The Vultures Part 25

"I entered the Franciszkanska near the old church of St. John, and traversed the whole length of the street."

"And you formed an opinion upon the Semitic question in this country?"

asked the Frenchman, earnestly.

"I have."

And Deulin turned to his salmon, while Miss Mangles swept away in a few chosen phrases the difficulties that have puzzled statesmen for fifteen hundred years.

"I shall read a paper upon it at one of our historical Women's Congress meetings--and I may publish," she said.

"It would be in the interests of humanity," murmured Deulin, politely.

"It would add to the . . . wisdom of the nations."

Across the table Netty was doing her best to make her uncle's guest happy, seeking to please him in a thousand ways, which need not be described.

"I know," she was saying at that moment, in not too loud a voice, "that you dislike political women." Heaven knows how she knew it. "But I am afraid I must confess to taking a great interest in Poland. Not the sort of interest you would dislike, I hope. But a personal interest in the people. I think I have never met people with quite the same qualities."

"Their chief quality is gameness," said Cartoner, thoughtfully.

"Yes, and that is just what appeals to English and Americans. I think the princess is delightful--do you not think so?"

"Yes," answered Cartoner, looking straight in front of him.

"There must be a great many stories," went on Netty, "connected with the story of the nation, which it would be so interesting to know--of people's lives, I mean--of all they have attempted and have failed to do."

Joseph was listening at his end of the table, with a kindly smile on his lined face. He had, perhaps, a soft place in that cynical and dry heart for his niece, and liked to hear her simple talk. Cartoner was listening, with a greater attention than the words deserved. He was weighing them with a greater nicety than experienced social experts are in the habit of exercising over dinner-table talk. And Deulin was talking hard, as usual, and listening at the same time; which is not by any means an easy thing to do.

"I always think," continued Netty, "that the princess has a story.

There must, I mean, be some one at the mines or in Siberia, or somewhere terrible like that, of whom she is always thinking."

And Netty's eyes were quite soft with a tender sympathy, as she glanced at Cartoner.

"Perhaps," put in Deulin, hastily, between two of Julie's solemn utterances. "Perhaps she is thinking of her brother--Prince Martin. He is always getting into sc.r.a.pes--ce jeune homme."

But Netty shook her head. She did not mean that sort of thought at all.

"It is your romantic heart," said Deulin, "that makes you see so much that perhaps does not exist."

"If you want a story," put in Joseph Mangles, suddenly, in his deep voice, "I can tell you one."

And because Joseph rarely spoke, he was accorded a silence.

"Waiter's a Finn, and says he doesn't understand English?" began Mangles, looking interrogatively at Deulin, beneath his great eyebrows.

"Which I believe to be the truth," a.s.sented the Frenchman.

"Cartoner and Deulin probably know the story," continued Joseph, "but they won't admit that they do. There was once a n.o.bleman in this city who was like Netty; he had a romantic heart. Dreamed that this country could be made a great country again, as it was in the past--dreamed that the peasants could be educated, could be civilized, could be turned into human beings. Dreamed that when Russia undertook that Poland should be an independent kingdom with a Polish governor, and a Polish Parliament, she would keep her word. Dreamed that when the powers, headed by France and England, promised to see that Russia kept to the terms of the treaty, they would do it. Dreamed that somebody out of all that crew, would keep his word. Comes from having a romantic heart."

And he looked at Netty with his fierce smile, as if to warn her against this danger.

"My country," he went on, "didn't take a hand in that deal. Bit out of breath and dizzy, as a young man would be that had had to fight his own father and whip him."

And he bobbed his head apologetically towards Cartoner, as representing the other side in that great misunderstanding.

"Ever heard the Polish hymn?" he asked, abruptly. He was not a good story-teller perhaps. And while slowly cutting his beef across and across, in a forlorn hope that it might, perchance, not give him dyspepsia this time, he recited in a sing-song monotone:

"'O Lord, who, for so many centuries, didst surround Poland with the magnificence of power and glory; who didst cover her with the s.h.i.+eld of Thy protection when our armies overcame the enemy; at Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"

He paused, and looked slowly round the table.

"Jooly--pa.s.s the mustard," he said.

Then, having helped himself, he lapsed into the monotone again, with a sort of earnest unction that had surely crossed the seas with those Pilgrim Fathers who set sail in quest of liberty.

"'Give back to our Poland her ancient splendor! Look upon fields soaked with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? G.o.d of wrath, cease to punish us! At Thy altar we raise our prayer: deign to restore us, O Lord, our free country!'"

And there was an odd silence, while Joseph P. Mangles ate sparingly of the beef.

"That is the first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia.

They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a chalk mark on the backs of those that sang the loudest, and they were arrested when they came out--women and children, old men and maidens."

Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman, but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite herself.

"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pus.h.i.+ng away his plate, "on some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of the family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.

She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He pet.i.tioned to be made the body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen from the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and died. The wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison, and all the care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and died. He had n.o.body now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but his foster-father--that great and parental government."

Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody must keep account of 'em."

The dessert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the telling than the reading of it would require.

"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take some yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history.

Well--after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face, and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that face if they saw it now."

Joseph poured out a gla.s.s of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin and dogged eyes.

"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.

And that was the end of the story.

XIX

THE HIGH-WATER MARK