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.