It was the luncheon hour at the Hotel de l'Europe, but the entrance hall was less encumbered with hats and fur coats than was usual between twelve and two. The man in the street might, as he had said, know nothing; but others, and notably the better-born, knew now that the Czar was dead.
As Deulin was preparing to open the carriage door, Wanda spoke for the first time.
“What will you do about the Mangles?” she asked. “We cannot let them remain here unwarned.”
“I had forgotten them,” he answered. “In times of stress one finds out one's friends, because the others are forgotten. I will say a word to Mangles, if you like.”
“Yes,” answered Wanda, sitting back in the cab so that on one should see her--“yes, do that.”
“Odd people women are,” said Deulin to himself, as he hurried up-stairs. He must really have been in readiness to depart, for he came down again almost at once, followed by a green-aproned porter carrying his luggage.
“I looked into Mangles's salon,” he said to Wanda, when he was seated beside her again. “He remains here alone. The ladies have already gone. They must have taken the mid-day train to Germany. He is no fool--that Mangles. But this morning he is dumb. He would say nothing.”
At the station and at the frontier there were, as the prince had predicted, difficulties, and Deulin overcame them with the odd mixture of good-humor and high-handedness which formed his method of ruling men. He seemed to be in good spirits, and always confident.
“They know,” he said, when Wanda and he were safely seated in the Austrian railway carriage. “They all know. Look at their stupid, perturbed faces. We have slipped across the frontier before they have decided whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. Ah! what a thing it is to have a smile to show the world!”
“Or a grin,” he added, after a long pause, “that passes for one.”
The thaw came that afternoon. Shortly before sunset the rain set in; the persistent, splashing, cold rain that drives northward from the Carpathians. In a few hours the roads would be impassable. The dawn would see the rise of the Vistula; and there are few sights in nature more alarming than the steady rise of a huge river.
There is to this day no paved road across the plain that lies to the south of Warsaw. From the capital to the village of Wilanow there are three roads which are sandy in dry weather, and wet in spring and autumn. During the rains the whole tracks, and not only the ruts, are under water. They are only passable and worthy of the name of road in winter, when the sleighs have pressed down a hard and polished track.