Cartoner glanced at the man, whose appearance would seem to indicate
that he was a fellow-countryman, and made sure that he did not know him.
Then he looked at him again, and the other happened to turn his profile.
Cartoner recognized the profile, and drew away to the far corner of
the examination-room. But they drifted together again--or, perhaps, the
younger man made a point of approaching. It was, at all events, he who,
when all had been marshalled into the refreshment-room, drew forward a
chair and sat down at the table where Cartoner had placed himself.
He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
high-born Briton.
“Englishman?” he said, with an easy and friendly nod.
“Yes,” answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
oddly stiff.
“Thought you were,” said the other, who, though his clothes were English
and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the
head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence.
He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who
was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye
to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to
his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.
“All this would be mildly amusing,” he said, “at say any other hour of
the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?”
“I can sleep anywhere,” replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
talk.
“I know Alexandrowo pretty well,” the other volunteered, nevertheless,
“and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on
friendly terms. They are inconceivably stupid; as boring as--the
multiplication-table. I am going to Warsaw; are you? I fancy we have the
sleeping-car to ourselves. I live in Warsaw as much as anywhere.”
He paused to feel in his pocket, not for his cigarettes this time, but
for a card.
“I know who you are,” said Cartoner, quietly: “I recognized you from
your likeness to your sister. I was dancing with her forty-eight hours
ago in London.”
“Wanda?” inquired the other, eagerly. “Dear old Wanda! How is she? She
was the prettiest girl in the room, I bet.”
He leaned across the table.
“Tell me,” he said, “all about them. But, first, tell me your name.
Wanda writes to me nearly every day, and I hear about all their
friends--the Orlays and the others. What is your name? She is sure to
have made mention of it in her letters.”
“Reginald Cartoner.”
“Ah! I have heard of you--but not from Wanda.”
He paused to reflect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account