If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.
A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him. Thus the gods—with men.
Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents—as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly part—with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.
The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the sex of this arbiter of human story.
Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two days after the meeting at the Mokotow—the morning following the visit paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe—Cartoner was early astir. He drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train, and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of peasants—wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.
This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone. There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was Wanda. The gods were kind—or cruel.
“You are going away?” she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that Cartoner looked at her in surprise. “You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and you are going away.”
“No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come again.”
“We are all watched,” said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. “But you are going away—that is all that matters.”
“I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be back this afternoon.”
Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room, which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers, they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to post a letter.
“You must leave Warsaw,” she said; “it is not safe for you to stay here. You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger.”
She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this bare railway station the place to say it in.
Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders. He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional salutation.
“Martin would have warned you,” she went on, “but he did not dare to. Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you had unwittingly run.”
“Not unwittingly,” said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He said so little that his meaning needed careful search.
“I cannot tell you much—” she began, and he interrupted her at once.
“Stop,” he said, “you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything—but not from you.”
“Martin hinted at that,” said Wanda, slowly, “but I did not believe him.”
And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as if there were more in him—more of him—than she had ever expected. And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.
“It is true enough,” he said, “fate has made us enemies, princess.”
“You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than fate—in Poland. Besides——”
“Yes.”
“You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall.”
And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.
“It has been refused.”
“But you must go—you must go!” she said, quickly. She glanced at the great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of gray in his closely cut hair.
“You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily—quite gayly—” she broke off with a light laugh, “on a volcano—it is the Bukatys. We have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled times.”
“I know,” said Cartoner, “what it is to be a Bukaty.” And he smiled slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her manner, in a flash, was different.
“Then you will go?” she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them, she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. “Say you will go!”
And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.
“I do not think you understand,” she went on, changing her manner and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own stolid, dumb form of defence. “You do not understand what a danger to us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this,” with a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred marks of a high state of civilization, “is skin deep. That things in Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated. We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to look at his face—”
“I know,” admitted Cartoner.
“It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe. That is why I ask you to go.”
“Yes, I know,” answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever, was quite a simple person.
“Besides,” said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to follow it, call no logic at all, “you can do no good here, if all your care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why have they refused your recall? It is so stupid.”
“I must do the best I can,” replied Cartoner.
Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.
“But we must not quarrel,” she said, gently. “We must not misunderstand each other,” she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, “for we have only five minutes in all the world.”
“Here and now,” he corrected, with a glance at the clock, “we have only five minutes. But the world is large.”
“For you,” she said quickly, “but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You forget I am a Russian subject.”
But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of his face.
“My presence in Warsaw,” he said, as if the train of thought needed no elucidating, “is in reality no source of danger to you—to your father and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am nobody—nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have happened—life is too short to record that. So you see my being in Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother.”
“Yes, I see—I see!” answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard, in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the length of the train. “But it was not on account of that that we asked Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and Martin. It is required of them—a sort of family tradition. It is their business in life—almost their pleasure.”
“It is my business in life—almost my pleasure,” said Cartoner, with a smile.
“But is there no one at home—in England—that you ought to think of?” in an odd, sharp voice.
“Nobody,” he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information respecting himself.
Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no corridor carriages. Two minutes now.
“We must not be seen together on the platform,” she said. “I am only going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old servants whom I go to see.”
She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.
“Thank you,” he said, “for warning me.”
And that was all.
“You must go,” he added, after a moment's pause.
Still she lingered.
“There is so much to say,” she said, half to herself. “There is so much to say.”
The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back. He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right—whether there was much to say—or nothing.
“It is,” said Miss Julie Mangles, “in the Franciszkanska that one lays one's hand on the true heart of the people.”
“That's as may be, Jooly,” replied her brother, “but I take it that the hearts of the women go to the Senatorska.”
For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
“I shall,” said Miss Mangles, “write a paper on the Jewish question in this country.”
And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.
“Seen the Senatorska, Netty?” he inquired. But Netty had not seen the Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
“Go out into the Faubourg,” her uncle explained, “and just turn to the left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops are.”
Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down—as the paper itself recorded—the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to accuracy.
Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions, and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of Bond Street.
The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski—that weak dreamer—built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the Prince Martin Bukaty.
“I was afraid you did not remember me,” said Martin. “You looked straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me.”
“Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why should I?”
And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
“Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting.”
“Of course,” said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. “One meets a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find it so?”
“I am glad,” answered Martin, “that you do not meet many people that you like.”
“Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people,” urged Netty, in some concern; “I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind. Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?”
“I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come in yours.”
And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.
“Oh no!” she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders descriptive of a shrinking humility. “Why should I? I have done nothing to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind—my uncle and aunt—everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why it is?”
And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could—if he dared. He had never met anybody quite like Netty—so spontaneous and innocent and easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes were dark, almost as violets.
“Ought I to be here?” she asked. “Going about the streets alone, I mean?”
“You are not alone,” answered Martin, with a laugh.
“No, but—perhaps I ought to be.”
And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
“In America, you know,” said the voice from under the parasol, “girls are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to be careful, is it not?—to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is the custom in Warsaw.”
Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
“In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes about the streets as they do in England or America.”
As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
“I can show you the best shops,” he said, “such as they are. This is Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?”
“I love them,” answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the next shop.
“You would naturally.”
“Why?” asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.
“Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?”
“It is very kind of you to say that,” said Netty, in a voice half-afraid, half-reproachful.
“It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes,” answered Martin, gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very good.
“You know,” said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, “I am much interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles—and the poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?”
“The nobles have come to great grief in Poland—that is all,” replied Martin, with a short laugh.
“And it is so sad,” said Netty, with a shake of the head; “but I am sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are interested in Poland—you and your sister and your father.”
“We are supposed to be,” admitted Martin. “But no one cares for Poland now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of, and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now—and her history, which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.”
“But I am sure you are wrong there,” said Netty, earnestly. “I know a great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in them.”
“Are you?” asked Martin, looking down at her.
“Yes,” she replied, with downcast eyes. “Come,” she said, after a pause, with a sort of effort, “we must not stand in front of this shop any longer.”
“Especially,” he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, “as it is a Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you must go.”
Netty looked at him doubtfully.
“I am quite serious,” he said. “We must fight with what weapons we have.”
“Yes,” she answered, indicating the shops, “these people, but not you. You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take anything from you.”
“Because there is nothing to take,” laughed Martin, gayly; “we were ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.”
“I am so sorry!” she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin—his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.
“I suppose you are on your way back to the Europe to lunch?” he said to Netty. “I am in luck. I have come just in time to walk back with you, if you will permit it.”
And he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside Netty, while Martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. It was not the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that Netty desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret possessed in common with her. He walked back quickly to the flower-shop kept by Ulrich, in the Senatorska.
A rare thing happened to Paul Deulin at this moment. He fell into a train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of Netty without speaking. It was against his principles altogether. “Never be silent with a woman,” he often said. “She will only misconstrue it.”
“It was odd that I should meet you at that moment,” he said, at length, for Netty had not attempted to break the silence. She never took the initiative with Paul Deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively the conversational lead which he might choose to give. He broke off and laughed. “I was going to say that it was odd that I should have met you at a moment that I was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if I could manage to meet you at a moment when I was not thinking of you, would it not?”
“It was very kind of you,” said Netty, “to think of me at the race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the Bukatys. I am so interested in the princess. She is so pretty, is she not? Such lovely hair, and I think her face is so interesting—a face with a history, is it not?”
“Yes,” answered Deulin, rather shortly, “Wanda is a nice girl.” He did not seem to find the subject pleasing, and Netty changed her ground.
“And the prince,” she said, “the old one, I mean—for this one, Prince Martin, is quite a boy, is he not?”
“Oh yes—quite a boy,” replied Deulin, absently, as he looked back over his shoulder and saw Martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had first perceived Netty and the young prince talking together.
“It is so sad that they are ruined—if they are really ruined.”
“There is no doubt whatever about that,” answered Deulin.
“But,” said Netty, who was practical, “could nothing induce him—the young prince, I mean—to abandon all these vague political dreams and accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates and recover his position?”
“You mean,” said Deulin, “the domestic felicities. Your fine and sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. You go about the world like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of others happier. Those are dreams, and in Poland dreams are forbidden—by the Czar. But they are the privilege of youth, and I like to catch an occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady.”
Netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
“Now you are laughing at me, because I am not clever,” she said.
“Heaven forbid! But I am laughing at your dream for Martin Bukaty. He will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory life. He has too much history behind him, which is a state of things never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. Moreover, he has not got it in him. He is not stable enough for the domestic felicities, and Siberia—his certain destination—is not a good mise-en-scene for your dream. No, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive remedy—another privilege of youth.”
“You talk as if you were so very old,” said Netty, reproachfully.
“I am very, very old,” he replied, with a laugh. “And there is no remedy for that. Even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age.”
“I reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,” answered Netty, lightly. “I think you are quite capable of taking care of yourself.”
“And of evolving my own dreams?” he inquired. But she made no answer, and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
“I know so little,” she said, after a pause, “so very little of Poland or Polish history. I suppose you know everything—you and Mr. Cartoner?”
“Oh, Cartoner! Yes, he knows a great deal. He is a regular magazine of knowledge, while I—I am only a little stall in Vanity Fair, with everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. Now, there is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. He is brilliantly successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. Can you not prescribe for him?”
Netty smiled gravely.
“I hardly know him sufficiently well,” she said. “Besides, he requires no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a fortune.”
Deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
“Ah! is that so?” he inquired. “Who told you that?”
But Netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to believe was a mere piece of gossip. Neither did she appear to be very interested in the matter.
Mr. Mangles gave a dinner-party the same evening. “It is well,” he had said, “to show the nations that the great powers are in perfect harmony.” He made this remark to Deulin and Cartoner, whom he met at the Cukiernia Lourse—a large confectioner's shop and tea-house in the Cracow Faubourg—which is the principal cafe in Warsaw. And he then and there had arranged that they should dine with him.
“I always accept the good Mangles' invitations. Firstly, I am in love with Miss Cahere. Secondly, Julie P. Mangles amuses me consumedly. In her presence I am dumb. My breath is taken away. I have nothing to say. But afterwards, in the night, I wake up and laugh into my pillow. It takes years off one's life,” said Deulin, confidentially, to Cartoner, as they sipped their tea when Mr. Joseph P. Mangles had departed.
As Deulin was staying under the same roof he had only to descend from the second to the first floor, when the clock struck seven. By some chance he was dressed in good time, and being an idle person, with a Gallic love of street-life, he drew back his curtain, and stood at the window waiting for the clock to strike.
“I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive,” he said to himself, “and we can make our entry together.”
It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into the square, where innumerable droskies stand. He saw, moreover, a man arrive at the corner immediately afterwards, as if he had been following Cartoner, and, standing there, watch him pass into the side door of the hotel.
Deulin reflected for a moment. Then he went into his bedroom, and took his coat and hat and stick. He hurried down-stairs with them, and gave them into the care of the porter at the side door, whose business it is to take charge of the effects of the numerous diners in the restaurant. When he entered the Mangles' drawing-room a few minutes later he found the party assembled there. Netty was dressed in white, with some violets at her waistband. She was listening to her aunt and Cartoner, who were talking together, and Deulin found himself relegated to the society of the hospitable Joseph at the other end of the room.
“You're looking at Cartoner as if he owed you money,” said Mr. Mangles, bluntly.
“I was looking at him with suspicion,” admitted Deulin, “but not on that account. No one owes me money. It is the other way round, and it is not I who need to be anxious, but the other party, you understand. No, I was looking at our friend because I thought he was lively. Did he strike you as lively when he came in?”
“Not what I should call a vivacious man,” said Mangles, looking dismally across the room. “There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm as he came in perhaps.”
“Yes,” said Deulin, in a low voice. “That is bad. There is usually something wrong when Cartoner is lively. He is making an effort, you know.”
They went towards the others, Deulin leading the way.
“What beautiful violets,” said he to Netty. “Surely Warsaw did not produce those?”
“Yes, they are pretty,” answered Netty, making a little movement to show the flowers to greater advantage to Deulin and to Cartoner also. Her waist was very round and slender. “They came from that shop in the Senatorska or the Wirzbowa, I forget, quite, which street. Ulrich, I think, was the name.”
And she apparently desired to let the subject drop there.
“Yes,” said Deulin, slowly. “Ulrich is the name. And you are fond of violets?”
“I love them.”
Deulin was making a silent, mental note of the harmless taste, when dinner was announced.
“It was I who recommended Netty to investigate the Senatorska,” said Mr. Mangles, when they were seated. But Netty did not wish to be made the subject of the conversation any longer. She was telling Cartoner, who sat next to her, a gay little story, connected with some piece of steamer gossip known only to himself and her. Is it not an accepted theory that quiet men like best those girls who are lively?
Miss Mangles dispensed her brother's hospitality with that rather labored ease of manner to which superior women are liable at such times as they are pleased to desire their inferiors to feel comfortable, and to enjoy themselves according to their lights.
Deulin perceived the situation at once, and sought information respecting Poland, which was most graciously accorded him.
“And you have actually walked through the Jewish quarter?” he said, noting, with the tail of his eye, that Cartoner was absent-minded.
“I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and traversed the whole length of the street.”
“And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?” asked the Frenchman, earnestly.
“I have.”
And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen hundred years.
“I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress meetings—and I may publish,” she said.
“It would be in the interests of humanity,” murmured Deulin, politely. “It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations.”
Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be described.
“I know,” she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, “that you dislike political women.” Heaven knows how she knew it. “But I am afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities.”
“Their chief quality is gameness,” said Cartoner, thoughtfully.
“Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think the princess is delightful—do you not think so?”
“Yes,” answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.
“There must be a great many stories,” went on Netty, “connected with the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know—of people's lives, I mean—of all they have attempted and have failed to do.”
Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by any means an easy thing to do.
“I always think,” continued Netty, “that the princess has a story. There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking.”
And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced at Cartoner.
“Perhaps,” put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn utterances. “Perhaps she is thinking of her brother—Prince Martin. He is always getting into scrapes—ce jeune homme.”
But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.
“It is your romantic heart,” said Deulin, “that makes you see so much that perhaps does not exist.”
“If you want a story,” put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep voice, “I can tell you one.”
And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.
“Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?” began Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.
“Which I believe to be the truth,” assented the Frenchman.
“Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story,” continued Joseph, “but they won't admit that they do. There was once a nobleman in this city who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country could be made a great country again, as it was in the past—dreamed that the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament, she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew, would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart.”
And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against this danger.
“My country,” he went on, “didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own father and whip him.”
And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing the other side in that great misunderstanding.
“Ever heard the Polish hymn?” he asked, abruptly. He was not a good story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:
“'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the shield of Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'”
He paused, and looked slowly round the table.
“Jooly—pass the mustard,” he said.
Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.
“'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'”
And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of the beef.
“That is the first verse, and the last,” he said at length. “And all Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia. They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when they came out—women and children, old men and maidens.”
Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman, but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite herself.
“The dreamer was arrested,” he continued, pushing away his plate, “on some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young—last of the family. Better that they should be the last—thought the paternal government of Russia. But she had influential relatives—so she went. She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the body-servant of the governor of his district—man who had risen from the ranks—and was refused. So he went to the mines again—and died. The wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to escape. Then the worst happened—she had a son, in prison, and all the care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but his foster-father—that great and parental government.”
Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.
“Nice story,” he said, “isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must keep account of 'em.”
The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the telling than the reading of it would require.
“Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes,” said the host, “and take some yourself. Story cannot interest you—must be ancient history. Well—after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it now.”
Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin and dogged eyes.
“Man's loose in Poland now,” he added.
And that was the end of the story.