other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's
wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able
to perceive. The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other
side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of
movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others
who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly
bright.
They waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even
then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the
glow of the wood-fire. Then Deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made,
with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
“Do you know?” said the prince, grimly.
“I knew at eight o'clock this morning. Cartoner advised me of it by a
cipher telegram.”
“Cartoner?” said the prince, interrogatively.
“Cartoner is in Petersburg. He went there presumably to attend
this--pleasing denouement.”
The prince gave a short laugh.
“How well,” he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside
reflectively--“how well that man knows his business. But why did he
telegraph to you?”
“We sometimes do each other a good turn,” explained Deulin, rather
curtly. “It must have happened yesterday afternoon. One can only hope
that--it was soon over.”
The prince laughed, and looked across at the Frenchman with a glitter
beneath his shaggy brows.
“My friend,” he said, “you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on
this occasion. Do not let us attempt to be anything but what God made
us--plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number
of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. The man
was a thief. He was a great man and in a great position, which only made
him the greater thief.”
The prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the
fire.
“He is dead,” he went on, after a pause, “and there is an end to it. I
do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. I only want him to be
dead; and he is dead. Voila! It is a matter of rejoicing.”
“You are a ruffian; I always said you were a ruffian,” said Deulin,
gravely.
“I am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. An object, moreover,
which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human
happiness more or less. You see, I do not even ask you to agree with me
or to approve of me.”
“My friend, in the course of a long life I have learned only one
effective lesson--to judge no man,” put in Deulin.
“Remember,” continued the prince, “I deplore the method. I understand it
was a bomb. I take no part in such proceedings. They are bad policy.
You will see--we shall both see, if we live long enough--that this is a
mistake. It will alienate all sympathies from the party. They have not
even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. They have
approached others of the Polish party and have been sent about their
business. But--well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of every
mishap to one's enemy.”
Deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
“Thin ice!” he said, warningly.
“Bah!” laughed the other. “You and your thin ice! I am no diplomatist--a
man who is afraid to look over a wall.”
“No. Only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by
less obvious means,” corrected the Frenchman. “One must not be seen
looking over one's neighbor's wall--that is the first commandment of
diplomacy.”
“Then why are you here?” asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough
laugh.
And Paul Deulin suddenly lost his temper. He sat bolt upright in his
chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust
flew out. He glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes
that had not glittered there for twenty years.
“You think I came here to pry into your affairs--to turn our friendship
into a means for my own aggrandizement? You think that I report to my
government that which you and I may say to each other, or leave unsaid,
before your study fire? Was it not I who cried 'Thin ice'?”
“Yes--yes,” answered the prince, shortly. And the two old friends glared
at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in
other days. “Yes--yes! but why are you here this morning?”
“Why am I here this morning? I will tell you. I ask you no questions,
I want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. You can run your neck
into a noose if you like. You have been doing it all your life. And--who
knows?--you may win at last. As for Martin, you have brought him up
in the same school. And, bon Dieu! I suppose you are Bukatys, and you
cannot help it. It is your affair, after all. But you shall not push
Wanda into a Russian prison! You shall not get her to Siberia, if I can
help it!”
“Wanda!” said the prince, in some surprise--“Wanda!”
“Yes. You forget--you Bukatys always have forgotten--the women. Warsaw
is no place for Wanda to-day. And to-day's work--to-night's work--is no
work for Wanda!”
“To-night's work! What do you mean?”
The prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
“Oh, you need not be alarmed. I know nothing,” was the answer. “But I am
not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess,
as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have
guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which
is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the finger what you
think!”
And he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and
thumb.
The prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
“If I did not know that you had broken your heart--more than once--long
ago,” he began. But Deulin interrupted him.
“Only once,” he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
“Well, only once, then. I should say that you had fallen in love with
Wanda.”
“Ah!” said Deulin, lightly, “that is an old affair. That happened when
she used to ride upon my shoulder. And one keeps a tenderness for one's
old loves, you know.”
“Well, and what do you propose to do? I tell you honestly I have had no
time to think of my own affairs. I have had no courage to think of them,
perhaps. I have been at work all night. Yes, yes! I know! Thin ice! You
ought to know it when you see it. You have been on it all your life, and
through it--”
“Only once,” repeated Deulin. “I propose what any other young lover
would propose to do--to run away with her from Warsaw.”
“When?”
Deulin looked at his watch.
“In half an hour. Think of the risks, Bukaty--a young girl.”
And he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. The point was
gained.
“I could take her to Cracow this evening. Your sister there will take
her in.”
“Yes, yes! But will Wanda go?”
“If you tell her to go she will. I think that is the only power on earth
that can make her do it.”
The prince smiled.
“You seem to know her failings. You are no lover, my friend.”
“That is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. You will do
this thing for me. I come back in half an hour.”
“What about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from
Warsaw to-day?” asked the prince. “What we know others must know now.”
“Leave those matters to me. You can safely do so. Please do not move. I
will find my way to the door, thank you.”
“If you see Wanda as you go,” called out the prince, as Deulin closed
the door behind him, “send her to me.”
Deulin did see Wanda. He had always intended to do so. He went to the
drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. He
held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
“A telegram,” she said, looking at it. “But I cannot make out its
meaning. I never saw or heard of that word before.”
“Nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the
end of time,” answered Deulin, lightly. “It is from a reliable source.
Cartoner sent it. Upon that news your father is basing that which he
wishes to say to you in his study now.”
“Ah!” said Wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
“It is nothing!” put in Deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face.
“Nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. It is only a question
of empires and kingdoms.”
With his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she
could ask him a question.
In half an hour he returned. He had a cab waiting at the door, and the
passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
“The man in the street,” he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside
Wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go--“the
man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this
city know nothing.”
“They will know at the frontier,” answered the prince, “and it is there
that you will have difficulties.”
“Then it is there that we shall overcome them,” he replied, gayly. “It
is there also, I hope, that we shall dine. For I have had no lunch. No
matter; I lunched yesterday. I shall eat things in the train, and Wanda
will hate me. I always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own I
have a certain tenderness. Yes. Now let us say good-bye and be gone.”
For Paul Deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment.
He came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. He was
suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid
his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches
which are nearly always better left unsaid.
“I must ask you,” he said to Wanda, when they were in the cab, “to drive
round by the Europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while I run
up-stairs and put together my belongings. I shall give up my room. I may
not come back. One never knows.”
And he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had
run with blood twice within his own recollection. He peered into the
faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and
to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
In the Cracow Faubourg all seemed to be as usual. Some were going about
their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races
always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all
beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of
enjoyment in the sunshine. The quieter thoroughfares were quieter than
usual, Deulin thought. But he made no comment, and Wanda seemed to be
fully occupied with her own thoughts. The long expected, when it comes
at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.
It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance
hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between
twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know
nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar
was dead.
As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the
first time.
“What will you do about the Mangles?” she asked. “We cannot let them
remain here unwarned.”
Deulin reflected for a moment.
“I had forgotten them,” he answered. “In times of stress one finds out
one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to
Mangles, if you like.”
“Yes,” answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see
her--“yes, do that.”
“Odd people women are,” said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs.
He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again
almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
“I looked into Mangles's salon,” he said to Wanda, when he was seated
beside her again. “He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone.
They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that
Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.”
At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had
predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture
of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men.
He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
“They know,” he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the
Austrian railway carriage. “They all know. Look at their stupid,
perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have
decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah!
what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!”
“Or a grin,” he added, after a long pause, “that passes for one.”
XXXIV
FOR ANOTHER TIME
The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in;
the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the
Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn
would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature
more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the
south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there
are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and
autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are
under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in
winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
Along the middle road--which is the worst and the least frequented--a
number of carts made their way soon after eight o'clock at night. The
road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such
deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on
either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for
the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter
it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used
at all.
It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the
pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses,
harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary
hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more
frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The
carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the
standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in
his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare
limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet.
He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely
have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere
outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his
head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him.
The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy wood-work of the
carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
At the cross-ways, where the shorter runs at right angles into
the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on
horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The
horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare
horse. He was in a rough peasant's overcoat of a dirty white cloth,
drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the
saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a
man's trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
“You are punctual,” he said. “I was nearly asleep in the saddle.”
And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat
such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he
leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
“You are not cold?” he asked.
“No; I feel as if I should never be cold again.”
“That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You
must take care of yourself.”
“So must you,” answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance
between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than
in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which
the French call _camaraderie_, which was not the outcome of a long
friendship. Far back in the days of Poland's greatness they must have
had a common ancestor. In the age of chivalry some dark, spare knight,
with royal blood in his veins, had perhaps fallen in love with one of
the fair Bukatys, whose women had always been beautiful, and their men
always reckless.
Kosmaroff climbed into the saddle, and they stood side by side, waiting
for the carts to come up. Martin's horse began to whinny at the sound
of approaching hoofs, when its rider leaned forward in the saddle and
struck it fiercely on the side of its great Roman nose, which sounded
hollow, like a drum.
“I suppose you had little sleep last night,” said Kosmaroff when Martin
yawned, with his face turned up to the sky.
“I had none.”
“Nor I,” said Kosmaroff. “We may get some--to-morrow.”
The carts now came up. Each team had two drivers, one walking on either
side.
“You know what to do,” said Martin to these in turn. “Come to the
iron-foundry, where you will find us waiting for you. When you are laden
you are to go straight back as quickly as you can by this same road to
the military earthworks, where you will find our friends drawn up in
line. You are to turn to the left, down the road running towards the
river on this side of the fortifications, and pass slowly down the line,
dropping your load as directed by those who will meet you there. If you
are stopped on the road by the police or a patrol, who insist on asking
what you have in your carts, you must be civil to them, and show them;
and while they are looking into your carts you must kill them quietly
with the knife.”
The drivers seemed to have heard these instructions before, for they
merely nodded, and made no comment. One of them gave a low laugh, and
that was all. He appeared to be an old man with a white beard, and
had perhaps waited a long time for this moment. There was a wealth of
promise in his curt hilarity.
Then Martin and Kosmaroff turned and rode on towards Warsaw at a trot.
Before long they wheeled to the right, quitting the highway and taking
to the quieter Czerniakowska, that wide and deserted road which runs
by the river-side, skirting the high land now converted into a public
pleasure-ground, under the name of the Lazienki Park.
In the daytime the Czerniakowska is only used by the sand-carts and the
workmen going to and from the manufactories. To-night, in the pouring
rain, no one passed that way.
Before the iron-foundry is reached the road narrows somewhat, and is
bounded on either side by a high stone wall. On the left are the
lower lands of the Lazienki Park; the yards and storehouses of the
iron-foundry are on the right.
At the point where the road narrows Kosmaroff suddenly reined in his
horse, and leaning forward, peered into the darkness. There are no lamps
at the farther end of the Czerniakowska.
“What is it?” asked Martin.
“I thought I saw a glint under the wall,” answered Kosmaroff.
“There--there it is again. Steel. There is some one there. It is the
gleam of those distant lights on a bayonet.”
“Then let us go forward,” said Martin, “and see who it is.”
And he urged his horse, which seemed tired, and carried its head low
beneath the rain. They had not gone ten paces when a rough voice called
out:
“Who goes there?”
“Who goes there?” echoed Martin. “But this is a high-road.” And he moved
nearer to the wall. The man stepped from the shadow, and his bayonet
gleamed again.
“No matter,” he said; “you cannot pass this way.”
“But, my friend--” began Martin, with a protesting laugh. But he never
finished the sentence, for Kosmaroff had slipped out of the saddle on
the far side, and interrupted him by pushing the bridle into his hand.
Then the ex-Cossack ran round at the back of the horses.
The soldier gave a sharp exclamation of surprise, and the next moment
his rifle rattled down against the wall. Both men were on the ground now
in the water and the mud. There came to Martin's ears the sound of hard
breathing, and some muttered words of anger; then a sharp cough, which
was not Kosmaroff's cough.
After an instant of dead silence, Kosmaroff rose to his feet.
“First blood,” he said, breathlessly. He went to his horse and wiped his
hands upon its mane.
“Bah!” he exclaimed, “how he smelled of bad cigarettes!”
Martin was leaning in the saddle, looking down at the dark form in the
mud.
“Oh, he is dead enough,” said Kosmaroff. “I broke his neck. Did you not
hear it go?”
“Yes--I heard it. But what was he doing here?”
“That is yet to be found out,” was the reply, in a sharp, strained
voice. “This is Cartoner's work.”
“I doubt it,” whispered Martin. And yet in his heart he could scarcely
doubt it at that moment. Nothing was further from his recollection than
the note he had given to Netty in the Saski Gardens ten hours ago.
“What does it mean?” he asked, with a sudden despair in his voice. He
had always been lucky and successful.
“It means,” answered the man who had never been either, “that the
place is surrounded, of course. They have got the arms, and we have
failed--this time. Take the horses back towards the barracks--and wait
for me where the water is across the road. I will go forward on foot and
make sure. If I do not return in twenty minutes it will mean that they
have taken me.”
As he spoke he took off his white overcoat, which was all gray and
bespattered with mud, and threw it across the saddle. His working
clothes were sombre and dirty. He was almost invisible in the darkness.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “I will get over the wall here. Bring your
horse against the wall.”
Martin did so, avoiding the body of the sentry, which lay stretched
across the foot-path. The wall was eighteen feet high.
“Stand in your stirrups,” said Kosmaroff, “and hold one arm up rigid
against the wall.”
He was already standing on the broad back of the charger, steadying
himself by a firm grip of Martin's collar. He climbed higher, standing
on Martin's shoulders, and steadying himself against the wall.
“Are you ready? I am going to spring.”
He placed the middle of his foot in Martin's up-stretched palm, gave a
light spring and a scramble, and reached the summit of the wall. Martin
could perceive him for a moment against the sky.
“All right,” he whispered, and disappeared.
Martin had not returned many yards along the road they had come when
he heard pattering steps in the mud behind him. It was Kosmaroff,
breathless.
“Quick!” he whispered. “Quick!”
And he scrambled into the saddle while the horse was still moving.
He was, it must be remembered, a trained soldier. He led the way at a
gallop, stooping in the saddle to secure the swinging stirrups. Martin
had to use his spurs to bring his horse alongside. Shoulder to shoulder
they splashed on in the darkness.
“I went right in,” gasped Kosmaroff. “The arms are gone. The place is
full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an
ambuscade. We have failed--failed--this time!”
“We must stop the carts, and then ride on and disperse the men,” said
Martin. “We may do it. We may succeed. It is a good night for such
work.”
Kosmaroff gave a short, despairing laugh.
“Ah!” he said. “You are full of hope--you.”
“Yes--I am full of hope--still,” answered Martin. He had more to lose
than his companion. But he had also less to gain.
They rode hard until they met the carts, and turned them back. So far as
these were concerned, there was little danger in going away empty from
the city.
Then the two horsemen rode on in silence. They were far out in the
marsh-lands before Kosmaroff spoke.
“I am sure,” he then said, “that I was seen as I climbed back over the
wall. I heard a stir among the rifles. But they could not recognize
me. It is just possible that I may not be suspected. For you it is
different. If they knew where the arms were stored, they must also know
who procured them. You will never be able to show yourself in Warsaw
again.”
“I may be able to make myself more dangerous elsewhere,” said Martin,
with a laugh.
“I do not know,” went on Kosmaroff, “if they will have arrested your
father and sister; but I am quite sure that they will be in the palace
now awaiting your return there. We must get away to-night.”
“Oh,” answered Martin gayly, “it does not matter much about that. What I
am thinking of are these four thousand men waiting out here in the rain.
How are we to get them to their homes in Warsaw?”
And Kosmaroff had no answer to this question.