Chapter 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Which I believe to be the truth,” assented the Frenchman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He paused, and looked slowly round the table.

“Jooly--pass the mustard,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Man's loose in Poland now,” he added.

And that was the end of the story.

XIX

THE HIGH-WATER MARK

Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who, so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such men, at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.

Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without the asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.

Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.

The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary to custom, the room was dark. The old-fashioned chandelier in the centre of the large, bare apartment glittered in the light of the gas-jet in the passage. Netty knew that there were matches on the square china stove opposite to the door, which stood open. She crossed the room, and as she did so the door behind her, which was on graduated hinges, swung to. She was in the dark, but she knew where the stove was.

Suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. There was some one in the room. The soft and surreptitious footstep of a person making his way cautiously to the door was unmistakable. Netty tried to speak--to ask who was there. But her voice failed. She had read of such a failure in books, but it had never been her lot to try to speak and to find herself dumb until now.

Instinctively she turned and faced the mysterious and terrifying sound. Then her courage came quite suddenly to her again. Like many diminutive persons, she was naturally brave. She moved towards the door, her small slippers and soft dress making no sound. As the fugitive touched the door-handle she stretched out her hand and grasped a rough sleeve. Instantly there was a struggle, and Netty fought in the dark with some one infinitely stronger and heavier than herself. That it was a man she knew by the scent of tobacco and of rough working-clothes. She had one hand on the handle, and in a moment turned it and threw open the door. The light from without flooded the room, and the man leaped back.

It was Kosmaroff. His eyes were wild; he was breathless. For a moment he was not a civilized man at all. Then he made an effort, clinched his hands, and bit his lips. His whole demeanor changed.

“You, mademoiselle!” he said, in broken English. “Then Heaven is kind--Heaven is kind!”

In a moment he was at her feet, holding her two hands, and pressing first one and then the other to his lips. He was wildly agitated, and Netty was conscious that his agitation in some way reached her. In all her life she had never known what it was to be really carried away until that moment. She had never felt anything like it--had never seen a man like this--at her feet. She dragged at her hands, but could not free them.

“I came,” he said--and all the while he had one eye on the passage to see that no one approached--“to see you, because I could not stay away! You think I am a poor man. That is as may be. But a poor man can love as well as a rich man--and perhaps better!”

“You must go! you must go!” said Netty. And yet she would have been sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if he had heard his own story through the door of communication between Mangles' bedroom and the dining-room. For the other door, from the salon to the bedroom, stood wide open.

“You think I have only seen you once,” said Kosmaroff. “I have not. I have seen you often. But the first time I saw you--at the races--was enough. I loved you then. I shall love you all my life!”

“You must go--you must go!” whispered Netty, dragging at her hands.

“I won't unless you promise to come to the Saski Gardens now--for five minutes. I only ask five minutes. It is quite safe. There are many passing in and out of the large door. No one will notice you. The streets are full. I made an excuse to come in. A man I know was coming to these rooms with a parcel for you. I took the parcel. See, there is the tradesman's box. I brought it. It will take me out safely. But I won't go till you promise. Promise, mademoiselle!”

“Yes!” whispered Netty, hurriedly. “I will come!”

Firstly, she was frightened. The others might come at any moment. Secondly--it is to be feared--she wanted to go. It was the high-water mark. This man carried her there and swept her off her feet--this working-man, in his rough clothes, whose ancestor had been a king.

“Go and get a cloak,” he said. “I will meet you by the great fountain.”

And Netty ran along the corridor to her room, her eyes alight, her heart beating as it had never beaten before.

Kosmaroff watched her for a moment with that strange smile that twisted his mouth to one side. Then he struck a match and turned to the chandelier. The globe was still warm. He had turned out the gas when Netty's hand was actually on the handle.

“It was a near thing,” he said to himself in Russian, which language he had learned before any other, so that he still thought in it. “And I found the only way out of that hideous danger.”

As he thus reflected he was putting together hastily the contents of Joseph Mangles's writing-case, which were spread all over the table in confusion. Then he hurried into the bedroom, closed one or two drawers which he had left open, put the despatch-case where he had found it, and, with a few deft touches, set the apartment in order. A moment later he lounged out at the great doorway, dangling the tradesman's box on his arm.

It was a fine moonlight night, and the gardens were peopled by shadows moving hither and thither beneath the trees. The shadows were mostly in couples. Others had come on the same errand as Kosmaroff--for a better motive, perhaps, or a worse. It was the very end of St. Martin's brief summer, and when winter lays its quiet mantle on these northern plains lovers must needs seek their opportunities in-doors.

Kosmaroff arrived first, and sat down thoughtfully on a bench. He was one of the few who were not muffled in great-coats and wraps against the autumn chill. He had known a greater cold than Poland ever felt.

“I suppose she will come,” he said in his mind, watching the gate through which Netty must enter the gardens. “It matters little if she does not. For I do not know what I shall say when she does come. Must leave that to the inspiration of the moment--and the moonlight. She is pretty enough to make it easy.”

In a few moments Netty passed through the gate and came towards him--not hurriedly or furtively, as some maiden in a book to her first clandestine meeting--but with her head thrown back, and with an air of having business to transact, which was infinitely safer and less likely to attract the attention of the idle. It was she who spoke first.

“I am going back at once,” she said. “It was very wrong to come. But you frightened me so. Was it very wrong? Do you think it was wrong of me to come, and despise me for it?”

“You promised,” he whispered, eagerly; “you promised me five minutes. Out of a whole lifetime, what is it? For I am going away from Warsaw soon, and I shall never see you again perhaps, and shall have only the memory of these five minutes to last me all my life--these five minutes and that minute--that one minute in the hotel.”

And he took her hand, which was quite near to him, somehow, on the stone bench, and raised it to his lips.

“We are going away, too,” she said. She was thinking also of that one minute in the doorway of the salon, when she had touched high-water mark. “We are on our way to St. Petersburg, and are only waiting here till my uncle has finished some business affairs on which he is engaged.”

“But he is not a business man,” said Kosmaroff, suddenly interested. “What is he doing here?”

“I do not know. He never talks to me of his affairs. I never know whether he is travelling for pleasure, or on account of his business in America, or for political purposes. He never explains. I only know that we are going on to St. Petersburg.”

“And I shall not see you again. What am I to do all my life without seeing you? And the others--Monsieur Deulin and that Englishman, Cartoner--are they going to St. Petersburg, too?”

“I do not know,” answered Netty, hastily withdrawing her hand, because a solitary promenader was passing close by them. “They never tell me either. But . . .”

“But what! Tell me all you know, because it will enable me, perhaps, to see you again in the distance. Ah! if you knew! If you could only see into my heart!”

And he took her hand again in the masterful way that thrilled her, and waited for her to answer.

“Mr. Cartoner will not go away from Warsaw if he can help it.”

“Ah!” said Kosmaroff. “Why--tell me why?”

But Netty shook her head. They were getting into a side issue assuredly, and she had not come here to stray into side issues. With that skill which came no doubt with the inspiration of the moment in which Kosmaroff trusted he got back into the straight path again at one bound--the sloping, pleasant path in which any fool may wander and any wise man lose himself.

“It is for you that he stays here,” he said. “What a fool I was not to see that! How could he know you, and be near you, and not love you?”

“I think he has found it quite easy to do it,” answered Netty, with an odd laugh. “No, it is not I who keep him in Warsaw, but somebody who is clever and beautiful.”

“There is no one more beautiful than you in Warsaw.”

And for a moment Netty was silenced by she knew not what.

“You say that to please me,” she said at last. And her voice was quite different--it was low and uneven.

“I say it because it is the truth. There is no one more beautiful than you in all the world. Heaven knows it.”

And he looked up with flashing black eyes to that heaven in which he had no faith.

“But who is there in Warsaw,” he asked, “whom any one could dream of comparing with you?”

“I have no doubt there are hundreds. But there is one whom Mr. Cartoner compares with me--and even you must know that she is prettier than I am.”

“I do not know it,” protested Kosmaroff, again taking her hand. “There is no one in all the world.”

“There is the Princess Wanda Bukaty,” said Netty, curtly.

“Ah! Does Cartoner admire her? Do they know each other? Yes, I remember I saw them together at the races.”

“They knew each other in London,” said Netty. “They knew each other when I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met here since.”

Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him, his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the salon a few minutes earlier.

“Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires information which she alone can give him?” he asked at length. Which was, after all, the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment and in that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.

Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose hastily and drew her cloak round her.

“I must go,” she said; “I have been here much more than five minutes. Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?”

And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.

“You will come again,” he said. “Now that you have come once--you cannot be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at the foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing. You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair, your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak French?”

“Yes--and she does not.”

“Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and remember that I love you--always, always!”

He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.

“It is all fair--all fair,” said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to convince himself. “Besides--has the world been fair to me?”

Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.

XX

A LIGHT TOUCH

Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty, having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions. She was not old-fashioned in that respect.

But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before. No one in the world could say that she had ever been imprudent. That which the lenient may call a school-girl escapade--a mere flight to the garden for a few minutes--was scarcely sufficient to account for this feeling. She must be unwell, she thought. And she decided, with some wisdom, not to submit herself to the scrutiny of Paul Deulin again.

Mr. Mangles had not finished his excellent cigar; and although Miss Mangles did not feel disposed for another of those long, innocent-looking Russian cigarettes offered by Deulin, she had still some views of value to be pressed upon the notice of the inferior sex.

Deulin had been glancing at the clock for some time, and, suspiciously soon after learning that they were not to see Netty again, he announced with regret that he had letters to write, and must take his leave. Cartoner made no excuse, but departed at the same time.

“I will come down to the door with you,” said Deulin, in the passage. He was always idle, and always had leisure to follow his sociable instincts.

At the side door, while Cartoner was putting on his coat, he stepped rather suddenly out into the street, and before Cartoner had found his hat was back again.

“It is a moonlight night,” he said. “I will walk with you part of the way.”

He turned, as he spoke, towards his coat and hat and stick, which were hanging near to where Cartoner had found his own. He did not seem to think it necessary to ask the usual formal permission. They knew each other too well for that. Cartoner helped the Frenchman on with his thin, light overcoat, and reaching out his hand took the stick from the rack, weighing and turning it thoughtfully in his hand.

“That is the Madrid Stick,” said the Frenchman. “You were with me when I bought it.”

“And when you used it,” added Cartoner, in his quietest tone, as he led the way to the door. “Generally keep your coat in the hall?” he inquired, casually, as they descended the steps.

“Sometimes,” replied Deulin, glancing at the questioner sideways beneath the brim of his hat.

It was, as he had said, a beautiful night. The moon was almost full and almost overhead, so that the streets were in most instances without shadow at all; for they nearly all run north and south, as does the river.