“Good-night,” he said. “Hope you will get some more sleep. We shall meet again in a few hours.”
He closed the sliding door, and as the train moved slowly out of the station Cartoner could hear the cheerful voice—of a rather high timbre—in conversation with the German attendant in the corridor. For, like nearly all his countrymen, Prince Martin was a man of tongues. The Pole is compelled by circumstances to learn several languages: first, his own; then the language of the conqueror, either Russian or German, or perhaps both. For social purposes he must speak the tongue of the two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so little—England and France.
Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after another as occasion seemed to demand.
He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession, even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the compartment, closing the door behind him.
“I have been thinking about it,” he said, in his quick way, “and it won't do, you know—it won't do. You cannot appear in Warsaw as our friend. It would never do for us to show special attention to you. Anywhere else in the world, you understand, I am your friend, but not in Warsaw.”
“Yes,” said Cartoner, “I understand.”
He rose as he spoke, for Prince Martin was holding out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said, in his quiet way, and they shook hands as the train glided into Warsaw Station.
In the doorway Martin turned and looked back over his shoulder.
“All the same, I don't understand why Wanda did not mention your name to me. She might have foreseen that we should meet. She is quick enough, as a rule, and has already saved my father and me half a dozen times.”