The Vultures Part 43

He pa.s.sed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.

Here was a man who had heard nothing.

Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the heavy leather ap.r.o.n.

"The telegraph office," he said.

And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he urged him to go faster. The pa.s.sers on the pavement were going about their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards away.

Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear great only when we look back at them.

He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?

Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him living, but a.s.suredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The Czar must a.s.suredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at a given moment.

The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams could be despatched from Russia.

Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.

Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.

The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.

He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.

The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.

Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he pa.s.sed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each knew that the other knew. Then the little man pa.s.sed in. The front of his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.

He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any earthly throne.

x.x.xII

A LOVE-LETTER

The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of spring were a.s.suredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.

She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.

It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.

Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially, perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater pleasure of the other half.

She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps, an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to what she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was different from other men.

She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska to the river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.

As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.

It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.

Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh when she thought of their poverty.

In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding, if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love should be warned that it is a game which never stands still, but must move onward or backward. You may play it one day in jest, and find that it must be played in earnest next time. You may never take it up just where you left it, for the stake must always be either increasing or diminis.h.i.+ng. And this is what makes it rather an interesting game. For you may never tell what it may grow to, and while it is in progress, none ever believe that it will have an end.

Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes she does not even go so far as that.

Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning.

The faces of those who pa.s.sed her were tranquil enough. The news of yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is leaden-footed in this backward country.

Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the pa.s.sers.

Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.

Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the two princ.i.p.al thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens, near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.

It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her, but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not even bow as he approached, but pa.s.sing close by her he dropped a folded note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.

There were others pa.s.sing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.

"I must not speak to you," Martin wrote, "for there is danger in it--not to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the Europe. I have already provided for your safety. There is great news, but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking of you, and--no! I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say it--who knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but I must not even bow to you. If you go away before I pa.s.s again, leave something on the seat that I may keep until I see you again--your glove or a flower, to be my talisman."

Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes.

She rather liked his old-fas.h.i.+oned chivalry, which is certainly no longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in covert-coating.

Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew that events were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.

Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of her--absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first in Poland, Prince Martin must a.s.suredly be second. She laid the violets on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.

She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.

She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man; had found it astonis.h.i.+ngly reliable. The honor of women was quite a different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day of adversity he would a.s.suredly adhere to in other circ.u.mstances.

"Besides--" And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as she bent her head to reb.u.t.ton her jacket and arrange her furs.

She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she pa.s.sed beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone seat and take up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste.

Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a pretty girl.

Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the Kotzebue gate.

Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.

He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until he was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the arches of the covered pa.s.sages of the palace.

After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down on the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the pa.s.sers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat and spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and had pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must have been a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw waif of the public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.

"That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night," he read, and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he could possibly compa.s.s.

He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.

Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.

Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.

"Ah!" he said, "thought I might meet you here."

He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark for some minutes.