Part 40 (1/2)

Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.

Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.

Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.

XXIX

IN A BY-WAY

There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, pa.s.sing by the gates of the cemetery.

Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful business of killing Germans.

Deulin did not think it necessary to refer to the object of Cartoner's ride. Neither did he mention the fact that he knew that this was not the direct way to St. Petersburg.

”I hired a horse and rode out to meet you,” he said, gayly--he was singularly gay this morning, and there was a light in his eye--”to intercept you. Kosmaroff is back in Warsaw. I saw him in the streets--and he saw me. I think that man is the G.o.d in the machine.

He is not a nonent.i.ty. I wonder who he is. There is blood there, my friend.”

He turned his horse as he spoke, and rode back towards the city with Cartoner.

”In the mean time,” he said, ”I have the hunger of a beggar's dog. What are we to do? It is one o'clock--and I have the inside of a Frenchman.

We are a great people. We tear down monarchies, and build up a new republic which is to last forever, and doesn't. We make history so quickly that the world stands breathless--but we always breakfast before mid-day.”

He took out his watch, and showed its face to Cartoner, with a gesture which could not have been more tragic had it marked the hour of the last trump.

”And we dare not show our faces in the streets. At least, I dare not show mine in the neighborhood of yours in Warsaw. For they have got accustomed to me there. They think I am a harmless old man--a dentist, perhaps.”

”My train goes from the St. Petersburg Station at three,” said Cartoner.

”I will have some lunch at the other station, and drive across in a close cab with the blinds down.”

And he gave his low, gentle laugh. Deulin glanced at him as if there were matter for surprise in the sound of it.

”Like a monstrosity going to a fair,” he said. ”And I shall go with you.

I will even lunch with you at the station--a station steak and a beery table. There is only one room at the station for those who eat and those who await their trains. So that the eaters eat before a famished audience like Louis XVI., and the travellers sit among the crumbs. I am with you. But let us be quick--and get it over. Did you see Bukaty?” he asked, finally, and, leaning forward, he sought an imaginary fly on the lower parts of his horse; for, after all, he was only a man, and lacked the higher skill or the thicker skin of the gentler s.e.x in dealing with certain delicate matters.

”No, I only saw the princess,” replied Cartoner. And they rode on in silence.

”You know,” said Deulin, at length, gravely, ”if that happens which you expect and I expect, and everybody here is hoping for--I shall seek out Wanda at once, and look after her. I do not know whether it is my duty or not. But it is my inclination; and I am much too old to put my duty before my inclination. So, if anything happens, and there follows that confusion which you and I have seen once or twice before, where things are stirring and dynasties are crumbling in the streets--when friends and foes are seeking each other in vain--you need not seek me or think about our friends in Warsaw. You need only think of yourself, remember that. I shall have eloped--with Wanda.”

And he finished with an odd laugh, that had a tender ring in it.

”Bukaty and I,” he went on, after a pause, ”do not talk of these things together. But we have come to an understanding on that point. And when the first flurry is over and we come to the top for a breath of air, you have only to wire to my address in Paris to tell me where you are--and I will tell you where--we are. We are old birds at this sport--you and I--and we know how to take care of ourselves.”

They were now in the outskirts of the town, among the wide and ill-paved streets where tall houses are springing up on the site of the huts once occupied by the Jews who are now quartered in the neighborhood of the Nowiniarska market-place. For the chosen people must needs live near a market-place, and within hearing of the c.h.i.n.k of small coin. In the cities of eastern Europe that have a Jews' quarter there is a barrier erected between the daily lives of the two races, though no more than a narrow street may in reality divide them. Different interests, different hopes, aspirations, and desires are to be found within a few yards, and neighbors are as far apart as if a frontier line or the curse of Babel stood between them.

Cartoner and Deulin, riding through the Jewish quarter, were as safe from recognition as if they were in a country lane at Wilanow; for the men hurrying along the pavements were wrapped each in his own keen thought of gain, and if they glanced up at the hors.e.m.e.n at all, merely looked in order to appraise the value of their clothes and saddles--as if there were nothing beyond. For them, it would seem there is no beyond; nothing but the dumb waiting for the removal of that curse which has lasted nineteen hundred years, and instead of wearing itself out, seems to gain in strength as the world grows older.

”We will go by the back ways,” said Cartoner, ”and need never see any of our world in Warsaw at all.”