The two men separated on the threshold, and Deulin went forward to shake hands with a tall, white-haired woman, who was the centre of a vivacious group. Over the heads of her guests this lady had already perceived Cartoner, who was making his way more slowly through the crowd. He seemed to have more friends there than Deulin. Lady Orlay at length went to meet Cartoner, and as they shook hands, one of those slight and indefinable family resemblances which start up at odd moments became visible.
“I want you particularly tomorrow night,” said the lady; “I have some people coming. I will send a card to your club this evening.”
And she turned to say goodbye to a departing guest. Deulin was at Cartoner’s elbow again.
“Here,” he said, taking him by the sleeve and speaking in his own tongue, “I wish to present you to friends of mine. Prince Pierre Bukaty,” he added, stopping in front of a tall, old man, with bushy, white hair, and the air of a medieval chieftain, “allow me to present my old friend Cartoner.”
The two men shook hands without other greeting than a formal bow. Deulin still held Cartoner by the sleeve, and gently compelled him to turn towards a girl who was looking round with bright and eager eyes. She had a manner full of energy and spirit, and might have been an English girl of open air and active tastes.
“Princess Wanda,” said the Frenchman, “my friend Mr. Cartoner.”
The eager eyes came round to Cartoner’s face, of which the gravity seemed suddenly reflected in them.
“He is the best linguist in Europe,” said Deulin, in a gay whisper; “even Polish; he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels.”
And he himself spoke in Polish.
Princess Wanda met Cartoner’s serious eyes again, and in that place, where human fates are written, another page of those inscrutable books was folded over.
V
An Old Acquaintance
Prince Bukaty was an affable old man, with a love of good wine and a perfect appreciation of the humorous. Had he been an Englishman, he would have been an honest squire of the old Tory type, now fast fading before facilities for foreign travel and a cheap local railway service. But he was a Pole, and the fine old hatred which should have been bestowed upon the Radicals fell to the lot of the Russians, and the contempt hurled by his British prototype upon Dissent was cast upon Commerce as represented in Poland by the thrifty German émigré.
The prince carried his bluff head with that air which almost invariably bespeaks a stormy youth, and looked out over mankind from his great height as over a fine standing crop of wild oats. As a matter of fact, he had grown to manhood in the years immediately preceding those wild early sixties, when all Europe was at loggerheads, and Poland seething in its midst, as lava seethes in the crater of a volcano.
The prince had been to England several times. He had friends in London. Indeed, he possessed them in many parts of the world, and, oddly enough, he had no enemies. To his credit be it noted that he was not an exile, which is usually another name for a scoundrel. For he who has no abiding city generally considers himself exempt from the duties of citizenship.
“They do not take me seriously,” he said to his intimate friends; “they do not honor me by recognizing me as a dangerous person; but we shall see.”
And the Prince Bukaty was thus allowed to go where he listed, and live in Warsaw if he so desired. Perhaps the secret of this lay in the fact that he was poor; for a poor man has few adherents. In the olden times, when the Bukatys had been rich, there were many professing readiness to follow him to the death—which is the way of the world. “You have but to hold up your hand,” cries the faithful follower. But wise men know that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and nothing could ever smooth him.
He was too frank by nature to play a hopeless game with the cunning and the savor of spite which hopeless games require. If he liked a man, he said so; if he disliked one, he was equally frank about it. He liked Cartoner on the briefest of brief introductions, and said so.
“It is difficult to find a man in London who speaks anything but English, and of anything but English topics. You are the narrowest people in the world—you Londoners. But you are no Londoner; I beg your pardon. Well, then, come and see me tomorrow. We are in a hotel in Kensington—will you come? That is the address.”
And he held out a card with a small gold crown emblazoned in the corner, after the mode of eastern Europe. Cartoner reflected for a moment, which was odd in a man whose decisions were usually arrived at with lightning speed. For he had a slow tongue and a quick brain. There are few better equipments with which to face the world.
“Yes,” he said at length; “it will give me much pleasure.”
The prince glanced at him curiously beneath his bushy eyebrows. What was there to need reflection in such a small question?
“At five o’clock,” he said. “We can give you a cup of the poisonous tea you drink in this country.”
And he went away laughing heartily at the small
