As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the first time.
“What will you do about the Mangles?” she asked. “We cannot let them remain here unwarned.”
Deulin reflected for a moment.
“I had forgotten them,” he answered. “In times of stress one finds out one’s friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to Mangles, if you like.”
“Yes,” answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that no one should see her—“yes, do that.”
“Odd people women are,” said Deulin to himself, as he hurried upstairs. He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
“I looked into Mangles’ salon,” he said to Wanda, when he was seated beside her again. “He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone. They must have taken the midday train to Germany. He is no fool—that Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.”
At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men. He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
“They know,” he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the Austrian railway carriage. “They all know. Look at their stupid, perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah! what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!”
“Or a grin,” he added, after a long pause, “that passes for one.”
XXXIV
For Another Time
The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in; the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.
Along the middle road—which is the worst and the least frequented—a number of carts made their way soon after eight o’clock at night. The road is not only unmade, but is neglected and allowed to fall into such deep ruts and puddles as to make it almost impassable. It is bordered on either side by trees and a deep ditch. In the late summer it is used for the transit of the hay which is grown on the low-lying land. In winter it is the shortest road to Wilanow. In spring and autumn it is not used at all.
It was raining hard now, and the wind hummed drearily through the pollarded trees. Each of the four carts was dragged by three horses, harnessed abreast in the Russian fashion. They were the ordinary hay-carts of the country, to be encountered at any time on the more frequented road nearer to the hills, carrying produce to the city. The carts were going towards the city now, but they were empty.
Fifty yards in front of the caravan a man splashed along through the standing water, his head bent to the rain. It was Kosmaroff. He was in his working clothes, and the rain had glued his garments to his spare limbs. He walked with long strides, heedless of where he set his feet. He had reached that stage of wetness where whole water could scarcely have made him wetter. Or else he had such business in hand that mere outward things were of no account. Every now and then he turned his head, half impatiently, to make sure that the carts were following him. The wheels made no sound on the wet sand, but the heavy woodwork of the carts groaned and creaked as they rolled clumsily in the deep ruts.
At the crossways, where the shorter runs at right angles into the larger Wilanow road, Kosmaroff found a man waiting for him, on horseback, under the shadow of the trees, which are larger here. The horseman was riding slowly towards him from the town, and led a spare horse. He was in a rough peasant’s overcoat of a dirty white cloth, drawn in at the waist, and split from heel to band, for use in the saddle. They wear such coats still in Poland and Galicia.
Kosmaroff gave a little cough. There is nothing so unmistakable as a man’s trick of coughing. The horseman pulled up at once.
“You are punctual,” he said. “I was nearly asleep in the saddle.”
And the voice was that of Prince Martin Bukaty. He had another coat such as he was wearing thrown across the saddle in front of him, and he leaned forward to hand it down to Kosmaroff.
“You are not cold?” he asked.
“No; I feel as if I should never be cold again.”
“That is good. Put on your coat quickly. You must not catch a chill. You must take care of yourself.”
“So must you,” answered Kosmaroff, with a little laugh.
Though one was dark and the other fair, there was a subtle resemblance between these two men which lay, perhaps, more in gesture and limb than in face. There also existed between them a certain sympathy which the French call camaraderie, which was not the outcome of a long friendship.
