be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their
appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud
man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no
other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark
man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something
magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward
things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at
its possessor as if measuring himself against him.
“Take a chair, captain,” said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be
standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece,
which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He was
clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and
he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide
that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim
strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a
fighting race.
The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which
to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his “suit.”
“Do you speak German, captain?” inquired Kosmaroff.
And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.
“Sailed with a crew of Germans,” he answered; “I understand a bit, and I
know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy words
like that.”
“Then,” said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, “we had better
continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain
dealing.”
He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable
stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.
“We have not much to say to Captain Cable,” replied the man who seemed
to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor
voice, and was what the French call _chetif_ in appearance--a weak man,
fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.
“It is essential in the first place,” he continued, “that we should
understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered.”
With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the
smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he
looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.
“We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself
quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer
entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he
understands very little of what we are saying.”
Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a
figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one
who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.
“Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible,”
continued the speaker. “Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and
verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable
to be affected by circumstances--and should be repeated several times in
the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a
period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again.”
There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.
“Yes,” said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.
“And is only awaiting her opportunity.”
“Yes.”
One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body,
which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a
penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker
took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed
his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been
justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps
he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two
nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history
is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet
man had made a little in his day.
“An opportunity is not an easy thing to define,” he said at length.
“Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's
opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One
would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about
just yet.”
He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the
worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.
“We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on
the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is
useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print--and
ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little
journalism--in England they have too much.”
Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.
“Another opportunity would be a social upheaval,” said the Russian,
drumming on the table with his slim fingers. “The time has not come for
that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and that we
can offer to you.”
Kosmaroff moved impatiently.
“Is that all?” he exclaimed. “I have heard that talk for the last ten
years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?”
The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and
waited till he had finished speaking.
“Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more
than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all
succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different
world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want
five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that
amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have
her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now.”
He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that
suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was
about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience,
paused, he knew not why.
“Think,” said the other, in his smooth, even voice--“one month from now,
after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very
different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to
nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish
party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own
affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and
we seek the approval of no man.”
There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch
for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the
judgment of any.
“Five thousand roubles,” he concluded. “And in exchange I give you the
date--so that Poland may be ready.”
“Thank you,” said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly
as he had lost it. “I decline--for myself and for the whole of Poland.
We play a cleaner game than that.”
He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.
“If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights--if
I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you
do not give--I should take you by the throat and throw you out into
the street for daring to make such a proposal to me,” he said, in a low
voice.
“To a deserter from a Cossack regiment,” suggested the other.
“To me,” repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing
at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were
again for a moment laid upon their tongues.
“Captain Cable,” said Kosmaroff, “you and I have met before, and I
learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for
you, and these men no company for you. I am going--will you come?”
“I'm agreeable,” said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.
When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up
into his face with bright and searching eyes.
“Who's that man?” he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.
“I do not know his name,” replied Kosmaroff.
They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door
behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at
the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger
and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.
“That is who he is,” he said.
Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.
“I've heard of him,” he said. “And I heard his voice--sort of
soft-spoken--on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I
refused the job and came out with you.”
XXV
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the
activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner
awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something
stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look
for the unexpected.
It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain
Cable chartered the _Minnie_ in the coasting trade, and after Christmas
he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards
Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened
with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a
sudden and untoward end.
Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the
cold and wet weather. “If the winter would only set in,” he said, “and
dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks
almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would
perhaps be more endurable.”
Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and
Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the
Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never
reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they
were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and
less comes out.
There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who
likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half
relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.
“History is assuredly at a stand-still,” said an old traveller one
evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. “The world must
be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your
head off.”
“I am waiting,” replied Cartoner.
“What for?”
“I do not know,” he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.
Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader,
and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries
in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a
deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It
came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little
sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor
household without surprise or comment.
Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment,
which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the
social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until
at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates,
while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.
“We've always dealt square by each other, you and I,” said the captain,
when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor,
and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.
“If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the
wall and shot me, sure as fate,” he said, bringing his hand down on
his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. “That was ten years ago last
November, when the _Minnie_ had been out of the builder's yard a matter
of six months.”
“Yes,” said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind.
It seemed that the building of the _Minnie_ was not the epoch upon which
he reckoned his periods.
“She's in Morrison's dry-dock now,” said the captain, who in a certain
way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of
by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. “You should go down and
see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in
the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely.”
Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry
out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the _Minnie's_ new
boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan
was never carried out after all.
“Yes,” he said, “you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have
never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I
believe, that time--you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer
Deulin--that time, over yonder.”
And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one
who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know
which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their
left hand from their right; and others, again, who say--or shout--that
all men are created equal.
“I've been done, Mr. Cartoner--that is what I've come to tell you. Me
that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done,
hoodwinked, tricked--same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you
a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad
turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has
always kept my hands----”
He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.
“You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner--you that has known me ten years
and more.”
“Yes, I'll say that for you,” answered Cartoner, with a laugh.
“They did me!” cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand
down on the table, “with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the
post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said
he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government
stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government
official. It was----”
Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked
up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.
“Bombs!” he concluded--“bombs!”
Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be
set down here.
“You know me and you know the _Minnie_, Mr. Cartoner!” continued the
angry sailor. “She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery,
and--well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a
man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war
material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me
out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean
stuff up to now--plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the
other. Always honest--revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But
bombs----”
And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no
place on a polite page.
“There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,” he
concluded. “That is what I have got to tell you.”
“How do you know?” asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the
other.
“Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?”
Cartoner nodded.
“Know the Seemannshaus there?”
“Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the
docks.”
“That's the place,” said Captain Cable. “Well, one night I was up there,
on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all
day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking
up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times
go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons.
You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way.
A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a
voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and
we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect,
with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning.
He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was
goin'--well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth.
Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down
at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the
bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as
I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding
agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke
German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't
rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft
voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have
known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a
match?”
For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he
always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for what
he wanted.
“Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of
an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside
of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want
it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man
said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed.
We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases
broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it.
Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in
wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides,
no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the
moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a
new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when
I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the
stuff away.”
Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story,
after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what
had brought these past events back to his recollection.
“I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge,” said Captain Cable,
“because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted
square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing,
though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit
of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe
and smoke it.”
And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a
conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.
“'Safternoon,” he continued, “I went to see some people about a little
job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not
forget to come down and see her?”
“I should like to see her,” said Cartoner. “Go on with your story.”
“Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to
offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of
politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't
been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that
got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.
And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark
night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting
quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken
the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten,
and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still
going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with
a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that
that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the
man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way
of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a
Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had
been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that
man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and
makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a
hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says.”
Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the
soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and
after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes
for eternity were exceedingly small.
“You are too much for me,” he said, after a pause. “You that deal in
politics and the like.”
“And the other man's name is Kosmaroff,” said Cartoner.
“That's it--a Russian,” answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He
carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of
a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
outward signs of man and nature.
“It beats me,” he said. “But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that
you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together
already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It
makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_
hatches.”
“It makes me uneasy, too,” said Cartoner. “Wait a minute till I put on
another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together.”
He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.
“Going to a swarree?” asked Cable, as between men of the world.
“I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
shall find him, as you say, at a soiree,” answered Cartoner, gravely.
Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
having dashed up from the club stand.
“By-the-way,” he said, “I shall not be able to come down and see the
_Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow
morning.”
“Going foreign?” asked the captain.
“Yes, I am going abroad again,” answered Cartoner, and there was a
sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of
action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit
still.
XXVI
IN THE SPRING
The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither
so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one,
and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady
would select to pass the cold months in.
“I have my orders,” said Mangles, rather grimly, “and I must stay here
till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
Nice if you like.”
And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason
or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.
“The place is dull for you,” said Mangles, “now that Cartoner seems to
have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven
any circle.”
And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did
not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.
“You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the
Atlantic,” she said. “I always found you with your heads close together
whenever I came on deck.”
“Don't think we sparkled much,” said Joseph, with his under lip well
forward.
“It is very kind of Uncle Joseph,” said Netty, afterwards, to Miss
Mangles, “to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would
be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could
we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should
not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here.”
Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant
of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a
particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested
that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came
forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for
others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.