The Vultures Part 22

"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 antic.i.p.ating 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 n.o.body--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 pa.s.s, 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.

"n.o.body," 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.

XVII

IN THE SENATORSKA

"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 a.s.suredly 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.