The Vultures Part 21

"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."

"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it comes. Your father?"

"No."

"Martin?"

"No."

"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with the necessity of reply.

"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"

"He has found out something."

"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."

"And I cannot tell you what it is."

"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."

"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, "but not a woman."

"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.

We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My father won't--"

Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.

His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his execution.

"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it--and never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right, and I was wrong."

He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both hands.

"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."

"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.

He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.

"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite ceased to affect my appet.i.te."

Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.

"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?"

"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.

"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this Englishman."

Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.

"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin, opening the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round."

He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which Wanda had just vacated.

"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I have known thousands--thousands."

XVI

MUCH--OR NOTHING

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 G.o.ds 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds--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 ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.

The G.o.ds 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 s.e.x 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-cla.s.s waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-cla.s.s room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades of the first-cla.s.s 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 G.o.ds 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-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, 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 a.s.suredly 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."