Paul Deulin walked slowly up the faubourg towards the new town. The clocks were striking the hour. He took off his hat, and gave a little sigh of enjoyment of the fresh air and bright sun.
“Just Heaven, forgive me!” he said, with upturned eyes. “I have already told several lies, and it is only eight o’clock. I wonder whether I shall find Cartoner out of bed?”
He walked on in a leisurely way, brushing past Jew and Gentile, gay Cossack officers, and that dull Polish peasant who has assuredly lived through greater persecution than any other class of men. He turned to the right up a broad street and then to the left into a narrower, quieter thoroughfare, called the Jasna. The houses in the Jasna are mostly large, with courtyards, where a few trees struggle for existence. They are let out in flats, or in even smaller apartments, where quiet people live—professors, lawyers, and other persons, who have an interest within themselves and are not dependent on the passerby for entertainment.
Into one of these large houses Deulin turned, and gave his destination to the Russian doorkeeper as he passed the lodge. This was the second floor, and the door was opened by a quick-mannered man, to whom the Frenchman nodded familiarly.
“Is he up yet?” he inquired, and called the man by his Christian name.
“This hour, monsieur,” replied the servant, leading the way along a narrow corridor. He opened a door, and stood aside for Deulin to pass into a comfortably furnished room, where Cartoner was seated at a writing-table.
“Good morning,” said the Frenchman. As he passed the table he took up a book and went towards the window, where he sat down in a deep armchair. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he continued. “Finish what you are doing.”
“News?” inquired Cartoner, laying aside his pen. He looked at Deulin gravely beneath his thoughtful brows. They were marvellously dissimilar—these friends.
“Bah!” returned Deulin, throwing aside the book he had picked up—Lelewel’s History of Poland, in Polish. “I trouble for your future, Cartoner. You take life so seriously—you, who need not work at all. Even uncles cannot live forever, and someday you will be in a position to lend money to poor devils of French diplomatists. Think of that!”
He reflected for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I have news of all sorts—news which goes to prove that you are quite right to take an apartment instead of going to the hotel. The Mangles arrived here this morning—Mangles frère, Mangles soeur, and Miss Cahere. I say, Cartoner—” He paused, and examined his own boots with a critical air.
“I say, Cartoner, how old do you put me?”
“Fifty.”
“All that, mon cher?—all that? Old enough to play the part of an old fool who excels all other fools.”
Cartoner took up his pen again. He had suddenly thought of something to put down, and in his odd, direct way proceeded to write, while Deulin watched him.
“I say,” said the Frenchman at length, and Cartoner paused, pen in hand—“what would you think of me if I fell in love with Netty Cahere?”
“I should think you a very lucky man if Netty Cahere fell in love with you,” was the reply.
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes,” he said. “I have known you a good many years, and have gathered that that is your way of looking at things. You want your wife to be in love with you. Odd! I suppose it is English. Well, I don’t know if there is any harm done, but I certainly had a queer sensation when I saw Miss Cahere suddenly this morning. You think her a nice girl?”
“Very nice,” replied Cartoner, gravely.
Deulin looked at him with an odd smile, but Cartoner was looking at the letter before him.
“What I like about her is her quiet ways,” suggested Deulin, tentatively.
“Yes.”
Then they lapsed into silence, while Cartoner thought of his letter. Deulin, to judge from a couple of sharp sighs which caught him unawares, must have been thinking of Netty Cahere. At length the Frenchman rose and took his leave, making an appointment to dine with Cartoner that evening.
Out in the street he took off his hat to high heaven again.
“More lies!” he murmured, humbly.
IX
The Sand-Workers
At the foot of the steep and narrow Bednarska—the street running down from the Krakow Faubourg to the river—there are always many workers. It is here that the bathing-houses and the boathouses are. Here lie the steamers that ply slowly on the shallow river. Here, also, is a trade in timber where from time to time one of the smaller rafts that float from the Carpathians down to Danzig is moored and broken up. Here, also, are loafers, who, like flies, congregate naturally near the water.
A few hundred yards higher up the river, between the Bednarska and the spacious Jerozolimska Alley, many carts and men work all day in the sand which the Vistula deposits along her low banks. The Jerozolimska starts hopefully from the higher parts of the city—the widest, the newest, the most Parisian street in the town, Warsaw’s only boulevard—down the hill, as if it expected to find a bridge at the bottom. But there is no bridge there, and the fine street dwindles away to sandy ruts and a broken towpath. Here horses struggle vainly to drag heavy sand-carts from the ruts, while their drivers swear at them and the sand-workers lean on their spades and watch. A cleaner sand is dredged from the middle or brought across in deep-laden punts from the many banks that render navigation next to impossible—a clean, hard sand, most excellent for building purposes.
It was the hour of the midday dinner—for Polish hours are the hours of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their gray bread, which only tastes
