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