And he laid his hand momentarily on his sister’s arm. But she did not answer. She desired before all things that clear understanding which was part of her creed of life, and she glanced quickly from side to side for fear some interruption should approach.
“Mr. Cartoner, on the other hand,” he continued, in his airy way, “is a most respectable man—in the employ of his country. That is what damns Mr. Cartoner. He is in the employ of his country. And he has a great reputation, to which I take off my hat.”
And he saluted gayly Cartoner’s reputation.
“It would never do,” continued Martin, “for us, the suspects, to be avowedly the friend of the man who is understood to be an envoy in some capacity of his government. Whether he is really such or not is of no consequence. It matters little to the dog, you remember.”
“But what are we to do?” asked Wanda, practically. “Let us have a clear understanding. Are we to pass each other in the streets?”
“No,” answered Cartoner, speaking at length, without hesitation and without haste—a man who knew his own mind, and went straight to the heart of the question. “We must not meet in the streets.”
“That may not be as easy as it sounds,” said Wanda, “in a small city like Warsaw. Are you so long-sighted that you can always make sure of avoiding us?”
“I can, at all events, try,” answered Cartoner, simply. After a pause (the pauses always occurred when it happened, so to say, to be Cartoner’s turn to speak) he rose from the stone seat, which was all that the Bukatys could offer him in Warsaw. “I can begin at once,” he said, gravely. And he took off his hat and went away.
It was done so quickly and quietly that Wanda and Martin were left in silence on the seat, watching him depart. He went the way he had come, down the broad walk towards the colonnade, and disappeared between the pillars of that building.
“A man of action, and not of words,” commented Martin, who spoke first. “I like him. Come, let us go for our walk.”
And Wanda said nothing. They rose and went away without speaking, though they usually had plenty to say to each other. It almost seemed that Cartoner’s silence was contagious.
He, for his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met. Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which could scarcely have had much interest for the Parisian.
“Ah!” said the Frenchman to himself, “there is our friend Reginald. He is in one of his silent humors. I can see that from this distance.”
He turned on the pavement and watched Cartoner, who was walking rather slowly.
“If any woman ever marries that man,” the Frenchman said to himself, “she will have to allow a great deal to go without saying. But, then, women are good at that.”
And he continued his leisurely contemplation of the dull shopwindows.
Cartoner walked on to his rooms in the Jasna, where he found letters awaiting him. He read them, and then sat down to write one which was not an answer to any that he had received. He wrote it carefully and thoughtfully, and when it was written sealed it. For in Warsaw it is well to seal such letters as are not intended to be read at the post-office. And if one expects letters of importance, it is wiser not to have them sent to Poland at all, for the post-office authorities are kind enough to exercise a parental censorship over the travellers’ correspondence.
Cartoner’s letter was addressed to an English gentleman at his country house in Sussex, and it asked for an immediate recall from Poland. It was a confession, for the first time, that the mission entrusted to him was more than he could undertake.
XII
Cartoner Versus Fate
It has been said that on the turf, and under it, all men are equal. It is, moreover, whispered that the crooked policy of Russia forwards the cause of horseracing at Warsaw by every means within its power, on the theory that even warring nationalities may find themselves reconciled by a common sport. And this dream of peace, pursued by the successor of that Czar who said to Poland: “Gentlemen—no dreams,” seems in part justified by the undeniable fact that Russians and Poles find themselves brought nearer together on the racecourse than in any other social function in Warsaw.
“Come,” cried Paul Deulin, breaking in on the solitude of Cartoner’s rooms after lunch one day towards the end of October. “Come, and let us bury the hatchet, and smoke the cigarette of peace before the grandstand at the Mokotow. Everybody will be there. All Poland and his wife, all the authorities and their wives, and these ladies will peep sideways at each other, and turn up their noses at each other’s toilets. To such has descended the great strife in eastern Europe.”
“You think so.”
“Yes, I think so, or I pretend to think so, which comes to the same thing, and makes it a more amusing world for those who have no stake in it. Come with me, and I will show you this little world of Warsaw, where the Russians walk on one side and the Poles pass by on the other; where these fine Russian officers glance longingly across the way, only too ready to take their hearts there and lose them—but the Czar forbids it. And, let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous in the world than a pair of Polish eyes.”
He broke off suddenly; for Cartoner was looking at him with a speculative glance, and turned away to the window.
“Come,” he said. “It
