“Usual cipher,” answered Cartoner.
“My salutations to Lady Orlay,” said Deulin, with a reflective nod. “That woman who can keep a secret.”
“I thought you had none.”
“She knows the secret—of my income,” answered the Frenchman. “Tell her—no! Do not tell her anything. But go and see her. When will you leave?”
“Tonight.”
“And until then? Come and lunch with me at the Russian Club. No! Well, do as you like. I will say goodbye now. Heavens! how many times have we met and said goodbye again in hotels and railway stations and hired rooms! We have no abiding city and no friends. We are sons of Ishmael, and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away.”
He paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing but the hired furniture.
“The police will be in here five minutes after you are out,” he said, curtly. “You have no message—” He paused to pick up from the floor a petal of his flower that had fallen. Then he walked to the window and looked out. Standing there, with his back to Cartoner, he went on: “No message to anyone in Warsaw?”
“No,” answered Cartoner.
“No—you wouldn’t have one. You are not that sort of man. Gad! You are hard, Cartoner—hard as nails.”
Cartoner did not answer. He was already putting together his possessions—already furling his solitary tent. It was only natural that he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality may be; for gameness is not solely a British virtue, as is supposed in English public schools.
Suddenly Deulin turned round and shook hands.
“Don’t know when we shall next meet. Take care of yourself. Goodbye.”
And he went towards the door. But he paused on the threshold.
“The matter of the ‘white feather’ you may leave to me. You may leave others to me, too, so far as that goes. The sons of Ishmael must stand together.”
And, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was gone.
XXIII
Cœur Volant
In that great plain which is known to geographers as the Central European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain. It had come at last.
In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices. He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda’s dress as she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with a sort of shock.
“You were dreaming,” she said.
“Heaven forbid!” he answered, fervently. “Dreams and white hairs—No, I was listening to the rain.”
He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if daring her to doubt him.
“I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda—it is gone.”
He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless, slow persistency.
“Can you not shut that door?” he said. “Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note that strikes—that hopeless rain—a northern autumn evening! There was a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw.”
Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was in reality about his business.
“There,” he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. “That is more comfortable. Can you tell me nothing that will amuse me? Do you not see that my sins sit heavily on me this evening?”
“I do not know if it will amuse you,” answered Wanda, in her energetic way, as if taking him at his word and seeking to rouse him, “but Mr. Mangles and Miss Cahere are coming to tea this evening.”
Deulin made a grimace at the clock. If he had anything to say, he seemed to be thinking, he must say it quickly. Wanda was, perhaps, thinking the same.
“Separately they are amusing enough,” he said, slowly, “but they do not mingle. I have an immense respect for Joseph P. Mangles.”
“So has my father,” put in Wanda, rather significantly.
“Ah! that is why you asked them. Your father knows that in a young country events move by jerks—that the man who is nobody today may be somebody tomorrow. The mammon of unrighteousness, Wanda.”
“Yes.”
“And you are above that sort of thing.”
“I am not above anything that they deem necessary for the good of Poland,” she answered, gravely. “They give everything. I have
