The Vultures

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Vultures


"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"

"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."

"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
comes. Your father?"

"No."

"Martin?"

"No."

"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
the necessity of reply.

"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"

"He has found out something."

"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."

"And I cannot tell you what it is."

"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."

"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across
the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look
a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to
Cartoner, "but not a woman."

"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda
paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr. Cartoner was very kind to us in London.
We all like him. Martin cannot, of course, say anything for him. My
father won't--"

Deulin was playing a gay little air with his fingers on the table.
His touch was staccato, and he appeared to be taking some pride in his
execution.

"Years ago," he said, after a pause, "I once took it upon myself to
advise Cartoner. He was quite a young man. He listened to my advice with
exemplary patience, and then acted in direct contradiction to it--and
never explained. He is shockingly bad at explanation. And he was right,
and I was wrong."

He finished his gay little air with an imaginary chord, played with both
hands.

"Voila!" he said. "I can do nothing, fair princess."

"But surely you will not stand idle and watch a man throw away his
life," said Wanda, looking at him in surprise.

He raised his eyes to hers for a moment, and they were startlingly
serious. They were dark eyes, beneath gray lashes. The whole man was
neat and gray and--shallow, as some thought.

"My dear Wanda," he said, "for forty years and more I have watched
men--and women--do worse than throw their lives away. And it has quite
ceased to affect my appetite."

Wanda rose from her chair, and Deulin's face changed again. He shot a
sidelong glance at her and bit his lip. His eyes were keen enough now.

"Listen!" he said, as he followed her to the door. "I will give him a
little hint--the merest ghost of a hint--will that do?"

"Thank you," said Wanda, going more slowly towards the door.

"Though I do not know why we should, any of us, trouble about this
Englishman."

Wanda quickened her pace a little, and made no answer.

"There are reasons why I should not accompany you," said Deulin, opening
the door. "Try the right-hand staircase, and the other way round."

He closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the chair which
Wanda had just vacated.

"Only the third woman who knows what she wants," he said, "and yet I
have known thousands--thousands."




XVI

MUCH--OR NOTHING

If we contemplate our neighbour's life with that calm indifference
to his good or ill which is the only true philosophy, it will become
apparent that the gods amuse themselves with men as children amuse
themselves with toys. Most lives are marked by a series of events, a
long roll of monotonous years, and perhaps another series of events. In
some the monotonous years come first, while others have a long breathing
space of quiet remembrance before they go hence and are no more seen.

A child will take a fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will
then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them.
The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed
in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all
interest in him. Thus the gods--with men.

Cartoner was beginning to experience this numb surprise. His life, set
down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers
good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for
it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these
incidents--as the hero of the serial sensational novel plays his monthly
part--with a mechanical energy calling into activity only one-half
of his being. He had always known what he wanted, and had usually
accomplished his desires with the subtraction of that discount which is
necessary to the accomplishment of all human wishes. The gods had not
helped him; but they had left him alone, which is quite as good, and
often better. And in human aid this applies as well, which that domestic
goddess, the managing female of the family, would do well to remember.

The gods had hitherto not been interested in Cartoner, and, like the fly
on the nursery window that has escaped notice, he had been allowed to
crawl about and make his own small life, with the result that he had
never found the sugar-basin and had retained his wings. But now, without
apparent reason, that which is called fate had suddenly accorded him
that gracious and inconsequent attention which has forever decided the
sex of this arbiter of human story.

Cartoner still knew what he wanted, and avoided the common error of
wanting too much. For the present he was content with the desire to
avoid the Princess Wanda Bukaty. And this he was not allowed to do. Two
days after the meeting at the Mokotow--the morning following the visit
paid by Wanda to the Hotel de l'Europe--Cartoner was early astir. He
drove to the railway station in time to catch the half-past eight train,
and knowing the ways of the country, he took care to arrive at
ten minutes past eight. He took his ticket amid a crowd of
peasants--wild-looking men in long coats and high boots, rough women in
gay shades of red, in short skirts and top-boots, like their husbands.

This was not a fashionable train, nor a through train to one of the
capitals. A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw
attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the
humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some
parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the
third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged. The second-class
room was a little emptier, and beyond it the sacred green-tinted shades
of the first-class waiting-room promised solitude. He went in alone.
There was one person in the bare room, who rose as he came in. It was
Wanda. The gods were kind--or cruel.

"You are going away?" she said, in a voice so unguardedly glad that
Cartoner looked at her in surprise. "You have seen Monsieur Deulin, and
you are going away."

"No, I have not seen Deulin since the races. He came to my rooms
yesterday, but I was out. My rooms are watched, and he did not come
again."

"We are all watched," said Wanda, with a short and careless laugh. "But
you are going away--that is all that matters."

"I am not going away. I am only going across the frontier, and shall be
back this afternoon."

Wanda turned and looked towards the door. They were alone in the room,
which was a vast one. If there were any other first-class passengers,
they were waiting the arrival of the train from Lemberg in the
restaurant, which is the more usual way of gaining access to the
platform. She probably guessed that he was going across the frontier to
post a letter.

"You must leave Warsaw," she said; "it is not safe for you to stay here.
You have by accident acquired some knowledge which renders it imperative
for you to go away. Your life, you understand, is in danger."

She kept her eyes on the door as she spoke. The ticket-collector on duty
at the entrance of the two waiting-rooms was a long way off, and could
not hear them even if he understood English, which was improbable. There
were so many other languages at this meeting-place of East and West
which it was essential for him to comprehend. The room was absolutely
bare; not so much as a dog could be concealed in it. It these two had
anything to say to each other this was assuredly the moment, and this
bare railway station the place to say it in.

Cartoner did not laugh at the mention of danger, or shrug his shoulders.
He was too familiar with it, perhaps, to accord it this conventional
salutation.

"Martin would have warned you," she went on, "but he did not dare to.
Besides, he thought that you knew something of the danger into which you
had unwittingly run."

"Not unwittingly," said Cartoner, and Wanda turned to look at him. He
said so little that his meaning needed careful search.

"I cannot tell you much--" she began, and he interrupted her at once.

"Stop," he said, "you must tell me nothing. It was not unwitting. I am
here for a purpose. I am here to learn everything--but not from you."

"Martin hinted at that," said Wanda, slowly, "but I did not believe
him."

And she looked at Cartoner with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as
if there were more in him--more of him--than she had ever expected.
And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were
baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which
was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes
from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able
to look up to the men with whom they have dealings.

"It is true enough," he said, "fate has made us enemies, princess."

"You said that even the Czar could not do that. And he is stronger than
fate--in Poland. Besides----"

"Yes."

"You, who say so little, were indiscreet enough to confide something in
your enemy. You told me you had written for your recall."

And again her eyes brightened, with an anticipating gleam of relief.

"It has been refused."

"But you must go--you must go!" she said, quickly. She glanced at the
great clock upon the wall. She had only ten minutes in which to make him
understand. He was an eminently sensible person. There were gleams of
gray in his closely cut hair.

"You must not think that we are alarmists. If there is any family in the
world who knows what it is to live peaceably, happily--quite gayly--"
she broke off with a light laugh, "on a volcano--it is the Bukatys. We
have all been brought up to it. Martin and I looked out of our nursery
window on April 8, 1861, and saw what was done on that day. My father
was in the streets. And ever since we have been accustomed to unsettled
times."

"I know," said Cartoner, "what it is to be a Bukaty." And he smiled
slowly as she looked at him with gray, fearless eyes. Then suddenly her
manner, in a flash, was different.

"Then you will go?" she pleaded, softly, persuasively. And when he
turned away his eyes from hers, as if he did not care to meet them,
she glanced again, hurriedly, at the clock. There is a cunning bred of
hatred, and there is another cunning, much deeper. "Say you will go!"

And, sternly economical of words, he shook his head.

"I do not think you understand," she went on, changing her manner
and her ground again. And to each attack he could only oppose his own
stolid, dumb form of defence. "You do not understand what a danger to
us your presence here is. It is needless to tell you all this," with
a gesture she indicated the well-ordered railway station, the hundred
marks of a high state of civilization, "is skin deep. That things in
Poland are not at all what they seem. And, of course, we are implicated.
We live from day to day in uncertainty. And my father is such an old
man; he has had such a hopeless struggle all his life. You have only to
look at his face--"

"I know," admitted Cartoner.

"It would be very hard if anything should happen to him now, after he
has gone through so much. And Martin, who is so young in mind, and so
happy and reckless! He would be such an easy prey for a political foe.
That is why I ask you to go."

"Yes, I know," answered Cartoner, who, like many people reputed clever,
was quite a simple person.

"Besides," said Wanda, with that logic which men, not having the wit to
follow it, call no logic at all, "you can do no good here, if all your
care and attention are required for the preservation of your life. Why
have they refused your recall? It is so stupid."

"I must do the best I can," replied Cartoner.

Wanda shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and tapped her foot on the
ground. Then suddenly her manner changed again.

"But we must not quarrel," she said, gently. "We must not misunderstand
each other," she added, with a quick and uneasy laugh, "for we have only
five minutes in all the world."

"Here and now," he corrected, with a glance at the clock, "we have only
five minutes. But the world is large."

"For you," she said quickly, "but not for me. My world is Warsaw. You
forget I am a Russian subject."

But he had not forgotten it, as she could see by the sudden hardening of
his face.

"My presence in Warsaw," he said, as if the train of thought needed no
elucidating, "is in reality no source of danger to you--to your father
and brother, I mean. Indeed, I might be of some use. I or Deulin. Do
not misunderstand my position. I am of no political importance. I am
nobody--nothing but a sort of machine that has to report upon events
that are past. It is not my business to prevent events or to make
history. I merely record. If I choose to be prepared for that which
may come to pass, that is merely my method of preparing my report. If
nothing happens I report nothing. I have not to say what might have
happened--life is too short to record that. So you see my being in
Warsaw is really of no danger to your father and brother."

"Yes, I see--I see!" answered Wanda. She had only three minutes now. The
door giving access to the platform had long been thrown open. The guard,
in his fine military uniform and shining top-boots, was strutting the
length of the train. "But it was not on account of that that we asked
Monsieur Deulin to warn you. It does not matter about my father and
Martin. It is required of them--a sort of family tradition. It is their
business in life--almost their pleasure."

"It is my business in life--almost my pleasure," said Cartoner, with a
smile.

"But is there no one at home--in England--that you ought to think of?"
in an odd, sharp voice.

"Nobody," he replied, in one word, for he was chary with information
respecting himself.

Wanda had walked towards the platform. Immediately opposite to her
stood a carriage with the door thrown open. In those days there were no
corridor carriages. Two minutes now.

"We must not be seen together on the platform," she said. "I am only
going to the next station. We have a small farm there, and some old
servants whom I go to see."

She stood within the open doorway, and seemed to wait for him to speak.

"Thank you," he said, "for warning me."

And that was all.

"You must go," he added, after a moment's pause.

Still she lingered.

"There is so much to say," she said, half to herself. "There is so much
to say."

The train was moving when Cartoner stepped into a carriage at the back.
He was alone, and he leaned back with a look of thoughtful wonder in his
eyes, as if he were questioning whether she were right--whether there
was much to say--or nothing.




XVII

IN THE SENATORSKA

"It is," said Miss Julie Mangles, "in the Franciszkanska that one lays
one's hand on the true heart of the people."

"That's as may be, Jooly," replied her brother, "but I take it that the
hearts of the women go to the Senatorska."

For Miss Mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down
the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply
their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with
bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is a
picture-gallery of the human requirements. The chosen people hurry to
and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the
mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. No Christian would
assuredly be a Jew; and no Jew would be a Polish Jew if he could
possibly help it. For a Polish Jew must not leave the country, may not
even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he
should go elsewhere. He has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a
choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.

"I shall," said Miss Mangles, "write a paper on the Jewish question in
this country."

And Joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the
right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with
his tongue. He saw no reason why Jooly should not write a paper on
the Semitic question in Russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a
town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far West.

"Seen the Senatorska, Netty?" he inquired. But Netty had not seen the
Senatorska, and did not know how to find it.

"Go out into the Faubourg," her uncle explained, "and just turn to the
left and follow all the other women. It is the street where the shops
are."

Two days later, when Miss Julie Mangles was writing her paper, Netty set
out to find the Senatorska. Miss Mangles was just putting down--as the
paper itself recorded--the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after
a walk down the Street of the Accursed. For they like their impressions
served hot out West, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to
accuracy.

Netty found the street quite easily. It was a sunny morning, and many
shoppers were abroad. In a degree she followed her uncle's instructions,
and instinct did the rest. For the Senatorska is not an easy street to
find. The entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of
Bond Street.

The Senatorska does not approach Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and
Netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest
her in the street where Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--that weak
dreamer--built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. The
shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and Netty was
passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed
in the wares of a silver-worker. Then she turned, with a little cry of
surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. It was the
Prince Martin Bukaty.

"I was afraid you did not remember me," said Martin. "You looked
straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me."

"Did I? I am so short-sighted, you know. I had not forgotten you. Why
should I?"

And Netty glanced at Martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and
then looked elsewhere rather hastily.

"Oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to
remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting."

"Of course," said Netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. "One meets
a great number of people, but not many that one likes. Do you not find
it so?"

"I am glad," answered Martin, "that you do not meet many people that you
like."

"Oh, but you must not think that I dislike people," urged Netty, in some
concern; "I should be very ungrateful if I did. Everybody is so kind.
Do you not find it so? I hate people to be cynical. There is much more
kindness in the world than anybody suspects. Do you not think so?"

"I do not know. It has not come my way, perhaps. It naturally would come
in yours."

And Martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with
that kindness in his eyes of which Netty had had so large a share.

"Oh no!" she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders
descriptive of a shrinking humility. "Why should I? I have done nothing
to deserve it. And yet, perhaps you are right. Everybody is so kind--my
uncle and aunt--everybody. I am very fortunate, I am sure. I wonder why
it is?"

And she looked up inquiringly into Martin's face as if he could tell
her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could--if he dared. He
had never met anybody quite like Netty--so spontaneous and innocent and
easy to get on with. Conversation with her was so interesting and yet so
little trouble. She asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to
answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had
a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from
under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes
were dark, almost as violets.

"Ought I to be here?" she asked. "Going about the streets alone, I
mean?"

"You are not alone," answered Martin, with a laugh.

"No, but--perhaps I ought to be."

And Martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.

"In America, you know," said the voice from under the parasol, "girls
are allowed to do so much more than in Europe. And it is always best to
be careful, is it not?--to follow the customs of the country, I mean. In
France and Germany people are so particular. I wanted to ask you what is
the custom in Warsaw."

Martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.

"In Warsaw you can do as you like. We are not French, and Heaven forbid
that we should resemble the Germans in anything. Here every one goes
about the streets as they do in England or America."

As if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.

"I can show you the best shops," he said, "such as they are. This is
Ulrich's, the flower shop. Those violets are Russian. The only good
thing I ever heard of that came from Russia. Do you like violets?"

"I love them," answered Netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the
next shop.

"You would naturally."

"Why?" asked Netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of
tea in the Russian shop next to Ulrich's.

"Is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the
eyes?"

"It is very kind of you to say that," said Netty, in a voice
half-afraid, half-reproachful.

"It is very kind of Heaven to give you such eyes," answered Martin,
gayly. He was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on
with Netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. Like many lively
persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and
this Netty seemed to have. He was sure that she was religious and very
good.

"You know," said Netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, "I am much
interested in Poland. It is such a romantic country. People have done
such great things, have they not, in Poland? I mean the nobles--and the
poor peasants, too in their small way, I suppose?"

"The nobles have come to great grief in Poland--that is all," replied
Martin, with a short laugh.

"And it is so sad," said Netty, with a shake of the head; "but I am
sure it will all come right some day. Do you think so? I am sure you are
interested in Poland--you and your sister and your father."

"We are supposed to be," admitted Martin. "But no one cares for Poland
now, I am afraid. The rest of the world has other things to think of,
and, in England and America, Poland is forgotten now--and her history,
which is the saddest history of any nation in the world."

"But I am sure you are wrong there," said Netty, earnestly. "I know a
great number of people who are sorry for the Poles and interested in
them."

"Are you?" asked Martin, looking down at her.

"Yes," she replied, with downcast eyes. "Come," she said, after a pause,
with a sort of effort, "we must not stand in front of this shop any
longer."

"Especially," he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, "as it is a
Russian shop. Wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in
a window, that is a Russian shop, and if you sympathize with Poland you
will not go into it. There are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in
Warsaw where they will not serve Russians. It is to those shops that you
must go."

Netty looked at him doubtfully.

"I am quite serious," he said. "We must fight with what weapons we
have."

"Yes," she answered, indicating the shops, "these people, but not you.
You are a prince, and they cannot touch you. They would not dare to take
anything from you."

"Because there is nothing to take," laughed Martin, gayly; "we were
ruined long ago. They took everything there was to take in 1830, when
my father was a boy. He could not work for his living, and I may not
either; so I am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own."

"I am so sorry!" she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.

Then she caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her
short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She
stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived
them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had
just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to
Martin--his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and
familiar friend.