave ahead!" he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English
+he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked
+his bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note.
+And he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was
+a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where
+discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a
+sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were
+turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was
+familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the
+Vistula as Kosmaroff.
+
+The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It
+will be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which
+their appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a
+proud man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found
+no other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small,
+dark man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something
+magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward
+things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again
+at its possessor as if measuring himself against him.
+
+"Take a chair, captain," said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
+standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
+which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He
+was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his
+business, and he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap
+clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long
+descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the
+fine, clean, hard bone of a fighting race.
+
+The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with
+which to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his "suit."
+
+"Do you speak German, captain?" inquired Kosmaroff.
+
+And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
+
+"Sailed with a crew of Germans," he answered; "I understand a bit, and
+I know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy
+words like that."
+
+"Then," said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, "we had better
+continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
+dealing."
+
+He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
+stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
+
+"We have not much to say to Captain Cable," replied the man who seemed
+to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor
+voice, and was what the French call /chetif/ in appearance--a weak
+man, fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent
+digestion.
+
+"It is essential in the first place," he continued, "that we should
+understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered."
+
+With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the
+smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he
+looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
+
+"We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself
+quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last
+comer entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive
+that he understands very little of what we are saying."
+
+Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
+figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for
+one who could not express himself in plain English and be done with
+it.
+
+"Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,"
+continued the speaker. "Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and
+verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable
+to be affected by circumstances--and should be repeated several times
+in the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that,
+after a period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again."
+
+There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
+
+"Yes," said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
+
+"And is only awaiting her opportunity."
+
+"Yes."
+
+One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body,
+which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a
+penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker
+took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his
+finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been
+justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps
+he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the
+two nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and
+history is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And
+this quiet man had made a little in his day.
+
+"An opportunity is not an easy thing to define," he said at length.
+"Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge,
+Poland's opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the
+most. One would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot
+bring about just yet."
+
+He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to
+the worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.
+
+"We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on
+the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It
+is useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print
+--and ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too
+little journalism--in England they have too much."
+
+Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
+
+"Another opportunity would be a social upheaval," said the Russian,
+drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come
+for that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and
+that we can offer to you."
+
+Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
+
+"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "I have heard that talk for the last ten
+years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?"
+
+The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache,
+and waited till he had finished speaking.
+
+"Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more
+than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
+succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
+world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We
+want five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times
+that amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall
+have her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now."
+
+He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
+suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was
+about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience,
+paused, he knew not why.
+
+"Think," said the other, in his smooth, even voice--"one month from
+now, after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a
+very different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves
+to nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the
+Polish party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods
+are our own affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have
+our reasons, and we seek the approval of no man."
+
+There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch
+for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the
+judgment of any.
+
+"Five thousand roubles," he concluded. "And in exchange I give you the
+date--so that Poland may be ready."
+
+"Thank you," said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as
+suddenly as he had lost it. "I decline--for myself and for the whole
+of Poland. We play a cleaner game than that."
+
+He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
+
+"If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights--if
+I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you
+do not give--I should take you by the throat and throw you out into
+the street for daring to make such a proposal to me," he said, in a
+low voice.
+
+"To a deserter from a Cossack regiment," suggested the other.
+
+"To me," repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and
+standing at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of
+History were again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
+
+"Captain Cable," said Kosmaroff, "you and I have met before, and I
+learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for
+you, and these men no company for you. I am going--will you come?"
+
+"I'm agreeable," said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
+
+When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
+into his face with bright and searching eyes.
+
+"Who's that man?" he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
+
+"I do not know his name," replied Kosmaroff.
+
+They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
+behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully
+at the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one
+finger and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
+
+"That is who he is," he said.
+
+Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
+
+"I've heard of him," he said. "And I heard his voice--sort of soft-
+spoken--on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
+refused the job and came out with you."
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
+
+More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
+activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife.
+Cartoner awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware
+of something stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or
+where to look for the unexpected.
+
+It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain
+Cable chartered the /Minnie/ in the coasting trade, and after
+Christmas he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river
+towards Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the
+captain opened with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which
+came to such a sudden and untoward end.
+
+Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
+cold and wet weather. "If the winter would only set in," he said, "and
+dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks
+almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would
+perhaps be more endurable."
+
+Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and
+Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the
+Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never
+reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they
+were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and
+less comes out.
+
+There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
+likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
+relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
+
+"History is assuredly at a stand-still," said an old traveller one
+evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. "The world must
+be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your
+head off."
+
+"I am waiting," replied Cartoner.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I do not know," he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
+
+Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader,
+and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different
+countries in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by
+newspapers, in a deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which
+he was waiting. It came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-
+going clothes. The little sailor was ushered in by the well-trained
+servant of this bachelor household without surprise or comment.
+
+Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment,
+which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in
+the social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter
+until at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette
+dictates, while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute
+rudeness.
+
+"We've always dealt square by each other, you and I," said the
+captain, when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a
+reminiscent humor, and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
+wall and shot me, sure as fate," he said, bringing his hand down on
+his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. "That was ten years ago last
+November, when the /Minnie/ had been out of the builder's yard a
+matter of six months."
+
+"Yes," said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his
+mind. It seemed that the building of the /Minnie/ was not the epoch
+upon which he reckoned his periods.
+
+"She's in Morrison's dry-dock now," said the captain, who in a certain
+way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number
+of by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. "You should go down
+and see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round
+her in the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely."
+
+Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry
+out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the /Minnie's/ new
+boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the
+plan was never carried out after all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have
+never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I
+believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick,
+Moonseer Deulin--that time, over yonder."
+
+And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one
+who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always
+know which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not
+know their left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or
+shout--that all men are created equal.
+
+"I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me
+that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men.
+Done, hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can
+do you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man
+a bad turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me,
+that has always kept my hands----"
+
+He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
+
+"You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years
+and more."
+
+"Yes, I'll say that for you," answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
+
+"They did me!" cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
+down on the table, "with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
+post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said
+he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government
+stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government
+official. It was----"
+
+Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even
+looked up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck
+skylights.
+
+"Bombs!" he concluded--"bombs!"
+
+Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not
+be set down here.
+
+"You know me and you know the /Minnie/, Mr. Cartoner!" continued the
+angry sailor. "She was specialty built with large hatches for
+machinery, and--well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and
+there's not a man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way
+of carrying war material. It was only natural, being built for it. But
+you'll bear me out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've
+only carried clean stuff up to now--plain, honest, fighting stuff for
+one side or the other. Always honest--revolutions and the like, and an
+open fight. But bombs----"
+
+And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no
+place on a polite page.
+
+"There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them," he
+concluded. "That is what I have got to tell you."
+
+"How do you know?" asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
+
+The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
+other.
+
+"Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?"
+
+Cartoner nodded.
+
+"Know the Seemannshaus there?"
+
+"Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
+docks."
+
+"That's the place," said Captain Cable. "Well, one night I was up
+there, on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and
+spit all day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I
+was picking up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after
+dark, as times go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I
+had my reasons. You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it
+the right way. A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had
+sailed with me on a voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that
+was too big for us, and we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed
+after nightfall, I recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas
+slopping in before the morning. He remembered it, he said. And he
+asked me if it was true that I was goin'--well, to the port I was
+bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told me a long yarn
+of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf.
+Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of
+lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought
+to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding agent, he
+called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke German, and
+the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't rightly see the
+other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft voice, like a
+woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have known it.
+Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a match?"
+
+For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
+always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for
+what he wanted.
+
+"Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size
+of an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room
+alongside of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I
+feel I want it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the
+soft-spoken man said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and
+never be missed. We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have
+it, one of the cases broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself,
+and had to open it. Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one!
+It was packed in wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for
+shells. Besides, no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in
+war time. At the moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy
+weather, and I had a new crew. There were other things to think about.
+And, I tell you, when I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came
+aboard and took the stuff away."
+
+Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this
+story, after all. There might be everything in it when the captain
+told what had brought these past events back to his recollection.
+
+"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable,
+"because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
+square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
+though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
+of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your
+pipe and smoke it."
+
+And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
+conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
+
+"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little
+job for the /Minnie/. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will
+not forget to come down and see her?"
+
+"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."
+
+"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
+offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
+politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I
+hadn't been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the
+lingo that got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?'
+thinks I. And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at
+Hamburg, one dark night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says
+to myself, sitting quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room.
+I wouldn't have taken the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which
+I have never forgotten, and yet never thought to hear again. But while
+the parley voo was still going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew
+there--name beginning with a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate,
+up he jumps, and says that that room was no place for me nor yet for
+him. Dare say you know the man, if I could remember his name. Sort of
+thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion
+--as if he was a king or a Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks
+out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. But blessed if I knew what
+it was all about. 'Who's that man!' I asks when we were in the street.
+And the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs
+out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he
+says."
+
+Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
+soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically,
+and after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his
+hopes for eternity were exceedingly small.
+
+"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in
+politics and the like."
+
+"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.
+
+"That's it--a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
+the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years.
+He carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness
+of a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
+outward signs of man and nature.
+
+"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps,
+that you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two
+together already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by
+it. It makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the
+/Minnie's/ hatches."
+
+"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on
+another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."
+
+He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
+the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
+
+"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.
+
+"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
+shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.
+
+Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
+having dashed up from the club stand.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the
+/Minnie/ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"Going foreign?" asked the captain.
+
+"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a
+sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man
+of action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is
+to sit still.
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+IN THE SPRING
+
+The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
+lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are
+neither so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a
+hard one, and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last
+that any lady would select to pass the cold months in.
+
+"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here
+till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go
+to Nice if you like."
+
+And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason or
+another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
+conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.
+
+"The place is dull for you," said Mangles, "now that Cartoner seems to
+have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would
+enliven any circle."
+
+And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek
+did not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate
+smile.
+
+"You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
+Atlantic," she said. "I always found you with your heads close
+together whenever I came on deck."
+
+"Don't think we sparkled much," said Joseph, with his under lip well
+forward.
+
+"It is very kind of Uncle Joseph," said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
+Mangles, "to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would
+be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him,
+could we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and
+should not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here."
+
+Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant
+of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During
+a particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again
+suggested that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty
+came forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought
+for others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every
+action.
+
+Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply
+impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a
+little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went
+for a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs
+which Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her
+delicate coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the
+Saski Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of
+snow; and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty
+there. Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally
+turned her steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was
+blocked by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still
+laboring, though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.
+
+Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he
+came--had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it,
+leaving only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he
+had raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the
+feminine heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand
+Kosmaroff, any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was
+natural that she should, in consequence, give much thought to them
+both. There was, she felt, something in both alike which she had not
+got at, and she naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow,
+and her kind heart drew her attention to any hidden thought that might
+be a sorrow. She might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a
+woman, she, no doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what
+the result would be.
+
+Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
+understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So
+many people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own.
+Indeed, no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of
+course, say these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind
+stupid, her uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was
+entirely absorbed in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to
+herself--and, no doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other
+people do.
+
+Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love,
+he was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be
+all right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she
+could not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her
+walk in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was
+to be supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had
+found out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not
+help it.
+
+Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now
+at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and
+talked much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a
+different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of
+useless information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the
+ladies, and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his
+sleigh. To Netty he showed a hundred attentions.
+
+"I cannot understand," she said, "why everybody is so kind to me."
+
+"It is because you are so kind to everybody," he answered, with that
+air of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve
+for Netty.
+
+"I do not understand Mr. Deulin," said Netty to her uncle one day.
+"Why does he stay here? What is he doing here?"
+
+And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
+deepest tones:
+
+"You had better ask him!"
+
+"But he would not tell me."
+
+"No."
+
+"And Mr. Cartoner," continued Netty, "I understood he was coming back,
+but he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult
+to get information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of
+course, who comes and who goes."
+
+"Course not," said Mangles.
+
+After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
+
+"Uncle," she said, "I was wondering if there was anything wrong in
+Warsaw."
+
+"What made you wonder that?"
+
+"I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong.
+Mr. Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so
+odd and quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see
+them exchange glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I
+distrust the quietness of the people, and--uncle--Mr. Deulin's gayety
+--I distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away
+and leave you here alone."
+
+Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
+
+"Because it is a dull hole," he said, "that is why I want you to go
+away. It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a
+conquered country before. All conquered countries are like that."
+
+Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he
+never again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But
+Netty's curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would
+answer no question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did
+Cartoner stay away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the
+Bukaty Palace. She made an excuse in some illustrated English and
+American magazines which might interest the Princess Wanda. But there
+was no one at home. She understood from the servant, who spoke a
+little German, that they had gone to their country house, a few miles
+from Warsaw.
+
+The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The
+weather had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At
+last the grip of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in
+the gardens who held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the
+softer air with a sort of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the
+winter had really broken, or if this should only be a false hope. It
+was one of the first days in March--a month wherein all nature slowly
+stirs after her long sleep, and men pull themselves together to new
+endeavor. The majority of great events in the world's history have
+taken place in the spring months. Is not the Ides of March written
+large in the story of this planet?
+
+Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came
+to her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English
+make, which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare,
+like the face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he
+was gay and light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of
+his admiration for Netty.
+
+"It is three days," he said, "since I have seen you. And it seems like
+three years."
+
+Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet.
+Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three
+days had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason
+altogether.
+
+"My uncle has been pressing us to go away," said Netty, "to the south
+of France, to Nice, but----"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Well," answered Netty, after a pause, "you see for yourself--we have
+not gone."
+
+"It is a very selfish hope--but I hope you will stay," said Prince
+Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible
+departure caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and
+(which is not usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards
+evil. She looked, besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and
+dependent at that moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was
+aroused. It was only natural that he should think that she had all the
+qualities he knew Wanda to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely
+higher degree. Which is the difference between one's own sister and
+another person's. She was good, and frank, and open. The idea of
+concealment between himself and her was to be treated with scorn.
+
+"I will tell you," he said, "if at any time there is any reason why
+you cannot stay."
+
+"But why should there be any reason--" she began, and a quick movement
+that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be
+within hearing, made her stop.
+
+"Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know,"
+she said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored
+her horribly.
+
+He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for
+persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better
+left to men.
+
+"I almost missed," he said gayly, "an excellent opportunity of holding
+my tongue."
+
+"Only----" began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest against
+being told anything.
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"Only--be careful," she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course, that
+brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful,
+if it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her
+sake. And at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the
+day. But he did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those
+who persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For
+they will vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to
+be cowards. And when the danger is there, and the woman is not--their
+vow is writ in water.
+
+Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had
+tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her
+ears to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his
+voice. The gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her
+cheeks look delicate and soft as a peach.
+
+"I will not hear you," she said. "I will not. I will not."
+
+Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
+
+"No," he said; "you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to
+hear me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may
+be an outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things
+may go well, and then I should be in a very different position."
+
+Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or,
+perhaps, she was only putting together recollections which had all
+been thought out before. She could be a princess. She remembered that.
+She had only been in Europe six months, and here was a prince at her
+feet. But there were terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and
+poverty, that greatest of all drawbacks, was the other.
+
+"I can tell you nothing now," he said. "But soon, before the summer,
+there may be great changes in Poland."
+
+Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty,
+wealth or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading.
+He did not even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly
+did not care.
+
+"What did you mean," he asked, "when you said 'Be careful'? What did
+you mean--tell me?"
+
+His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an
+honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was
+reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken
+her hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her
+back. She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear
+nervous often rise to the occasion.
+
+"I do not know what I meant," she said; "I do not know. You must not
+ask me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be
+generous, and do not ask me."
+
+By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a
+Bukaty to be generous.
+
+"Some day," he said, "I will ask you."
+
+And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A SACRIFICE
+
+Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better
+things, like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the
+air seemed warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went
+below zero.
+
+Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
+
+So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is
+better than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but
+when the thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-
+lying field a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the
+villages who can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring,
+so closely associated in most minds with the song of birds and the
+budding of green things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting
+for the water to drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's
+thickest top-boots in these countries, where men and women are booted
+to the knee, and every third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon
+its door-post.
+
+The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left them,
+was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the
+smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge;
+for it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient,
+for it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior
+and parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula,
+where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim
+solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the
+French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland, more
+frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her
+inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a
+king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that
+great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron?
+If ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials,
+he was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
+
+Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a
+plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt
+had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had
+been built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been
+placed on the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed
+again into a meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their
+rough sides, while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had
+left the plaster ornamentation mossy and broken.
+
+Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year.
+They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they
+were needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and
+weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only
+remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was
+his duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his
+power the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity
+of the recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a
+heavy taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew,
+and the village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any
+money. And so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be
+no reason why they ever should.
+
+By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the
+prince seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into
+the world to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his
+serfs. And, though he spoke to them as if they were of a different
+creation and not his equals--as the French Revolution set about to
+prove, but only succeeded in proving the contrary--he cared for their
+bodies as he would have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that
+they were hungry, and he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were
+among them sick who could not pay for a doctor, and could not have
+gone to the expense of obeying his orders had they called one in. She
+only saw that there were mothers who had to work in the fields, while
+their children died of infantine and comparatively simple complaints
+at home, because their rightful nurse could not spare the time to
+nurse them. It was no wonder that the roof of the farm-house leaked,
+and that the cows were invited to feed upon the front lawn.
+
+Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his
+knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house
+to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical
+advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor
+crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his
+great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these
+Poles, through it all. "Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants," said
+Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a
+hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it
+is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often
+strengthens it.
+
+Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than
+enough work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like
+her father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being--like him, she
+was intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit.
+They liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that
+hung round their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched
+the weather, and longed to be about larger business, which alone could
+satisfy the restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the
+forefathers who had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to
+kings.
+
+Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow
+lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines.
+In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night
+alike the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch
+breaking beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of
+snow and forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
+
+"This frost cannot last," said the prince. "The spring must come soon,
+and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business."
+
+But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief
+frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was
+essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went
+the spirit of unrest.
+
+He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw
+on foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
+
+"And you have had nothing to eat," said Wanda, glancing at his spare,
+weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and
+activity; a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and
+every hardship. He had simply opened the front door and walked in,
+throwing his rough sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow
+was on his boots nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache
+and glistened on his eyebrows. He held his coarse blue handkerchief in
+his hand, and wiped his face from time to time as the ice melted.
+
+"No," he answered, "I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not
+know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of
+the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am
+here."
+
+"You will not go hungry from this house," said the prince, with his
+rather fierce laugh.
+
+"I will get you what you want," said Wanda, lighting a candle. "There
+are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are
+only the farmer and his wife--and my maid, who is English, and
+silent."
+
+So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda
+waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in
+the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet
+had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in
+all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired
+at any academy.
+
+"When you have finished," said Wanda, "you can talk of your affairs. I
+shall leave you to yourselves."
+
+"Oh, there is not much to say," answered Kosmaroff. "I have done no
+good on my journey. Things make no progress."
+
+"You expect too much," said the prince. He had helped himself to a
+glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. "You
+expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and
+heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two
+sticks. You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of
+negotiations going forward for five years, and then falling through,
+after all."
+
+Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of
+bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at
+table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals
+had never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many
+do, to pass the time.
+
+"One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now," he said. "In fact,
+it is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it
+concerns her also. But, please, do not stand," he added, turning to
+her. "I have all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were
+a king--or a beggar."
+
+His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
+
+"It is," he said, after a pause, "about that Englishman, Cartoner."
+
+Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on
+Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.
+
+"Yes," she said, in a steady voice.
+
+"He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself.
+One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity,
+perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the
+lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the
+life of one. This does not come into my sphere, and I have no
+immediate concern in it----" He stopped, and looked at the prince.
+
+"But I have also no power," he added, "over those whose affair it is--
+you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the
+attitude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our
+foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to
+us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who
+are our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the
+foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that
+Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow."
+
+The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
+
+"In Cracow," he said, "they are all words."
+
+"There are certain men, it appears," continued Kosmaroff, "in the
+service of the governments--in one service it is called 'foreign
+affairs,' in another the 'secret service'--whose mission it is to find
+themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They
+are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would
+conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw.
+Therefore, the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said--I ask
+your pardon for repeating it--that they know, and that Cartoner knows
+what he knows--through the Bukatys."
+
+The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak.
+Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was
+looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not
+taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and
+had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment,
+a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man
+than any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words
+Kosmaroff spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.
+
+"I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is
+a brave man. It happens that I know that," he said. "He knows as well
+as I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I
+left London I heard--for we have friends everywhere--that he had got
+his passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming
+back, so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to
+confirm these suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I
+have no control over certain members of the party. If it was thought
+that you or Martin had betrayed anything--"
+
+"I or Martin would be assassinated," said the prince with his loud
+laugh. "I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the
+methods of the sixties--suspicion and assassination. It has always
+been the ruin of Poland--that method."
+
+"But you have no feelings with regard to this man?" asked Kosmaroff,
+sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong glance,
+as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him
+untouched.
+
+"None whatever," answered the prince. "He is a mere passing
+acquaintance. He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him--you can
+tell your friends--it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some
+that have been made for Poland."
+
+Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
+
+"You know what they are," broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. "They see
+a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with
+Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known
+to have called on you at your hotel in London."
+
+"It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend," said the
+prince, "and I tell you, he shall be dropped."
+
+"It is more than that," answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
+
+"You mean," said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, "that Martin
+and I are put upon our good behavior--that our lives are safe only so
+long as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of
+having any communication with him."
+
+And Kosmaroff was silent.
+
+He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was
+clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one
+hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and
+had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came
+first.
+
+"I tell you this," he said, after a silence, "because no one else
+dared to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all
+that you have done--all that you are ready to do."
+
+"Yes--yes. Everything must be done for Poland," said the prince,
+suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's
+life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck
+ten.
+
+"And the princess says the same?" said Kosmaroff, rising also, and
+raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish
+fashion.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I say the same."
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+IN THE PINE-WOODS
+
+The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man,
+and covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor
+rain prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village
+which had once owned his ancestor as lord and master--in those days
+when a noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer
+may claim for an injured sheep to-day.
+
+The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a
+noble, he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen,
+perhaps, enough in the great revolution of his younger days to teach
+him that women--and even Polish women--should take no part in
+politics. He believed in a wise and studied ignorance of those things
+which it is better not to know. He made no reference to Kosmaroff at
+breakfast the next morning, and Wanda asked no questions. She had not
+slept until nearly morning, and had heard her father bolt the doors
+after the departure of the ex-Cossack. She had heard Kosmaroff's light
+and quick step on the frozen snow as he started on his seven-mile walk
+to Warsaw.
+
+Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal,
+which the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning
+was bright and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep
+the snow from melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the
+previous evening, and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted
+enough. She was young and strong. In her veins there flowed the blood
+of a race that had always been "game," that had always faced the world
+with unflinching eyes, and had never craved its pity. Her father had
+lost everything, had lived a life of hardship, almost to privation for
+one of his rank; and witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his
+friends; and yet he could laugh with the merry, while with the mourner
+it was his habit to purse up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache
+and mutter a few curt words, not of condolence, but of stimulation to
+endure.
+
+He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt,
+to carry on to the end of his days that high-handed and dignified
+fight against ill-fortune which he had always waged.
+
+"If you have a grievance," he always said to those who brought their
+tales of woe to his ears, "air it as much as you like, but speak up,
+and do not whine."
+
+He had to listen to a great number of such tales, and to the majority
+of grievances could suggest no cure; for they were the grievances of
+Poland, and in these later times of Finland also, to which it appears
+there is no cure.
+
+"I shall make a long round to-day," he said to Wanda, when he was in
+the saddle, with his short, old-fashioned stirrup, his great boots
+covering his knee and thigh from the wind, and his weather-beaten old
+face looking out from the fur collar of his riding-coat. "It may be
+the last time this winter. The spring must come soon."
+
+And he went away at an easy canter.
+
+Wanda, left alone for the whole day in the stillness of this forest
+farm, had her round to do also. She set out on foot soon after her
+father's departure, bound to a distant cottage in the depths of the
+pine-woods. The trees were quiet this morning; for it is only at the
+time of thaw, when the snow, gathering moisture from the atmosphere,
+gains in weight and breaks down the branches, that the woods crack as
+beneath the tread of some stealthy giant. But a frost seems to brace
+the trees which in the colder weather stand grim and silent, bearing
+their burden without complaint.
+
+The sky was cloudless and the air quite still. There is no silence
+like that of a northern pine-wood in winter; for the creatures living
+in the twilight there have been given by God silent feet and a
+stealthy habit--the smaller ones going in fear of the larger, and the
+beasts of prey ever alert for their natural enemy--man. The birds kept
+for the most part to the outer fringes of the forest, nearer to the
+crops and the few, far cottages.
+
+Wanda had grown from childhood amid the pines, and the gloomy forest-
+paths were so familiar as to have lost all power to impress her. In
+the nursery she had heard tales of wolves and bears, but had never
+seen them. They might be near or far; they might be watching through
+the avenues of straight and motionless stems. In their childhood it
+had been the delight of Martin and herself to trace in the snow the
+footprints of the wolves--near the house, in the garden, right up to
+the nursery window. They had gradually acquired the indifference of
+the peasants who work in the fields, or the woodmen at their labors
+amid the trees, who are aware that the silent, stealthy eyes are
+watching them, and work on without fear. The prince had taught the
+children fearlessness, or, perhaps, it was in their blood, and needed
+no education. He had taught them to look upon the beasts of the
+forests not as enemies, but as quiet, watching friends.
+
+Wanda went alone whithersoever she listed, without so much as turning
+her head to look over her shoulder. The pine-woods were hers; the
+peasants were her serfs in spirit, if not in deed. Here, at all
+events, the Bukatys were free to come and go. In cities they were
+watched, their footsteps dogged by human wolves.
+
+There are few paths through the great forests of Poland, of Posen, and
+of Silesia, and what there are, are usually cut straight and at right
+angles to each other. There was a path just wide enough to give
+passage to the narrow timber carts from the farm direct to the
+woodman's cottage, and so flat is the face of the earth that the
+distant trees are like the masts of ships half-hidden by the curve of
+the world. It seems as if one could walk on and on forever, or drop
+from hunger and fatigue and lie unheeded for years in some forgotten
+corner. In the better-kept forests the paths are staked and numbered,
+or else it would be impossible to know the way amid such millions of
+trees--all alike, all of the same height. But the prince was too poor
+to vie with the wealthy land-owners of Silesia, and his forests were
+ill-kept.
+
+In places the trees had fallen across the original path, and the few
+passers-by had made a new path to one side or the other. Sometimes a
+tree had grown outward towards the light and air, almost bridging the
+open space.
+
+Wanda could not, therefore, see very far in front or behind, and was
+taken by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow
+behind her. She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some
+reason had returned home, and, learning whither she had gone, had
+followed her. But it was not the prince. It was Cartoner. Before she
+had quite realized that it was he, he was on his feet leading his
+horse towards her.
+
+She paused and looked at him, half startled; then, with a curt,
+inarticulate cry of joy she hurried towards him. Thus were given to
+them a few of those brief moments of complete happiness which are
+sometimes vouchsafed to human beings. Which must assuredly be moments
+stolen from heaven; for angels are so chary with them, giving them to
+a few favored ones only once or twice in a whole lifetime, and, to the
+large majority of mankind, never at all.
+
+"Why have you come?" asked Wanda.
+
+"To see you," replied this man of few words.
+
+And the sound of his voice, the sight of his strong face, swept away
+all her troubles and anxieties; as if, with his greater physical
+strength, he had taken a burden which she could hardly lift, and
+carried it easily. For he always seemed to know how to meet every
+emergency and face every trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting
+with relief that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her
+heart must break had he been anywhere else. She forgot for the moment
+all the dangers that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love,
+the thousand reasons why they should not meet. She forgot that a whole
+nation stood between them. But it was only for a moment--a moment
+borrowed from eternity.
+
+"Is that the only reason?" she asked, remembering with a sort of shock
+that this world of glittering snow and still pine-trees was not their
+real world at all.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"But you cannot stay in Poland! You must go away again at once! You do
+not know--" And she stopped short, for their respective positions were
+such that they always arrived at a point where only silence was left
+to them.
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered with a short laugh. "I know. I am going away
+to-night--to St. Petersburg."
+
+He did not explain that his immediate departure was not due to the
+fears that she had half expressed.
+
+"I am so glad." She broke off, and looked at him with a little smile.
+"I am so glad you are going away."
+
+She turned away from him with a sharp sigh. For she had now a new
+anxiety, which, however, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed all the rest.
+
+"I would rather know that you were safe in England," she said, "even
+if I were never to see you again. But," and she looked up at him with
+a sort of pride in her eyes--that long-drawn pride of race which is
+strong to endure--"but you must never be hampered by a thought of me.
+I want you to be what you have always been. Ah! you need not shake
+your head. All men say the same of you--they are afraid of you."
+
+She looked at him slowly, up and down.
+
+"And I am not," she added, with a sudden laugh. For her happiness was
+real enough. The best sort of happiness is rarely visible to the
+multitude. It lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places; and the
+eager world which, presumably, is seeking it, hurries past and never
+recognizes it, but continues to mistake for it prosperity and riches,
+noise and laughter, even fame and mere cheap notoriety.
+
+They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind
+to them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such
+moments fly. Much that they had to say to each other may not be
+expressed on paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.
+
+They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the
+snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly
+unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid of
+selfishness, and they looked for happiness--not in an immediate
+gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their
+hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and
+bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword.
+Loyalty to self, to duty, and to each other.
+
+Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that
+should stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore
+duty, which is only another word for honor, and throw down the
+spectres, Foresight, Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the
+pathway of that madness, a brief passion. She was content, it seemed,
+that her lover should be wise, should be careful for the future,
+should take her life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if
+he had a right to do so--a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is
+usually considered the privilege of that which is called a great
+passion and admired as such--but a right to shape, guard, and keep.
+
+Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps,
+made him rather different from most lovers. He went so far as to
+consider the feelings of others and to place them before his own,
+which, of course, is quite unusual. And yet the scheme of life which
+was his reading of Love, and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny
+March morning and pieced together bit by bit in her own decided and
+conclusive way, seemed to content her. She seemed to gather from it
+that he loved her precisely as she wished to be loved, and that, come
+what might, she had already enough to make her life happier than the
+lives of most women.
+
+And, of course, they hoped. For they were young, and human, and the
+spring was in the air. But their hope was one of those things of which
+they could not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had
+become possessed at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff.
+It touched those things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn,
+but not from Wanda.
+
+The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them
+that they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped
+short.
+
+"You must not go any nearer," she said. "You are sure no one saw you
+when you came?"
+
+"No one," answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For
+he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
+footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
+very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
+Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the
+city again unobserved.
+
+For he knew--indeed, Wanda had told him--the dangers that surrounded
+him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater for
+Martin and the prince.
+
+"It is only what you foresaw," she said, "when--when we first
+understood."
+
+"No, it is worse than I foresaw," he answered.
+
+So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in
+Poland when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They
+could not even write to each other while Wanda should be within the
+circle of the Russian postal service. There was but the one link
+between them--Paul Deulin; and to him neither would impart a
+confidence. Deulin had brought about this meeting to-day. Warned by
+telegram, he had met Cartoner at Warsaw Station, and had counselled
+him not to go out into the streets. Since he was only waiting a few
+hours in Warsaw for the St. Petersburg train, he must either sit in
+the station or take a horse and go for a ride into the country. The
+Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in town, but at their country house.
+
+"Go and see them," he added. "A man living on a volcano may surely
+play with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano
+together. Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend,
+reek of catastrophe."
+
+Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
+her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
+hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
+for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
+
+Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the
+sunlight waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips
+hard pressed. Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him
+through his solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the
+hope of Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the
+watcher who sees most of the game, and knew that the time might never
+ripen till years after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more
+seen.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+IN A BY-WAY
+
+There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs
+join the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by
+the gates of the cemetery.
+
+Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
+away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
+horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
+days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
+white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
+business of killing Germans.
+
+Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's
+ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not
+the direct way to St. Petersburg.
+
+"I hired a horse and rode out to meet you," he said, gayly--he was
+singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye--"to
+intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the streets--
+and he saw me. I think that man is the god in the machine. He is not a
+nonentity. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my friend."
+
+He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with
+Cartoner.
+
+"In the mean time," he said, "I have the hunger of a beggar's dog.
+What are we to do? It is one o'clock--and I have the inside of a
+Frenchman. We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build
+up a new republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make
+history so quickly that the world stands breathless--but we always
+breakfast before mid-day."
+
+He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture
+which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the
+last trump.
+
+"And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not
+show mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got
+accustomed to me there. They think I am a harmless old man--a dentist,
+perhaps."
+
+"My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three," said
+Cartoner. "I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive
+across in a close cab with the blinds down."
+
+And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there
+were matter for surprise in the sound of it.
+
+"Like a monstrosity going to a fair," he said. "And I shall go with
+you. I will even lunch with you at the station--a station steak and a
+beery table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat
+and those who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a
+famished audience like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the
+crumbs. I am with you. But let us be quick--and get it over. Did you
+see Bukaty?" he asked, finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an
+imaginary fly on the lower parts of his horse; for, after all, he was
+only a man, and lacked the higher skill or the thicker skin of the
+gentler sex in dealing with certain delicate matters.
+
+"No, I only saw the princess," replied Cartoner. And they rode on in
+silence.
+
+"You know," said Deulin, at length, gravely, "if that happens which
+you expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for--I shall
+seek out Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it
+is my duty or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to
+put my duty before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there
+follows that confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before,
+where things are stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets--
+when friends and foes are seeking each other in vain--you need not
+seek me or think about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of
+yourself, remember that. I shall have eloped--with Wanda."
+
+And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.
+
+"Bukaty and I," he went on, after a pause, "do not talk of these
+things together. But we have come to an understanding on that point.
+And when the first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath
+of air, you have only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where
+you are--and I will tell you where--we are. We are old birds at this
+sport--you and I--and we know how to take care of ourselves."
+
+They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-
+paved streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the
+huts once occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the
+neighborhood of the Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people
+must needs live near a market-place, and within hearing of the chink
+of small coin. In the cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews'
+quarter there is a barrier erected between the daily lives of the two
+races, though no more than a narrow street may in reality divide them.
+Different interests, different hopes, aspirations, and desires are to
+be found within a few yards, and neighbors are as far apart as if a
+frontier line or the curse of Babel stood between them.
+
+Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe
+from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for the
+men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen
+thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the horsemen at all, merely
+looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles--as
+if there were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no
+beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse
+which has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself
+out, seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.
+
+"We will go by the back ways," said Cartoner, "and need never see any
+of our world in Warsaw at all."
+
+The streets were crowded by men, for the women live an in-door life in
+an atmosphere that seems to bleach and fatten. The roads were little
+used for wheel traffic; for the commerce by which these people live is
+of so retail a nature that it seems to pass from hand to hand in
+mysterious cloth bundles and black stuff bags. The two horsemen were
+obliged to go slowly through the groups, who never raised their heads,
+or seemed to speak above a whisper.
+
+"What do they talk of--what do they think--all day?" said Cartoner.
+And, indeed, the quiet of the streets had a suggestion of
+surreptitiousness. Even the children are sad, and stand about in
+melancholy solitude.
+
+"I would sooner be a dog," answered Deulin, with a shake of the
+shoulders, as if Care had climbed into the saddle behind him. "Sooner
+a dog."
+
+By these ways they reached the station, and there found a messenger to
+take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had
+passed men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed,
+who strode in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose
+clothes were poor and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and
+shambling boots to make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would
+turn and look back at some sword-bearer who was more offensive than
+usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at
+a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who
+were the most offensive--the little Jacks-in-office from the postal
+administration, the common officers, the hundred obscure civil
+servants who wear a sword and uniform unworthily in any one of the
+three European empires. On the other hand, the men in real authority,
+and notably the officers of the better regiments, sought to conciliate
+by politeness and a careful retention of themselves in the background.
+But these well-intentioned efforts were of small avail; for racial
+things are stronger than human endeavor or the careful foresight of
+statesmen. Here in Warsaw the Muscovite, the Pole, the Jew--herding
+together in the same streets, under the same roof, obedient to one
+law, acknowledging one sovereign--were watching each other, hating
+each other.
+
+At the street corners the smart, quiet police took note of each foot-
+passenger, every carriage, every stranger passing in a hired droschki.
+Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath the
+flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn. On
+the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense of
+looking the other way by two of the higher officials of the Russian-
+speaking police.
+
+"I do not mind them," said Deulin, passing through the doorway to the
+booking-office. "It is not of them that we need be afraid. We are
+doing no harm, and they cannot send us out of the country while our
+passports hold out. They have satisfied themselves as to that. For
+they have been through my belongings twice, in my rooms at the Europe
+--I know when my things have been touched--they or some one else.
+Perhaps Kosmaroff; who knows?"
+
+Thus he talked on in characteristic fashion, saying a hundred nothings
+as only Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled
+musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord
+half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper
+meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied
+him on the criminal paucity of his menu.
+
+"Yes," he said, "let it be beef. I know your mutton. It tastes like
+the smell of goat. So give us beef--your railway beef, which has
+travelled so far, but not by train. It has come on foot, to be killed
+and cut up by a locomotive, to be served by a waiter who has assuredly
+failed as a stoker."
+
+He sat down as he spoke, and rearranged the small table, covered by a
+doubtful cloth, through which could be felt the chill of the marble
+underneath. Deulin always took the lead in these small matters, and
+Cartoner accepted his decision without comment. The Frenchman knew him
+so well, it seemed, that he knew his tastes, or suspected his
+indifference. While he thus rattled on he glanced sharply from time to
+time at his companion, and when the waiter was finally sent away with
+a hundred minute instructions, he turned suddenly to Cartoner.
+
+"You are absorbed. What are you thinking about?" he said.
+
+"I was thinking how well you speak Polish. And yet you have only been
+here once before," answered the Englishman, bluntly.
+
+"When I was a young man there were opportunities of learning Polish in
+Paris," said Deulin. "Yes--I learned Polish when I was young----"
+
+He had arranged the table to his satisfaction, had picked up several
+objects to examine them and replace them with care on the exact spot
+from whence he had taken them, and was now looking round the room with
+large, deep-lined eyes which were always tired and never at rest.
+
+"When one is young, one learns so much in a short time, especially if
+that time is ill-spent," he said, airily. "That is why the virtuous
+are such poor company; they have no backbone to their past. With the
+others--'nous autres'--it is the evil deeds that form a sort of spinal
+column to our lives, rigid and strong, upon which to lean in old age
+when virtue is almost a necessity."
+
+Finally he came round in his tour of inspection to the face opposite
+to him.
+
+"Do you know," he said, sharply, "you are devilish absent-minded. It
+is a bad habit. It makes the world think that you have something on
+your mind. And having nothing on its own mind--or no mind to have
+anything on--it hates you for your airs of superiority."
+
+He took up the bottle of wine which the waiter had set upon the table
+in front of him, inspected the label, and filled two glasses. He
+tasted the vintage, and made a wry face. Then he raised his shoulders
+with an air or reconciliation to the inevitable.
+
+"When I was a young--a very young diplomatist--an old scoundrel in
+gold spectacles told me that one of the first rules of the game was to
+appear content with that which you cannot alter. We must apply that
+rule to this wine. It is our old friend, Chateau la Pompe. It will not
+hurt you. It will not loosen your tongue, my friend, you need not fear
+that."
+
+He spoke so significantly that Cartoner looked across the table at
+him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Deulin laughed and made no answer.
+
+"Do you think that my tongue requires loosening?"
+
+And the Frenchman stroked his mustache as he looked thoughtfully into
+the steady, meditating eyes.
+
+"It is not," he said, "that you assume a reserve which one might think
+unfair. It is merely that there are so many things which you do not
+think worth saying, or wise to speak of, or necessary to communicate,
+that--well--there is nothing left but silence. And silence is
+sometimes dangerous. Not as dangerous as speech, I allow--but
+dangerous, nevertheless."
+
+Cartoner looked at him and waited. Across the little table the two
+schools went out to meet each other--the old school of diplomacy, all
+words; the new, all silence.
+
+"Listen," said the Frenchman. "I once knew a man into whose care was
+given the happiness of a fellow-being. There is a greater
+responsibility, by-the-way, than the well-being of a whole nation,
+even of one of the two greatest nations in the world. And that is a
+care which you and I have had upon our shoulders for a brief hour here
+and there. It was the old story; for it was the happiness of a woman.
+God knows the man meant well! But he bungled it. Bon Dieu--how he
+bungled it! He said too little. Ever since he has talked too much. She
+was a Polish woman, by-the-way, and that has left a tenderness, nay, a
+raw place, in my heart, which smarts at the sound of a Polish word.
+For I was the man."
+
+"Well," asked Cartoner, "what do you want to know?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the other, quick as thought. "I only tell you the
+story as a warning. To you especially, who take so much for said that
+has not been said. You are strong, and a man. Remember that a woman--
+even the strongest--may not be able to bear such a strain as you can
+bear."
+
+Cartoner was listening attentively enough. He always listened with
+attention to his friend on such rare occasions as he chose to be
+serious.
+
+"You know," went on Deulin, after a pause, during which the waiter had
+set before him a battered silver dish from which he removed the cover
+with a flourish full of promise--"you know that I would give into your
+care unreservedly anything that I possessed, such as a fortune, or--
+well--a daughter. I would trust you entirely. But any man may make a
+mistake. And if you make a mistake now, I shall never forgive you--
+never."
+
+And his eyes flashed with a sudden fierceness as he looked at his
+companion.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, my friend?" he asked, curtly.
+
+"You have already promised to do the only thing I would ask you to do
+in Warsaw," replied Cartoner.
+
+Deulin held up one hand in a gesture commanding silence.
+
+"Not another word--they cost you so much, a few words--I understand
+perfectly."
+
+Then with a rapid relapse into his gayer mood he turned to the dish
+before him.
+
+"And now let us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it
+cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake--I tell
+you that."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE QUIET CITY
+
+The most liberal-minded man in Russia at this time was the Czar. He
+had chosen his ministers from among the nobles who were at least
+tolerant of advance, if they did not actually advocate it. Much as he
+hated to make a change, he had in one or two instances parted with old
+and trusted servants--friends of his boyhood--rather than forgo one
+item of his policy. In other cases he had appealed to the memory of
+their long friendship in order to bring his nobles not to his own way
+of thinking, for he could not do that, but to his own plan of action.
+
+"I do not agree with you, but I will serve you," had answered one of
+these, and the Czar, who did not know where to turn to find the man he
+needed, accepted such service.
+
+For a throne stands in isolation, and no man may judge another by
+looking down upon him, but must needs descend into the crowd, and,
+mingling there on a lower level, pick out for himself the honest man
+or the clever man--or that rare being, the man who is both.
+
+Kings and emperors may not do this, however. Despots dare not.
+Alexander II. acted as any ordinary man acts when he finds himself in
+a position to confer favors, to make appointments, to get together, as
+it were, a ministry, even if this takes no more dignified a form than
+a board of directors. He suspected that the world contained precisely
+the men he wanted, if he could only let down a net into it and draw
+them up. How, otherwise, could he select them? So he did the usual
+thing. He looked round among his relations, and, failing them, the
+friends of his youth. For an emperor, popularly supposed to have the
+whole world to choose from, has no larger a choice than any bourgeois
+looking round his own small world for a satisfactory executor.
+
+Coming to the throne, as he did, in the midst of a losing fight, his
+first task was to conclude a humiliating peace. He must needs bow down
+to the upstart adventurer of France, who had tricked England into a
+useless war in order to steady his own tottering throne.
+
+Alexander II., moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of
+liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for
+with his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to
+stand aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds
+as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was
+untenable. "Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away,"
+his advisers told him. "With the serf she cannot endure," he answered
+And twenty-two millions of men were set free. In this act he stood
+almost alone; for hardly a single minister was with him heart and
+soul, though many obeyed him loyally enough against their own
+convictions. Many honestly thought that this must be the end of the
+Russian Empire.
+
+It is hard to go against the advice of those near at hand; for their
+point of view must always appear to be the same as one's own, while
+counsel from afar comes as the word of one who is looking at things
+from another stand-point, and may thus be more easily mistaken.
+
+Alexander II., called suddenly to reign over one-tenth part of the
+human race, men of different breed and color, of the three great
+contending religions and a hundred minor churches, was himself a
+nervous, impressionable man, suffering from ill-health, bowed down
+with the weight of his great responsibility. His father died in his
+arms, broken-hearted, bequeathing him an empire invaded by the armies
+of five European nations, hated of all the world, despised of all
+mankind. Even to-day there is a sinister sound in the very name of
+Russian. Men turn to look twice at one who comes from that stupendous
+empire. It is said that an hereditary melancholy broods beneath the
+weightiest earthly crown. History tells that none wearing it has ever
+reached a hale old age. Soldiers still hearty, still wearing the sword
+they have carried through half a dozen campaigns, bow to-day in the
+Winter Palace before their sovereign, having taken the oath of
+allegiance to four successive Czars.
+
+Half in, half out of Europe, Alexander II. awoke with his own hand the
+great nation still wrapped in the sleep of the Middle Ages, only to
+find that he had stirred a slumbering power whose movements were soon
+to prove beyond control. He poured out education like water upon the
+surface of a vast field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably
+spring up wheat or tares--a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific
+growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of
+his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to
+despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This
+tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time
+came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an unflinching
+eye.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked, the very moment after he had been
+saved almost by a miracle from assassination. For he knew that he was
+giving more than was wise. It is said that he was puzzled and
+thoughtful after each attempt upon his life.
+
+The war with Turkey was the first sign that Russia was awakening--that
+the soldiers knew how to read and write. It was the first time in
+history that the nation forced a Czar to declare war, and Servia was
+full of Russian volunteers fighting for Christian Slavs before the
+Emperor realized that he must fight--and fight alone, for no nation in
+Europe would help him. He had taught Russia to read; had raised the
+veil of ignorance that hung between his people and the rest of
+civilization. They had read of the Bulgarian atrocities, and there was
+no holding them.
+
+To rule autocratically what was then the vastest empire in the world
+was in itself more than one brain could compass. But in addition to
+his own internal troubles, Alexander II. was surrounded by European
+difficulties. England, his steady, deadly enemy, despite a declaration
+of neutrality, was secretly helping Turkey. Austria, as usual, the dog
+waiting on the threshold, was ready to side with the winner--for a
+consideration. No wonder this man was always weary. It is said that
+all through his reign he received and despatched telegrams at any hour
+of the night.
+
+No wonder that his heart was hardened towards Poland. The most
+liberal-minded Czar had his mean point, as every man must have. There
+are many great and good men who will write a check readily enough and
+look twice at a penny. There are many who will give generously with
+one hand while grasping with the other that which is really the
+property of their neighbor. Alexander's mean point was Poland.
+
+On the occasion of his first imperial visit to Warsaw he said, in the
+cold, calm voice which was so hated and feared: "Gentlemen, let us
+have no more dreams." Eleven years later he reminded an influential
+deputation of Polish nobles of the unforgiven and unforgotten words,
+commending the caution to their attention again. He paid frequent
+visits to Warsaw on one excuse or another. This dreamer would have no
+dreaming in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his
+hoard. The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the
+inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull.
+No one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.
+
+From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still,
+Cartoner travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the
+north. He found as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The
+very faces of the people had changed since he last looked upon them
+only a few years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of
+their own strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not
+because they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to.
+They had followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that
+succeeded the signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and
+lost. They were men, and no longer driven beasts.
+
+It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long
+northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was
+reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of
+the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.
+
+The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the
+streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost
+deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or
+the drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were
+in another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most
+spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the
+inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets
+too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken
+surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with
+rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and
+crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet.
+The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St.
+Petersburg is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest
+city in the world, excepting Venice.
+
+The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The
+river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were
+still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of
+the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and
+leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of parallel streets
+where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the
+university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges
+facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.
+
+It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
+proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was
+a house like any other in the street--like any other in any other
+street. For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to
+the world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here
+and there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St.
+Peter and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of
+St. Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.
+
+When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
+door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His
+was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at
+this time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police
+gave the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however,
+for he raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the
+gentleman asked for was within.
+
+"On the second floor. You will remember the door," he said, over his
+shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the
+house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
+
+Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by a
+clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured
+recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the way
+along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain
+bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid
+opened the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.
+
+Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a
+short, brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined
+chin. He was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the
+table, and he stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got
+other work to do."
+
+"No, I am at the same work. And you?"
+
+"As you see," replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with
+his foot and seating himself again before the fire. "I am here still,
+where you left me"--he paused to make a brief calculation--"five years
+ago. I stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin
+Congress, when it was not good to be an Englishman in Petersburg. But
+I stayed. Tallow! It does not sound heroic, but the world must have
+its tallow. And there is a simplicity about commerce, you know."
+
+He gave a short laugh--the laugh of a man who had tried something and
+failed. Something that was not commerce, for his voice and speech had
+a ring of other things.
+
+"Can you put me up?" asked Cartoner. "Only for a few days, perhaps."
+
+"As long as you stay in Petersburg you stay in these rooms," replied
+the other, gravely.
+
+Cartoner nodded his thanks and sat down. Their attitude towards each
+other had the repose which is only existent in a friendship that has
+lasted since childhood.
+
+"Well?" he inquired.
+
+"Gad!" exclaimed the other, "we are in a queer way. I went to the
+opera the other evening. He showed his face in the imperial box and
+the house was empty in half an hour. He always drives alone in his
+sleigh now, so that only one royal life may go at a time. They'll get
+him--they'll get him! And he knows it."
+
+"Fools!" said Cartoner.
+
+"They are worse than fools," answered the other. "The man is down, and
+they strike him. His asthma is worse. He has half a dozen complaints.
+His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia.
+He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury;
+he abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this
+earth, Cartoner!"
+
+"I know," replied Cartoner, in his gentle way, "students who cannot
+learn--workmen who will not work--women whom no one will marry."
+
+"Yes, the sons and daughters of the serfs that he emancipated. It
+makes one sick to talk of them. Let me hear about yourself."
+
+"Well," answered Cartoner, "I have had nothing to eat since
+breakfast."
+
+"That is all you have to tell me about yourself?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+THE PAYMENT
+
+It was on every gossip's tongue in St. Petersburg that Jeliaboff had
+been arrested.
+
+"It is the beginning of the end," men said. "They will now catch the
+others. The new reign of terror is over."
+
+But Jeliaboff himself--a dangerous man (one of the Terrorists), the
+chief of the plot to blow up the imperial train at the Alexandroff
+Station--said that it was not so. This also, the mere bravado of an
+arrested criminal, was bandied from mouth to mouth.
+
+For two years the most extraordinary agitation of modern days had held
+Russian society within its grip. All the world seemed to whisper. Men
+walking in the streets turned to glance over their shoulders at the
+approach of a step, at the sound of a sleigh-bell. The women were in
+the secret, too; and when the women touch politics they are politics
+no longer. For there should be no real emotion in politics; only the
+stimulated emotion of the platform.
+
+For two years the Czar had been slowly and surely ostracized by a
+persecution which was as cruel as it was unreasoning.
+
+In former days the curious, and the many who loved to look on royalty,
+had studied his habits and hours to the end that they might gain a
+glimpse of him or perhaps a bow from the courteous Emperor. Now his
+habits and his daily life were watched for quite another purpose. If
+it was known that he would pass through a certain street, he was now
+allowed a monopoly of that thoroughfare. None passed nearer to the
+Winter Palace than he could help. If the Czar was seen to approach,
+men hurried in the opposite direction; women called their children to
+them. He was a leper among his own people.
+
+"Do not go to the opera to-morrow," one lady would say to another. "I
+have heard that the Czar is to be there."
+
+"Do not pass through the Little Sadovaia," men said to one another;
+"the street is mined. Do not let your wife linger in the Newski
+Prospect; it is honeycombed by mines."
+
+The Czar withdrew himself, as a man must who perceives that others
+shrink from him; as the leper who sees even the pitiful draw aside his
+cloak. But some ceremonies he would not relinquish; and to some duties
+he remained faithful, calmly facing the risk, which he fully
+recognized.
+
+He went to the usual Sunday review on the 12th of March, as all the
+world knows. It was a brilliant, winter morning. The sun shone from a
+cloudless sky upon streets and houses buried still beneath their
+winter covering of snow. The houses always look too large for their
+inmates, the streets too wide for those that walk them. St. Petersburg
+was planned on too large a scale by the man who did everything
+largely, and made his window looking out upon Europe a bigger window
+than the coldness of his home would allow.
+
+The review passed off successfully. The Czar, men said, was in good
+spirits. He had that morning signed a decree which was now in the
+hands of Loris Melikoff, and would to-morrow be given to the world,
+proving even to the most sceptical for the hundredth time that he had
+at heart the advance of Russia--the greater liberty of his people.
+
+Instead of returning direct to the Winter Palace, the Czar paid his
+usual visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine. He quitted her
+palace at two o'clock in his own carriage, accompanied by half a dozen
+Cossacks. His officers followed in two sleighs. It was never known
+which way he would take. He himself gave the order to the coachman. He
+knew the streets as thoroughly as the driver himself; for he had
+always walked in them unattended, unheeded, and unknown--had always
+mixed with his subjects. This was no French monarch living in an
+earthly heaven above his people. He knew--always had known--what men
+said to each other in the streets.
+
+He gave the order to go to the Winter Palace by way of the Catherine
+Canal, which was not the direct way. Had he passed down the Newski
+Prospect half of that great street would have been blown to the skies.
+The road running by the side of the Catherine Canal was in 1881 a
+quiet enough thoroughfare, with large houses staring blankly across
+the frozen canal. The canal itself was none too clean a sight, for the
+snow was old and soiled and strewed with refuse. In some places there
+were gardens between the road and the waterways, but most of its
+length was bounded by a low wall and a railing.
+
+The road itself was almost deserted. The side streets of St.
+Petersburg are quieter than the smaller thoroughfares of any other
+city in the world. A confectioner's boy was alone on the pavement,
+hurrying along and whistling as he went on his Sunday errand of
+delivery. He hardly glanced at the carriage that sped past him.
+Perhaps he saw a man looking over the low wall at the approach of the
+cavalcade. Perhaps he saw the bomb thrown and heard the deafening
+report. Though none can say what he heard or saw at that minute, for
+he was dead the next.
+
+The bomb had fallen under the carriage at the back. A Cossack and his
+horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The
+Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow.
+He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the
+cushions afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind
+seemed to be anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead
+baker-boy. The pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some
+lying quite still, others attempting to lift themselves with numbed
+and charred limbs. It was very cold.
+
+Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
+captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been
+weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar
+went towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account
+of those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the
+terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took
+part in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who
+were walking in their sleep.
+
+Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
+
+"Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!" cried more than one
+voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard
+this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments
+in the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one
+bound to the heights of immortality.
+
+Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a
+crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went
+towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of
+the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
+
+The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
+hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
+
+One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the
+Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading
+to the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came
+along it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the
+freed son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the
+stones between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of
+his slavery.
+
+It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
+white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt
+took note of it.
+
+A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very
+stones of the pavement were displaced.
+
+The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One
+leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful.
+He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
+
+This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a
+murmur. He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise,
+against his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his
+father's teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience.
+He had done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of
+Russia. And this was the payment!
+
+The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The
+terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white
+smoke, and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great
+Assize. It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did
+not stammer in the presence of his Judge.
+
+The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was
+left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could
+to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
+beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
+literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
+brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the
+first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the
+dying man.
+
+The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
+again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor
+near. The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner,
+brought hither by that instinct which had made him first among the
+Vultures--the instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was
+called upon to share the horror and reap none of the glory.
+
+His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
+could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
+killer.
+
+He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the
+second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events
+brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
+
+Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together,
+to be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast,
+he took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way
+from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the
+slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information
+obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain
+Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's
+opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre
+of the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which
+other men called his luck had brought him within sound of the first
+explosion by the side of the Catherine Canal.
+
+He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
+hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the
+zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him.
+The driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid
+face. Here was a man who had heard nothing.
+
+Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
+heavy leather apron.
+
+"The telegraph office," he said.
+
+And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
+urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
+their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
+Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred
+yards away.
+
+Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp
+over his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick
+furs. He made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a
+lifetime, and he knew it. Which is not always the case, for great
+moments often appear great only when we look back at them.
+
+He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
+streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner
+by mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a
+thousand things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find
+the right word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this
+moment? Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last
+seen him living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last
+frontier? The Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched
+now could reach England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of
+men who seem to combine with an infinite patience the readiness to
+take a heavy risk at a given moment.
+
+The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
+behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
+uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
+inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial
+telegrams could be despatched from Russia.
+
+Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole
+world. Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach
+of recall.
+
+The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
+London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
+
+He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
+The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the
+second were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to
+Wanda. He walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even
+gain a minute there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the
+handle should any one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door
+when a man hurried up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and
+gentle face, and eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
+
+Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by
+persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was
+allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he
+passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The
+two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each
+knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of
+his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding a
+loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it
+afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been
+sown broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted
+white.
+
+He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
+crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
+mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
+earthly throne.
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A LOVE-LETTER
+
+The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
+Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the
+snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of
+the garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark
+of the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements
+of spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all
+mankind.
+
+She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind
+to. It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly
+relatives. Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement,
+especially, perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads
+one-half of the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring
+for the greater pleasure of the other half.
+
+She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved
+problem to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in
+her brief experience. She had usually found men very easy to
+understand, and the failure to achieve her simple purpose in this
+instance aroused, perhaps, an additional attention. She thought it was
+that, but she was not quite sure. She had not arrived at a clear
+definition in her own mind as to what she thought of Cartoner. She was
+quite sure, however, that he was different from other men.
+
+She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange
+interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a
+conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at
+once the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts.
+She knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and
+might come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska
+to the river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the
+ice.
+
+As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was
+nice. It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a
+young man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank
+that there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather
+liked a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a
+prince. Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her
+lips after speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something
+pleasant. It was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty
+gave a little sigh when she thought of their poverty.
+
+In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not
+count Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting
+enough when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the
+broad walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have
+so frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered
+why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had
+gradually resolved themselves into something very much like an
+understanding, if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in
+the game of love should be warned that it is a game which never stands
+still, but must move onward or backward. You may play it one day in
+jest, and find that it must be played in earnest next time. You may
+never take it up just where you left it, for the stake must always be
+either increasing or diminishing. And this is what makes it rather an
+interesting game. For you may never tell what it may grow to, and
+while it is in progress, none ever believe that it will have an end.
+
+Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a
+poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it
+is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections
+in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just,
+it is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the
+maidens with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young
+girl is oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers
+teach them to be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare
+that a girl is in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks
+she is. Sometimes she does not even go so far as that.
+
+Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
+maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning. The
+faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
+yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at
+all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is
+leaden-footed in this backward country.
+
+Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she
+felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had
+ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was
+cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other
+occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up
+in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or
+in the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the
+passers.
+
+Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
+Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
+entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
+gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
+fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
+almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
+hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate
+of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he
+did not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked
+all ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the
+open.
+
+Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old
+palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for
+the two principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the
+gardens, near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
+
+It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
+except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
+satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her,
+but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did
+not even bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a
+folded note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.
+
+There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
+know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they
+had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions
+were unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her
+direction.
+
+
+ "I must not speak to you," Martin wrote, "for there is danger in it
+  --not to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me
+  tell you is for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave
+  your rooms at the Europe. I have already provided for your safety.
+  There is great news, but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I
+  shall always be thinking of you, and--no! I must not say that. But
+  to-morrow I may be able to say it--who knows! I shall walk to the
+  end of the garden and back again; but I must not even bow to you.
+  If you go away before I pass again, leave something on the seat
+  that I may keep until I see you again--your glove or a flower, to
+  be my talisman."
+
+
+Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the
+length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her
+eyes. She rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly
+no longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between
+two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
+covert-coating.
+
+Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would
+turn and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think
+and to make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from
+telling her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But
+she knew that events were about to take place which might restore the
+fortunes of the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew
+that the prince would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a
+king. For the crown had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a
+monarchy.
+
+Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She
+thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of her--
+absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first in
+Poland, Prince Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets
+on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.
+She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.
+She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man;
+had found it astonishingly reliable. The honor of women was quite a
+different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day of
+adversity he would assuredly adhere to in other circumstances.
+"Besides--" And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as
+she bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange her furs.
+
+She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of
+snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked
+at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and
+walked slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man
+sitting beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad
+avenue. He sat huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded
+nothing. There was no one near to the seat that she had just vacated,
+and Martin was now going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace,
+and as she passed beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin
+bend over the stone seat and take up his talisman. He did it without
+disguise or haste. Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that
+has been dropped by a pretty girl.
+
+Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to
+the Kotzebue gate.
+
+Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty
+had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.
+He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until he
+was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the
+arches of the covered passages of the palace.
+
+After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down on
+the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the
+passers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one
+near enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough,
+across the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter
+which Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat
+and spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed,
+an expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and
+had pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must
+have been a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw
+waif of the public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.
+
+"That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night," he read,
+and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient
+clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a
+flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he
+could possibly compass.
+
+He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby
+purse. Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-
+general's palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite
+forgot to walk with the deliberation that would have beseemed his
+apparent years.
+
+Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned
+into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as
+being composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met
+Joseph Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying
+along.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "thought I might meet you here."
+
+He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to
+the conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be
+in the Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust
+forward, and he appeared to have something to think about, for he
+offered no remark for some minutes.
+
+"The mail is in," he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as
+if the post had brought him his death-warrant.
+
+"Ah!" answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something
+had happened. "Have you had important news?"
+
+"Had nothing by the mail," he answered, looking straight in front of
+him. And Netty asked no more questions.
+
+"Your aunt Jooly," he said, after a pause, "has had an interesting
+mail. She has been offered the presidency--"
+
+"Of the United States?" asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
+Joseph paused.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, with deep gravity. "Of the Massachusetts Women
+Bachelors' Federation."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She'll accept," opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
+
+"Is it a great honor?"
+
+"There are different sorts of greatness," Joseph replied.
+
+"What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?"
+
+Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road
+to allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old
+school, and still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend
+to take for themselves in the future.
+
+"Think it is like the blue-ribbon army," he said, when he returned to
+Netty's side. "The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer
+the abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
+membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around
+who will induce 'em to resign."
+
+"Is Aunt Julie pleased?" asked Netty.
+
+"Almighty," was the brief reply. "And she will accept it. She will
+marry the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President
+usually marries him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms
+--the men that help women to make fools of themselves."
+
+This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed to
+have a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty
+suspected that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made
+the Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
+
+"She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly," he said; "she'll give him
+his choice between dismissal and--and earthly paradise."
+
+Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
+along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware
+of. His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push
+a way through a crowded world.
+
+And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some
+order; that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+THIN ICE
+
+It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
+
+"Is the prince in?" he asked. "Is he busy?" he added, when the servant
+had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only
+shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was
+never busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study,
+reading a German newspaper.
+
+The prince looked at him over the folded sheet. They had known each
+other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's
+wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were
+able to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the
+other side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that
+leisureliness of movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and
+Cartoner, and others who were intimate with him, knew the inner
+meaning. His eyes were oddly bright.
+
+They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
+then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the
+glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made,
+with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
+
+"Do you know?" said the prince, grimly.
+
+"I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
+cipher telegram."
+
+"Cartoner?" said the prince, interrogatively.
+
+"Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend this--
+pleasing denouement."
+
+The prince gave a short laugh.
+
+"How well," he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
+reflectively--"how well that man knows his business. But why did he
+telegraph to you?"
+
+"We sometimes do each other a good turn," explained Deulin, rather
+curtly. "It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope
+that--it was soon over."
+
+The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
+beneath his shaggy brows.
+
+"My friend," he said, "you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on
+this occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made
+us--plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number
+of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The
+man was a thief. He was a great man and in a great position, which
+only made him the greater thief."
+
+The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
+fire.
+
+"He is dead," he went on, after a pause, "and there is an end to it. I
+do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to
+be dead; and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing."
+
+"You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian," said Deulin,
+gravely.
+
+"I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object,
+moreover, which cannot take into consideration a human life here or
+there, a human happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you
+to agree with me or to approve of me."
+
+"My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one
+effective lesson--to judge no man," put in Deulin.
+
+"Remember," continued the prince, "I deplore the method. I understand
+it was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad
+policy. You will see--we shall both see, if we live long enough--that
+this is a mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party.
+They have not even dared to approach me with any suggestion of
+co-operation. They have approached others of the Polish party and have
+been sent about their business. But--well, one would be a fool not to
+take advantage of every mishap to one's enemy."
+
+Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
+
+"Thin ice!" he said, warningly.
+
+"Bah!" laughed the other. "You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist
+--a man who is afraid to look over a wall."
+
+"No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by
+less obvious means," corrected the Frenchman. "One must not be seen
+looking over one's neighbor's wall--that is the first commandment of
+diplomacy."
+
+"Then why are you here?" asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough
+laugh.
+
+And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
+chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the
+dust flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his
+eyes that had not glittered there for twenty years.
+
+"You think I came here to pry into your affairs--to turn our
+friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I
+report to my government that which you and I may say to each other, or
+leave unsaid, before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin
+ice'?"
+
+"Yes--yes," answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends
+glared at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely
+enough in other days. "Yes--yes! but why are you here this morning?"
+
+"Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions,
+I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your
+neck into a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life.
+And--who knows?--you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought
+him up in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys,
+and you cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall
+not push Wanda into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to
+Siberia, if I can help it!"
+
+"Wanda!" said the prince, in some surprise--"Wanda!"
+
+"Yes. You forget--you Bukatys always have forgotten--the women. Warsaw
+is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work--to-night's work--is
+no work for Wanda!"
+
+"To-night's work! What do you mean?"
+
+The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
+
+"Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing," was the answer. "But I
+am not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only
+guess, as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I
+have guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in
+that which is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger
+what you think!"
+
+And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
+thumb.
+
+The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
+
+"If I did not know that you had broken your heart--more than once--
+long ago," he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
+
+"Only once," he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
+
+"Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
+Wanda."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin, lightly, "that is an old affair. That happened when
+she used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for
+one's old loves, you know."
+
+"Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had
+no time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of
+them, perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin
+ice! You ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all
+your life, and through it--"
+
+"Only once," repeated Deulin. "I propose what any other young lover
+would propose to do--to run away with her from Warsaw."
+
+"When?"
+
+Deulin looked at his watch.
+
+"In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty--a young girl."
+
+And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
+gained.
+
+"I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take
+her in."
+
+"Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?"
+
+"If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on
+earth that can make her do it."
+
+The prince smiled.
+
+"You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend."
+
+"That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
+this thing for me. I come back in half an hour."
+
+"What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from
+Warsaw to-day?" asked the prince. "What we know others must know now."
+
+"Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move.
+I will find my way to the door, thank you."
+
+"If you see Wanda as you go," called out the prince, as Deulin closed
+the door behind him, "send her to me."
+
+Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
+drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He
+held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
+
+"A telegram," she said, looking at it. "But I cannot make out its
+meaning. I never saw or heard of that word before."
+
+"Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the
+end of time," answered Deulin, lightly. "It is from a reliable source.
+Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
+wishes to say to you in his study now."
+
+"Ah!" said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
+
+"It is nothing!" put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
+"Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a
+question of empires and kingdoms."
+
+With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
+could ask him a question.
+
+In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
+passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
+
+"The man in the street," he added, turning to the prince, sitting
+beside Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to
+go--"the man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry
+swords in this city know nothing."
+
+"They will know at the frontier," answered the prince, "and it is
+there that you will have difficulties."
+
+"Then it is there that we shall overcome them," he replied, gayly. "It
+is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
+matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and
+Wanda will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my
+own I have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be
+gone."
+
+For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
+He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
+suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
+his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell
+speeches which are nearly always better left unsaid.
+
+"I must ask you," he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, "to
+drive round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I
+run up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room.
+I may not come back. One never knows."
+
+And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
+run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
+faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
+to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
+
+In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going
+about their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered
+races always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at
+all beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely
+sense of enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were
+quieter than usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda
+seemed to be fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected,
+when it comes at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected
+itself.
+
+It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance
+hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual
+between twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said,
+know nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that
+the Czar was dead.
+
+As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
+first time.
+
+"What will you do about the Mangles?" she asked. "We cannot let them
+remain here unwarned."
+
+Deulin reflected for a moment.
+
+"I had forgotten them," he answered. "In times of stress one finds out
+one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
+Mangles, if you like."
+
+"Yes," answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should
+see her--"yes, do that."
+
+"Odd people women are," said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-
+stairs. He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came
+down again almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying
+his luggage.
+
+"I looked into Mangles's salon," he said to Wanda, when he was seated
+beside her again. "He remains here alone. The ladies have already
+gone. They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool
+--that Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing."
+
+At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
+predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
+of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling
+men. He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
+
+"They know," he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
+Austrian railway carriage. "They all know. Look at their stupid,
+perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
+decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
+what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!"
+
+"Or a grin," he added, after a long pause, "that passes for one."
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+FOR ANOTHER TIME
+
+The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
+the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
+Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
+would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
+more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
+
+There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
+south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there are
+three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
+autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
+under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
+winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
+
+Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
+number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
+road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into
+such deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is
+bordered on either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer
+it is used for the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying
+land. In winter it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and
+autumn it is not used at all.
+
+It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
+pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
+harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary hay-
+carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
+frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
+carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
+
+Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
+standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
+his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
+limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
+He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
+have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
+outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
+head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following
+him. The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work
+of the carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep
+ruts.
+
+At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into the
+larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
+horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
+horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
+horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
+drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
+saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
+
+Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
+man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
+
+"You are punctual," he said. "I was nearly asleep in the saddle."
+
+And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
+such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and
+he leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
+
+"You are not cold?" he asked.
+
+"No; I feel as if I should never be cold again."
+
+"That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill.
+You must take care of yourself."
+
+"So must you," answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
+
+Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
+between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb
+than in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
+the French call /camaraderie/, which was not the outcome of a long
+friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
+had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
+with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
+the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
+always reckless.
+
+Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side,
+waiting for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at
+the sound of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the
+saddle and struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose,
+which sounded hollow, like a drum.
+
+"I suppose you had little sleep last night," said Kosmaroff when
+Martin yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
+
+"I had none."
+
+"Nor I," said Kosmaroff. "We may get some--to-morrow."
+
+The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on
+either side.
+
+"You know what to do," said Martin to these in turn. "Come to the
+iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are
+laden you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same
+road to the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn
+up in line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards
+the river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the
+line, dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there.
+If you are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist
+on asking what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and
+show them; and while they are looking into your carts you must kill
+them quietly with the knife."
+
+The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
+merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
+that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and had
+perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
+promise in his curt hilarity.
+
+Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
+Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
+to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
+by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
+pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
+
+In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and
+the workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the
+pouring rain, no one passed that way.
+
+Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
+bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the lower
+lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the iron-
+foundry are on the right.
+
+At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
+horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no
+lamps at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
+
+"What is it?" asked Martin.
+
+"I thought I saw a glint under the wall," answered Kosmaroff. "There--
+there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the gleam of
+those distant lights on a bayonet."
+
+"Then let us go forward," said Martin, "and see who it is."
+
+And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
+beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice
+called out:
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Who goes there?" echoed Martin. "But this is a high-road." And he
+moved nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his
+bayonet gleamed again.
+
+"No matter," he said; "you cannot pass this way."
+
+"But, my friend--" began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
+finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
+the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
+Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
+
+The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
+his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground
+now in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of
+hard breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough,
+which was not Kosmaroff's cough.
+
+After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
+
+"First blood," he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped
+his hands upon its mane.
+
+"Bah!" he exclaimed, "how he smelled of bad cigarettes!"
+
+Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
+mud.
+
+"Oh, he is dead enough," said Kosmaroff. "I broke his neck. Did you
+not hear it go?"
+
+"Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?"
+
+"That is yet to be found out," was the reply, in a sharp, strained
+voice. "This is Cartoner's work."
+
+"I doubt it," whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
+doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection
+than the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours
+ago.
+
+"What does it mean?" he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
+had always been lucky and successful.
+
+"It means," answered the man who had never been either, "that the
+place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
+failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
+for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot
+and make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that
+they have taken me."
+
+As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
+bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
+clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the
+darkness.
+
+"Wait a moment," he said. "I will get over the wall here. Bring your
+horse against the wall."
+
+Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
+across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
+
+"Stand in your stirrups," said Kosmaroff, "and hold one arm up rigid
+against the wall."
+
+He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
+himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
+on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
+
+"Are you ready? I am going to spring."
+
+He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
+light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall.
+Martin could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
+
+"All right," he whispered, and disappeared.
+
+Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
+he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
+breathless.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered. "Quick!"
+
+And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving. He
+was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
+gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
+had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to
+shoulder they splashed on in the darkness.
+
+"I went right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is
+full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
+ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!"
+
+"We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men," said
+Martin. "We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
+work."
+
+Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "You are full of hope--you."
+
+"Yes--I am full of hope--still," answered Martin. He had more to lose
+than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
+
+They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far
+as these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty
+from the city.
+
+Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
+marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
+
+"I am sure," he then said, "that I was seen as I climbed back over the
+wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
+me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
+different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also
+know who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in
+Warsaw again."
+
+"I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere," said Martin,
+with a laugh.
+
+"I do not know," went on Kosmaroff, "if they will have arrested your
+father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
+now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night."
+
+"Oh," answered Martin gayly, "it does not matter much about that. What
+I am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the
+rain. How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?"
+
+And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.
+
+Beneath the trees on the low, wet land inside the fortifications they
+found their men drawn up in a double line. There were evidences of
+military organization and training in their bearing and formation. If
+the arms had been forthcoming, these would have been dangerous
+soldiers; for they were desperate men, and had each in his heart a
+grievance to be wiped out. They were only the nucleus of a great
+rising, organized carefully and systematically--the brand to be thrown
+amid the straw. They were to surprise and hold the two strongholds in
+Warsaw, while the whole country was set in a blaze, while the foreign
+powers and the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically
+broken were appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but
+not half so wild as many that have succeeded.
+
+The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
+their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
+away.
+
+"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and
+Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
+darkness.
+
+In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
+streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
+who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
+streets.
+
+At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
+came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
+shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
+in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
+houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without
+anger.
+
+It was a miserable fiasco.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+
+Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
+firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
+hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula
+grinding and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was
+moving and the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and
+down the great length of the river that touches three empires men must
+needs be on the alert night and day.
+
+Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
+large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
+and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
+endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
+midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
+The moon above the clouds was almost full.
+
+"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.
+Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past
+twelve. I will get a boat. Have you money?"
+
+"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.
+
+"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
+make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."
+
+And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
+Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he
+earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome
+lives. Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the
+city. He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the
+others slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of
+the soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed at
+the street corners. And he was allowed to pass, unrecognized.
+
+A group of officers stood in the wide road opposite to the railway
+station, muffled in their large cloaks. They were talking together in
+a low voice. One of them gave a laugh as Martin passed. He recognized
+the voice as that of a friend--a young Cossack officer who had lunched
+with him two days earlier.
+
+Soon after midnight he made his way down the steep Bednarska. He had
+found out that the Bukaty Palace was surrounded; had seen the light
+filtering through the dripping panes of the conservatory. His father
+was probably sitting in the great drawing-room alone, before the wood-
+fire, meditating over the failure which he must have realized by now
+from a note hurriedly sent by one of the few servants whom they could
+trust. Martin knew that Wanda had gone. He also knew the address that
+would find her. This was one of the hundred details to which the
+prince himself had attended. He had been a skilled organizer in the
+days when he had poured arms and ammunition into Poland across the
+Austrian frontier, and his hand had not lost its cunning. All Poland
+was seamed by channels through which information could be poured at
+any moment day or night, just as water is distributed over the land of
+an irrigated farm.
+
+Martin had procured money. He carried some large round loaves of gray
+bread under his arm. The neck of a bottle protruded from the pocket of
+his coat. Among the lower streets near the river these burdens were
+more likely to allay than to arouse suspicion.
+
+Between the Bednarska and the bridge which towers above the low-roofed
+houses fifty yards farther down the river are the landing-stages for
+the steamers that ply in summer. There is a public bath, and at one
+end of this floating erection a landing-stage for smaller boats, where
+as often as not Kosmaroff found work. It was to this landing-stage
+that Martin directed his steps. In summer there were usually workers
+and watchers here night and day; for the traffic of a great river
+never ceases, and those whose daily bread is wrested from wind, water,
+and tide must get their sleep when they can.
+
+To-night there were a few men standing at the foot of the street where
+the steps are--river-workers who had property afloat and imprisoned by
+the ice, dwellers, perhaps, in those cheap houses beneath the bridge
+which are now gradually falling under the builder's hammer, who took a
+sleepless interest in the prospects of a flood.
+
+Martin went out onto the landing-stage, and looked about him as if he
+also had a stake in this, one of nature's great lotteries. There he
+had a fit of coughing, such as any man might have on such a night, and
+at the most deadly time of the year. He waited ten minutes, perhaps,
+coughing at intervals, and at length Kosmaroff came to him, not from
+the land, but across the moving floes from the direction of the
+bridge.
+
+"The water is running freely," he said, "through the middle arch. I
+have a boat out there on the ice. Come!"
+
+And he took the bread from Martin's arms, and led the way on to the
+river that he knew so well in all its varying moods. The boat was
+lying on the ice a few yards above the massive pier of the bridge,
+almost at the edge of the water, which could be heard gurgling and
+lapping as it flowed towards the sea with its burden of snow and ice.
+It was so dark that Martin, stumbling over the chaos of ice, fell
+against the boat before he saw it. It was one of the rough punts of a
+primeval simplicity of build used by the sand-workers of the Vistula.
+
+Kosmaroff gave his orders shortly and sharply. He was at home on the
+unstable surface, which was half water, half ice. He was commander
+now, and spoke without haste or hesitation.
+
+"Help me," he said, "to carry her to the edge, but do not stand
+upright. We can easily get away unseen, and you may be sure that no
+one will come out on the ice to look for us. We must be twenty miles
+away before dawn."
+
+The boat was a heavy one, and they stumbled and fell several times;
+for there was no foothold, and both were lightly made men. At last
+they reached the running water and cautiously launched into it.
+
+"We must lie down in the bottom of the boat," said Kosmaroff, "and
+take our chances of being crushed until we are past the citadel."
+
+As he spoke they shot under the bridge. Above them, to the left,
+towered the terrace of the castle, and the square face of that great
+building which has seen so many vicissitudes. Every window was alight.
+For the castle is used as a barracks now, and the soldiers, having
+been partially withdrawn from the streets, were going to bed. Soon
+these lights were left behind, and the outline of the citadel, half
+buried in trees, could be dimly seen. Then suddenly they left the city
+behind, and were borne on the breast of the river into the outer
+darkness beyond.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up.
+
+"Give me a piece of bread," he said. "I am famished."
+
+But he received no answer. Prince Martin was asleep.
+
+The sky was beginning to clear. The storm was over, but the flood had
+yet to come. The rain must have fallen in the Carpathians, and the
+Vistula came from those mountains. In twenty-four hours there would be
+not only ice to fear, but uprooted trees and sawn timber from the
+mills; here and there a mill-wheel torn from its bearings, now and
+then a dead horse; a door, perhaps, of a cottage, or part of a roof; a
+few boats; a hundred trophies of the triumph of nature over man, borne
+to the distant sea on muddy waters.
+
+Kosmaroff found the bread and tore a piece off. Then he made himself
+as comfortable as he could in the stern of the boat, using one oar as
+a rudder. But he could not see much. He could only keep the boat
+heading down stream and avoid the larger floes. Then--wet, tired out,
+conscious of failure, sick at heart--he fell asleep, too, in the hands
+of God.
+
+When he awoke he found Martin crouching beside him, wide awake. The
+prince had taken the oar and was steering. The clouds had all cleared
+away, and a full moon was high above them. The dawn was in the sky
+above the level land. They were passing through a plain now, broken
+here and there by pollarded trees, great spaces of marsh-land, with
+big, low-roofed farms standing back on the slightly rising ground. It
+was almost morning.
+
+Kosmaroff sat up, and immediately began to shiver. Martin was
+shivering too, and handed him the vodka-bottle with a laugh. His
+spirits were proof even against failure and a hopeless dawn and bitter
+cold.
+
+"Where are we?" he asked.
+
+Kosmaroff stood up and looked round. They were travelling at a great
+pace in the company of countless ice-floes, some white with snow,
+others gray and muddy.
+
+"I know where we are," he answered, after a pause. "We have passed
+Wyszogrod. We are nearing Plock. We have come a great distance. I wish
+my teeth wouldn't chatter."
+
+"I have secured mine with a piece of bread," mumbled Martin.
+
+Kosmaroff was looking uneasily at the sky.
+
+"We cannot travel during the day," he said, after a long examination
+of the little clouds hanging like lines across the eastern sky. "We
+shall not be able to cross the frontier at Thorn with this full moon,
+and I am afraid we are going to have fine weather. We shall soon come
+to some large islands on this side of Plock. I know a farmer there. We
+must wait with him until we have promise of a suitable night to pass
+through Thorn."
+
+Before daylight they reached the islands. There was no pack now; the
+ice was afloat and moving onward. All Kosmaroff's skill, all the
+little strength of both was required to work the boat through the
+floes towards the land. The farmer took them in willingly enough, and
+boasted that they could not have found a safer hiding-place in all
+Poland, which, indeed, seemed true enough. For none but expert and
+reckless boatmen would attempt to cross the river now.
+
+Nevertheless, Kosmaroff made the passage to the mainland before mid-
+day, and set off on foot to Plock. He was going to communicate with the
+prince at Warsaw, and ask him to provide money or means of escape to
+await them at Dantzic. In two days a reply came, telling them that
+their escape was being arranged, but they must await further
+instructions before quitting their hiding-place. After the lapse of
+four days these further orders came by the same sure channel, which
+was independent of the Russian post-offices.
+
+The fugitives were to proceed cautiously to Dantzic, to pass through
+that town at night to the anchorage below Neufahrwasser. Here they
+would find Captain Cable, in the /Minnie/, anchored in the stream
+ready for sea. The instructions were necessarily short. There were no
+explanations whatever. There was no news.
+
+At Plock, Kosmaroff could learn nothing, for nothing was known there.
+The story of the great plot had been hushed up by the authorities.
+There are persons living in Warsaw who do not know of it to this day.
+There are others who know of it and deny that it ever existed. The
+arms are in use in Central Asia at the present time, though their
+pattern is already considered antiquated. Any one who may choose to
+walk along the Czerniakowska will find to-day on the left-hand side of
+it a large building, once an iron-foundry, now deserted and falling
+into disrepair. If it be evening-time, he will, as likely as not, meet
+the patrol from the neighboring hussar barracks, which nightly guards
+this road and the river-side.
+
+After receiving their final instructions, Kosmaroff and Martin had to
+wait two days until the weather changed--until the moon, now well on
+the wane, did not rise before midnight.
+
+At last they set out, in full daylight, on a high river still
+encumbered by ice. It was much warmer during the day now; but the
+evenings were cold, and a thick mist usually arose from the marsh-
+lands. This soon enveloped them, and they swept on unseen. None could
+have followed them into the mist, for none had Kosmaroff's knowledge
+of the river.
+
+The frontier-line is some miles above the ancient city of Thorn. It is
+strictly guarded by day and night. The patrol-boats are afloat at
+every hour. Kosmaroff had arranged to arrive at this spot early in the
+night, before the mists had been dispelled by the coming of the moon.
+
+Even he could only guess at their position. Once they dared to
+approach the shore in order to discover some landmark. But they
+navigated chiefly by sound. The whistle of a distant train, the sound
+of church clocks, the street cries of a town--these were Kosmaroff's
+degrees of latitude.
+
+"We are getting near," he said, in little more than a whisper. "What
+is the time?"
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. If they got past the frontier they would
+sweep through Thorn before mid-night. The river narrows here, and goes
+at a great pace. It is still of a vast width--one of the largest
+rivers in Europe.
+
+The mist was very thick here.
+
+"Listen!" whispered Kosmaroff, suddenly. And they heard the low,
+regular thud of oars. It was the patrol-boat.
+
+Almost immediately a voice, startlingly near, called upon them to
+halt. They crouched low in the boat. In a mist it is very difficult to
+locate sound. They looked round in all directions. The voice seemed to
+have come from above. It was raised again, and seemed to be behind
+them this time.
+
+"Stop, or we fire!" it said, in Russian. Then followed a sharp
+whistle, which was answered by two or three others. There were at
+least three boats close at hand, seeking to locate each other before
+they fired.
+
+Immediately afterwards the firing began, and was taken up by the more
+distant boats. A bullet splashed in the water close behind Kosmaroff's
+oar, with a sharp spit like that of an angry cat. Martin gave a
+suppressed laugh. Kosmaroff only smiled.
+
+Then two bullets struck the boat simultaneously, one on the stern-
+post, fired from behind, the other full on the side amidships, where
+Martin lay concealed.
+
+Neither of the two men moved or made a sound. Kosmaroff leaned forward
+and peered into the fog. The patrol-boats were behind now, and the
+officers were calling to each other.
+
+"What was it--a boat or a floating tree?" they heard them ask each
+other.
+
+Kosmaroff was staring ahead, but he saw Martin make a quick movement
+in the bottom of the boat.
+
+"What is it?" he whispered.
+
+"A bullet," answered Martin. "It came through the side of the boat,
+low down. It struck me in the back--the spine. I cannot move my legs.
+But I have stopped the water from coming in. I have my finger in the
+hole the bullet made below the water-line. I can hold on till we have
+passed through Thorn."
+
+He spoke in his natural voice, quite cheerfully. They were not out of
+danger yet. Kosmaroff could not quit the steering-oar. He glanced at
+Martin, and then looked ahead again uneasily.
+
+Martin was the first to speak. He raised himself on his elbow, and
+with a jerk of the wrist threw something towards Kosmaroff. It was an
+envelope, closed and doubled over.
+
+"Put that in your pocket," he said. And Kosmaroff obeyed.
+
+"You know Miss Cahere, who was at the Europe?" asked Martin, suddenly,
+after a pause.
+
+Kosmaroff smiled the queer smile that twisted his face all to one
+side.
+
+"Yes, I know her."
+
+"Give her that, or get it to her," said Martin.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Yes," said Martin, answering the unasked question, "I am badly hit,
+unless you can do something for me after we are past Thorn."
+
+And his voice was still cheerful.
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+CAPTAIN CABLE SOILS HIS HANDS
+
+Cartoner was preparing to leave St. Petersburg when he received a
+letter from Deulin. The Frenchman wrote from Cracow, and mentioned in
+a rather rambling letter that Wanda was staying with a relative in
+that ancient city. He also thought it probable that she would make a
+stay in England pending the settlement of certain family affairs.
+
+"I suppose," wrote Deulin, "that you will soon be on your way home. I
+think it likely we shall both be sent to Madrid before long. At all
+events, I hope we may meet somewhere. If you are passing through
+Dantzic on your homeward journey, you will find your old friend Cable
+there."
+
+This last sentence was partly disfigured by a peculiar-shaped blot.
+The writer had evidently dropped his pen, all laden with ink, upon the
+letter as he wrote it. And Cartoner knew that this was the kernel, as
+it were, of this chatty epistle. He was bidden to make it convenient
+to go to Dantzic and to see Captain Cable there.
+
+He arrived in Dantzic early in the morning, and did not go to a hotel.
+He left his luggage at the station and walked down to the Lange
+Brucke, where the river steamers start for Neufahrwasser.
+
+The boats ran every hour, and Cartoner had not long to wait. He was
+not pressed for time, however, on his homeward journey, as he was more
+or less his own master while travelling, and could break his journey
+at Dantzic quite as easily as at Berlin.
+
+Neufahrwasser is slowly absorbing the commerce of Dantzic, and none
+but small vessels go up the river to the city now. Captain Cable was
+deeply versed in those by-paths of maritime knowledge which enable
+small vessels to hold their own in these days of monopoly.
+
+Cartoner knew that he would find the /Minnie/ not in dock, but in one
+of the river anchorages, which are not only cheaper, but are more
+convenient for a vessel wanting to go to sea at short notice. And
+Captain Cable had a habit of going to sea at short notice.
+
+Cartoner was not far wrong. For his own steamer passed the /Minnie/
+just above Neufahrwasser, where the river is broad and many vessels
+lie in mid-stream. The /Minnie/ was deeply laden and lay anchored bow
+and stern, with the rapid tide rustling round her chains. She was
+ready for sea. Cartoner could see that. But she flew no bluepeter nor
+heralded her departure, as some captains, and especially foreigners,
+love to do. It adds to their sense of importance, and this was a
+modern quality little cultivated by Captain Cable. Neither was his
+steam aggressively in evidence. The /Minnie/ did not catch the eye of
+the river-side idler, but conveyed the impression that she was a
+small, insignificant craft minding her own business, and would be much
+obliged if you would mind yours.
+
+Cartoner had to walk back by the river-side and then take a boat from
+the steps opposite to the anchorage. He bade the boatman wait while he
+clambered on board. Captain Cable had been informed of the approach of
+a shore boat, and was standing squarely on his own iron main-deck when
+Cartoner put his leg across the rail.
+
+"Come below," he said, without enthusiasm. "It wasn't you that I was
+expecting. I tell you that."
+
+Cartoner followed the captain into the little, low cabin, which
+smelled of petroleum, as usual. The /Minnie/ was a hospitable ship,
+according to her facilities, and her skipper began by polishing a
+tumbler with a corner of the table-cloth. Then he indicated the vacant
+swing-back bench at the far side of the table, and sat down opposite
+to Cartoner himself.
+
+"Was up the Baltic," he explained. "Pit props. Got a full cargo on
+board. Got an offer such as a poor sailorman couldn't afford to let
+slip to come to Dantzic and wait here till two gents came aboard.
+That's all I'm going to tell you."
+
+"That's all I want to know," answered Cartoner.
+
+"But, dammy, it's not all I want to know!" shouted Cable, suddenly,
+with a bang of his little, thick fist on the table. "I've been
+thinking since I lay here--been sleeping badly, and took the anchor
+watch meself--what I want to know is whether I'm to be treated
+gentlemanly!"
+
+"In what way?" inquired Cartoner, gently. And the sound of his voice
+seemed to pacify the captain.
+
+"Of course," he admitted, "I'm not a gentleman, I know that; but in
+seafaring things I'll be treated as such. Truth is, I'm afraid it's
+something to do with this news from St. Petersburg. And I don't take
+any bombmen on board my ship, and that's flat."
+
+"I think I can assure you on that point," said Cartoner. "Nobody who
+had to do with the assassination of the Czar is likely to be in
+Dantzic. But I do not know whom you are to take on board here."
+
+"May be as you can guess," suggested the captain.
+
+"Yes, I think I can guess," admitted Cartoner, with his slow smile.
+
+"But you won't tell me?"
+
+"No. When do you expect them?"
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another," said Captain Cable, getting a
+yellow decanter from a locker beneath the table. "That's port--ship-
+chandler's port. I won't say it's got a bokay, mind."
+
+For Captain Cable's hospitality was not showy or self-sufficient.
+
+"I'll answer that and ask you another. I expected them last night.
+They'll likely come down with the tide, soon after midnight to-night.
+And now I'll ask you, what brought you aboard this ship, here in
+Dantzic River, Mr. Cartoner?"
+
+"A letter from a Frenchman you know as well as I do--Paul Deulin. Like
+to read it?"
+
+And Cartoner laid the letter before Captain Cable, who smiled
+contemptuously. He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than
+even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," he answered. He scratched his head reflectively, and
+looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the ship-
+chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort.
+
+"Got your luggage in the boat alongside?" he asked, at length.
+
+"No. It's at the station."
+
+"Then let me send a hand ashore for it. Got three Germans furard.
+You'll come aboard and see this thing through, I hope."
+
+"Thank you," answered Cartoner. He handed Captain Cable the ticket for
+his luggage.
+
+"Mate's receipt?" inquired the captain.
+
+And Cartoner nodded. The captain pushed the decanter towards his guest
+as he rose to go and give the necessary orders.
+
+"No stint of the wine," he said, and went out on deck.
+
+When he came back he laid the whole question aside, and devoted
+himself to the entertainment of his guest. They both slept in the
+afternoon. For the captain had been up all night, and fully expected
+to see no bed the following night.
+
+"If they come down with the tide we'll go to sea on the same ebb," he
+said, as he lay down on his state-room locker and composed himself to
+sleep.
+
+He sent the hands below at ten o'clock, saying he would keep the
+anchor watch himself. He wanted no forecastle gossip, he said to
+Cartoner, and did not trouble to explain that he had kept the watch
+three nights in succession on that account. Cartoner and he walked the
+deck side by side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under
+deck. For the same reason, perhaps, they were silent.
+
+Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper.
+
+"Hope he is pleased with himself," he said, as he stood at the stern
+rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow. "For it is his
+doing, you and me waiting his orders here this cold night. They're
+tricky--the French. He's a tricky man."
+
+"Yes," admitted Cartoner, who knew that the captain spoke of Deulin,
+"he is a tricky man."
+
+After this they walked backward and forward for an hour without
+speaking. Then Captain Cable suddenly raised his hand and pointed into
+the night.
+
+"There's a boat yonder," he said, "coming down quiet, under the lee of
+the land."
+
+They stood listening, and presently heard the sound of oars used with
+great caution. A boat was crossing the river now and coming towards
+them. Captain Cable went forward and took a coil of rope. He clambered
+laboriously to the rail and stood there, watching the shadowy shape of
+the boat, which was now within hail. It was swinging round on the tide
+with perfect calculation and a most excellent skill.
+
+"Stand by," said Captain Cable, gruffly, and the coils of his rope
+uncurled against the sky, to fall in a straight line across the boat.
+
+Cartoner could see a man catch the rope neatly and make it fast with
+two turns. In a moment the boat came softly nestling against the
+steamer as a kitten may nestle against its mother.
+
+The man, who seemed to be the sole occupant, stood up, resting his
+hand on the rail of the /Minnie/. His head came up over the rail, and
+he peered into Cartoner's face.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," answered Cartoner, watching his hands, for there was a sort of
+exultation in Kosmaroff's voice, as if fate had offered him a chance
+which he never expected.
+
+Cable came aft and stood beside Cartoner.
+
+"I want to go to sea this tide," he said. "Where is the other man?"
+
+"The other man is Prince Martin Bukaty," was the answer. "Help me to
+lift him on board."
+
+"Why can't he come on board himself?"
+
+"Because he is dead," answered Kosmaroff, with a break in his voice.
+And he lurched forward against the rail. Cartoner caught him by one
+arm and held him up.
+
+"I am so weak!" he murmured, "so weak! I am famished!"
+
+Cartoner lifted him bodily over the rail, and Cable received him, half
+fainting, in his arms. The next moment Cartoner was kneeling in the
+boat that rode alongside. He slowly raised Martin, and with an effort
+held him towards the captain, who was sitting astride on the rail.
+Thus they got him on board and carried him to the cabin. They passed
+through it to that which was grandly called the captain's state-room.
+They laid him on the locker which served for a bed, while Kosmaroff,
+supporting himself against the bulkhead, watched them in silence.
+
+The captain glanced at Martin, and then, catching sight of Kosmaroff's
+face, he hurried to the cabin, to return in a minute with the
+inevitable decanter, yellow with age and rust.
+
+"Here," he said, "drink that. Eat a bit o' biscuit. You're done."
+
+Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of
+starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a
+hundred unasked questions in them.
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Cartoner, at length.
+
+"They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not
+me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the
+night before last. He died before the morning."
+
+"Tut! tut!" muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of
+pity. "There was the makings of a man in him," he said--"the makings
+of a man!"
+
+And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common
+as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for
+a moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the
+lid of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
+
+"I'll take him out to sea and bury him there," said Cable, at length,
+"if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried
+at sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth."
+
+"That is the only thing to be done," said Cartoner.
+
+Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that will do. He will lay quiet enough there."
+
+And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath
+the sea with this last of the Bukatys.
+
+Captain Cable was the first to move. He turned and glanced at the
+clock.
+
+"I'll turn the hands out," he said, "and we'll get to sea on the ebb.
+But I'll have to send ashore for a pilot."
+
+"No," answered Kosmaroff, rising and finishing his wine, "you need not
+do that. I can take you out to sea."
+
+The captain nodded curtly and went on deck, leaving Kosmaroff and
+Cartoner alone in the cabin in the silent presence of the man who had
+been the friend of both.
+
+"Will you answer me a question?" asked Kosmaroff, suddenly.
+
+"If I can," was the reply, economical of words.
+
+"Where were you on the 13th of March?"
+
+Cartoner reflected for a moment, and then replied:
+
+"In St. Petersburg."
+
+"Then I do not understand you," said Kosmaroff. "I don't understand
+how we failed. For you know we have failed, I suppose?"
+
+"I know nothing," answered Cartoner. "But I conclude you have failed,
+since you are here--and he is there."
+
+And he pointed towards Martin.
+
+"Thanks to you."
+
+"No, I had nothing to do with it," said Cartoner.
+
+"You cannot expect me to believe that."
+
+"I do not care," replied the English diplomat, gently, "whether you
+believe it or not."
+
+Kosmaroff moved towards the door. He carefully avoided passing near
+Cartoner, as if too close a proximity might make him forget himself.
+
+"I will tell you one thing," he said, in a hard, low voice. "It will
+not do for you to show your face in Poland. Don't ever forget that I
+will take any chance I get to kill you! There is not room for you and
+me in Poland!"
+
+"If I am sent there I shall go," replied Cartoner. And there crept to
+one side of Kosmaroff's face that slow smile which seemed to give him
+pain.
+
+"I believe you will."
+
+Then he went to the door. For Captain Cable could be heard on deck
+giving his orders, and already the winches were at work. But the Pole
+paused on the threshold and looked back. Then he came into the cabin
+again with his hand in the pocket of his threadbare workman's jacket.
+
+"Look here," he said, bringing out a folded envelope and laying it on
+the cabin-table between them. "A dead man's wish. Get that to Miss
+Cahere. There is no message."
+
+Cartoner took up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
+
+"I shall not see her, but I will see that she gets it," he said.
+
+The dawn was in the sky before the /Minnie/ swept out past the pier-
+head light of Neufahrwasser. It was almost daylight when she slowed
+down in the bay to drop her pilot. Kosmaroff's boat was towing astern,
+jumping and straining in the wash of the screw. They hauled it up
+under the quarter, and in the dim light of coming day Cable and
+Cartoner drew near to the Pole, who had just quitted the wheel.
+
+The three men stood together for a moment in silence. There was much
+to be said. There was a multitude of questions to be asked and
+answered. But none of the three had the intention of doing either one
+or the other.
+
+"If you want a passage home," said Cable, gruffly, "cut your boat
+adrift. You're welcome."
+
+"Thank you," was the answer. "I am going back to Poland to try again."
+
+He turned to Cartoner, and peered in the half-light into the face of
+the only man he had had dealings with who had not been afraid of him.
+"Perhaps we shall meet again soon," he said, "in Poland."
+
+"Not yet," replied Cartoner. "I am under orders for Madrid."
+
+Kosmaroff stood by the rail for a moment, looking down into his boat.
+Then he turned suddenly to Cartoner, and made him a short, formal bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.
+
+Cartoner nodded, and said nothing.
+
+Kosmaroff then turned towards Cable, who was standing with his hands
+thrust into his jacket-pockets, looking ahead towards the open sea.
+
+"Captain," he said, and held out his hand so that Cable could not help
+seeing it. The captain hesitated, and at length withdrew his hand from
+the shelter of his pocket.
+
+"Good-bye, mister," he said.
+
+Then Kosmaroff climbed down into his boat. They cut the rope adrift,
+and he sat down to the oars.
+
+There was a lurid streak of dawn low down in the sky, and Kosmaroff
+headed his boat towards it across the chill, green waters. Above the
+promise of a stormy day towered a great bank of torn clouds hanging
+over Poland.
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+Paul Deulin happened to be in Lady Orlay's drawing-room, nearly a
+month later, when Miss Cahere's name was announced. He made a grimace
+and stood his ground.
+
+Lady Orlay, it may be remembered, was one of those who attempt to keep
+their acquaintances in the right place--that is to say, in the
+background of her life. With this object in view, she had an "at home"
+day, hoping that her acquaintances would come to see her then and not
+stay too long. To-day was not that day.
+
+"I know I ought not to have come this afternoon," explained Netty,
+with a rather shy haste, as she shook hands. "But I could not wait
+until next Tuesday, because we sail that day."
+
+"Then you are going home again?"
+
+Netty turned to greet Deulin, and changed color very prettily.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking from one to the other with the soft blush
+still in her cheeks--"yes, and I am engaged to be married."
+
+"Ah!" said Deulin. And his voice meant a great deal, while his eyes
+said nothing.
+
+"Do we know the--gentleman?" asked Lady Orlay kindly. She was noting,
+with her quick and clever eyes, that Netty seemed happy and was
+exquisitely dressed. She was quite ready to be really interested in
+this idyl.
+
+"I do not know," answered Netty. "He is not unknown in London. His
+name is Burris."
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Orlay, "the comp--" Then she remembered that to call a
+fellow-creature a company promoter is practically a libel. "The
+millionaire?" she concluded, rather lamely.
+
+"I believe he is very rich," admitted Netty, "though, of course--"
+
+"No, of course not," Lady Orlay hastened to say. "I congratulate you,
+and wish you every happiness."
+
+She turned rather abruptly towards Deulin, as if to give the next word
+to him. He took it promptly.
+
+"And I," he said, with his old-world bow and deprecatory outspreading
+of the hands--"I wish you all the happiness--that money can buy."
+
+Then he walked towards the fireplace, and stood there with his
+shoulder turned towards them while the two ladies discussed that which
+was to be Netty's future life. Her husband would be old enough to be
+her father, but he was a millionaire twice over--in London and New
+York. He had, moreover, a house in each of those great cities, of
+which details appeared from time to time in the illustrated monthly
+magazines.
+
+"So I shall hope to be in London every year," said Netty, "and to see
+all the friends who have been so kind to us--you and Lord Orlay and
+Mr. Deulin."
+
+"And Reginald Cartoner," suggested Deulin, turning to look over his
+shoulder for the change which he knew would come into Netty's eyes.
+And it came.
+
+"Yes," she said. She looked as if she would like to ask a question,
+but did not give way to the temptation. She did not know that Cartoner
+was in the house at that moment, and Wanda, too. She did not know that
+Deulin had brought Wanda to London to stay at Lady Orlay's until
+Martin effected his escape and joined his sister in England. She only
+knew what the world now knew--that Price Martin Bukaty had died and
+been buried at sea. It was very sad, she had said, he was so nice.
+
+Deulin did not join in the conversation again. He seemed to be
+interested in the fire, and Lady Orlay glanced at him once or twice,
+seeking to recall him to a sense of his social obligations. He had
+taken an envelope from his pocket, and, having torn it in two, had
+thrown it on the fire, where it was smouldering now on the coals. It
+was a soiled and worn envelope, as if it had passed through
+vicissitudes; there seemed to be something inside it which burned and
+gave forth an aromatic odor.
+
+He was still watching the fire when Netty rose and took her leave.
+When the door closed again Lady Orlay went towards the fire.
+
+"What is that in which you are so deeply interested that you quite
+forgot to be polite?" she said to Deulin. "Is it a letter?"
+
+"It is a love-token," answered the Frenchman.
+
+"For Netty Cahere?"
+
+"No. For the woman that some poor fool supposed her to be."
+
+Lady Orlay touched the envelope with the toe of a slipper which was
+still neat and small, so that it fell into the glowing centre of the
+fire and was there consumed.
+
+"Perhaps you have assumed a great responsibility," she said.
+
+"I have, and I shall carry it lightly to heaven if I get there."
+
+"It has a smell of violets," said Lady Orlay, looking down into the
+fire.
+
+"They are violets--from Warsaw," admitted Deulin. "Wanda is in?" he
+asked, gravely.
+
+"Yes; they are in the study. I will send for her."
+
+"I have received a letter from her father," said Deulin, with his hand
+on the bell.
+
+Wanda came into the room a few minutes later. She was, of course, in
+mourning for Martin now, as well as for Poland. But she still carried
+her head high and faced the world with unshrinking eyes. Cartoner
+followed her into the room, his thoughtful glance reading Deulin's
+face.
+
+"You have news?"
+
+"I have heard from your father at last."
+
+The Frenchman took the letter from his pocket, and his manner of
+unfolding it must have conveyed the intimation that he was not going
+to give it to Wanda, but intended to read it aloud, for Lady Orlay
+walked to the other end of the long room, out of hearing. Cartoner was
+about to follow her, when Wanda turned and glanced at him, and he
+stayed.
+
+"The letter begins," said Deulin, unconsciously falling into a
+professional preliminary--
+
+
+ "'I have received Cartoner's letter supplementing the account given
+  by the man who was with Martin at the last. I remember Captain
+  Cable quite well. When we met him at the Signal House, at
+  Northfleet, I little thought that he would be called upon to
+  render the last earthly service to my son. So it was he who read
+  the last words. And Martin was buried in the Baltic. You, my old
+  friend, know all that I have given to Poland. The last gift has
+  been the hardest to part with. Some day I hope to write to
+  Cartoner, but not now. He is not a man to attach much importance
+  to words. He is, I think, a man to understand silence. At present
+  I cannot write, as I am virtually a prisoner in my own house. From
+  a high quarter I have received a gracious intimation that my
+  affairs are under the special attention of a beneficent monarch,
+  and that I am so far to be mercifully forgiven that a sentence of
+  perpetual confinement within the barriers of Warsaw will be deemed
+  sufficient punishment for--not having been found out. But my worst
+  enemies are my own party. Nothing can now convince them that
+  Martin and I did not betray the plot. Moreover, Cartoner's name is
+  freely coupled with ours. So they believe. So it will go down to
+  history, and nothing that we can say will make any difference.
+  That I find myself in company with Cartoner in this error only
+  strengthens the feeling of friendship, of which I was conscious
+  when we first met. Beg him, for his own sake, never to cross this
+  frontier again. Ask him, for mine, to avoid making any sign of
+  friendship towards me or mine.'"
+
+
+As fate ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and
+Deulin, for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a
+crucial moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and
+had to pause for an instant before he could proceed.
+
+"Then follow," he said, rather uneasily, "certain passages to myself
+which I need not read. Further on he proceeds: 'I am in good health.
+Better, indeed, than when I last saw you. I am, in fact, a very tough
+old man, and may live to give much trouble yet.'"
+
+Deulin broke off, and laughed heartily at this conceit. But he laughed
+alone.
+
+"So, you see, he seems very cheerful," he said, as if it was the
+letter that had laughed. He folded the paper and replaced it in his
+pocket. "He seems to be getting on very well without you, you
+perceive," he added, smiling at Wanda. But he lacked conviction. There
+was in his voice and manner a dim suggestion of the losing game,
+consciously played.
+
+"May I read the letter for myself?" asked Wanda, holding out her slim,
+steady hand.
+
+After a moment's hesitation, Deulin took the folded paper from his
+pocket and handed it to her. Lady Orlay had returned to the group
+standing near the fire. He turned and met her eyes, making an
+imperceptible movement of his eyebrows, as of one who had made an
+attempt and failed. They waited in silence while Wanda read the
+letter, and at length she handed it back to him.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I read it differently. It is not only the world
+which appears differently to two different people, even a letter may
+have two meanings to two readers. You shed a sort of gayety upon
+that----"
+
+She indicated the letter which he still held in his hand, and Deulin
+deprecated the suggestion by a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"--which is not really there. To me it is the letter of a broken-
+hearted man," she added slowly. There was an odd pause, during which
+Wanda seemed to reflect. She was at the parting of the ways. Even
+Deulin had nothing to say. He could not point out the path. Perhaps
+Cartoner had already done so by his own life, without any words at
+all.
+
+"I shall go to Warsaw to-night," she said at last to Lady Orlay, "if
+you will not think me wanting in manners. Believe me, I do not lack
+gratitude. But--you understand?"
+
+"Yes, dear, I understand," replied the woman who had known happiness.
+And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might
+falter.
+
+"It is so clearly my duty, and duty is best, is it not?" said Wanda.
+As she spoke she turned to Cartoner. The question was asked of none
+other. It was unto his judgment that she gave her case; to his wisdom
+she submitted the verdict of her life. She wished him to give it
+before these people. As if she took a subtle pride in showing them
+that he was what she knew him to be. She was sure of her lover; which
+is, perhaps, happiness enough for this world.
+
+"Duty is best, is it not?" she repeated.
+
+"It is the only thing," he answered.
+
+Deulin was the first to speak. He had strong views upon last words and
+partings. The mere thought of such things made him suddenly energetic
+and active. He turned to Wanda with his watch in his hand.
+
+"Your mind is made up?" he asked. "You go to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I must go at once to see to your passport and make arrangements
+for the journey. I take you as far as Alexandrowo. I cannot take you
+across the frontier, you understand?"
+
+He turned to Cartoner.
+
+"And you? When do you go to Spain?"
+
+"To-night," was the answer.
+
+"Then good-bye." The Frenchman held out his hand, and in a moment was
+at the door. Lady Orlay followed him out of the room and closed the
+door behind her. She followed him down-stairs. In the hall they stood
+and looked at each other in silence. There were tears in the woman's
+eyes. But Deulin's smile was sadder.
+
+"And this is the end," he said--"the end!"
+
+"No," said Lady Orlay; "it is not. It cannot be. I have never known a
+great happiness yet that was not built upon the wreckage of other
+happinesses. That is why happy people are never gay. It is not the
+end, Paul. Heaven is kind."
+
+"Sometimes," answered Deulin, grudgingly. On the door-step he paused,
+and, facing her suddenly, he made a gesture indicating himself,
+commanding her attention to his long life and story. "Sometimes,
+milady."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman
+
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