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 theMinniein 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 theMinniehad 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 theMinniewas 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 theMinnie'snew 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 theMinnie, 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 theMinnie. 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 theMinnie'shatches.”
“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 theMinniethis 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.
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.
Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all right—whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.
Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies, and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To Netty he showed a hundred attentions.
“I cannot understand,” she said, “why everybody is so kind to me.”
“It is because you are so kind to everybody,” he answered, with that air of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for Netty.
“I do not understand Mr. Deulin,” said Netty to her uncle one day. “Why does he stay here? What is he doing here?”
And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his deepest tones:
“You had better ask him!”
“But he would not tell me.”
“No.”
“And Mr. Cartoner,” continued Netty, “I understood he was coming back, but he does not seem to come. No one seems to know. It is so difficult to get information about the merest trifles. Not that I care, of course, who comes and who goes.”
“Course not,” said Mangles.
After a pause, Netty looked up again from her work.
“Uncle,” she said, “I was wondering if there was anything wrong in Warsaw.”
“What made you wonder that?”
“I do not know. It feels, sometimes, as if there were something wrong. Mr. Cartoner went away so suddenly. The people in the streets are so odd and quiet. And down stairs in the restaurant, at dinner, I see them exchange glances when the Russian officers come into the room. I distrust the quietness of the people, and—uncle—Mr. Deulin's gayety—I distrust that, too. And then, you; you so often ask us to go away and leave you here alone.”
Mangles laughed, curtly, and folded his newspaper.
“Because it is a dull hole,” he said, “that is why I want you to go away. It has got on your nerves. It is because you have not lived in a conquered country before. All conquered countries are like that.”
Which was a very long explanation for Joseph Mangles to make. And he never again proposed that Netty and her aunt should go to Nice. But Netty's curiosity was not satisfied, and she knew that Deulin would answer no question seriously. Why did not Kosmaroff come back? Why did Cartoner stay away? As soon as etiquette allowed, she called at the Bukaty Palace. She made an excuse in some illustrated English and American magazines which might interest the Princess Wanda. But there was no one at home. She understood from the servant, who spoke a little German, that they had gone to their country house, a few miles from Warsaw.
The next morning Netty went for a walk in the Saski Gardens. The weather had changed suddenly. It was quite mild and springlike. At last the grip of winter seemed to be slackening. There were others in the gardens who held their faces up to the sky, and breathed in the softer air with a sort of expectancy; who seemed to wonder if the winter had really broken, or if this should only be a false hope. It was one of the first days in March—a month wherein all nature slowly stirs after her long sleep, and men pull themselves together to new endeavor. The majority of great events in the world's history have taken place in the spring months. Is not the Ides of March written large in the story of this planet?
Netty had not been many minutes in the gardens when Prince Martin came to her. He had laid aside his fur coat for a lighter cloak of English make, which made him look thinner. His face, too, was thin and spare, like the face of a man who is working hard at work or sport. But he was gay and light-hearted as ever. Neither did he make any disguise of his admiration for Netty.
“It is three days,” he said, “since I have seen you. And it seems like three years.”
Which is the sort of remark that can only be ignored by the discreet. Besides, Prince Martin did not go so far as to state why the three days had been so tedious. It might be for some other reason altogether.
“My uncle has been pressing us to go away,” said Netty, “to the south of France, to Nice, but——”
“But what?”
“Well,” answered Netty, after a pause, “you see for yourself—we have not gone.”
“It is a very selfish hope—but I hope you will stay,” said Prince Martin. He looked down at her, and the thought of her possible departure caught him like a vise. He was a person of impulse, and (which is not usual) his impulse was as often towards good as towards evil. She looked, besides looking pretty, rather small and frail, and dependent at that moment, and all the chivalry of his nature was aroused. It was only natural that he should think that she had all the qualities he knew Wanda to possess, and, of course, in an infinitely higher degree. Which is the difference between one's own sister and another person's. She was good, and frank, and open. The idea of concealment between himself and her was to be treated with scorn.
“I will tell you,” he said, “if at any time there is any reason why you cannot stay.”
“But why should there be any reason—” she began, and a quick movement that he made to look round and see who was in sight, who might be within hearing, made her stop.
“Oh! I do not want you to tell me anything. I do not want to know,” she said hurriedly. Which was the absolute truth; for politics bored her horribly.
He looked at her with a laugh, and only loved her all the more, for persisting in her ignorance of those matters which are always better left to men.
“I almost missed,” he said gayly, “an excellent opportunity of holding my tongue.”
“Only——” began Netty, as if in continuation of her protest against being told anything.
“Only what?”
“Only—be careful,” she said, with downcast eyes. And, of course, that brought him, figuratively, to her feet. He vowed he would be careful, if it was for her sake. If she would only say that it was for her sake. And at the moment he really meant it. He was as honest as the day. But he did not know, perhaps, that the best sort of men are those who persistently and repeatedly break their word in one respect. For they will vow to a woman never to run into danger, to be careful, to be cowards. And when the danger is there, and the woman is not—their vow is writ in water.
Netty tried to stop him. She was very much distressed. She almost had tears in her eyes, but not quite. She put her gloved hands over her ears to stop them, but did not quite succeed in shutting out his voice. The gloves were backed with a dark, fine fur, which made her cheeks look delicate and soft as a peach.
“I will not hear you,” she said. “I will not. I will not.”
Then he seemed to recollect something, and he stopped short.
“No,” he said; “you are quite right. I have no business to ask you to hear me. I have nothing to offer you. I am poor. At any moment I may be an outlaw. But at any moment I may have more to offer you. Things may go well, and then I should be in a very different position.”
Netty looked away from him, and seemed to be trying to think. Or, perhaps, she was only putting together recollections which had all been thought out before. She could be a princess. She remembered that. She had only been in Europe six months, and here was a prince at her feet. But there were terrible drawbacks. Warsaw was one of them, and poverty, that greatest of all drawbacks, was the other.
“I can tell you nothing now,” he said. “But soon, before the summer, there may be great changes in Poland.”
Then his own natural instinct told him that position, or poverty, wealth or success, had nothing to do with the cause he was pleading. He did not even know whether Netty was rich or poor, and he certainly did not care.
“What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said 'Be careful'? What did you mean—tell me?”
His gay, blue eyes were serious enough now. They were alight with an honest and good love. Never of a cold and calculating habit, he was reckless of observation. He did not care who saw. He would have taken her hands and forced her to face him had she not held them behind her back. She was singularly calm and self-possessed. People who appear nervous often rise to the occasion.
“I do not know what I meant,” she said; “I do not know. You must not ask me. It slipped out when I was not thinking. Oh! please be generous, and do not ask me.”
By some instinct she had leaped to the right mark. She had asked a Bukaty to be generous.
“Some day,” he said, “I will ask you.”
And he walked with her to the gate of the gardens in silence.
Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things, like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.
Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.
So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely associated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in these countries, where men and women are booted to the knee, and every third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.
The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left them, was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula, where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland, more frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials, he was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.
Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides, while the passage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster ornamentation mossy and broken.
Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year. They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity of the recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any money. And so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be no reason why they ever should.
By some chain of reasoning, which assuredly had a flaw in it, the prince seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And, though he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and not his equals—as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only succeeded in proving the contrary—he cared for their bodies as he would have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry, and he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine and comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful nurse could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the roof of the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed upon the front lawn.
Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these Poles, through it all. “Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants,” said Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often strengthens it.
Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being—like him, she was intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather, and longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.
Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines. In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.
“This frost cannot last,” said the prince. “The spring must come soon, and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business.”
But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went the spirit of unrest.
He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.
“And you have had nothing to eat,” said Wanda, glancing at his spare, weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity; a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hardship. He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his eyebrows. He held his coarse blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped his face from time to time as the ice melted.
“No,” he answered, “I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here.”
“You will not go hungry from this house,” said the prince, with his rather fierce laugh.
“I will get you what you want,” said Wanda, lighting a candle. “There are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only the farmer and his wife—and my maid, who is English, and silent.”
So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at any academy.
“When you have finished,” said Wanda, “you can talk of your affairs. I shall leave you to yourselves.”
“Oh, there is not much to say,” answered Kosmaroff. “I have done no good on my journey. Things make no progress.”
“You expect too much,” said the prince. He had helped himself to a glass of wine, and fingered the glass reflectively as he spoke. “You expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks. You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward for five years, and then falling through, after all.”
Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry—not, as many do, to pass the time.
“One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now,” he said. “In fact, it is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her also. But, please, do not stand,” he added, turning to her. “I have all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king—or a beggar.”
His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.
“It is,” he said, after a pause, “about that Englishman, Cartoner.”
Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.
“Yes,” she said, in a steady voice.
“He knows more than it is safe to know—safe for us—or for himself. One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one. This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in it——” He stopped, and looked at the prince.
“But I have also no power,” he added, “over those whose affair it is—you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the attitude of the European powers, our—well, I suppose I may say—our foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to us—they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words—and who are our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that Cartoner—knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow.”
The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.
“In Cracow,” he said, “they are all words.”
“There are certain men, it appears,” continued Kosmaroff, “in the service of the governments—in one service it is called 'foreign affairs,' in another the 'secret service'—whose mission it is to find themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore, the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said—I ask your pardon for repeating it—that they know, and that Cartoner knows what he knows—through the Bukatys.”
The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak. Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment, a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.
“I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a brave man. It happens that I know that,” he said. “He knows as well as I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left London I heard—for we have friends everywhere—that he had got his passport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back, so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin had betrayed anything—”
“I or Martin would be assassinated,” said the prince with his loud laugh. “I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the methods of the sixties—suspicion and assassination. It has always been the ruin of Poland—that method.”
“But you have no feelings with regard to this man?” asked Kosmaroff, sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong glance, as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him untouched.
“None whatever,” answered the prince. “He is a mere passing acquaintance. He must be allowed to pass. We will drop him—you can tell your friends—it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that have been made for Poland.”
Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?
“You know what they are,” broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. “They see a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to have called on you at your hotel in London.”
“It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend,” said the prince, “and I tell you, he shall be dropped.”
“It is more than that,” answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.
“You mean,” said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, “that Martin and I are put upon our good behavior—that our lives are safe only so long as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having any communication with him.”
And Kosmaroff was silent.
He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.
“I tell you this,” he said, after a silence, “because no one else dared to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you have done—all that you are ready to do.”
“Yes—yes. Everything must be done for Poland,” said the prince, suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck ten.
“And the princess says the same?” said Kosmaroff, rising also, and raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish fashion.
“Yes,” she answered, “I say the same.”