with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had
observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important
business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to
be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed
that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have
thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no
use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
“I dare say you are right,” he said. “And, at all events, you will see
the last of this sad city.”
Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial
matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of
superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here
and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at
this period in European history.
“I smell,” he said, “something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in
the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret
which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets.”
He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
“Because,” he added, with a sudden gravity, “there is nothing in life
worth making a secret of--except one's income. There are many reasons
why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should
happen--anything--anywhere--we keep each other advised. Is it not so?”
“Usual cipher,” answered Cartoner.
“My salutations to Lady Orlay,” said Deulin, with a reflective nod.
“That woman who can keep a secret.”
“I thought you had none.”
“She knows the secret--of my income,” answered the Frenchman. “Tell
her--no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you
leave?”
“To-night.”
“And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well,
do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have
we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired
rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael,
and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away.”
He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing
but the hired furniture.
“The police will be in here five minutes after you are out,” he said,
curtly. “You have no message--” He paused to pick up from the floor a
petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and
looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: “No
message to any one in Warsaw?”
“No,” answered Cartoner.
“No--you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are
hard, Cartoner--hard as nails.”
Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his
possessions--already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that
he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men
worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality
may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in
English public schools.
Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
“Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye.”
And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
“The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave
others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand
together.”
And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was
gone.
XXIII
COEUR VOLANT
In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central
European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain.
It had come at last.
In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices.
He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing
that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as
she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with
a sort of shock.
“You were dreaming,” she said.
“Heaven forbid!” he answered, fervently. “Dreams and white hairs--No, I
was listening to the rain.”
He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
daring her to doubt him.
“I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone.”
He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
slow persistency.
“Can you not shut that door?” he said. “Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in
a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw.”
Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched
him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she
knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden
anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow
of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew
that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was
in reality about his business.
“There,” he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. “That is
more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not
see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?”
“I do not know if it will amuse you,” answered Wanda, in her energetic
way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, “but Mr.
Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening.”
Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed
to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the
same.
“Separately they are amusing enough,” he said, slowly, “but they do not
mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles.”
“So has my father,” put in Wanda, rather significantly.
“Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young
country events move by jerks--that the man who is nobody to-day may be
somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda.”
“Yes.”
“And you are above that sort of thing.”
“I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of
Poland,” she answered, gravely. “They give everything. I have not much
to give, you see.”
“I suppose you have what every woman has--to sacrifice upon some altar
or another--your happiness!”
Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at
him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of
that, at least, she was sure.
“Happiness, or a hope of happiness,” he went on, reflectively. “Perhaps
one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If
you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always
remembered by women, and very seldom by men.”
“Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events.”
“What is common enough?” he asked, absent-mindedly.
“Hope.”
“Hope! connais pas!” he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. “You must ask
some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is
why I am so gay.”
And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.
“The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all,” he went on, as if seeking
to explain his own humor. “Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to
existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a
fire to sit by. That is why I am here.”
And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he
had something to tell her--that he had come for no other purpose. And,
that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that it
was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care showed
her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his
character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed
middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness
of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart
was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the
world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long
and grim a family history as the world has known.
“Do you not feel lonely in this great room?” he asked, looking round at
the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits
that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.
“No, I think not,” answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the
room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed
down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the
first time.
Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts,
usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a
feminine way of skirting a subject--of walking round, as it were, and
contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best
approach to it.
“The worst of Warsaw,” he said, “is its dulness. The theatres are
deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course,
none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must
amuse one's self.”
He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse
himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.
“It was sordid,” he continued. “One wondered how the performers could be
content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such
an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who
interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile--like cracking
nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was
so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he
must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It
was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when
they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was
usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He
had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the
others who received the applause--the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted,
and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled condescendingly. But
the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing at all, and quite
forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression of his patient
face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one was looking
at him--which was only the truth. Then, when the applause was over, he
turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired--his day's
work done. And, I don't know why, I thought--of Cartoner.”
She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would
have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.
“Yes,” said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own
thoughts, “the world would get on very well without its talkers.
No great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in
history?”
Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had
to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and
Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his
monologue.
“I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am
alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw.”
Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had
any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in
Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to
know the meaning of that.
“Gone!” she said. “I am very glad.”
“Yes,” answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. “It is
a good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at
half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which
you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution,
is Cartoner's repose of manner--for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am
not a devout man.”
“Then you have done what I asked you to do,” said Wanda, “some time ago,
and I am very grateful.”
“Some time ago? It was only yesterday.”
“Was it? It seems more than that,” said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his
head slowly.
“I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans
quite suddenly,” he explained. “So he packed up and went. He had not
much to pack. We travel light--he and I. We have no despatch-boxes
or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember
and forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets
anything.”
“And you?” asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.
“I? Oh! I do my best,” he said, lightly. “But if you desire to forget
anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later
life.”
He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering
and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that
he was short-sighted.
“I do not think I will wait for the Mangles,” he said. “Especially
Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way--” He paused,
and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. “You never talk politics,
I know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of
politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted
Warsaw--you understand?”
“I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of
discretion,” said Wanda.
“Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found
us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her
Netty--well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion.”
“And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. “Have I concealed
my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the
concealment.”
“Perhaps you have overdone the contempt,” suggested Wanda. “She is
probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the
test.”
“You see,” said Deulin, in an explanatory way, “Cartoner may have had
reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are
the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people
in the passport-office--and the others, whose business it is to watch us
all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought
it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So
I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by
Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw.
Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so
he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he
ignored the little social trammels which the majority of mankind know
much better than they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He
was too discreet to call and say good-bye--knowing the ways of servants
in this country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by
post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office.”
He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and
pleasant laugh.
“You are wondering,” he said, “why I am taking this unusual course. It
is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his
back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with,
Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also,
I may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone
to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget
them.”
“At all events,” said Wanda, shaking hands, “you are cautious. You make
no promises.”
“And therefore we break none,” he answered, as he crossed the threshold.
He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by
Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous
and rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles,
standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting
was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as
if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.
“Princess,” he said, “my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to
take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon
to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked
two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to
show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--that
she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache.”
And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still
attempt to oppose the progress of women.
XXIV
IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the
sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs
about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of
foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing
more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion
that they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of
one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.
There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen
tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not
even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump,
on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the
south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to
knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in
his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
served in one army or another, would probably be useful.
There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles
de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is
also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite
a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by
a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.
There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business,
had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective
brush, which had last been used for red.
On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the
dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post
is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian
character three words, which, being translated, read: “The Brothers of
Liberty.” As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the
Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment
would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one
so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither
would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to
suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday
afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain
that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.
“That's their lingo,” said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable
emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the
numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the
furrier's shop.
He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby
imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages
from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece
of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse
with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and
original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
“That's their lingo, right enough,” said the captain, examining the tin
tablet a second time. “That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman.”
He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was,
nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building
critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his
high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of
disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he
had put on what he called his “suit”; a coat and trousers of solid
pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all
times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly
live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the
state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape,
such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.
Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward
signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on
the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron,
who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
“Name of Cable,” said the captain, turning to expectorate on the
pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find
themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards
with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
“Name of Cable,” repeated the captain. “Dirty!” he added, just by way of
inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without
which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood
aside.
“Heave ahead!” he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English
he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his
bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And
he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was
a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where
discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a
sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were
turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was
familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the
Vistula as Kosmaroff.