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.