“it is,” said miss julie mangles, “in the franciszkanska that one lays one's hand on the true heart of the people.”
“that's as may be, jooly,” replied her brother, “but i take it that the hearts of the women go to the senatorska.”
for miss mangles, on the advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down the length of that silent street, the franciszkanska, where the jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright images of the wares sold within the house. the street is a picture-gallery of the human requirements. the chosen people hurry to and fro with curved backs and patient, suffering faces that bear the mark of eighteen hundred years of persecution. no christian would assuredly be a jew; and no jew would be a polish jew if he could possibly help it. for a polish jew must not leave the country, may not even quit his native town, unless it suits a paternal government that he should go elsewhere. he has no personal liberty, and may not exercise a choice as to the clothes that he shall wear.
“i shall,” said miss mangles, “write a paper on the jewish question in this country.”
and joseph changed the position of his cigar from the left-hand to the right-hand corner of his mouth, very dexterously from within, with his tongue. he saw no reason why jooly should not write a paper on the semitic question in russia, and read it to a greedy multitude in a town-hall, provided that the town-hall was sufficiently far west.
“seen the senatorska, netty?” he inquired. but netty had not seen the senatorska, and did not know how to find it.
“go out into the faubourg,” her uncle explained, “and just turn to the left and follow all the other women. it is the street where the shops are.”
two days later, when miss julie mangles was writing her paper, netty set out to find the senatorska. miss mangles was just putting down—as the paper itself recorded—the hot impressions of the moment, gathered after a walk down the street of the accursed. for they like their impressions served hot out west, and this is a generation that prefers vividness to accuracy.
netty found the street quite easily. it was a sunny morning, and many shoppers were abroad. in a degree she followed her uncle's instructions, and instinct did the rest. for the senatorska is not an easy street to find. the entrance to it is narrow and unpromising, like either end of bond street.
the senatorska does not approach bond street or the rue de la paix, and netty, who knew those thoroughfares, seemed to find little to interest her in the street where stanislaus augustus poniatowski—that weak dreamer—built his great opera-house and cultivated the ballet. the shops are, indeed, not worthy of a close attention, and netty was passing them indifferently enough when suddenly she became absorbed in the wares of a silver-worker. then she turned, with a little cry of surprise, to find a gentleman standing hatless beside her. it was the prince martin bukaty.
“i was afraid you did not remember me,” said martin. “you looked straight at me, and did not seem to recognize me.”
“did i? i am so short-sighted, you know. i had not forgotten you. why should i?”
and netty glanced at martin in her little, gentle, appealing way, and then looked elsewhere rather hastily.
“oh, you travellers must see so many people you cannot be expected to remember every one who is introduced to you at a race-meeting.”
“of course,” said netty, looking into the silversmith's shop. “one meets a great number of people, but not many that one likes. do you not find it so?”
“i am glad,” answered martin, “that you do not meet many people that you like.”
“oh, but you must not think that i dislike people,” urged netty, in some concern; “i should be very ungrateful if i did. everybody is so kind. do you not find it so? i hate people to be cynical. there is much more kindness in the world than anybody suspects. do you not think so?”
“i do not know. it has not come my way, perhaps. it naturally would come in yours.”
and martin looked down at her beneath the pink shade of her parasol with that kindness in his eyes of which netty had had so large a share.
“oh no!” she protested, with a little movement of the shoulders descriptive of a shrinking humility. “why should i? i have done nothing to deserve it. and yet, perhaps you are right. everybody is so kind—my uncle and aunt—everybody. i am very fortunate, i am sure. i wonder why it is?”
and she looked up inquiringly into martin's face as if he could tell her, and, indeed, he looked remarkably as if he could—if he dared. he had never met anybody quite like netty—so spontaneous and innocent and easy to get on with. conversation with her was so interesting and yet so little trouble. she asked a hundred questions which were quite easy to answer; and were not stupid little questions about the weather, but had a human interest in them, especially when she looked up like that from under her parasol, and there was a pink glow on her face, and her eyes were dark, almost as violets.
“ought i to be here?” she asked. “going about the streets alone, i mean?”
“you are not alone,” answered martin, with a laugh.
“no, but—perhaps i ought to be.”
and martin, looking down, saw nothing but the top of the pink parasol.
“in america, you know,” said the voice from under the parasol, “girls are allowed to do so much more than in europe. and it is always best to be careful, is it not?—to follow the customs of the country, i mean. in france and germany people are so particular. i wanted to ask you what is the custom in warsaw.”
martin stepped to one side in order to avoid the parasol.
“in warsaw you can do as you like. we are not french, and heaven forbid that we should resemble the germans in anything. here every one goes about the streets as they do in england or america.”
as if to confirm this, he walked on slowly, and she walked by his side.
“i can show you the best shops,” he said, “such as they are. this is ulrich's, the flower shop. those violets are russian. the only good thing i ever heard of that came from russia. do you like violets?”
“i love them,” answered netty, and she walked on rather hurriedly to the next shop.
“you would naturally.”
“why?” asked netty, looking with a curious interest at the packets of tea in the russian shop next to ulrich's.
“is it not the correct thing to select the flower that matches the eyes?”
“it is very kind of you to say that,” said netty, in a voice half-afraid, half-reproachful.
“it is very kind of heaven to give you such eyes,” answered martin, gayly. he was more and more surprised to find how easy it was to get on with netty, whom he seemed to have known all his life. like many lively persons, he rather liked a companion to possess a vein of gravity, and this netty seemed to have. he was sure that she was religious and very good.
“you know,” said netty, hastily, and ignoring his remark, “i am much interested in poland. it is such a romantic country. people have done such great things, have they not, in poland? i mean the nobles—and the poor peasants, too in their small way, i suppose?”
“the nobles have come to great grief in poland—that is all,” replied martin, with a short laugh.
“and it is so sad,” said netty, with a shake of the head; “but i am sure it will all come right some day. do you think so? i am sure you are interested in poland—you and your sister and your father.”
“we are supposed to be,” admitted martin. “but no one cares for poland now, i am afraid. the rest of the world has other things to think of, and, in england and america, poland is forgotten now—and her history, which is the saddest history of any nation in the world.”
“but i am sure you are wrong there,” said netty, earnestly. “i know a great number of people who are sorry for the poles and interested in them.”
“are you?” asked martin, looking down at her.
“yes,” she replied, with downcast eyes. “come,” she said, after a pause, with a sort of effort, “we must not stand in front of this shop any longer.”
“especially,” he said, with a laugh, as he followed her, “as it is a russian shop. wherever you see tea and articles of religion mixed up in a window, that is a russian shop, and if you sympathize with poland you will not go into it. there are, on the other hand, plenty of shops in warsaw where they will not serve russians. it is to those shops that you must go.”
netty looked at him doubtfully.
“i am quite serious,” he said. “we must fight with what weapons we have.”
“yes,” she answered, indicating the shops, “these people, but not you. you are a prince, and they cannot touch you. they would not dare to take anything from you.”
“because there is nothing to take,” laughed martin, gayly; “we were ruined long ago. they took everything there was to take in 1830, when my father was a boy. he could not work for his living, and i may not either; so i am a prince without a halfpenny to call his own.”
“i am so sorry!” she said, in a soft voice, and, indeed, she looked it.
then she caught sight of paul deulin a long way off, despite her short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. she stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss martin. when deulin perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. he came up with a bow to netty and his hand stretched out to martin—his left hand, which conveyed the fact that he was an old and familiar friend.
“i suppose you are on your way back to the europe to lunch?” he said to netty. “i am in luck. i have come just in time to walk back with you, if you will permit it.”
and he did not wait for permission, but walked on beside netty, while martin took off his hat and went in the opposite direction. it was not the way he wanted to go but something had made him think that netty desired him to go, and he departed with a pleasant sensation as of a secret possessed in common with her. he walked back quickly to the flower-shop kept by ulrich, in the senatorska.
a rare thing happened to paul deulin at this moment. he fell into a train of thought, and walked some distance by the side of netty without speaking. it was against his principles altogether. “never be silent with a woman,” he often said. “she will only misconstrue it.”
“it was odd that i should meet you at that moment,” he said, at length, for netty had not attempted to break the silence. she never took the initiative with paul deulin, but followed quite humbly and submissively the conversational lead which he might choose to give. he broke off and laughed. “i was going to say that it was odd that i should have met you at a moment that i was thinking of you; but it would be odder still if i could manage to meet you at a moment when i was not thinking of you, would it not?”
“it was very kind of you,” said netty, “to think of me at the race-meeting the other day, and to introduce me to the bukatys. i am so interested in the princess. she is so pretty, is she not? such lovely hair, and i think her face is so interesting—a face with a history, is it not?”
“yes,” answered deulin, rather shortly, “wanda is a nice girl.” he did not seem to find the subject pleasing, and netty changed her ground.
“and the prince,” she said, “the old one, i mean—for this one, prince martin, is quite a boy, is he not?”
“oh yes—quite a boy,” replied deulin, absently, as he looked back over his shoulder and saw martin hurry into the flower-shop where he had first perceived netty and the young prince talking together.
“it is so sad that they are ruined—if they are really ruined.”
“there is no doubt whatever about that,” answered deulin.
“but,” said netty, who was practical, “could nothing induce him—the young prince, i mean—to abandon all these vague political dreams and accept the situation as it is, and settle down to develop his estates and recover his position?”
“you mean,” said deulin, “the domestic felicities. your fine and sympathetic heart would naturally think of that. you go about the world like an unemployed and wandering angel, seeking to make the lives of others happier. those are dreams, and in poland dreams are forbidden—by the czar. but they are the privilege of youth, and i like to catch an occasional glimpse of your gentle dreams, my dear young lady.”
netty smiled a little pathetically, and glanced up at him beneath her lashes, which were dark as lashes should be that veil violet eyes.
“now you are laughing at me, because i am not clever,” she said.
“heaven forbid! but i am laughing at your dream for martin bukaty. he will never come to what you suggest as the cure for his unsatisfactory life. he has too much history behind him, which is a state of things never quite understood in your country, mademoiselle. moreover, he has not got it in him. he is not stable enough for the domestic felicities, and siberia—his certain destination—is not a good mise-en-scene for your dream. no, you must not hope to do good to your fellow-beings here, though it is natural that you should seek the ever-evasive remedy—another privilege of youth.”
“you talk as if you were so very old,” said netty, reproachfully.
“i am very, very old,” he replied, with a laugh. “and there is no remedy for that. even your kind heart can supply no cure for old age.”
“i reserve my charity and my cures for really deserving cases,” answered netty, lightly. “i think you are quite capable of taking care of yourself.”
“and of evolving my own dreams?” he inquired. but she made no answer, and did not appear to notice the glance of his tired, dark eyes.
“i know so little,” she said, after a pause, “so very little of poland or polish history. i suppose you know everything—you and mr. cartoner?”
“oh, cartoner! yes, he knows a great deal. he is a regular magazine of knowledge, while i—i am only a little stall in vanity fair, with everything displayed to the best advantage in the sunshine. now, there is a life for you to exercise your charity upon. he is brilliantly successful, and yet there is something wanting in his life. can you not prescribe for him?”
netty smiled gravely.
“i hardly know him sufficiently well,” she said. “besides, he requires no sympathy if it is true that he is the heir to a baronetcy and a fortune.”
deulin's eyebrows went up into his hat, and he made, for his own satisfaction, a little grimace of surprise.
“ah! is that so?” he inquired. “who told you that?”
but netty could not remember where she had heard what she was ready to believe was a mere piece of gossip. neither did she appear to be very interested in the matter.