Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the pavement.

"Any coming from the other side?" asked Deulin.

"No."

"In the doorway," whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow doorway that had the air of being little used. The long blade of his sword-stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor's sheath-knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the moonlight.

"Here," he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner's hand. "But you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!"

With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight, and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together, and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and planted a kick in the small of his adversary's back, sending him staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries of "Ah!" and "La!" breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the fencing-floor—performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm, hand, head, and leg; forward, back-handed, from above and below. He never awaited their attack—but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who said that the surest way to defend is to attack?

The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men. The sword might have been a lady's riding-whip, for its bloodlessness, from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying note of steel.

The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow. Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the doorway.

"Even if they are armed," said Deulin, "they won't fire. They don't want the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now."

While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.

"Both have knives," he said, "but they cannot get near me. Stay where you are."

"All right," said Cartoner. "Haven't had a chance yet."

And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice before in all the years that they had known each other.

"That's the best," he said, half to himself, "of dealing with a man who keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner—here they come."

And he went out to meet them.

But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together, Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their returning to the attack—thus, with a cold-blooded courage—showed that they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he could not lay aside the little flourish—the quick, stiff pose—of the fencer.

His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down lightly, like a butterfly, on the man's shoulder. He lowered it further, as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in as if into a cheese.

"Voila, mon ami," he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.

The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly curling up, and he had no control over them.

"And now," said Deulin, in Polish, "for you."

He turned to the other, who had been moving surreptitiously round towards Cartoner, who had, indeed, come out to meet him; but the man turned and ran, followed closely by his companion.

Deulin picked up the knife, which lay gleaming on the cobble-stones, and came towards Cartoner with it. Then he turned aside, and carefully dropped it between the bars of the street gutter, where it fell with a muddy splash.

"He will never use that hand again," he said. "Poor devil! I only hope he was well paid for it."

"Doubt it."

Deulin was feeling in the pocket of his top-coat.

"Have you an old envelope?" he inquired.

Cartoner handed him what he asked for. It happened to be the envelope of the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall. And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt, where the government mark and the word "Toledo" were deeply engraved.

"Unless I keep it clean it sticks," he explained. "And if you want it at all, you want it in a hurry—like a woman's heart, eh?"

He was looking up and down the street as he spoke, and shot the blade back into its sheath. He turned and examined the ground to make sure that nothing was left there.

"The light was good," he said, appreciatively, "and the ground favorable for—for the autumn manoeuvres."

And he broke into a gay laugh.

"Come," he said. "Let us go back into the more frequented streets. This back way was not a success—only proves that it never does to turn tail."

"How did you know," asked Cartoner, "that this was coming off?"

"Quite simple, my friend. I was at the window when you arrived at the Europe. You were followed. Or, at all events, I thought you were followed. So I made up my mind to walk back with you and see. Veni, vidi, vici—you understand?"

And again his clear laugh broke the silence of that back street, while he made a pass at an imaginary foe with his stick.

"I thought we might escape by the quieter streets," he went on. "For it is our business to seek peace and ensure it. But it was not to be. Neither could I warn you, because we have never interfered in each other's business, you and I. That is why we have continued, through many chances and changes, to be friends."

They walked on in silence for a few moments. Then Cartoner spoke, saying that which he was bound to say in his half-audible voice.

"It was like you, to come like that and take the risk," he said, "and say nothing."

But Deulin stopped him with a quick touch on his arm.

"As to that," he said, "silence, my friend. Wait. Thank me, if you will, five years hence—ten years hence—when the time comes. I will tell you then why I did it."

"There can only be one reason why you did it," muttered the Englishman.

"Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool—the very best sort of fool—and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to me as I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship."

And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.

"I should like to fight some one to-night," he said. "Some one of the very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things to-night—and the angels in heaven are talking of me."

In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky. But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were sincere.

As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant, alighting quickly, came towards them.

"There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like that," he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.

He recognized Cartoner at this moment.

"You!" he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. "You, Cartoner! What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?"

"We have been dining with Mangles," explained Deulin.

"And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going," added Cartoner. "But we think we are going home."

"You seem to be on the spree," said Martin, with a laugh in his voice, and none in his eyes.

"We are," answered Deulin.

"Come," said Martin, turning to send away the carriage. "Come—your shortest way is through our place now. My father and Wanda are out at a ball, or something, so I am afraid you will not see them."

"Do it," whispered Deulin's voice from behind.

And Cartoner followed Martin up the narrow passage that led to the garden of the Bukaty Palace.



XXI

A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING

Martin led the way without speaking. He opened the door with a key, and passed through first. The garden was dark; for the trees in it had grown to a great height, and, protected as they were from the wild winds that sweep across the central plain of Europe, they had not shed their leaves.

A few lights twinkled through the branches from the direction of the house, and the shape of the large conservatory was dimly outlined, as though there were blinds within, partially covering the glass.

"Yes," said Martin, carefully closing the door behind him. "You find me in sole possession. My father and sister have gone to a reception—a semi-political affair at which they are compelled to put in an appearance. It only began at half-past nine. They will not be home till midnight. Mind those branches, Cartoner! You will come in, of course."

And he hurried on again to open the next door.

"Thank you, for a few minutes," answered Deulin, and seeing a movement of dissent on Cartoner's part, he laid his hand on his arm.

"It is better," he said, in an undertone. "It will put them completely off the scent. There are sure to be more than two in it."

So, reluctantly, Cartoner followed Martin into the Bukaty Palace for the first time.

"Come," said the young prince, "into the drawing-room. I see they have left the lights on there."

He pushed open the door of the long, bare room, and stood aside to allow his guests to pass.

"Holloa!" he exclaimed, an instant later, following them into the room.

At the far end of it, where two large folding-doors opened to the conservatory, half turning to see who came, stood Wanda. She had some flowers in her hand, which she had just taken from her dress.

"Back again already?" asked Martin, in surprise.

"Yes," answered Wanda. "There were some people there he did not want to meet, so we came away again at once."

"But I thought they could not possibly be there."

"They got there," answered Wanda, "by some ill chance, from Petersburg, just in time."

And as she spoke she shook hands with Cartoner.

"It is not such an ill chance, after all," said Deulin, "since it gives us the opportunity of seeing you. Where is your father?"

"He is in his study."

"I rather want to see him," said Deulin, looking at Martin.

"Come along, then," was the answer. "He will be glad to see you. It will cheer him up."

And Wanda and Cartoner were left alone. It had all come about quickly and simply—so much quicker and simpler than human plans are the plans of Heaven.

Wanda, still standing in the doorway of the conservatory, of which the warm, scented air swept out past her into the great room, watched her brother and Deulin go and close the door behind them. She turned to Cartoner with a smile as if about to speak; but she saw his face, and she said nothing, and her own slowly grew grave.

He came towards her, upright and still and thoughtful. She did not look at him, but past him towards the closed door. He only looked at her with quiet, remembering eyes. Then he went straight to the point, as was his habit.

"I was wrong," he said, "when I said that fate could be hampered by action. Nothing can hamper it. For fate has brought me here again."

He stood before her, and the attitude in some way conveyed that by the word "here" he only thought and meant near to her. There was a strange look in her eyes of suspense and fear, and something else which needs no telling to such as have seen it, and cannot be conveyed in words to those who have not.

"A clear understanding," he said abruptly, recalling her own words. "That is your creed."

She gave a little nod, and still looked past him towards the door with deep, submissive eyes. One would have thought that she had done something wrong which was being brought home to her. Explain the thought, who can!

"I made another mistake," he said. "Have been acting on it for years. I thought that a career was everything. I dreamed, I suppose, of an embassy—of a viceroyalty, perhaps—when I was quite young, and thought the world was easy to conquer. All that . . . vanished when I saw you. If it comes, well and good. I should like it. Not for my own sake."

She made a little movement, and her eyelids flickered. Ah! that clear understanding, which poor humanity cannot put into words!

"If it doesn't come"—he paused, and snapped the finger and thumb that hung quiescent at his side—"well and good. I shall have lived. I shall have known what life is meant to be. I shall have been the happiest man in the world."

He spoke slowly in his gently abrupt way. Practice in a difficult profession had taught him to weigh every word he uttered. He had never been known to say more than he meant.

"There never has been anybody else," he continued. "All that side of life was quite blank. The world was empty until you came and filled it, at Lady Orlay's that afternoon. I had come half round the world—you had come across Europe. And fate had fixed that I should meet you there. At first I did not believe. I thought it was a mistake—that we should drift apart again. Then came my orders to leave for Warsaw. I knew then that you would inevitably return. Still I tried to get out of it—fought against it—tried to avoid you. And you knew what it all came to."

She nodded again, and still did not meet his eyes. She had not spoken to him since he entered the room.

"There never can be anybody else," he said. "How could there be?"

And the abrupt laugh that followed the question made her catch her breath. She had, then, the knowledge given to so few, that so far as this one fellow-creature was concerned she was the whole earth—that he was thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that the soul can carry. For to love is as difficult as it is rare, but to be worthy of love is infinitely harder.

"I knew from the first," he continued, "that there is no hope. Whichever way we turn there is no hope. I can spare you the task of telling me that."

She turned her eyes to his at last.

"You knew?" she asked, speaking for the first time.

"I know the history of Poland," he said, quietly. "The country must have your father—your father needs you. I could not ask you to give up Poland—you know that."

They stood in silence for a few moments. They had had so little time together that they must needs have learned to understand each other in absence. The friendship that grows in absence and the love that comes to life between two people who are apart, are the love and friendship which raise men to such heights as human nature is permitted to attain.

"If you asked me," said Wanda, at length, with an illegible smile—"I should do it."

"And if I asked you I should not love you. If you loved me, you would one day cease to do so; for you would remember what I had asked you. There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it—and that would be the end."

"Is it so delicate as that?" she asked.

"It is the frailest thing in the world—and the strongest," he answered, with his thoughtful smile. "It is a very delicate sort of—thought, which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to succeed in keeping it even passably intact—and not one couple in a million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from the outer world, but from themselves."

"Where did you learn all that?" she asked, looking at him with her shrewd, smiling eyes.

"You taught me."

"But you have a terribly high ideal."

"Yes."

"Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?"

"Quite."

She shook her head doubtfully.

"Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world compromises."

"With its conscience," said Cartoner. "And look at the result."

"Then you are good," she returned, looking at him with a speculative gravity, "as well as concise—and rather masterful."

"It is clear," he said, "that a man who persuades a woman to marry against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is seeking her unhappiness and his own."

"Ah!" she cried. "But you ask for a great deal."

"I ask for love."

"And," she said, going past that question, "no obstacles."

"No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside."

"And if one such object—quite a small one—should be found?"

"Then they must be content with love alone."

Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so many hasten and such numbers fall.

"You have a way," she said, "of putting into words—so few words—what others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they did—there would, perhaps, be no marriages."

"There would be no unhappy ones," said Cartoner.

"And it is better to be content with love alone?"

"Content," was his sole answer.

Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten. Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour earlier, and his life had been in peril—he had been down to the depths and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.

"So that is your creed," she said at length. "And there is no compromise?"

"None," he answered.

And she smiled suddenly at the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the backbone of human nature.

"Ah!" she said, with a quick sigh, as she turned and looked down the length of the long, lamp-lit room. "You are strong—you are strong for two."

He shook his head in negation, for he knew that hers was that fine, steely strength of women which endures a strain all through a lifetime of which the world knows nothing. Then, acting up to her own creed of seeking always the clear understanding, she returned to the point they had left untouched.

"And if two people had between them," she suggested, wonderingly, "that with which you say they might be content, if they had it, and were sure they had it, and had with it a perfect trust in each other, but knew that they could never have more, could they be happy?"

"They could be happier than nearly everybody else in the world," he answered.

"And if they had to go on all their lives—and if one lived in London and the other in Warsaw—Warsaw?"

"They could still be happy."

"If she—alone at one end of Europe—" asked Wanda, with her worldly-wise searching into detail—"if she saw slowly vanishing those small attractions which belong to youth, for which he might care, perhaps?"

"She could still be happy."

"And he? If he experienced a check in his career, or had some misfortune, and felt lonely and disappointed—and there was no one near to—to take care of him?"

"He could still be happy—if—"

"If—?"

"If he knew that she loved him," replied Cartoner, slowly.

Wanda turned and looked at him with an odd little laugh, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Oh! you may know that," she said, suddenly descending from the uncertain heights of generality. "You may be quite sure of that. If that is what you want."

"That is what I want."

As he spoke he took her hand and slowly raised it to his lips. She looked at his bent head, and when her eyes rested on the gray hairs at his temples, they lighted suddenly with a gleam which was strangely protecting and dimly maternal.

"I want you to go away from Warsaw," she said. "I would rather you went even if you say—that you are afraid to stay."

"I cannot say that."

"Besides," she added, with her head held high, "they would not believe you if you did."

"I promise you," he answered, "not to run any risks, to take every care. But we must not see each other. I may have to go away without seeing you."

She gave a little nod of comprehension, and held her lips between her teeth. She was looking towards the door; for she had heard voices in that direction.

"I should like," she said, "to make you a promise in return. It would give me great satisfaction. Some day you may, perhaps, be glad to remember it."

The voices were approaching. It was Deulin's voice, and he seemed to be speaking unnecessarily loud.

"I promise you," said Wanda, with unfathomable eyes, "never to marry anybody else."

And the door opened, giving admittance to Deulin, who was laughing and talking. He came forward looking, not at Wanda and Cartoner, but at the clock.

"To your tents, O Israel!" he said.

Cartoner said good-night at once, and went to the door. For a moment Deulin was left alone with Wanda. He went to a side-table, where he had laid his sword-stick. He took it up, and slowly turned it in his hand.

"Wanda," he said, "remember me in your prayers to-night!"



XXII

THE WHITE FEATHER

It is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.

Looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view, it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the least harm are the uncharitable. Better than the eager, verbose man is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of Providence for the improvident must ever evoke.

Paul Deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a French cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. A fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could perceive no difference between one form of government and another. And in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the lives of individuals.

Deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which were affecting the lives of those around him. More than any other do Frenchmen herd together in exile, and Deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in Warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move. He had a friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the Jerozolimska. This lady was a French Jewess, who had by some undercurrent of Judaism drifted from Paris to Warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. The western world is ignorant of the strength of Jewry in Poland.

Deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop. He took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which Englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.

"One likes," he said to the stout Jewess, "to talk one's own tongue in a foreign land."

And he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter. Conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped past before Deulin quitted the little shop. It was still early in the day, and he hurried to Cartoner's rooms in the Jasna. He bought a flower at the corner of the Jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in his buttonhole. He wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.

"Ah!" he cried, at the sight of Cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his writing-table. "Ah! if you were only idle, as I am"—he paused, with a sharp, little sigh—"if you only could be idle, how much happier you would be!"

"A Frenchman," replied Cartoner, without looking up, "thinks that noise means happiness."

"Then you are happy—you pretend to happiness?" inquired Deulin, sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a cigarette-case that lay upon the table.

"Yes, thank you," replied Cartoner, lightly. He seemed, too, to be gay this morning.

"Don't thank me—thank the gods," replied Deulin, with a sudden gravity.

"Well," said Cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, "what do you want?"

Deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.

"What do I want?" he inquired, innocently.

"Yes. You want something. I always know when you want something. When you are most idle you are most occupied."

"Ah!"

Cartoner wrote on while Deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.

"There is a certain smell in the Rue Royale, left-hand side looking towards the Column—the shady side, after the street has been watered—that my soul desires," said the Frenchman, at length.

"When are you going?" asked Cartoner, softly.

"I am not going; I wish I were. I thought I was last night. I thought I had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on indefinitely for——"

"For what?"

"For the upheaval," explained Deulin, with an airy wave of his cigarette.

"This morning—" he began. And then he waited for Cartoner to lay aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his being. Cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.

"This morning I picked up a scrap of information." He drew towards him a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin. The design was made in three strokes. It was not unlike a Greek cross, Deulin threw the paper across the table.

"You know that man?"

"I do not know his name," replied Cartoner.

"No; no one knows that," replied Deulin. "It is one of the very few mysteries of the nineteenth century. All the others are cleared up."

Cartoner made no answer. He sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content to be known only by a mark.

"Up to the present I have not attached much importance to those rumors which, happily, have never reached the newspaper," said Deulin, after a pause. "One has supposed that, as usual, Poland is ready for an upheaval. But the upheaval does not come. That has been the status quo for many years here. Suppose—suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the creating of an opportunity."

"Anarchy?" inquired Cartoner.

"The ladies of the party call it Nihilism," replied the Frenchman, with an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay a lady.

"Bukaty would not stoop to that. Remember they are a patient people. They waited thirty years."

"And struck too hastily, after all," commented Deulin. "Bukaty would not link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. But there are others besides Bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait longer, and are therefore less patient—men of a more modern stamp, without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in their way. It may not be a gentlemanly way—"

"The man who goes by the name of Kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to his lights," interrupted Cartoner.

"Ah! since you say so," returned Deulin, with a significant gesture, "yes."

"Bon sang," said Cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying. "He is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists."

But Deulin did not seem to be listening. He was following his own train of thought.

"So you know of Kosmaroff?" he said, studying his companion's face. "You know that, too. What a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. Where is Kosmaroff? Perhaps you know that."

"In Warsaw," guessed Cartoner.

"Wrong. He has gone towards Berlin—towards London, by the same token."

Deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.

"That parishioner is in London, too," he said, in his own tongue—and the word means more in French.

Cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the drawing to small pieces. Then he glanced at the clock.

"Trying to get me out of Warsaw," he said. "Giving me a graceful chance of showing the white feather."

Deulin smiled. He had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. The force of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the time of day at the same moment. If Cartoner was thinking of a train at that instant, it could only be the train to Berlin on the heels of Kosmaroff, and Deulin desired to get Cartoner away from Warsaw.

"The white feather," he said, "is an emblem that neither you nor I need trouble our minds about. Don't get narrow-minded, Cartoner. It is a national fault, remember. For an Englishman, you used to be singularly independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the tea-table. Afraid! What does it matter who thinks we are afraid?"

And he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.

"Look here," he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on the table, "here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling—here, in Warsaw. Here—in Berlin or in London—is the man with the match that will set it alight. You and I have happened on a great event, and stand in the shadow that it casts before it, for the second—no, for the third time in our lives. We work together again, I suppose. We have always done so when it was possible. One must watch the dry wood, the other must know the movements of the man with the kindling. Take your choice, since your humor is so odd. You stay or you go—but remember that it is in the interests of others that you go."

"Of others?"

"Yes—of the Bukatys. Your presence here is a danger to them. Now go or stay, as you like."

Cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. He was not deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing that decision.

"I will go," he said, at length. And Deulin leaned back in his chair with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. It was, as Cartoner had observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important business in hand. He had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. It seemed that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.

"I dare say you are right," he said. "And, at all events, you will see the last of this sad city."

Then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at this period in European history.

"I smell," he said, "something in the atmosphere. Strangers passing in the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret which one might perhaps be party to. And I, who have no secrets."

He spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.

"Because," he added, with a sudden gravity, "there is nothing in life worth making a secret of—except one's income. There are many reasons why mine remains unconfessed. But, my friend, if anything should happen—anything—anywhere—we keep each other advised. Is it not so?"

"Usual cipher," answered Cartoner.

"My salutations to Lady Orlay," said Deulin, with a reflective nod. "That woman who can keep a secret."

"I thought you had none."

"She knows the secret—of my income," answered the Frenchman. "Tell her—no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you leave?"

"To-night."

"And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well, do as you like. I will say good-bye now. Heavens! how many times have we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael, and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away."

He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing but the hired furniture.

"The police will be in here five minutes after you are out," he said, curtly. "You have no message—" He paused to pick up from the floor a petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: "No message to any one in Warsaw?"

"No," answered Cartoner.

"No—you wouldn't have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are hard, Cartoner—hard as nails."

Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his possessions—already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in English public schools.

Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.

"Don't know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Good-bye."

And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.

"The matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. You may leave others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand together."

And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was gone.



XXIII

COEUR VOLANT

In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain. It had come at last.

In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices. He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with a sort of shock.

"You were dreaming," she said.

"Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "Dreams and white hairs—No, I was listening to the rain."

He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if daring her to doubt him.

"I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda—it is gone."

He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless, slow persistency.

"Can you not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note that strikes—that hopeless rain—a northern autumn evening! There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw."

Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was in reality about his business.

"There," he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. "That is more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?"

"I do not know if it will amuse you," answered Wanda, in her energetic way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, "but Mr. Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening."

Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the same.

"Separately they are amusing enough," he said, slowly, "but they do not mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles."

"So has my father," put in Wanda, rather significantly.

"Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young country events move by jerks—that the man who is nobody to-day may be somebody to-morrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda."

"Yes."

"And you are above that sort of thing."

"I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of Poland," she answered, gravely. "They give everything. I have not much to give, you see."

"I suppose you have what every woman has—to sacrifice upon some altar or another—your happiness!"

Wanda shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She glanced across at him. He knew something. But he had learned nothing from Cartoner. Of that, at least, she was sure.

"Happiness, or a hope of happiness," he went on, reflectively. "Perhaps one is as valuable as the other. Perhaps they are the same thing. If you gain a happiness you lose a hope, remember that. It is not always remembered by women, and very seldom by men."

"Is it so precious? It is common enough, at all events."

"What is common enough?" he asked, absent-mindedly.

"Hope."

"Hope! connais pas!" he exclaimed, with a sudden laugh. "You must ask some one who knows more about it. I am a man of sorrow, Wanda; that is why I am so gay."

And his laugh was indeed light-hearted enough.

"The rain makes one feel lonely, that is all," he went on, as if seeking to explain his own humor. "Rain and cold and half a dozen drawbacks to existence lose their terrors if one has an in-door life to turn to and a fire to sit by. That is why I am here."

And he drew his chair nearer to the burning logs. Wanda now knew that he had something to tell her—that he had come for no other purpose. And, that he should be delicate and careful in his approach, told her that it was of Cartoner he had come to speak. While the delicacy and care showed her that he had guessed something, it also opened up a new side to his character. For the susceptibilities of men and women who have passed middle age are usually dull, and often quite dead, to the sensitiveness of younger hearts. It almost seemed that he divined that Wanda's heart was sensitive and sore, like an exposed nerve, though she showed the world a quiet face, such as the Bukatys had always shown through as long and grim a family history as the world has known.

"Do you not feel lonely in this great room?" he asked, looking round at the bare walls, which still showed the dim marks left by the portraits that had gone to grace an imperial gallery.

"No, I think not," answered Wanda. She followed his glance round the room, wondering, perhaps, if the rest of her life was to be weighed down by the sense of loneliness which had come over her that day for the first time.

Deulin, like the majority of Frenchmen, had certain mental gifts, usually considered to be the special privilege of women. He had a feminine way of skirting a subject—of walking round, as it were, and contemplating it from various side issues, as if to find out the best approach to it.

"The worst of Warsaw," he said, "is its dulness. The theatres are deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course, none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. One must amuse one's self."

He looked at her furtively, as if he were ashamed of having to amuse himself, and remembered too late how much the confession might mean.

"It was sordid," he continued. "One wondered how the performers could be content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile—like cracking nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested me. It was really he who did all the work. It was he who caught the others when they swung across the tent in mid-air. He was very steady and he was usually the wrong way up, hanging by his heels on a swinging trapeze. He had the lives of the others in his hands at every moment. But it was the others who received the applause—the nut-cracker girl who pirouetted, and the vain man who tapped his chest and smiled condescendingly. But the big man stood in the background, scarcely bowing at all, and quite forgetting to smile. One could see from the expression of his patient face that he knew it did not matter what he did for no one was looking at him—which was only the truth. Then, when the applause was over, he turned and walked away, heavy-shouldered and rather tired—his day's work done. And, I don't know why, I thought—of Cartoner."

She expected the name. Perhaps she wished for it, though she never would have spoken it herself. She had yet to learn to do that.

"Yes," said Deulin, after a pause, pursuing, it would appear, his own thoughts, "the world would get on very well without its talkers. No great man has ever been a great talker. Have you noticed that in history?"

Wanda made no answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged he continued his monologue.

"I suppose that is why I feel lonely this afternoon. In a sense, I am alone. Cartoner has gone, you know. He has left Warsaw."

Deulin glanced at the mirror over the mantel-piece, and if he had had any doubts they were now laid aside, for there was only gladness in Wanda's face. It was good news, then. And Deulin was clever enough to know the meaning of that.

"Gone!" she said. "I am very glad."

"Yes," answered Deulin, gravely, as he returned to his chair. "It is a good thing. I left him this morning, placidly preparing to depart at half an hour's warning. He was packing, with that repose of manner which you have perhaps noticed. Better than Vespers, better than absolution, is Cartoner's repose of manner—for me, bien entendu. But, then, I am not a devout man."

"Then you have done what I asked you to do," said Wanda, "some time ago, and I am very grateful."

"Some time ago? It was only yesterday."

"Was it? It seems more than that," said Wanda. And Deulin nodded his head slowly.

"I was able to give him some information which made him change his plans quite suddenly," he explained. "So he packed up and went. He had not much to pack. We travel light—he and I. We have no despatch-boxes or note-books or diaries. What we remember and forget we remember and forget in our own heads. Though I doubt whether Cartoner forgets anything."

"And you?" asked Wanda, turning upon him quickly.

"I? Oh! I do my best," he said, lightly. "But if you desire to forget anything you should begin early. It is not a habit acquired in later life."

He rose as he spoke and looked at the clock. He had a habit of peering and contracting his round brown eyes which made many people think that he was short-sighted.

"I do not think I will wait for the Mangles," he said. "Especially Julie. I do not feel in the humor for Julie. By-the-way—" He paused, and contemplated the fire thoughtfully. "You never talk politics, I know. With the Mangles you may go further, and not even talk of politicians. It is no affair of theirs that Cartoner may have quitted Warsaw—you understand?"

"I should have thought Mr. Joseph Mangles the incarnation of discretion," said Wanda.

"Ah! You have found out Mangles, have you? I wonder if you have found us all out. Yes, Mangles is discreet, but Netty is not. I call her Netty—well, because I regard her with a secret and consuming passion."

"And have an equally secret and complete contempt for her discretion."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, and turned to look at her again. "Have I concealed my admiration so successfully as that? Perhaps I have overdone the concealment."

"Perhaps you have overdone the contempt," suggested Wanda. "She is probably more discreet than you think, but I shall not put her to the test."

"You see," said Deulin, in an explanatory way, "Cartoner may have had reasons of his own for leaving without drum or trumpet. You and I are the only persons in Warsaw who know of his departure, except the people in the passport-office—and the others, whose business it is to watch us all. You have a certain right to know; because in a sense you brought it all about, and it concerns the safety of your father and Martin. So I took it upon myself to tell you. I was not instructed to do so by Cartoner. I have no message of politeness to give to any one in Warsaw. Cartoner merely saw that it was his duty to go, and to go at once; so he went at once. And with a characteristic simplicity of purpose, he ignored the little social trammels which the majority of mankind know much better than they know their Bible, and follow much more closely. He was too discreet to call and say good-bye—knowing the ways of servants in this country. He will be much too discreet to send a conge card by post, knowing, as he does, the Warsaw post-office."

He took up his hat as he sat, and broke suddenly into his light and pleasant laugh.

"You are wondering," he said, "why I am taking this unusual course. It is not often, I know, that one speaks well of one's friend behind his back. It is six for Cartoner and half a dozen for myself. To begin with, Cartoner is my friend. I should not like him to be misunderstood. Also, I may do the same at any moment myself. We are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Sometimes we remember our friends and sometimes we forget them."

"At all events," said Wanda, shaking hands, "you are cautious. You make no promises."

"And therefore we break none," he answered, as he crossed the threshold.

He had hardly gone before Netty entered the room, followed closely by Mr. Mangles. She was prettily dressed. She appeared to be nervous and rather shy. The two girls shook hands in silence. Joseph Mangles, standing well in the middle of the room, waited till the first greeting was over, and then, with that solemn air of addressing an individual as if he or she were an assembly, he spoke.

"Princess," he said, "my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked two cigarettes towards the emancipation of your sex, princess. Just to show her independence—to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a—that she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache."

And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still attempt to oppose the progress of women.



XXIV

IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD

It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion that they have seen life and London when they have passed the portals of one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.

There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump, on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician, Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have served in one army or another, would probably be useful.

There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them, it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those articles de luxe which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.

There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business, had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective brush, which had last been used for red.

On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy work-people—men, women, and ancient children—also use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.

The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian character three words, which, being translated, read: "The Brothers of Liberty." As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.

"That's their lingo," said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the furrier's shop.

He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.

"That's their lingo, right enough," said the captain, examining the tin tablet a second time. "That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman."

He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was, nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he had put on what he called his "suit"; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.

The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it. Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron, who looked at him in lugubrious silence.

"Name of Cable," said the captain, turning to expectorate on the pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.

"Name of Cable," repeated the captain. "Dirty!" he added, just by way of inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.

This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood aside.

"Heave ahead!" he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain cocked his bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And he stumped along the passage into the dim room at the end. It was a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a sparrow. The room was full of men—six or seven foreign faces were turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the Vistula as Kosmaroff.

The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at its possessor as if measuring himself against him.

"Take a chair, captain," said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece, which had seen better days—and company—and smoking a cigarette. He was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and he scraped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a fighting race.

The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his "suit."

"Do you speak German, captain?" inquired Kosmaroff.

And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.

"Sailed with a crew of Germans," he answered; "I understand a bit, and I know a few words. I know the German for d—n your eyes, and handy words like that."

"Then," said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, "we had better continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain dealing."

He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.

"We have not much to say to Captain Cable," replied the man who seemed to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor voice, and was what the French call chetif in appearance—a weak man, fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.

"It is essential in the first place," he continued, "that we should understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered."

With a gesture he divided the party assembled into two groups, the smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.

"We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he understands very little of what we are saying."

Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.

"Our circumstances are such that no correspondence is possible," continued the speaker. "Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and verbal agreements should be quite clear—the human memory is so liable to be affected by circumstances—and should be repeated several times in the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a period of nearly twenty years, Poland—is ready again."

There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.

"Yes," said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.

"And is only awaiting her opportunity."

"Yes."

One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body, which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet man had made a little in his day.

"An opportunity is not an easy thing to define," he said at length. "Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about just yet."

He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the worst of blindness—the blindness of vanity.

"We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough—in print—and ready enough to fight—in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little journalism—in England they have too much."

Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.

"Another opportunity would be a social upheaval," said the Russian, drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come for that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head—and that we can offer to you."

Kosmaroff moved impatiently.

"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "I have heard that talk for the last ten years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?"

The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and waited till he had finished speaking.

"Yes—that is all I have to propose to you—but this time it is more than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have her opportunity—and a good one—in a month from now."

He held up his hand to command silence, for Kosmaroff, with eyes that suddenly blazed in anger, had stepped forward to the table, and was about to interrupt. And Kosmaroff, who was not given to obedience, paused, he knew not why.

"Think," said the other, in his smooth, even voice—"one month from now, after waiting twenty years. In a month you yourself may be in a very different position to that you now occupy. You commit yourselves to nothing. You do not even give ground for the conclusion that the Polish party ever for a moment approved of our methods. Our methods are our own affair, as are the risks we are content to run. We have our reasons, and we seek the approval of no man."

There was a deadly coldness in the man's manner which seemed to vouch for the validity of those reasons which he did not submit to the judgment of any.

"Five thousand roubles," he concluded. "And in exchange I give you the date—so that Poland may be ready."

"Thank you," said Kosmaroff, who had regained his composure as suddenly as he had lost it. "I decline—for myself and for the whole of Poland. We play a cleaner game than that."

He turned and took up his hat, and his hand shook as he did it.

"If I did not know that you are a patriot according to your lights—if I did not know something of your story, and of those reasons that you do not give—I should take you by the throat and throw you out into the street for daring to make such a proposal to me," he said, in a low voice.

"To a deserter from a Cossack regiment," suggested the other.

"To me," repeated Kosmaroff, touching himself on the breast and standing at his full height. No one spoke, as if the silent spell of History were again for a moment laid upon their tongues.

"Captain Cable," said Kosmaroff, "you and I have met before, and I learned enough of you then to tell you now that this is no place for you, and these men no company for you. I am going—will you come?"

"I'm agreeable," said Captain Cable, dusting his hat.

When they were out in the street, he turned to Kosmaroff and looked up into his face with bright and searching eyes.

"Who's that man?" he asked, as if there had been only one in the room.

"I do not know his name," replied Kosmaroff.

They were standing on the doorstep. The dirty man had closed the door behind them, and, turning on his heel, Kosmaroff looked thoughtfully at the dusty woodwork of it. Half absent-mindedly he extended one finger and made a design on the door. It was not unlike a Greek cross.

"That is who he is," he said.

Captain Cable followed the motion of his companion's finger.

"I've heard of him," he said. "And I heard his voice—sort of soft-spoken—on Hamburg quay one night, many years ago. That is why I refused the job and came out with you."



XXV

THE CAPTAIN'S STORY

More especially in northern countries nature lays her veto upon the activity of men, and winter calls a truce even to human strife. Cartoner awaited orders in London, for all the world was dimly aware of something stirring in the north, and no one knew what to expect or where to look for the unexpected.

It was a cold winter that year, and the Baltic closed early. Captain Cable chartered the Minnie in the coasting trade, and after Christmas he put her into one of the cheaper dry-docks down the river towards Rotherhithe. His ship was, indeed, in dry-dock when the captain opened with the Brothers of Liberty those negotiations which came to such a sudden and untoward end.

Paul Deulin wrote one piteous letter to Cartoner, full of abuse of the cold and wet weather. "If the winter would only set in," he said, "and dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would perhaps be more endurable."

Then the silence of the northern winter closed over him too, and Cartoner wrote in vain, hoping to receive some small details of the Bukatys and perhaps a mention of Wanda's name. But his letters never reached Warsaw, or if they travelled to the banks of the Vistula they were absorbed into that playful post-office where little goes in and less comes out.

There were others besides Cartoner who were wintering in London who likewise laid aside their newspaper with a sigh half weariness, half relief, to find that their parts of the world were still quiet.

"History is assuredly at a stand-still," said an old traveller one evening at the club, as he paused at Cartoner's table. "The world must be quiet indeed with you here in London, all the winter, eating your head off."

"I am waiting," replied Cartoner.

"What for?"

"I do not know," he said, placidly, continuing his dinner.

Later on he returned to his rooms in Pall Mall. He was a great reader, and was forced to follow the daily events in a dozen different countries in a dozen different languages. He was surrounded by newspapers, in a deep arm-chair by the table, when that came for which he was waiting. It came in the form of Captain Cable in his shore-going clothes. The little sailor was ushered in by the well-trained servant of this bachelor household without surprise or comment.

Cartoner made him welcome with a cigar and an offer of refreshment, which was refused. Captain Cable knew that as you progress upward in the social scale the refusal of refreshment becomes an easier matter until at last you can really do as you like and not as etiquette dictates, while to decline the beggar's pint of beer is absolute rudeness.

"We've always dealt square by each other, you and I," said the captain, when he had lighted his cigar. Then he fell into a reminiscent humor, and presently broke into a chuckling laugh.

"If it hadn't been for you, them Dons would have had me up against the wall and shot me, sure as fate," he said, bringing his hand down on his knee with a keen sense of enjoyment. "That was ten years ago last November, when the Minnie had been out of the builder's yard a matter of six months."

"Yes," said Cartoner, putting the dates carefully together in his mind. It seemed that the building of the Minnie was not the epoch upon which he reckoned his periods.

"She's in Morrison's dry-dock now," said the captain, who in a certain way was like a young mother. For him all the topics were but a number of by-ways leading ultimately to the same centre. "You should go down and see her, Mr. Cartoner. It's a big dock. You can walk right round her in the mud at the bottom of the dock and see her finely."

Cartoner said he would. They even arranged a date on which to carry out this plan, and included in it an inspection of the Minnie's new boiler. Then Captain Cable remembered what he had come for, and the plan was never carried out after all.

"Yes," he said, "you've a reckoning against me, Mr. Cartoner. I have never done you a good turn that I know of, and you saved my life, I believe, that time—you and that Frenchman who talks so quick, Moonseer Deulin—that time, over yonder."

And he nodded his head towards the southwest with the accuracy of one who never loses his bearings. For there are some people who always know which is the north; and others who, if asked suddenly, do not know their left hand from their right; and others, again, who say—or shout—that all men are created equal.

"I've been done, Mr. Cartoner—that is what I've come to tell you. Me that has always been so smart and has dealt straight by other men. Done, hoodwinked, tricked—same as a Sunday-school teacher. And I can do you a good turn by telling you about it; and I can do the other man a bad turn, which is what I want to do. Besides, it's dirty work. Me, that has always kept my hands——"

He looked at his hands, and decided not to pursue the subject.

"You'll say that for me, Mr. Cartoner—you that has known me ten years and more."

"Yes, I'll say that for you," answered Cartoner, with a laugh.

"They did me!" cried the captain, leaning forward and banging his hand down on the table, "with the old trick of a bill of lading lost in the post and a man in a gold-laced hat that came aboard one night and said he was a government official from the Arsenal come for his government stuff. And it wasn't government stuff, and he wasn't a government official. It was——"

Captain Cable paused and looked carefully round the room. He even looked up to the ceiling, from a long habit of living beneath deck skylights.

"Bombs!" he concluded—"bombs!"

Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be set down here.

"You know me and you know the Minnie, Mr. Cartoner!" continued the angry sailor. "She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery, and—well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean stuff up to now—plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the other. Always honest—revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But bombs——"

And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no place on a polite page.

"There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them," he concluded. "That is what I have got to tell you."

"How do you know?" asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.

The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other.

"Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?"

Cartoner nodded.

"Know the Seemannshaus there?"

"Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the docks."

"That's the place," said Captain Cable. "Well, one night I was up there, on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons. You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way. A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'—well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him—forwarding agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man—with a queer, soft voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d—d innocent, and I ought to have known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a match?"

For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he always did—this unvarnished gentleman from the sea—and asked for what he wanted.

"Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed. We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it. Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for shells. Besides, no government sends loaded shells about, 'cepting in war time. At the moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the stuff away."

Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story, after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what had brought these past events back to his recollection.

"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable, "because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing, though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit of information—you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."

And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.

"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little job for the Minnie. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not forget to come down and see her?"

"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."

"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to offer me. Foreigners—every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I. And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten, and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still going on, up jumps a man—the only man I knew there—name beginning with a K—don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head—quarter-deck fashion—as if he was a king or a Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says."

Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes for eternity were exceedingly small.

"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in politics and the like."

"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.

"That's it—a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the outward signs of man and nature.

"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can—all, perhaps, that you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the Minnie's hatches."

"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."

He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.

"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.

"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.

Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting, having dashed up from the club stand.

"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the Minnie this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow morning."

"Going foreign?" asked the captain.

"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit still.



XXVI

IN THE SPRING

The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one, and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady would select to pass the cold months in.

"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to Nice if you like."

And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason or another—reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private conversation with her aunt—the ladies lingered on.

"The place is dull for you," said Mangles, "now that Cartoner seems to have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven any circle."

And beneath his shaggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.

"You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the Atlantic," she said. "I always found you with your heads close together whenever I came on deck."

"Don't think we sparkled much," said Joseph, with his under lip well forward.

"It is very kind of Uncle Joseph," said Netty, afterwards, to Miss Mangles, "to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here."

Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.

Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow; and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there. Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring, though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.

Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he came—had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff, any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was, she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would be.

Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed, no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself—and, no doubt, found herself quite easy to convince—as other people do.