it is to be presumed that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere in her neighbor's affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.
looking at the question from the strictly commonsense point of view, it would appear to the observer that those who do the most good or the least harm are the uncharitable. better than the eager, verbose man is he who stands on the shore cynically watching a landsman in a boat without proffering advice as to how the vessel should be navigated, who only holds out a cold and steady hand after the catastrophe has happened, or, if no catastrophe supervenes, is content to walk away in that silent wonder which the care of providence for the improvident must ever evoke.
paul deulin was considered by his friends to be a cynic; and a french cynic is not without cruelty. he once told wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. but there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. there always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. for he sat alone in his room at the hotel de l'europe, at warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. he was thinking of the affairs of others, and into his thoughts there came, moreover, the affairs, not of individuals, but of nations. a fellow-countryman once gave it as his opinion that so long as the trains ran punctually and meals were served at regular intervals he could perceive no difference between one form of government and another. and in the majority of instances the fate of nations rarely affects the lives of individuals.
deulin, however, was suddenly made aware of his own ignorance of affairs that were progressing in his immediate vicinity, and which were affecting the lives of those around him. more than any other do frenchmen herd together in exile, and deulin knew all his fellow-countrymen and women in warsaw, in whatsoever station of life they happened to move. he had a friend behind the counter of the small feather-cleaning shop in the jerozolimska. this lady was a french jewess, who had by some undercurrent of judaism drifted from paris to warsaw again and found herself once more among her own people. the western world is ignorant of the strength of jewry in poland.
deulin made a transparent excuse for his visit to the cleaner's shop. he took with him two or three pairs of those lavender gloves which englishmen have happily ceased to wear by day.
“one likes,” he said to the stout jewess, “to talk one's own tongue in a foreign land.”
and he sat down quite affably on the hither side of the counter. conversation ran smoothly enough between these two, and an hour slipped past before deulin quitted the little shop. it was still early in the day, and he hurried to cartoner's rooms in the jasna. he bought a flower at the corner of the jerozolimska as he went along, and placed it in his buttonhole. he wore his soft felt hat at a gay angle, and walked the pavement at a pace and with an air belonging to a younger generation.
“ah!” he cried, at the sight of cartoner, pipe in mouth, at his writing-table. “ah! if you were only idle, as i am”—he paused, with a sharp, little sigh—“if you only could be idle, how much happier you would be!”
“a frenchman,” replied cartoner, without looking up, “thinks that noise means happiness.”
“then you are happy—you pretend to happiness?” inquired deulin, sitting down without being invited to do so, and drawing towards him a cigarette-case that lay upon the table.
“yes, thank you,” replied cartoner, lightly. he seemed, too, to be gay this morning.
“don't thank me—thank the gods,” replied deulin, with a sudden gravity.
“well,” said cartoner presently, without ceasing to write, “what do you want?”
deulin glanced at his friend with a gleam of suspicion.
“what do i want?” he inquired, innocently.
“yes. you want something. i always know when you want something. when you are most idle you are most occupied.”
“ah!”
cartoner wrote on while deulin lighted a cigarette and smoked half of it with a leisurely enjoyment of its bouquet.
“there is a certain smell in the rue royale, left-hand side looking towards the column—the shady side, after the street has been watered—that my soul desires,” said the frenchman, at length.
“when are you going?” asked cartoner, softly.
“i am not going; i wish i were. i thought i was last night. i thought i had done my work here, and that it would be unnecessary to wait on indefinitely for——”
“for what?”
“for the upheaval,” explained deulin, with an airy wave of his cigarette.
“this morning—” he began. and then he waited for cartoner to lay aside his pen and lean back in his chair with the air of thoughtful attention which he seemed to wear towards that world in which he moved and had his being. cartoner did exactly what was expected of him.
“this morning i picked up a scrap of information.” he drew towards him a newspaper, and with a pencil made a little drawing on the margin. the design was made in three strokes. it was not unlike a greek cross, deulin threw the paper across the table.
“you know that man?”
“i do not know his name,” replied cartoner.
“no; no one knows that,” replied deulin. “it is one of the very few mysteries of the nineteenth century. all the others are cleared up.”
cartoner made no answer. he sat looking at the design, thinking, perhaps, with wonder of the man who in this notoriety-loving age was still content to be known only by a mark.
“up to the present i have not attached much importance to those rumors which, happily, have never reached the newspaper,” said deulin, after a pause. “one has supposed that, as usual, poland is ready for an upheaval. but the upheaval does not come. that has been the status quo for many years here. suppose—suppose, my friend, that they manufacture their own opportunity, or agree with some other body of malcontents as to the creating of an opportunity.”
“anarchy?” inquired cartoner.
“the ladies of the party call it nihilism,” replied the frenchman, with an inimitable gesture, conveying the fact that he was not the man to gainsay a lady.
“bukaty would not stoop to that. remember they are a patient people. they waited thirty years.”
“and struck too hastily, after all,” commented deulin. “bukaty would not link himself with these others, who talk so much and do so little. but there are others besides bukaty, who are younger, and can afford to wait longer, and are therefore less patient—men of a more modern stamp, without his educational advantages, who are nevertheless sincere enough in their way. it may not be a gentlemanly way—”
“the man who goes by the name of kosmaroff is a gentleman, according to his lights,” interrupted cartoner.
“ah! since you say so,” returned deulin, with a significant gesture, “yes.”
“bon sang,” said cartoner, and did not trouble to complete the saying. “he is too much of a gentleman to herd with the extremists.”
but deulin did not seem to be listening. he was following his own train of thought.
“so you know of kosmaroff?” he said, studying his companion's face. “you know that, too. what a lot you know behind that dull physiognomy. where is kosmaroff? perhaps you know that.”
“in warsaw,” guessed cartoner.
“wrong. he has gone towards berlin—towards london, by the same token.”
deulin leaned across the table and tapped the symbol that he had drawn on the margin of the newspaper, daintily, with his finger-nail.
“that parishioner is in london, too,” he said, in his own tongue—and the word means more in french.
cartoner slowly tore the margin from the newspaper and reduced the drawing to small pieces. then he glanced at the clock.
“trying to get me out of warsaw,” he said. “giving me a graceful chance of showing the white feather.”
deulin smiled. he had seen the glance, and he was quicker than most at guessing that which might be passing in another man's mind. the force of habit is so strong that few even think of a train without noting the time of day at the same moment. if cartoner was thinking of a train at that instant, it could only be the train to berlin on the heels of kosmaroff, and deulin desired to get cartoner away from warsaw.
“the white feather,” he said, “is an emblem that neither you nor i need trouble our minds about. don't get narrow-minded, cartoner. it is a national fault, remember. for an englishman, you used to be singularly independent of the opinion of the man in the street or the woman at the tea-table. afraid! what does it matter who thinks we are afraid?”
and he gave a sudden staccato laugh which had a subtle ring in it of envy, or of that heaviness which is of a life that is waxing old.
“look here,” he said, after a pause, and he made a little diagram on the table, “here is a bonfire, all dry and crackling—here, in warsaw. here—in berlin or in london—is the man with the match that will set it alight. you and i have happened on a great event, and stand in the shadow that it casts before it, for the second—no, for the third time in our lives. we work together again, i suppose. we have always done so when it was possible. one must watch the dry wood, the other must know the movements of the man with the kindling. take your choice, since your humor is so odd. you stay or you go—but remember that it is in the interests of others that you go.”
“of others?”
“yes—of the bukatys. your presence here is a danger to them. now go or stay, as you like.”
cartoner glanced at his companion with watchful eyes. he was not deliberating; for he had made up his mind long ago, and was now weighing that decision.
“i will go,” he said, at length. and deulin leaned back in his chair with a half-suppressed yawn of indifference. it was, as cartoner had observed, when he was most idle that this gentleman had important business in hand. he had a gay, light, easy touch on life, and, it is to be supposed, never set much store upon the gain of an object. it seemed that he must have played the game in earnest at one time, must have thrown down his stake and lost it, or won it perhaps, and then had no use for his gain, which is a bitterer end than loss can ever be.
“i dare say you are right,” he said. “and, at all events, you will see the last of this sad city.”
then he changed the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial matter. from one question to another he passed, with that air of superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at this period in european history.
“i smell,” he said, “something in the atmosphere. strangers passing in the street look at one with a questioning air, as if there were a secret which one might perhaps be party to. and i, who have no secrets.”
he spread out his hands, with a gay laugh.
“because,” he added, with a sudden gravity, “there is nothing in life worth making a secret of—except one's income. there are many reasons why mine remains unconfessed. but, my friend, if anything should happen—anything—anywhere—we keep each other advised. is it not so?”
“usual cipher,” answered cartoner.
“my salutations to lady orlay,” said deulin, with a reflective nod. “that woman who can keep a secret.”
“i thought you had none.”
“she knows the secret—of my income,” answered the frenchman. “tell her—no! do not tell her anything. but go and see her. when will you leave?”
“to-night.”
“and until then? come and lunch with me at the russian club. no! well, do as you like. i will say good-bye now. heavens! how many times have we met and said good-bye again in hotels and railway stations and hired rooms! we have no abiding city and no friends. we are sons of ishmael, and have none to care when we furl our tents and steal away.”
he paused, and looked round the bare room, in which there was nothing but the hired furniture.
“the police will be in here five minutes after you are out,” he said, curtly. “you have no message—” he paused to pick up from the floor a petal of his flower that had fallen. then he walked to the window and looked out. standing there, with his back to cartoner, he went on: “no message to any one in warsaw?”
“no,” answered cartoner.
“no—you wouldn't have one. you are not that sort of man. gad! you are hard, cartoner—hard as nails.”
cartoner did not answer. he was already putting together his possessions—already furling his solitary tent. it was only natural that he was loath to go; for he was turning his back on danger, and few men worthy of the name do that with alacrity, whatever their nationality may be; for gameness is not solely a british virtue, as is supposed in english public schools.
suddenly deulin turned round and shook hands.
“don't know when we shall next meet. take care of yourself. good-bye.”
and he went towards the door. but he paused on the threshold.
“the matter of the 'white feather' you may leave to me. you may leave others to me, too, so far as that goes. the sons of ishmael must stand together.”
and, with an airy wave of the hand and his rather hollow laugh, he was gone.