Martin was reluctantly making a move. One or two carriages were allowed to come to the gate of the lawn, and of these one was Prince Bukaty's.

"Come, Wanda," said Martin. "We must not keep him waiting. I can see him, with his two sticks, coming out of the club enclosure."

"I will go with you to make sure that he is none the worse," said Deulin, "and then return to the assistance of these ladies."

He did not speak as they moved slowly through the crowd. Nor did he explain to Wanda why he had reintroduced Miss Cahere. He stood watching the carriages after they had gone.

"The gods forbid," he said, piously, to himself, "that I should attempt to interfere in the projects of Providence! But it is well that Wanda should know who are her friends and who her enemies. And I think she knows now, my shrewd princess."

And he bowed, bareheaded, in response to a gay wave of the hand from Wanda as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared. He turned on his heel, to find himself cut off from the grand-stand by a dense throng of people moving rather confusedly towards the exit. The sky was black, and a shower was impending.

"Ah, well!" he muttered, philosophically, "they are capable of taking care of themselves."

And he joined the throng making for the gates. It appeared, however, that he gave more credit than was merited; for Netty was carried along by a stream of people whose aim was a gate to the left of the great gate, and though she saw the hat of her uncle above the hats of the other men, she could not make her way towards it. Mr. Mangles and his sister passed out of the large gateway, and waited in the first available space beyond it. Netty was carried by the gentle pressure of the crowd to the smaller gate, and having passed it, decided to wait till her uncle, who undoubtedly must have seen her, should come in search of her. She was not uneasy. All through her life she had always found people, especially men, ready, nay, anxious, to be kind to her. She was looking round for Mr. Mangles when a man came towards her. He was only a workman in his best suit of working clothes. He had a narrow, sunburned face, and there was in his whole being a not unpleasant suggestion of the seafaring life.

"I am afraid," he said, in perfect English, as he raised his cap, "that you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course, so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you to find your father?"

"Thank you," answered Netty, without concealing her surprise. "I think my uncle went out of the larger gate, and it seems impossible to get at him. Perhaps—"

"Yes," answered Kosmaroff, "I will show you another way with pleasure. Then that tall gentleman is not your father?"

"No. Mr. Mangles is my uncle," replied Netty, following her companion.

"Ah, that is Mr. Mangles! An American, is he not?"

"Yes. We are Americans."

"A diplomatist?"

"Yes, my uncle is in the service."

"And you are at the Europe. Yes, I have heard of Mr. Mangles. This way; we can pass through this alley and come to the large gate."

"But you—you are not a Pole? It is so kind of you to help me," said Netty, looking at him with some interest. And Kosmaroff, perceiving this interest, slightly changed his manner.

"Ah! you are looking at my clothes," he said, rather less formally. "In Poland things are not always what they seem, mademoiselle. Yes, I am a Pole. I am a boatman, and keep my boat at the foot of Bednarska Street, just above the bridge. If you ever want to go on the river, it is pleasant in the evening, you and your party, you will perhaps do me the great honor of selecting my poor boat, mademoiselle?"

"Yes, I will remember," answered Netty, who did not seem to notice that his glance was, as it were, less distant than his speech.

"I knew at once—at once," he said, "that you were English or American."

"Ah! Then there is a difference—" said Netty, looking round for her uncle.

"There is a difference—yes, assuredly."

"What is it?" asked Netty, with a subtle tone of expectancy in her voice.

"Your mirror will answer that question," replied Kosmaroff, with his odd, one-sided smile, "more plainly than I should ever dare to do. There is your uncle, mademoiselle, and I must go."

Mr. Mangles, perceiving the situation, was coming forward with his hand in his pocket, when Kosmaroff took off his cap and hurried away.

"No," said Netty, laying her hand on Mr. Mangle's arm, "do not give him anything. He was rather a superior man, and spoke a little English."



XIV

SENTENCED

Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it. The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.

Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved, growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.

One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in the Lazienki Park.

Before he reached the high wall that surrounds these works on the land side he got out of the saddle and carefully tried the four shoes of his horse. One of them was loose. He loosened it further, working at it patiently with the handle of his whip. Then he led the horse forward and found that it limped, which seemed to satisfy him. As he walked on, with the bridle over his arm, he consulted his watch. There was just light enough to show him that it was nearly six.

The iron-foundries were quiet now. They had been closed at five. From the distant streets the sound of the traffic came to his ears in a long, low roar, like the breaking of surf upon shingle far away.

Cartoner led his horse to the high double door that gave access to the iron-foundry. He turned the horse very exactly and carefully, so that the animal's shoulder pressed against that half of the door which opened first. Then he rang the bell, of which the chain swung gently in the wind. It gave a solitary clang inside the deserted works. After a few moments there was the sound of rusted bolts being slowly withdrawn, and at the right moment Cartoner touched the horse with his whip, so that it started forward against the door and thrust it open, despite the efforts of the gate-keeper, who staggered back into the dimly lighted yard.

Cartoner looked quickly round him. All was darkness except an open doorway, from which a shaft of light poured out, dimly illuminating cranes and carts and piles of iron girders. The gate-keeper was hurriedly bolting the gate. Cartoner led his horse towards the open door, but before he reached it a number of men ran out and fell on him like hounds upon a fox. He leaped back, abandoning his horse, and striking the first-comer full in the chest with his fist. He charged the next and knocked him over; but from the third he retreated, leaping quickly to one side.

"Bukaty!" he cried; "don't you know me?"

"You, Cartoner!" replied Martin. He spread out his arms, and the men behind him ran against them. He turned and said something to them in Polish, which Cartoner did not catch. "You here!" he said. And there was a ring in the gay, rather light voice, which the Englishman had never heard there before. But he had heard it in other voices, and knew the meaning of it. For his work had brought him into contact with refined men in moments when their refinement only serves to harden that grimmer side of human nature of which half humanity is in happy ignorance, which deals in battle and sudden death.

"It is too risky," said some one, almost in Martin's ear, in Polish, but Cartoner heard it. "We must kill him and be done with it."

There was an odd silence for a moment, only broken by the stealthy feet of the gate-keeper coming forward to join the group. Then Cartoner spoke, quietly and collectedly. His nerve was so steady that he had taken time to reflect as to which tongue to make use of. For all had disadvantages, but silence meant death.

"This near fore-shoe," he said in French, turning to his horse, "is nearly off. It has been loose all the way from Wilanow. This is a foundry, is it not? There must be a hammer and some nails about."

Martin gave a sort of gasp of relief. For a moment he had thought there was no loop-hole.

Cartoner looked towards the door, and the light fell full upon his patient, thoughtful face. The faces of the men standing in a half-circle in front of him were in the dark.

"Good! He's a brave man!" muttered the man who had spoken in Martin's ear. It was Kosmaroff. And he stepped back a pace.

"Yes," said Martin, hastily, "this is a foundry. I can get you a hammer."

His right hand was opening and shutting convulsively. Cartoner glanced at it, and Martin put it behind his back. He was rather breathless, and he was angrily wishing that he had the Englishman's nerve.

"You might tell these men," he said, in French, "of my mishap; perhaps one of them can put it right, and I can get along home. I am desperately hungry. The journey had been so slow from Wilanow."

He had already perceived that Kosmaroff understood both English and French, and that it was of him that Martin was afraid. He spoke slowly, so as to give Martin time to pull himself together. Kosmaroff stepped forward to the horse and examined the shoe indicated. It was nearly off.

Martin turned, and explained in Polish that the gentleman had come for a hammer and some nails—that his horse had nearly lost a shoe. Cartoner had simply forced him to become his ally, and had even indicated the line of conduct he was to pursue.

"Get a hammer—one of you," said Kosmaroff, over his shoulder, and Martin bit his lip with a sudden desire to speak—to say more than was discreet. He took his cue in some way from Cartoner, without knowing that wise men cease persuading the moment they have gained consent. Never comment on your own victory.

Never had Cartoner's silent habit stood him in such good stead as during the following moments, while a skilled workman replaced the lost shoe. Never had he observed so skilled a silence, or left unsaid such dangerous words. For Kosmaroff watched him as a cat may watch a bird. Behind, were the barred gates, and in front, the semicircle of men, whose faces he could not see, while the full light glared through the open doorway upon his own countenance. Two miles from Warsaw—a dark autumn night, and eleven men to one. He counted them, in a mechanical way, as persons in face of death nearly always do count, with a cold deliberation, their chances of life. He played his miserable little cards with all the skill he possessed, and his knowledge of the racial characteristics of humanity served him. For he acted slowly, and gave his enemies leisure to see that it would be a mistake to kill him. They would see it in time; for they were not Frenchmen, nor of any other Celtic race, who would have killed him first and recognized their mistake afterwards. They were Slavs—of the most calculating race the world had produced—a little slow in their calculations. So he gave them time, just as Russia must have time; but she will reach the summit eventually, when her farsighted policy is fully evolved—long, long after reader and writer are dust.

Cartoner gave the workman half a rouble, which was accepted with a muttered word of thanks, and then he turned towards the great doors, which were barred. There was another pause, while the gate-keeper looked inquiringly at Kosmaroff.

"I am very much obliged to you," said Cartoner to Martin, who went towards the gate as if to draw back the bolt. But at a signal from Kosmaroff the gate-keeper sprang forward and opened the heavy doors.

Martin was nearest, and instinctively held the stirrup, while Cartoner climbed into the saddle.

"Saved your life!" he said, in a whisper.

"I know," answered Cartoner, turning in his saddle to lift his hat to the men grouped behind him. He looked over their heads into the open doorway, but could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew where were concealed the arms brought out into the North Sea by Captain Cable in the Minnie.

"More than I bargained for," he muttered to himself, as he rode away from the iron-foundry by the river. He put his horse to a trot and presently to a canter along the deserted, dusty road. The animal was astonishingly fresh and went off at a good pace, so that the man sent by Kosmaroff to follow him was soon breathless and forced to give up the chase.

Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much, and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was steady.

He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which stand on either side of every man's path, present neither gap nor gate. He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.

"That Cartoner," Deulin was in the habit of saying, "takes certain things so seriously, and other things—social things, to which I give most careful attention—he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by different routes."

Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady perseverance and slow, sure steps.

"In a moment of danger give me Cartoner," Deulin had once said.

On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.

Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.

"Got a job in Russia," he had stolidly told any one who asked him. "Cold, unhealthy place." He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must know what is going to happen.

Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life—alone with his failures and his small successes—content, it would seem, to be a good servant in a great service.

He went to the restaurant of the Hotel de France, which is a quiet place of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance, like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of the house under his care.

"The poet is in. There is a letter up-stairs," said the door-keeper to Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner's servant was out, and the lamps were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.

It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work intrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity.



XV

A TALE HALF TOLD

The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived, while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope of alleviation.

The prince's friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and read his Figaro quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.

"He is late," he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and Martin had been expected to return to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin, whose daring was rather of the reckless type, whose genius lay more in leadership than in strategy. As to her father, he had come through the sixties, and had survived the persecution and the dangers of Wielopolski's day—he could reasonably be expected to take care of himself. With regard to herself, she had no fear. Hers was the woman's lot of watching others in a danger which she could not share.

It was nearly half-past eleven when Martin came in. He was in riding-costume and was covered with dirt. His eyes, rimmed with dust, looked out of a face that was pale beneath the sunburn. He threw himself into a chair with an exclamation of fatigue.

"Had any dinner?" asked his father.

Wanda looked at her brother's face, and changed color herself. There was a suggestion of the wild rose in Wanda's face, with its delicate, fleeting shades of pink and white, while the slim strength of her limbs and carriage rather added to a characteristic which is essentially English or Polish. For American girls suggest a fuller flower on a firmer stem.

"Something has happened," said Wanda, quietly.

"Yes," replied Martin, stretching out his slight legs.

The prince laid aside his newspaper, and looked up quickly. When his attention was thus roused suddenly his eyes and his whole face were momentarily fierce. Some one had once said that the history of Poland was written on those deep-lined features.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing that affects affairs," replied Martin. "Everything is safe."

Which seemed to be catch-words, for Kosmaroff had made use of almost the identical phrases.

"I am quite confident that there is no danger to affairs," continued Martin, speaking with the haste and vehemence of a man who is anxious to convince himself. "It was a mere mischance, but it gave us all a horrid fright, I can tell you—especially me, for I was doubly interested. Cartoner rode into our midst to-night."

"Cartoner?" repeated the prince.

"Yes. He rang the bell, and when the door was opened—we were expecting some one else—he led his horse into our midst, with a loose shoe."

"Who saw him?" asked the prince.

"Every one."

"Kosmaroff?"

"Yes. And if I had not been there it would have been all up with Cartoner. You know what Kosmaroff is. It was a very near thing."

"That would have been a mistake," said the prince, reflectively. "It was the mistake they made last time. It has never paid yet to take life in driblets."

"That is what I told Kosmaroff afterwards, when Cartoner had gone. It was evident that it could only have been an accident. Cartoner could not have known. To do a thing like that, he must have known all—or nothing."

"He could not have known all," said the prince. "That is an impossibility."

"Then he must have known nothing," put in Wanda, with a laugh, which at one stroke robbed the matter of much of its importance.

"I do not know how much he perceived when he was in—as to his own danger, I mean—for he has an excellent nerve, and was steady; steadier than I was. But he knows that there was something wrong," said Martin, wiping the dust from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. His hand shook a little, as if he had ridden hard, or had been badly frightened. "We had a bad half-hour after he left, especially with Kosmaroff. The man is only half-tamed, that is the truth of it."

"That is more to his own danger than to any one else's," put in Wanda, again. She spoke lightly, and seemed quite determined to make as little of the incident as possible.

"Then how do matters stand?" inquired the prince.

"It comes to this," answered Martin, "that Poland is not big enough to hold both Kosmaroff and Cartoner. Cartoner must go. He must be told to go, or else——"

Wanda had taken up her work again. As she looked at it attentively, the color slowly faded from her face.

"Or else—what?" she inquired.

Martin shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, Kosmaroff is not a man to stick at trifles."

"You mean," said Wanda, who would have things plainly, "that he would assassinate him?"

Wanda glanced at her father. She knew that men hard pressed are no sticklers. She knew the story of the last insurrection, and of the wholesale assassination, abetted and encouraged by the anonymous national government of which the members remain to this day unknown. The prince made an indifferent gesture of the hand.

"We cannot go into those small matters. We are playing a bigger game that that. It has always been agreed that no individual life must be allowed to stand in the way of success."

"It is upon that principle that Kosmaroff argues," said Martin, uneasily.

"Precisely; and as I was not present when this happened—as it is, moreover, not my department—I cannot, personally, act in the matter."

"Kosmaroff will obey nobody else."

"Then warn Cartoner," the prince said, in a final voice. His had always been the final word. He would say to one, go; and to another, come.

"I cannot do it," said Martin, looking at Wanda. "You know my position—how I am watched."

"There is only one person in Warsaw who can do it," said Wanda—"Paul Deulin."

"Deulin could do it," said the prince, thoughtfully. "But I never talk to Deulin of these matters. Politics are a forbidden subject between us."

"Then I will go and see Monsieur Deulin the first thing to-morrow morning," said Wanda, quietly.

"You?" asked her father. And Martin looked at her in silent surprise. The old prince's eyes flashed suddenly.

"Remember," he said, "that you run the risk of making people talk of you. They may talk of us—of Martin and me—the world has talked of the Bukatys for some centuries—but never of their women."

"They will not talk of me," returned Wanda, composedly. "I will see to that. A word to Mr. Cartoner will be enough. I understood him to say that he was not going to stay long in Warsaw."

The prince had acquired the habit of leaving many things to Wanda. He knew that she was wiser than Martin, and in some ways more capable.

"Well," he said, rising. "I take no hand in it. It is very late. Let us go to bed."

He paused half-way towards the door.

"There is one thing," he said, "which we should be wise to recollect—that whatever Cartoner may know or may not know will go no farther. He is a diplomatist. It is his business to know everything and to say nothing."

"Then, by Heaven, he knows his business!" cried Martin, with his reckless laugh.

There are three entrances to the Hotel de l'Europe, two beneath the great archway on the Faubourg, where the carriages pass through into the court-yard—where Hermani was assassinated—where the people carried in the bodies of those historic five, whose mutilated corpses were photographed and hawked all through eastern Europe. The third is a side door, used more generally by habitues of the restaurant. It was to this third door that Wanda drove the next morning. She knew the porter there. He was in those days a man with a history and Wanda was not ignorant of it.

"Miss Cahere—the American lady?" she said. And the porter gave her the number of Netty's room. He was too busy a man to offer to escort her thither.

Wanda mounted the stairs along the huge corridor. She passed Netty's room, and ascended to the second story. All fell out as she had wished. At the head of the second staircase there is a little glass-partitioned room, where the servants sit when they are unemployed. In this room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant, a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room occupied by Deulin, who always travelled en prince.

"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want to give it are those who will not accept it."

Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of surprise in his eyes.

"Did Jean show you in?" he said.

"Yes."

"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies, Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."

Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.

"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"

"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."

"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it comes. Your father?"

"No."

"Martin?"

"No."

"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with the necessity of reply.

"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"

"He has found out something."

"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper—giving voice to that exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."

"And I cannot tell you what it is."

"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."

"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, "but not a woman."

"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that—" Wanda paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way—"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London. We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My father won't—"

Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table. His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his execution.

"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it—and never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right, and I was wrong."

He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both hands.

"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."

"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.

He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was neat and gray and—shallow, as some thought.

"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched men—and women—do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite ceased to affect my appetite."

Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.

"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a little hint—the merest ghost of a hint—will that do?"

"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.

"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this Englishman."

Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.

"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin, opening the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round."

He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which Wanda had just vacated.

"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I have known thousands—thousands."



XVI

MUCH—OR NOTHING

If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.

A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him. Thus the gods—with men.

Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents—as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part—with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.

The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the sex of this arbiter of human story.

Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two days after the meeting at the Mokotow—the morning following the visit paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe—Cartoner was early astir. He drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train, and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of peasants—wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.

This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone. There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was Wanda. The gods were kind—or cruel.

"You are going away?" she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that Cartoner looked at her in surprise. "You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and you are going away."

"No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come again."

"We are all watched," said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. "But you are going away—that is all that matters."

"I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be back this afternoon."

Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room, which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers, they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to post a letter.

"You must leave Warsaw," she said; "it is not safe for you to stay here. You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger."

She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this bare railway station the place to say it in.

Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders. He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional salutation.

"Martin would have warned you," she went on, "but he did not dare to. Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you had unwittingly run."

"Not unwittingly," said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He said so little that his meaning needed careful search.

"I cannot tell you much—" she began, and he interrupted her at once.

"Stop," he said, "you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything—but not from you."

"Martin hinted at that," said Wanda, slowly, "but I did not believe him."

And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as if there were more in him—more of him—than she had ever expected. And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.

"It is true enough," he said, "fate has made us enemies, princess."

"You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than fate—in Poland. Besides——"

"Yes."

"You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall."

And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.

"It has been refused."

"But you must go—you must go!" she said, quickly. She glanced at the great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of gray in his closely cut hair.

"You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily—quite gayly—" she broke off with a light laugh, "on a volcano—it is the Bukatys. We have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled times."

"I know," said Cartoner, "what it is to be a Bukaty." And he smiled slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her manner, in a flash, was different.

"Then you will go?" she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them, she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. "Say you will go!"

And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.

"I do not think you understand," she went on, changing her manner and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own stolid, dumb form of defence. "You do not understand what a danger to us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this," with a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred marks of a high state of civilization, "is skin deep. That things in Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated. We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to look at his face—"

"I know," admitted Cartoner.

"It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe. That is why I ask you to go."

"Yes, I know," answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever, was quite a simple person.

"Besides," said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to follow it, call no logic at all, "you can do no good here, if all your care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why have they refused your recall? It is so stupid."

"I must do the best I can," replied Cartoner.

Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.

"But we must not quarrel," she said, gently. "We must not misunderstand each other," she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, "for we have only five minutes in all the world."

"Here and now," he corrected, with a glance at the clock, "we have only five minutes. But the world is large."

"For you," she said quickly, "but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You forget I am a Russian subject."

But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of his face.

"My presence in Warsaw," he said, as if the train of thought needed no elucidating, "is in reality no source of danger to you—to your father and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am nobody—nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have happened—life is too short to record that. So you see my being in Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother."

"Yes, I see—I see!" answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard, in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the length of the train. "But it was not on account of that that we asked Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and Martin. It is required of them—a sort of family tradition. It is their business in life—almost their pleasure."

"It is my business in life—almost my pleasure," said Cartoner, with a smile.

"But is there no one at home—in England—that you ought to think of?" in an odd, sharp voice.

"Nobody," he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information respecting himself.

Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no corridor carriages. Two minutes now.

"We must not be seen together on the platform," she said. "I am only going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old servants whom I go to see."

She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.

"Thank you," he said, "for warning me."

And that was all.

"You must go," he added, after a moment's pause.

Still she lingered.

"There is so much to say," she said, half to herself. "There is so much to say."

The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back. He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right—whether there was much to say—or nothing.



XVII

IN THE SENATORSKA

"It is," said Miss Julie Mangles, "in the Franciszkanska that one lays one's hand on the true heart of the people."

"That's as may be, Jooly," replied her brother, "but I take it that the hearts of the women go to the Senatorska."

For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.

"I shall," said Miss Mangles, "write a paper on the Jewish question in this country."

And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.

"Seen the Senatorska, Netty?" he inquired. But Netty had not seen the Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.

"Go out into the Faubourg," her uncle explained, "and just turn to the left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops are."

Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down—as the paper itself recorded—the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to accuracy.

Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions, and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of Bond Street.

The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski—that weak dreamer—built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the Prince Martin Bukaty.

"I was afraid you did not remember me," said Martin. "You looked straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me."

"Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why should I?"

And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and then looked elsewhere rather hastily.

"Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting."

"Of course," said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. "One meets a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find it so?"

"I am glad," answered Martin, "that you do not meet many people that you like."

"Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people," urged Netty, in some concern; "I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind. Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?"

"I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come in yours."

And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.

"Oh no!" she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders descriptive of a shrinking humility. "Why should I? I have done nothing to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind—my uncle and aunt—everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why it is?"

And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could—if he dared. He had never met anybody quite like Netty—so spontaneous and innocent and easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes were dark, almost as violets.

"Ought I to be here?" she asked. "Going about the streets alone, I mean?"

"You are not alone," answered Martin, with a laugh.

"No, but—perhaps I ought to be."

And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.

"In America, you know," said the voice from under the parasol, "girls are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to be careful, is it not?—to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is the custom in Warsaw."

Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.

"In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes about the streets as they do in England or America."

As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.

"I can show you the best shops," he said, "such as they are. This is Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?"

"I love them," answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the next shop.

"You would naturally."

"Why?" asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.

"Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?"

"It is very kind of you to say that," said Netty, in a voice half-afraid, half-reproachful.

"It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes," answered Martin, gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very good.

"You know," said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, "I am much interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles—and the poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?"

"The nobles have come to great grief in Poland—that is all," replied Martin, with a short laugh.

"And it is so sad," said Netty, with a shake of the head; "but I am sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are interested in Poland—you and your sister and your father."

"We are supposed to be," admitted Martin. "But no one cares for Poland now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of, and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now—and her history, which is the saddest history of any nation in the world."

"But I am sure you are wrong there," said Netty, earnestly. "I know a great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in them."

"Are you?" asked Martin, looking down at her.

"Yes," she replied, with downcast eyes. "Come," she said, after a pause, with a sort of effort, "we must not stand in front of this shop any longer."

"Especially," he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, "as it is a Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you must go."

Netty looked at him doubtfully.

"I am quite serious," he said. "We must fight with what weapons we have."

"Yes," she answered, indicating the shops, "these people, but not you. You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take anything from you."

"Because there is nothing to take," laughed Martin, gayly; "we were ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own."

"I am so sorry!" she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.

Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin—his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.

"I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?" he said to Netty. "I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if you will permit it."

And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.

A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without speaking. It was against his principles altogether. "Never be silent with a woman," he often said. "She will only misconstrue it."

"It was odd that I should meet you at that moment," he said, at length, for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and laughed. "I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if I could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you, would it not?"

"It was very kind of you," said Netty, "to think of me at the race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely hair, and I think her face is so interesting—a face with a history, is it not?"

"Yes," answered Deulin, rather shortly, "Wanda is a nice girl." He did not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.

"And the prince," she said, "the old one, I mean—for this one, Prince Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?"

"Oh yes—quite a boy," replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back over his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.

"It is so sad that they are ruined—if they are really ruined."

"There is no doubt whatever about that," answered Deulin.

"But," said Netty, who was practical, "could nothing induce him—the young prince, I mean—to abandon all these vague political dreams and accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates and recover his position?"

"You mean," said Deulin, "the domestic felicities. Your fine and sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden—by the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady."

Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.

"Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever," she said.

"Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities, and Siberia—his certain destination—is not a good mise-en-scene for your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive remedy—another privilege of youth."

"You talk as if you were so very old," said Netty, reproachfully.

"I am very, very old," he replied, with a laugh. "And there is no remedy for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age."

"I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases," answered Netty, lightly. "I think you are quite capable of taking care of yourself."

"And of evolving my own dreams?" he inquired. But she made no answer, and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.

"I know so little," she said, after a pause, "so very little of Poland or Polish history. I suppose you know everything—you and Mr. Cartoner?"

"Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine of knowledge, while I—I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not prescribe for him?"

Netty smiled gravely.

"I hardly know him sufficiently well," she said. "Besides, he requires no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a fortune."

Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.

"Ah! is that so?" he inquired. "Who told you that?"

But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very interested in the matter.



XVIII

JOSEPH'S STORY

Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. "It is well," he had said, "to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect harmony." He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at the Cukiernia Lourse—a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the Cracow Faubourg—which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and there had arranged that they should dine with him.

"I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say. But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It takes years off one's life," said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner, as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.

As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the window waiting for the clock to strike.

"I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive," he said to himself, "and we can make our entry together."

It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the hotel.

Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant. When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were talking together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of the hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.

"You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money," said Mr. Mangles, bluntly.

"I was looking at him with suspicion," admitted Deulin, "but not on that account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you as lively when he came in?"

"Not what I should call a vivacious man," said Mangles, looking dismally across the room. "There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he came in perhaps."

"Yes," said Deulin, in a low voice. "That is bad. There is usually something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you know."

They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.

"What beautiful violets," said he to Netty. "Surely Warsaw did not produce those?"

"Yes, they are pretty," answered Netty, making a little movement to show the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her waist was very round and slender. "They came from that shop in the Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I think, was the name."

And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.

"Yes," said Deulin, slowly. "Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of violets?"

"I love them."

Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when dinner was announced.

"It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska," said Mr. Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner, who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?

Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and to enjoy themselves according to their lights.

Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.

"And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?" he said, noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.

"I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and traversed the whole length of the street."

"And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?" asked the Frenchman, earnestly.

"I have."

And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen hundred years.

"I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress meetings—and I may publish," she said.

"It would be in the interests of humanity," murmured Deulin, politely. "It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations."

Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be described.

"I know," she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, "that you dislike political women." Heaven knows how she knew it. "But I am afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities."

"Their chief quality is gameness," said Cartoner, thoughtfully.

"Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think the princess is delightful—do you not think so?"

"Yes," answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.

"There must be a great many stories," went on Netty, "connected with the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know—of people's lives, I mean—of all they have attempted and have failed to do."

Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by any means an easy thing to do.

"I always think," continued Netty, "that the princess has a story. There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking."

And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced at Cartoner.

"Perhaps," put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn utterances. "Perhaps she is thinking of her brother—Prince Martin. He is always getting into scrapes—ce jeune homme."

But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.

"It is your romantic heart," said Deulin, "that makes you see so much that perhaps does not exist."

"If you want a story," put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep voice, "I can tell you one."

And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.

"Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?" began Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.

"Which I believe to be the truth," assented the Frenchman.

"Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story," continued Joseph, "but they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country could be made a great country again, as it was in the past—dreamed that the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament, she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew, would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart."

And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against this danger.

"My country," he went on, "didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own father and whip him."

And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing the other side in that great misunderstanding.

"Ever heard the Polish hymn?" he asked, abruptly. He was not a good story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:

"'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"

He paused, and looked slowly round the table.

"Jooly—pass the mustard," he said.

Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.

"'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"

And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of the beef.

"That is the first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia. They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when they came out—women and children, old men and maidens."

Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman, but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite herself.

"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pushing away his plate, "on some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young—last of the family. Better that they should be the last—thought the paternal government of Russia. But she had influential relatives—so she went. She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the body-servant of the governor of his district—man who had risen from the ranks—and was refused. So he went to the mines again—and died. The wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to escape. Then the worst happened—she had a son, in prison, and all the care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but his foster-father—that great and parental government."

Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must keep account of 'em."

The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the telling than the reading of it would require.

"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take some yourself. Story cannot interest you—must be ancient history. Well—after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it now."

Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin and dogged eyes.

"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.

And that was the end of the story.



XIX

THE HIGH-WATER MARK

Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned 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.