The Vultures Part 26

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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 surrept.i.tious 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.suredly, 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."