it was not yet mid-day when paul deulin called at the bukaty palace.
“is the prince in?” he asked. “is he busy?” he added, when the servant had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. but the man only shrugged his shoulders with a smile. the prince, it appeared, was never busy. deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a german newspaper.
the prince looked at him over the folded sheet. they had known each other since boyhood, and could read perhaps more in each other's wrinkled and drawn faces than the eyes of a younger generation were able to perceive. the prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other side of the fireplace. deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of movement and demeanor of which lady orlay, and cartoner, and others who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. his eyes were oddly bright.
they waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, and even then they did not speak at once, but sat looking at each other in the glow of the wood-fire. then deulin shrugged his shoulders, and made, with both hands outspread, a gesture indicative of infinite pity.
“do you know?” said the prince, grimly.
“i knew at eight o'clock this morning. cartoner advised me of it by a cipher telegram.”
“cartoner?” said the prince, interrogatively.
“cartoner is in petersburg. he went there presumably to attend this—pleasing denouement.”
the prince gave a short laugh.
“how well,” he said, folding his newspaper, and laying it aside reflectively—“how well that man knows his business. but why did he telegraph to you?”
“we sometimes do each other a good turn,” explained deulin, rather curtly. “it must have happened yesterday afternoon. one can only hope that—it was soon over.”
the prince laughed, and looked across at the frenchman with a glitter beneath his shaggy brows.
“my friend,” he said, “you must not ask me to get up any sentiment on this occasion. do not let us attempt to be anything but what god made us—plain men, with a few friends, whom one would regret; and a number of enemies, of whose death one naturally learns with equanimity. the man was a thief. he was a great man and in a great position, which only made him the greater thief.”
the prince moved his crippled legs with an effort and contemplated the fire.
“he is dead,” he went on, after a pause, “and there is an end to it. i do not pray that he may go to eternal punishment. i only want him to be dead; and he is dead. voila! it is a matter of rejoicing.”
“you are a ruffian; i always said you were a ruffian,” said deulin, gravely.
“i am a man, my friend, who has an object in life. an object, moreover, which cannot take into consideration a human life here or there, a human happiness more or less. you see, i do not even ask you to agree with me or to approve of me.”
“my friend, in the course of a long life i have learned only one effective lesson—to judge no man,” put in deulin.
“remember,” continued the prince, “i deplore the method. i understand it was a bomb. i take no part in such proceedings. they are bad policy. you will see—we shall both see, if we live long enough—that this is a mistake. it will alienate all sympathies from the party. they have not even dared to approach me with any suggestion of co-operation. they have approached others of the polish party and have been sent about their business. but—well, one would be a fool not to take advantage of every mishap to one's enemy.”
deulin help up one hand in a gesture imploring silence.
“thin ice!” he said, warningly.
“bah!” laughed the other. “you and your thin ice! i am no diplomatist—a man who is afraid to look over a wall.”
“no. only a man who prefers to find out what is on the other side by less obvious means,” corrected the frenchman. “one must not be seen looking over one's neighbor's wall—that is the first commandment of diplomacy.”
“then why are you here?” asked the prince, abruptly, with his rough laugh.
and paul deulin suddenly lost his temper. he sat bolt upright in his chair, and banged his two hands down on the arms of it so that the dust flew out. he glared across at the prince with a fierceness in his eyes that had not glittered there for twenty years.
“you think i came here to pry into your affairs—to turn our friendship into a means for my own aggrandizement? you think that i report to my government that which you and i may say to each other, or leave unsaid, before your study fire? was it not i who cried 'thin ice'?”
“yes—yes,” answered the prince, shortly. and the two old friends glared at each other gleams of the fires that had burned fiercely enough in other days. “yes—yes! but why are you here this morning?”
“why am i here this morning? i will tell you. i ask you no questions, i want to know nothing of your schemes and plans. you can run your neck into a noose if you like. you have been doing it all your life. and—who knows?—you may win at last. as for martin, you have brought him up in the same school. and, bon dieu! i suppose you are bukatys, and you cannot help it. it is your affair, after all. but you shall not push wanda into a russian prison! you shall not get her to siberia, if i can help it!”
“wanda!” said the prince, in some surprise—“wanda!”
“yes. you forget—you bukatys always have forgotten—the women. warsaw is no place for wanda to-day. and to-day's work—to-night's work—is no work for wanda!”
“to-night's work! what do you mean?”
the prince sat forward and looked hard at his friend.
“oh, you need not be alarmed. i know nothing,” was the answer. “but i am not a complete fool. i put two and two together at random. i only guess, as you know. i have guessed all my life. and as often as not i have guessed right, as you know. ah! you think i am interfering in that which is not my business, and i do not care a snap of the finger what you think!”
and he illustrated this indifference with a gesture of his finger and thumb.
the prince laughed suddenly and boisterously.
“if i did not know that you had broken your heart—more than once—long ago,” he began. but deulin interrupted him.
“only once,” he put in, with a short, hard laugh.
“well, only once, then. i should say that you had fallen in love with wanda.”
“ah!” said deulin, lightly, “that is an old affair. that happened when she used to ride upon my shoulder. and one keeps a tenderness for one's old loves, you know.”
“well, and what do you propose to do? i tell you honestly i have had no time to think of my own affairs. i have had no courage to think of them, perhaps. i have been at work all night. yes, yes! i know! thin ice! you ought to know it when you see it. you have been on it all your life, and through it—”
“only once,” repeated deulin. “i propose what any other young lover would propose to do—to run away with her from warsaw.”
“when?”
deulin looked at his watch.
“in half an hour. think of the risks, bukaty—a young girl.”
and he saw a sudden fierceness in the old man's eyes. the point was gained.
“i could take her to cracow this evening. your sister there will take her in.”
“yes, yes! but will wanda go?”
“if you tell her to go she will. i think that is the only power on earth that can make her do it.”
the prince smiled.
“you seem to know her failings. you are no lover, my friend.”
“that is a question in which we are both beyond our depth. you will do this thing for me. i come back in half an hour.”
“what about the passport, and the difficulties of getting away from warsaw to-day?” asked the prince. “what we know others must know now.”
“leave those matters to me. you can safely do so. please do not move. i will find my way to the door, thank you.”
“if you see wanda as you go,” called out the prince, as deulin closed the door behind him, “send her to me.”
deulin did see wanda. he had always intended to do so. he went to the drawing-room and there found her, busy over some household books. he held out beneath her eyes the telegram he had received that morning.
“a telegram,” she said, looking at it. “but i cannot make out its meaning. i never saw or heard of that word before.”
“nevertheless the news it contains will stir the blood of men till the end of time,” answered deulin, lightly. “it is from a reliable source. cartoner sent it. upon that news your father is basing that which he wishes to say to you in his study now.”
“ah!” said wanda, with a ring of anxiety in her voice.
“it is nothing!” put in deulin, quickly, at the sight of her face. “nothing that need disturb your thoughts or mine. it is only a question of empires and kingdoms.”
with his light laugh, he turned away from her, and was gone before she could ask him a question.
in half an hour he returned. he had a cab waiting at the door, and the passport difficulty had been overcome, he said.
“the man in the street,” he added, turning to the prince, sitting beside wanda, who stood before the study fire in her furs, ready to go—“the man in the street and the innumerable persons who carry swords in this city know nothing.”
“they will know at the frontier,” answered the prince, “and it is there that you will have difficulties.”
“then it is there that we shall overcome them,” he replied, gayly. “it is there also, i hope, that we shall dine. for i have had no lunch. no matter; i lunched yesterday. i shall eat things in the train, and wanda will hate me. i always hate other people's crumbs, while for my own i have a certain tenderness. yes. now let us say good-bye and be gone.”
for paul deulin's gayety always rose to the emergency of the moment. he came of a stock that had made jests on the guillotine steps. he was suddenly pressed for time, and had scarcely a moment in which to bid his old friend good-bye, and no leisure to make those farewell speeches which are nearly always better left unsaid.
“i must ask you,” he said to wanda, when they were in the cab, “to drive round by the europe, and keep you waiting a few moments while i run up-stairs and put together my belongings. i shall give up my room. i may not come back. one never knows.”
and he looked curiously out of the cab window into the street that had run with blood twice within his own recollection. he peered into the faces of the passers-by as into the faces of men who were to-day, and to-morrow would be as the seed of grass.
in the cracow faubourg all seemed to be as usual. some were going about their business without haste or enthusiasm, as the conquered races always seem to do, while others appeared to have no business at all beyond a passing interest in the shop-windows and a leisurely sense of enjoyment in the sunshine. the quieter thoroughfares were quieter than usual, deulin thought. but he made no comment, and wanda seemed to be fully occupied with her own thoughts. the long expected, when it comes at last, is really more surprising than the unexpected itself.
it was the luncheon hour at the hotel de l'europe, but the entrance hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between twelve and two. the man in the street might, as he had said, know nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the czar was dead.
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 on one should see her—“yes, do that.”
“odd people women are,” said deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs. 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's 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 mid-day 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.”
