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Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a hundred unasked questions in them. "How did it happen?" asked Cartoner, at length. "They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the night before last.
The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland. From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening.
He stood reflecting for a moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp. "I'll take him out to sea and bury him there," said Cable, at length, "if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth."
Cartoner and he walked the deck side by side, treading softly for the sake of the sleepers under deck. For the same reason, perhaps, they were silent. Once only Captain Cable spoke in little more than a whisper. "Hope he is pleased with himself," he said, as he stood at the stern rail, looking up river, as it happened, towards Cracow.
The prince pointed to the vacant arm-chair at the other side of the fireplace. Deulin took the chair with that leisureliness of movement and demeanor of which Lady Orlay, and Cartoner, and others who were intimate with him, knew the inner meaning. His eyes were oddly bright.
A religious fete at a village some miles out of Warsaw attracted the devout from all parts, and the devout are usually the humble in Roman Catholic countries. Railways are still conducted in some parts of Europe on the prison system, and Cartoner, glancing into the third-class waiting room, saw that it was thronged.
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.
"Oh, I have no principles," said Cartoner, rising from his chair, and looking round absent-mindedly for his hat. "You would be no friend of mine if you had. There is no moderation in principles. If a man has any at all, he always has some to spare for his neighbors. And who wants to act up to another man's principles? By-the-way, are you doing any good here, Cartoner?" "None."
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.
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.
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