Approaching the town, Cartoner rode at a more leisurely pace. That his life had hung on a thread since sunset did not seem to affect him much, and he looked about him with quiet eyes, while the hand on the bridle was steady.
He was, it seemed, one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road clearly before them, and for whom the barriers of duty and honor, which stand on either side of every man’s path, present neither gap nor gate. He had courage and patience, and was content to exercise both, without weighing the changes of reward too carefully. That he read his duty in a different sense to that understood by other men was no doubt only that which this tolerant age calls a matter of temperament.
“That Cartoner,” Deulin was in the habit of saying, “takes certain things so seriously, and other things—social things, to which I give most careful attention—he ignores. And yet we often reach the same end by different routes.”
Which was quite true. But Deulin reached the end by a happy guess, and that easy exercise of intuition which is the special gift of the Gallic race, while Cartoner worked his way towards his goal with a steady perseverance and slow, sure steps.
“In a moment of danger give me Cartoner,” Deulin had once said.
On more than one occasion Cartoner had shown quite clearly, without words, that he understood and appreciated that odd mixture of heroism and frivolity which will always puzzle the world and draw its wondering attention to France. The two men never compared notes, never helped each other, never exchanged the minutest confidence.
Joseph P. Mangles was different. He spoke quite openly of his work.
“Got a job in Russia,” he had stolidly told anyone who asked him. “Cold, unhealthy place.” He seemed to enter upon his duties with the casual interest of the amateur, and, in a way, exactly embodied the attitude of his country towards Europe, of which the many wheels within wheels may spin and whir or halt and grind without in any degree affecting the great republic. America can afford to content herself with the knowledge of what has happened or is happening. Countries nearer to the field of action must know what is going to happen.
Cartoner rode placidly to the stable where he had hired his horse, and delivered the beast to its owner. He had no one in Warsaw to go to and relate his adventures. He was alone, as he had been all his life—alone with his failures and his small successes—content, it would seem, to be a good servant in a great service.
He went to the restaurant of the Hôtel de France, which is a quiet place of refreshment close to the Jasna, which has no political importance, like the restaurant of the Europe, and there dined. The square was deserted as he stumbled over the vile pavement towards his rooms. The concierge was sitting at the door of the quiet house where he had taken an apartment. All along the street the dvornik of every house thus takes his station at the half-closed door at nightfall. And it is so all through the town. It is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of the house under his care.
“The post is in. There is a letter upstairs,” said the doorkeeper to Cartoner, as he passed in. Cartoner’s servant was out, and the lamps were turned low when he entered his sitting-room. He knew that the letter must be the reply to his application for a recall. He turned up the lamp, and, taking the letter from the table where it lay in a prominent position, sat down in a deep chair to read it at leisure.
It bore no address, and prattled of the crops. Some of it seemed to be nonsense. Cartoner read it slowly and carefully. It was an order, in brief and almost brutal language, to stay where he was and do the work entrusted to him. For a man who writes in a code must perforce avoid verbosity.
XV
A Tale Half Told
The heart soon accustoms itself to that existence which is called living upon a volcano. Prince Bukaty had indeed known no other life, and to such as had daily intercourse with him he was quite a peaceful and jovial gentleman. He had brought up his children in the same atmosphere of strife and peril, and it is to be presumed that the fit had survived, while the unfit princess, his wife, had turned her face to the wall quite soon, not daring to meet the years in which there could be no hope of alleviation.
The prince’s friends were not in Warsaw; many were at the mines. Some lived in Paris; others were exiled to distant parts of Russia. His generation was slowly passing away, and its history is one of the grimmest stories untold. Yet he sat in that bare drawing-room of a poor man and read his Figaro quite placidly, like any bourgeois in the safety of the suburb, only glancing at the clock from time to time.
“He is late,” he said once, as he folded the paper, and that was all.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and Martin had been expected to return to dinner at half-past six. Wanda was working, and she, too, glanced towards the clock at intervals. She was always uneasy about Martin, whose
