“No one,” answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came. For
he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda's
footsteps in the snow. He had often ridden over the same ground on the
very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to
Warsaw. He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city
again unobserved.
For he knew--indeed, Wanda had told him--the dangers that surrounded
him. He knew also that these dangers were infinitely greater for Martin
and the prince.
“It is only what you foresaw,” she said, “when--when we first
understood.”
“No, it is worse than I foresaw,” he answered.
So they parted, with the knowledge that they must not meet again in
Poland when their meeting must mean such imminent risk to others. They
could not even write to each other while Wanda should be within the
circle of the Russian postal service. There was but the one link between
them--Paul Deulin; and to him neither would impart a confidence. Deulin
had brought about this meeting to-day. Warned by telegram, he had met
Cartoner at Warsaw Station, and had counselled him not to go out into
the streets. Since he was only waiting a few hours in Warsaw for the St.
Petersburg train, he must either sit in the station or take a horse and
go for a ride into the country. The Bukatys, by-the-way, were not in
town, but at their country house.
“Go and see them,” he added. “A man living on a volcano may surely play
with firearms if he wants to. And you are all on the volcano together.
Pah! I know the smell of it. The very streets, my friend, reek of
catastrophe.”
Wanda was gay and light-hearted to the end. There was French blood in
her veins--that gay, good blood which stained the streets of Paris a
hundred years ago, and raised a standard of courage against adversity
for all the world to imitate so long as history shall exist.
Cartoner turned once in his saddle and saw her standing in the sunlight
waving him a farewell, with her eyes smiling and her lips hard pressed.
Then he rode on, with that small, small hope to help him through his
solitary wanderings which he knew to be identical with the hope of
Poland, for which the time was not yet ripe. He was the watcher who sees
most of the game, and knew that the time might never ripen till years
after Wanda and he had gone hence and were no more seen.
XXIX
IN A BY-WAY
There are few roads in Poland. Sooner or later, Cartoner must needs join
the great highway that enters Warsaw from the west, passing by the gates
of the cemetery.
Deulin, no doubt, knew this, for Cartoner found him, riding leisurely
away from the city, just beyond the cemetery. The Frenchman sat his
horse with a straight leg and arm which made Cartoner think of those
days ten years earlier, to which Deulin seldom referred, when this
white-haired dandy was a cavalry soldier, engaged in the painful
business of killing Germans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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