Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station. There are many who have never heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.
How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train just before these electric lights were reached—to take his chance of crossing the frontier before morning—history will never tell! How many have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station with a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of the officials, Heaven only knows! There is no other way of passing Alexandrowo—of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland—but by this route. Before the train is at a standstill at the platform each one of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty of Russian law. Here, whatever time of day or night, winter or summer, it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity. There are always sentries on the outer side of the train. The platform is a prison-yard—the waiting rooms are prison-yards.
With a passport in perfect order, vised for here and there and everywhere, with good clothes, good luggage, and nothing contraband in baggage or demeanor, Alexandrowo is easy enough. Obedience and patience will see the traveller through. There is no fear of his being left in the huge station, or of his going anywhere but to his avowed and rightful destination. But with a passport that is old or torn, with a visa which bears any but a recent date, with a restless eye or a hunted look, the voyager had better take his chance of dropping from the footboard at speed, especially if it be a misty night.
Like sheep, the passengers are driven from the train in which not so much as a newspaper is left. Only the sleeping-car is allowed to go through, but it is emptied and searched. The travellers are penned within a large room where the luggage is inspected, and they are deprived of their passports. When the customs formalities are over they are allowed to find the refreshment-room, and there console themselves with weak tea in tumblers until such time as they are released.
The train on this occasion was a full one, and the great inspection-room, with its bare walls and glaring lights, crammed to overflowing. The majority of the travellers seemed, as usual, to be Germans. There were a few ladies. And two men, better dressed than the others, had the appearance of Englishmen. They drifted together—just as the women drifted together and the little knot of shady characters who hoped against hope that their passports were in order. For the most part, no one spoke, though one German commercial traveller protested with so much warmth that an examination of his trunks was nothing but an intrusion on the officer's valuable time that a few essayed to laugh and feel at their ease.
Reginald Cartoner, who had been among the first to quit Lady Orlay's, was an easy first across the frontier. He had twelve hours' start of anybody, and was twenty-four hours ahead of all except Paul Deulin, whose train had steamed into Berlin Station as the Warsaw Express left it. He seemed to know the ways of Alexandrowo, and the formalities to be observed at the frontier, but he was not eager to betray his knowledge. He obeyed with a silent patience the instructions of the white-aproned, black-capped porter who had a semi-official charge of him. He made no attempt to escape an examination of his luggage, and he avoided the refreshment-room tea.
Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him. Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile. Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of the examination-room. But they drifted together again—or, perhaps, the younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who, when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a high-born Briton.
“Englishman?” he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
“Yes,” answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was oddly stiff.
“Thought you were,” said the other, who, though his clothes were English and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman. There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the head—a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence. He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.
“All this would be mildly amusing,” he said, “at say any other hour of the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?”
“I can sleep anywhere,” replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to talk.
“I know Alexandrowo pretty well,” the other volunteered, nevertheless, “and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as—the multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere.”
He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but for a card.
“I know who you are,” said Cartoner, quietly: “I recognized you from your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours ago in London.”
“Wanda?” inquired the other, eagerly. “Dear old Wanda! How is she? She was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet.”
He leaned across the table.
“Tell me,” he said, “all about them. But, first, tell me your name. Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their friends—the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to have made mention of it in her letters.”
“Reginald Cartoner.”
“Ah! I have heard of you—but not from Wanda.”
He paused to reflect.
“No,” he added, rather wonderingly, after a pause. “No, she never mentioned your name. But, of course, I know it. It is better known out of England than in your own country, I fancy. Deulin—you know Deulin?—has spoken to us of you. No doubt we have dozens of other friends in common. We shall find them out in time. I am very glad to meet you. You say you know my name—yes, I am Martin Bukaty. Odd that you should have recognized me from my likeness to Wanda. I am very glad you think I am like her. Dear old Wanda! She is a better sort than I am, you know.”
And he finished with a frank and hearty laugh—not that there was anything to laugh at, but merely because he was young, and looked at life from a cheerful standpoint.
Cartoner sipped his coffee, and looked reflectively at his companion over the cup. “Cartoner,” Paul Deulin had once said to a common friend, “weighs you, and naturally finds you wanting.” It seemed that he was weighing Prince Martin Bukaty now.
“I saw your father also,” he said, at length. “He was kind enough to ask me to call, which I did.”
“That was kind of you. Of course we know no one in London—no one, I mean, who speaks anything except English. That is a thing which is never quite understood on the Continent—that if you go to London you must speak English. If you cannot, you had better hang yourself and be done with it, for you are practically in solitary confinement. My father does not easily make friends—you must have been very civil to him.”
“According to my lights, I was,” admitted Cartoner.
Martin laughed again. It is a gay heart that can be amused at three in the morning.
“The truth is,” continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way, “that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want, and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however, to admit that we have been confoundedly badly treated.”
He tossed off his coffee as he spoke, and turned in his chair to nod an acknowledgment to the profound bows of a gold-laced official who had approached him, and who now tendered an envelope, with some murmured words of politeness.
“Thank you—thank you,” said Prince Martin, and slipped the envelope within his pocket.
“It is my passport,” he explained to Cartoner, lightly. “All the rest of you will receive yours when you are in the train. Mine is the doubtful privilege of being known here, and being a suspected character. So they are doubly polite and doubly watchful. As for you, at Alexandrowo you rejoice in a happy obscurity. You will pass in with the crowd, I suppose.”
“I always try to,” replied Cartoner. Which was strictly true.
“You see,” went on Martin, not too discreetly, considering their environments, “we cannot forget that we were a great nation before there was a Russian Empire or an Austrian Empire or a German Empire. We are a landlady who has seen better days; who has let her lodgings to three foreign gentlemen who do not pay the rent—who make us clean their boots and then cast them at our heads.”
The doors of the great room had now been thrown open, and the passengers were passing slowly out to the long, deserted platform. It was almost daylight now, and the train was drawn up in readiness to start, with a fresh engine and new officials. The homeliness of Germany had vanished, giving place to that subtle sense of discomfort and melancholy which hangs in the air from the Baltic to the Pacific coast.
“I hope you will stay a long time in Warsaw,” said Martin, as they walked up the platform. “My father and sister will be coming home before long, and will be glad to see you. We will do what we can to make the place tolerable for you. We live in the Kotzebue, and I have a horse for you when you want it. You know we have good horses in Warsaw, as good as any. And the only way to see the country is from the saddle. We have the best horses and the worst roads.”
“Thanks, very much,” replied Cartoner. “I, of course, do not know how long I shall stay. I am not my own master, you understand. I never know from one day to another what my movements may be.”
“No,” replied Martin, in the absent tone of one who only half hears. “No, of course not. By-the-way, we have the races coming on. I hope you will be here for them. In our small way, it is the season in Warsaw now. But, of course, there are difficulties—even the races present difficulties—there is the military element.”
He paused and indicated with a short nod the Russian officer who was passing to his carriage in front of them.
“They have the best horses,” he explained. “They have more money than we have. We have been robbed, as you know. You, whose business it is.”
He turned, with his foot on the step of the carriage. He was so accustomed to the recognition of his rank that he went first without question.
“Yes,” he said, with a laugh, “I had quite forgotten that it is your business to know all about us.”
“I have tried to remind you of it several times,” answered Cartoner, quietly.
“To shut me up, you mean?” asked the younger man.
“Yes.”
Martin was standing at the door of Cartoner's compartment. He turned away with a laugh.
“Good-night,” he said. “Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet again in a few hours.”
He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of the station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice—of a rather high timbre—in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor. For, like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues. The Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first, his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German, or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so little—England and France.
Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after another as occasion seemed to demand.
He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession, even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the compartment, closing the door behind him.
“I have been thinking about it,” he said, in his quick way, “and it won't do, you know—it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you. Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in Warsaw.”
“Yes,” said Cartoner, “I understand.”
He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train glided into Warsaw Station.
In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
“All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times.”
He waited for an answer, and at length Cartoner spoke.
“She did not know that I was coming,” he said.
The Vistula is the backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At Cracow—the tomb of many kings—it passes half round the citadel, a shallow, sluggish river; and from the ancient capital of Poland to the present capital—Warsaw—it finds its way across the great plain, amid the cultivated fields, through the quiet villages of Galicia and Masovia.
Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In Praga—a hundred years ago—the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in the square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. Again, in cold blood, the troops fired, and the Warsaw massacre continued for three hours in the streets.
Warsaw is a gay and cheerful town, with fine streets and good shops, with a cold, gray climate, and a history as grim as that of any city in the world save Paris. Like most cities, Warsaw has its principal street, and, like all things Polish, this street has a terrible name—the Krakowski Przedmiescie. It is in this Krakowski Faubourg that the Hotel de l'Europe stands, where history in its time has played a part, where kings and princes have slept, where the Jew Hermani was murdered, where the bodies of the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were carried after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where the great light from the West—Miss Julie P. Mangles—alighted one May morning, looking a little dim and travel-stained.
“Told you,” said Mr. Mangles to his sister, who for so lofty a soul was within almost measurable distance of snappishness—“told you you would have nothing to complain of in the hotel, Jooly.”
But Miss Mangles was not to be impressed or mollified. Only once before had her brother and niece seen this noble woman in such a frame of mind—on their arrival at the rising town of New Canterbury, Massachusetts, when the deputation of Women Workers and Wishful Waiters for the Truth failed to reach the railway depot because they happened on a fire in a straw-hat manufactory on their way, and heard that the newest pattern of straw hat was to be had for the picking up in the open street.
There had been no deputation at Warsaw Station to meet Miss Mangles. London had not recognized her. Berlin had shaken its official head when she proposed to visit its plenipotentiaries, and hers was the ignoble position of the prophet—not without honor in his own country—who cannot get a hearing in foreign parts.
“This is even worse than I anticipated,” said Miss Mangles, watching the hotel porters in a conflict with Miss Netty Cahere's large trunks.
“What is worse, Jooly?”
“Poland!” replied Miss Mangles, in a voice full of foreboding, and yet with a ring of determination in it, as if to say that she had reformed worse countries than Poland in her day.
“I allow,” said Mr. Mangles, slowly, “that at this hour in the morning it appears to be a one-horse country. You want your breakfast, Jooly?”
“Breakfast will not put two horses to it, Joseph,” replied Miss Mangles, looking not at her brother, but at the imposing hotel concierge with a bland severity indicative of an intention of keeping him strictly in his place.
Miss Netty quietly relieved her aunt of the small impedimenta of travel, with a gentle deference which was better than words. Miss Cahere seemed always to know how to say or do the right thing, or, more difficult still, to keep the right silence. Either this, or the fact that Miss Mangles was conscious of having convinced her hearers that she was as expert in the lighter swordplay of debate as in the rolling platform period, somewhat alleviated the lady's humor, and she turned towards the historic staircase, which had run with the blood of Jew and Pole, with a distinct air of condescension.
“Tell me,” said Mr. Joseph Mangles to the concierge, in a voice of deep depression which only added to the incongruity of his French, “what languages you speak.”
“Russian, French, Polish, German, English—”
“That'll do to go on with,” interrupted Mangles, in his own tongue. “We'll get along in English. My name is Mangles.”
Whereupon the porter bowed low, as to one for whom first-floor rooms and a salon had been bespoken, and waved his hand towards the stairs, where stood a couple of waiters.
Of the party, Miss Cahere alone appeared cool and composed and neat. She might, to judge from her bright eyes and delicate complexion, have slept all night in a comfortable bed. Her hat and her hair had the appearance of having been arranged at leisure by a maid. Miss Netty had on the surface a little manner of self-depreciating flurry which sometimes seemed to conceal a deep and abiding calm. She had little worldly theories, too, which she often enunciated in her confidential manner; and one of these was that one should always, in all places and at all times, be neat and tidy, for no one knows whom one may meet. And, be it noted in passing, there have been many successful human careers based upon this simple rule.
She followed the waiter up-stairs with that soft rustle of the dress which conveys even in the obtuse masculine mind a care for clothes and the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it appeared, as much at home here as in London or Paris or New York.
“Ah, mademoiselle!” he said, standing hat in hand before her, “who could have dreamed of such a pleasure—here and at this moment—in this sad town?”
“You seemed gay enough—you were singing,” answered Miss Cahere.
“It was a sad little air, mademoiselle, and I was singing flat. Perhaps you noticed it?”
“No, I never know when people are singing flat or not. I have no ear for music. I only know when I like to hear a person's voice. I have no accomplishments, you know,” said Netty, with a little humble drawing-in of the shoulders.
“Ah!” said Deulin, with a gesture which conveyed quite clearly his opinion that she had need of none. And he turned to greet Miss Mangles and her brother.
Miss Mangles received him coldly. Even the greatest of women is liable to feminine moments, and may know when she is not looking her best. She shook hands, with her platform bow—from the waist—and passed on.
“Hallo!” said Joseph Mangles. “Got here before us? Thought you'd turn up. Dismal place, eh?”
“You have just arrived, I suppose?” said Deulin.
“Oh, please don't laugh at us!” broke in Netty. “Of course you can see that. You must know that we have just come out of a sleeping-car!”
“You always look, mademoiselle, as if you had come straight from heaven,” answered Deulin, looking at Miss Cahere, whose hand was at her hair. It was pretty hair and a pretty, slim, American hand. But she did not seem to hear, for she had turned away quickly and was speaking to her uncle. Deulin accompanied them along the corridor, which is a long one, for the Hotel de l'Europe is a huge quadrangle.
“You startled me by your sudden appearance, you know,” she said, turning again to the Frenchman, which was probably intended for an explanation of her heightened color. She was one of those fortunate persons who blush easily—at the right time. “I am sure Uncle Joseph will be pleased to have you in the same hotel. Of course, we know no one in Warsaw. Have you friends here?”
“Only one,” replied Deulin—“the waiter who serves the Zakuska counter down-stairs. I knew him when he was an Austrian nobleman, travelling for his health in France. He does not recognize me now.”
“Will you stay long?”
“I did not intend to,” replied Deulin, “when I came out of my room this morning.”
“But you and Mr. Cartoner have Polish friends, have you not?” asked Netty.
“Not in Warsaw,” was the reply.
“Suppose we shall meet again,” broke in Joseph Mangles at this moment, halting on the threshold of the gorgeous apartment. He tapped the number on the door in order to draw Deulin's attention to it. “Always welcome,” he said. “Funny we should meet here. Means mischief, I suppose.”
“I suppose it does,” answered Deulin, looking guilelessly at Netty.
He took his leave and continued his way down-stairs. Out in the Krakowski Faubourg the sun was shining brightly and the world was already astir, while the shops were opening and buyers already hurrying home from the morning markets. It is a broad street, with palaces and churches on either side. Every palace has its story; two of them were confiscated by the Russian government because a bomb, which was thrown from the pavement, might possibly have come from one of the windows. Every church has rung to the strains of the forbidden Polish hymn—“At Thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country.” Into almost all of them the soldiers have forced their way to make arrests.
Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
“Just Heaven, forgive me!” he said, with upturned eyes. “I have already told several lies, and it is only eight o'clock. I wonder whether I shall find Cartoner out of bed?”
He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned to the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower, quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna are mostly large, with court-yards, where a few trees struggle for existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments, where quiet people live—professors, lawyers, and other persons, who have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the passer-by for entertainment.
Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the Frenchman nodded familiarly.
“Is he up yet?” he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
“This hour, monsieur,” replied the servant, leading the way along a narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a writing-table.
“Good-morning,” said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep arm-chair. “Don't let me disturb you,” he continued. “Finish what you are doing.”
“News?” inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at Deulin gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously dissimilar—these friends.
“Bah!” returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked up—Lelewel'sHistory of Poland, in Polish. “I trouble for your future, Cartoner. You take life so seriously—you, who need not work at all. Even uncles cannot live forever, and some day you will be in a position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of that!”
He reflected for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I have news of all sorts—news which goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead of going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning—Mangles frere, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner—” He paused, and examined his own boots with a critical air.
“I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?”
“Fifty.”
“All that, mon cher?—all that? Old enough to play the part of an old fool who excels all other fools.”
Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin watched him.
“I say,” said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in hand—“what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?”
“I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with you,” was the reply.
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes,” he said. “I have known you a good many years, and have gathered that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don't know if there is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?”
“Very nice,” replied Cartoner, gravely.
Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the letter before him.
“What I like about her is her quiet ways,” suggested Deulin, tentatively.
“Yes.”
Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter. Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares, must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that evening.
Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
“More lies!” he murmured, humbly.
At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska—the street running down from the Cracow Faubourg to the river—there are always many workers. It is here that the bathing-houses and the boat-houses are. Here lie the steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a trade in timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that float from the Carpathians down to Dantzic is moored and broken up. Here, also, are loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts hopefully from the higher parts of the city—the widest, the newest, the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw's only boulevard—down the hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a broken tow-path. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that render navigation next to impossible—a clean, hard sand, most excellent for building purposes.
It was the hour of the mid-day dinner—for Polish hours are the hours of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river. Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once said that it is a country to die for, but not to live in.
It was only natural that the workmen should group together for their uninteresting meal. The sand-bank offered a comfortable seat. Their position was in a sense a strategetical one. They were in full view of the bridge and of the high land behind them, but no one could approach within half a mile unperceived.
“Yes,” one of the workmen was saying, “those who know say that there will inevitably be a kingdom of Poland again. Some day. And if some day, why not now? Why not this time?”
His hearers continued to eat in silence. Some were slightly built, oval-faced men—real Poles; others had the narrower look of the Lithuanian; while a third type possessed the broad and placid face that comes from Posen. Some were born to this hard work of the sand-hills; others had that look in the eyes, that carriage of the head, which betokens breeding and suggests an ancestral story.
“The third time, they say, is lucky,” answered a white-haired man, at length. He was a strong man, with the lines of hunger cut deeply in his face. The work was nothing to him. He had labored elsewhere. The others turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees. Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to his horses.
He who had first spoken—a boatman known as Kosmaroff—was a spare man, with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard. He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely, a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the old man as if hoping that more was coming.
“Yes, it will be the third time,” he said, when the other had lapsed into a musing silence, “though few of us have seen it with our own eyes. But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of our forefathers to guide us—though we cannot say that our forefathers have told us—”
He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his father had gone to Siberia to perish there.
“We shall time it better,” he said, “than last time. We have men watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the dogs should quarrel among themselves—the three dogs that have torn Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed what they thought of us!”
The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some was broken. There is nothing like hunger for breaking the spirit. Others looked doubtful, for one reason or another. These men resembled a board of directors—some of them knew too little, others too much. It seemed to be Kosmaroff's mission to keep them up to a certain mark by his boundless optimism, his unquestioning faith in a good cause.
“It is all very well for you,” said one, a little fat man with beady eyes. Fat men with beady eyes are not usually found in near proximity to danger of any sort—“you, who are an aristocrat, and have nothing to lose!”
Kosmaroff ate his bread with an odd smile. He did not look towards the speaker. He knew the voice perhaps, or he knew that the great truth that a man's character is ever bubbling to his lips, and every spoken word is a part of it running over.
“There are many who can be aristocrats some day—with a little good-fortune,” he said, and the beady eyes brightened.
“I lost five at Praga,” muttered an elderly man, who had the subdued manner of the toiler. “That is enough for me.”
“It is well to remember Praga,” returned Kosmaroff, in a hard monotone. “It is well to remember that the Muscovites have never kept their word! There is much to remember!”
And a murmur of unforgetfulness came from the listeners. Kosmaroff glanced sideways at two men who sat shoulder to shoulder staring sullenly across the river.
“I may be an aristocrat by descent,” he said, “but what does that come to? I am a raftsman. I work with my hands, like any other. To be a Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here. They will finish by losing everything—the little they have left—or else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They will win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!”
“And when they have won will they remember?” asked one of the two smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.
“If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it. You may rely on that. They know what each gives—whether freely or with a niggard hand—and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!”
The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.
Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a number—a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed him much, and none cared when he disappeared from it. And now here he was back in Poland, with a Russian name for daily use and another name hidden in his heart that had blazed all over Poland once. Here he was, a raftsman plying between Cracow and Warsaw, those two hot-beds of Polish patriotism—a mere piece of human driftwood on the river. He had made the usual grand tour of Russia's deadliest enemies. He had been to Siberia and Paris and London. He might have lived abroad, as he said, in the sunshine; but he preferred Poland and its gray skies, manual labor, and the bread that tastes of dampness. For he believed that a kingdom which stood in the forefront for eight centuries cannot die. There are others who cherish the same belief.
“This time,” he went on, after a pause, “I have news for you. We are a little nearer. It is our object to be ready, and then to wait patiently until some event in Europe gives us our opportunity. Last time they acted at the wrong moment. This time we shall not do that, but we shall nevertheless act with decision when the moment arrives. We are a step nearer to readiness, and we owe it to Prince Martin Bukaty again. He is never slow to put his head in the noose, and laughs with the rope around his neck. And he has succeeded again, for he has the luck. We have five thousand rifles in Poland—”
He paused and looked down the line of grimy faces, noting that some lighted up and others drooped. The fat little man with the beady eyes blinked as he stared resolutely across the river.
“In Warsaw!” he added, significantly. “So, if there are any who think that the cause is a dead one, they had better say so now—and take the consequences.” He concluded rather grimly, with his one-sided smile.
No one seemed disposed to avail himself of this invitation.
“And there is ammunition enough,” continued Kosmaroff, “to close the account of every Muscovite in Warsaw!”
His voice vibrated as he spoke, with the cold and steady hatred of the conquered; but on his face there only rested the twisted smile.
“I tell you this,” he went on, “because I am likely to go to Cracow before long, and so that you may know what is expected of you. Certain events may be taken beforehand as a sure signal for assembly—such as the death of either emperor, of the King of Prussia, or of Bismarck, the declaration of war by any of the great powers. There is always something seething on the Indian frontier, and one day the English will awake. The Warsaw papers will not have the news; but theCzasand the other Cracow journals will tell you soon enough, and you can all see the Galician papers when you want to, despite their censors and their police!”
A contemptuous laugh from the fat man confirmed this statement. This was his department. In many men cunning takes the place of courage.
At this moment the steam-whistle of the iron-works farther up the river boomed out across the plain. The bells of the city churches broke out into a clanging unanimity as to the time of day, and all the workers stirred reluctantly. The dinner-hour was over.
Kosmaroff rose to his feet and stretched himself—a long, lithe, wiry figure.
“Come,” he said. “We must go back to work.”
He glanced from face to face, and any looking with understanding at his narrow countenance, his steady, dark eyes, and clean-cut nose must have realized that they stood in the presence of that rare and indefinable creation—a strong man.