“Oh, I have no principles,” said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and looking round absentmindedly for his hat.
“You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man’s principles? By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?”
“None.”
“Nor I,” pursued Deulin; “and I am bored. That is why I want you to come to the races with me. Besides, it would be more marked to stay away than to go—especially for an Englishman and a Frenchman, who lead the world in racing.”
“That is why I am going,” said Cartoner.
“Then you don’t like racing?”
“Yes, I am very fond of it,” answered the Englishman, in the same absent voice, as he led the way towards the door.
In the Jasna they found a drosky, where there is always one to be found at the corner of the square, and they did not speak during the drive up the broad Marszalkowska to the rather barren suburb of the Mokotow (where bricks and mortar are still engaged in emphasizing the nakedness of the land), for the simple reason that speech is impossible while driving through the streets of the worst-paved city in Europe. Which is a grudge that the traveller may bear against Russia, for if Poland had been a kingdom she would assuredly have paved the streets of her capital.
The racecourse is not more than fifteen minutes’ drive from the heart of the town, and all Warsaw was going thither this sunny afternoon. At the entrance a crowd was slowly working its way through the turnstiles, and Deulin and Cartoner passed in with it. They had the trick, so rare among travellers, of doing this in any country without attracting undue attention.
It was a motley enough throng. There were Polish ladies and gentlemen in the garb of their caste, which is today the same all the world over, though in some parts of Ruthenia and Lithuania one may still come across a Polish gentleman of the old school in his frogged coat and top-boots. German tradesmen and their families formed here and there one of those domesticated and homely groups which the Fatherland sends out into the world’s trading centres. And moving amid these, as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, the Russian officers, who virtually had the management of the course—tall, fair, clean men, with sunburned faces and white skins—energetic, refined, and strong. They were mostly in white tunics with gold shoulder-straps, blue breeches, and much gold lace. Here and there a Cossack officer moved with long, free strides in his dressing-gown of a coat, heavily ornamented with silver, carrying high his astrakhan cap, and looking round him with dark eyes that had a gleam of something wild and untamed in them. It was a meeting-ground of many races, one of the marketplaces where men may greet each other who come from different hemispheres and yet owe allegiance to one flag: are sons of the empire which today gathers within one ring-fence the north, the south, the east, and the west.
“France amuses me, England commands my respect, but Russia takes my breath away,” said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many races. On all sides one heard different languages—German, the singsong Russian—the odd, exclamatory tongue which three emperors cannot kill.
“And Germany?” inquired Cartoner, in his low, curt voice.
“Bores me, my friend.”
He was pushing his way gently through into the paddock, where a number of men were congregated, but no ladies.
“The Fatherland,” he added, “the heavy Fatherland! I killed a German once, when I was in the army of the Loire—a most painful business.”
He was still shaking his head over this reminiscence when they reached the gateway of the paddock. He was passing through it when, without turning towards him, he grasped Cartoner’s arm.
“Look!” he said, “look!”
There was a sudden commotion in the well-dressed crowd in the paddock, and above the gray coats and glossy hats the tossing colors of a jockey. The head of a startled horse and two gleaming shoes appeared above the heads of men for a moment. A horse had broken away with its jockey only half in the saddle.
The throng divided, and dispersed in either direction like sheep before a dog—all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move above a snail’s pace.
Then, because they were both quick men, with the instincts and a long practice of action in moments calling for a rapid decision, Deulin and Cartoner ran forward. But they could not save the catastrophe which they knew was imminent. The horse advanced with long, wild strides, and knocked the crippled old man over as if he were a ninepin. He came on at a gallop now, the jockey leaning forward and trying to catch a broken bridle, his two stirrups flying, his cap off. The little man was swearing in English. And he had need to, for through the paddock gate the crowd was densely packed and he was charging into it on a maddened horse beyond control.
Deulin was nearer, and therefore the first to get to the horse; but Cartoner’s greater weight came an instant later, and the horse’s head was down.
“Let go! let go!” cried the jockey through his teeth, as Cartoner and Deulin, one on each side, crammed the stirrups over his feet. “Let go! I’ll teach him!”
And they obeyed him, for the horse interested them less than the Prince Bukaty, lying half-stunned on the turf. They were both at his side in a moment and saw him open his eyes.
“I am unhurt,” he said. “Help me up. No! sh—h! No, nothing is broken; it is that confounded gout. No, I cannot rise yet! Leave me for a minute. Go,
