The Vultures Part 38

A SACRIFICE

Though the fine weather did not last, it was a promise of better things, like the letter that precedes a welcome friend. After it the air seemed warmer, though snow fell again, and the thermometer went below zero.

Wanda and her father did not return to Warsaw as they had intended.

So long as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely a.s.sociated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of green things, is in Poland and Russia a period of waiting for the water to drain off the flat land; a time to look to one's thickest top-boots in these countries, where men and women are booted to the knee, and every third house displays the shoemaker's sign upon its door-post.

The Bukatys' country-house, like all else that the past had left them, was insignificant. In olden days it had been a farm, one of the smallest, used once or twice during the winter as a shooting-lodge; for it stood in the midst of vast forests. It was not really ancient, for it had been built in the days of Sobieski, when that rough warrior and parvenu king built himself the house in the valley of the Vistula, where he saw all his greatness vanish, and ended his days in that grim solitude which is the inheritance of master-minds. The hand of the French architect is to be detected even in this farm; for Poland, more frankly and consciously than the rest of the world, drew all her inspiration and her art from France. Did not France once send her a king? Was not Sobieski's wife a Frenchwoman, who, moreover, ruled that great fighter with her little finger, stronger than any rod of iron? If ever a Frenchman was artificially made from other racial materials, he was the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski.

Built on raised ground, the farm-house was of stone. It had been a plain, square building; but in the days of Poniatowski some attempt had been made at ornamentation in the French style. A pavilion had been built in the garden amid the pine-trees. A sun-dial had been placed on the lawn, which was now no longer a lawn, but had lapsed again into a meadow. The cows had polished the sun-dial with their rough sides, while the pa.s.sage of cold winters and wet springs had left the plaster ornamentation mossy and broken.

Here, amid a simple people, the Bukatys spent a portion of the year.

They usually came in the winter, because it was in the winter they were needed. The feudal spirit, which was strong in the old prince and weaker in his children, has two sides to it; but its enemies have only remembered one. The prince took it as a matter of course that it was his duty to care for his peasants, and relieve as far as lay in his power the distress which came upon them annually with the regularity of the recurring seasons. With a long winter and a wet spring, with a heavy taxation, and a standing bill at the village shop kept by a Jew, and the village inn kept by another, these peasants never had any money. And so far as human foresight can perceive, there seems to be no reason why they ever should.

By some chain of reasoning, which a.s.suredly had a flaw in it, the prince seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that he was put into the world to help his peasants, and those who were now no longer his serfs. And, though he spoke to them as if they were of a different creation and not his equals--as the French Revolution set about to prove, but only succeeded in proving the contrary--he cared for their bodies as he would have cared for a troop of sheep. He only saw that they were hungry, and he fed them. Wanda only saw that there were among them sick who could not pay for a doctor, and could not have gone to the expense of obeying his orders had they called one in. She only saw that there were mothers who had to work in the fields, while their children died of infantine and comparatively simple complaints at home, because their rightful nurse could not spare the time to nurse them. It was no wonder that the roof of the farm-house leaked, and that the cows were invited to feed upon the front lawn.

Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his great laugh and some small witticism. For they are a gay people, these Poles, through it all. "Ils sont legers, actifs, insouciants," said Napoleon, that keenest searcher of the human heart, who knew them a hundred years ago when their troubles were comparatively fresh. And it is an odd thing that adversity rarely breaks a man's spirit, but often strengthens it.

Wanda sometimes rode, but usually went on foot, and had more than enough work to fill the days now growing longer and lighter. She, like her father, was brisk and cheerful in her well-being--like him, she was intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of spirit. They liked the simple life and the freedom from the restraint that hung round their daily existence in Warsaw. But the old man watched the weather, and longed to be about larger business, which alone could satisfy the restless spirit of activity handed down to him by the forefathers who had stirred all Europe, and spoken fearlessly to kings.

Wanda was not sorry when the thaw gave way to renewed frost. The snow lay thickly on the ground, and weighed down the branches of the pines.

In the stillness which brooded over the land during day and night alike the only sound they ever heard was the sharp crack of a branch breaking beneath its burden. They had lived in this still world of snow and forest for some weeks, and had seen and heard nothing of men.

"This frost cannot last," said the prince. "The spring must come soon, and then we shall have to go back to the world and its business."

But the world and its business thereof did not wait until the brief frost was over. It came to them that same night. For Kosmaroff was essentially of the active world, and carried with him wherever he went the spirit of unrest.

He arrived on foot soon after nine o'clock. He was going on to Warsaw on foot the same night, he announced, before the greetings were over.

"And you have had nothing to eat," said Wanda, glancing at his spare, weather-beaten face. He was the impersonation of hardness and activity; a man in excellent physical training, inured to cold and every hards.h.i.+p.

He had simply opened the front door and walked in, throwing his rough sheepskin coat aside in the outer hall. The snow was on his boots nearly to the knee. The ice hung from his mustache and glistened on his eyebrows. He held his coa.r.s.e blue handkerchief in his hand, and wiped his face from time to time as the ice melted.

"No," he answered, "I have had nothing to eat. But the servants do not know I am here. I saw the lights in their windows at the other end of the house. I would rather go hungry than let them know that I am here."

"You will not go hungry from this house," said the prince, with his rather fierce laugh.

"I will get you what you want," said Wanda, lighting a candle. "There are no servants, however, so you need not think of that. There are only the farmer and his wife--and my maid, who is English, and silent."

So, before telling his news, Kosmaroff sat down and ate, while Wanda waited on him, and Prince Bukaty poured out wine for this rough man in the homespun clothing and heavy boots of the Vistula raftsman, who yet had the manner of a gentleman and that quiet air of self-possession in all societies which is not to be learned in schools nor yet acquired at any academy.

"When you have finished," said Wanda, "you can talk of your affairs. I shall leave you to yourselves."

"Oh, there is not much to say," answered Kosmaroff. "I have done no good on my journey. Things make no progress."

"You expect too much," said the prince. He had helped himself to a gla.s.s of wine, and fingered the gla.s.s reflectively as he spoke. "You expect the world to move more quickly than it can. It is old and heavy, remember that. I have a fellow-feeling for it, with my two sticks.

You would never make a diplomatist. I have heard of negotiations going forward for five years, and then falling through, after all."

Kosmaroff smiled, his odd, one-sided smile, and cut himself a piece of bread. There was a faint suggestion of the river-side in his manner at table. This was a man into whose life the ceremony of sit-down meals had never entered largely. He ate because he was hungry--not, as many do, to pa.s.s the time.

"One thing I came to tell you I can tell you now," he said. "In fact, it is better that the princess should hear it; for in a way it concerns her also. But, please, do not stand," he added, turning to her. "I have all I want. It is kind of you to wait on me as if I were a king--or a beggar."

His laugh had rather a cruel ring in it as he continued his meal.

"It is," he said, after a pause, "about that Englishman, Cartoner."

Wanda turned slowly, and resumed the chair she had quitted on Kosmaroff's sudden appearance at the door.

"Yes," she said, in a steady voice.

"He knows more than it is safe to know--safe for us--or for himself. One evening I could have put him out of the way, and it is a pity, perhaps, that it was not done. In a cause like ours, which affects the lives and happiness of millions, we should not pause to think of the life of one.

This does not come into my sphere, and I have no immediate concern in it----" He stopped, and looked at the prince.

"But I have also no power," he added, "over those whose affair it is--you understand that. This comes under the hand of those who study the att.i.tude of the European powers, our--well, I suppose I may say--our foreign office. It is their affair to know what powers are friendly to us--they were all friendly to us thirty years ago, in words--and who are our enemies. It is also their affair to find out how much the foreign powers know. It seems they must know something. It seems that Cartoner--knows everything. So it is reported in Cracow."

The prince shrugged his shoulders, and gave a short laugh.

"In Cracow," he said, "they are all words."

"There are certain men, it appears," continued Kosmaroff, "in the service of the governments--in one service it is called 'foreign affairs,' in another the 'secret service'--whose mission it is to find themselves where things are stirring, to be at the seat of war. They are, in jest, called the Vultures. It is a French jest, as you would conclude. And the Vultures have been congregating at Warsaw. Therefore, the powers know something. At Cracow, it is said--I ask your pardon for repeating it--that they know, and that Cartoner knows what he knows--through the Bukatys."

The prince's lips moved beneath his mustache, but he did not speak.

Wanda, who was seated near the fire, had turned in her chair, and was looking at Kosmaroff over her shoulder with steady eyes. She was not taken by surprise. It was Cartoner himself who had foreseen this, and had warned her. There was deep down in her heart, even at this moment, a thrill of pride in the thought that her lover was a cleverer man than any she had had to do with. And, oddly enough, the next words Kosmaroff spoke made her his friend for the rest of her life.

"I have nothing against him. I know nothing of him, except that he is a brave man. It happens that I know that," he said. "He knows as well as I do that his life is unsafe in this country, and yet, before I left London I heard--for we have friends everywhere--that he had got his pa.s.sport for Russia again. It is to be presumed that he is coming back, so you must be prepared. In case anything should happen to confirm these suspicions that come to us from Cracow, you know that I have no control over certain members of the party. If it was thought that you or Martin had betrayed anything--"

"I or Martin would be a.s.sa.s.sinated," said the prince with his loud laugh. "I know that. I have long known that we are going back to the methods of the sixties--suspicion and a.s.sa.s.sination. It has always been the ruin of Poland--that method."

"But you have no feelings with regard to this man?" asked Kosmaroff, sharply, looking from father to daughter, with a keen sidelong glance, as if the suspicion that had come from Cracow had not left him untouched.

"None whatever," answered the prince. "He is a mere pa.s.sing acquaintance. He must be allowed to pa.s.s. We will drop him--you can tell your friends--it will not be much of a sacrifice compared to some that have been made for Poland."

Wanda glanced at her father. Did he mean anything?

"You know what they are," broke in Kosmaroff's eager voice. "They see a mountain in every molehill. Martin was seen at Alexandrowo with Cartoner. Wanda was seen speaking to him at the Mokotow. He is known to have called on you at your hotel in London."

"It is a question of dropping his acquaintance, my friend," said the prince, "and I tell you, he shall be dropped."

"It is more than that," answered Kosmaroff, half sullenly.

"You mean," said the prince, suddenly roused to anger, "that Martin and I are put upon our good behavior--that our lives are safe only so long as we are not seen speaking to Cartoner, or are not suspected of having any communication with him."

And Kosmaroff was silent.

He had ceased eating, and had laid aside his knife and fork. It was clear that his whole mind and body were given to one thought and one hope. He looked indifferently at the simple dishes set before him, and had satisfied his hunger on that nearest to him, because it came first.

"I tell you this," he said, after a silence, "because no one else dared to tell you. Because I know, perhaps better than any other, all that you have done--all that you are ready to do."

"Yes--yes. Everything must be done for Poland," said the prince, suddenly pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck ten.