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.