;-d
 
 ONE 
 YEAR 
 
 BY 
 DOROTHEA GERARD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "LADY BABY," "A SPOTLESS REPUTATION," rrc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD fc? COMPANY 
 MDCCCC
 
 Copyright 1899 
 
 by 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
 
 \
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE year I am going to write about is the only 
 one worth writing about in the whole of my event- 
 less career. There are such things as long, even 
 stretches of road, broken only at one spot by the 
 excitement of a raging torrent, or such things as 
 still summer days, shaken at only one moment by the 
 thrill of an isolated thunder-clap, only to these 
 things can I liken my peaceful and mildly dull life, 
 cut, as it were, into two distinct halves by that one 
 year into which was crowded all that I have ever 
 known of violent emotions, of apprehension, and 
 even of horror. And yet it is probable that but for 
 Agnes Jeffrey that year would have remained un- 
 chronicled and those sentiments unrecorded. It was 
 but a few weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide holidays 
 which, as usual, I was spending at Broadfield, that 
 Agnes put into my hands a bundle of letters on 
 which I recognised my own writing, and tied to- 
 gether with a green ribbon which had scarcely be- 
 gun to fade. 
 
 u You should make a story of that," she said to 
 me, taking her youngest child on her arm as she 
 spoke. 
 
 I 
 
 2229072
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I untied the green ribbon, my eye catching the 
 rosy flush of the Austrian stamps, and immediately 
 the memories began to surge. Agnes, with her 
 child on her arm, had left the room ; I was alone 
 with the dead past. One page after another did I 
 unfold, here skimming along, there spelling out, 
 and presently let them all drop together on the 
 table and gazed out on the softly rolling landscape 
 with eyes that saw neither the blossoming hedge- 
 rows nor the vividly green meadows, but rather the 
 flat line of horizon, the straight roads, the wattled 
 willow palings of a far-off land. In the pleasant 
 vicarage garden the first crimson rose had opened 
 over-night, but, although in spirit, too, I looked 
 upon roses, they were roses of a different hue, and 
 of a lower, more rustic, growth ; in place of the 
 well-trimmed lawn it was waving patches of grass 
 that I saw; instead of the irreproachable paths 
 rough gravel richly matted with dandelion tufts. 
 And through it all a face looked at me dark-eyed, 
 colourless, exquisite, and stabbed me to the heart 
 with its phantom gaze. 
 
 Oh, Jadwiga, beautiful Jadwiga, shall I ever be 
 able to forget your eyes ? Shall I ever see their 
 like again ? Assuredly neither one nor the other. 
 Make a story of it ? Was not that what Agnes 
 had said ? No need of that, surely ; the story was 
 there already, ready-made to my hand ; my letters 
 told it, and what my letters left out my memory
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 not more faded yet than that green ribbon could 
 supply. If ever I was to do it, now was the time. 
 Sooner would have been too soon, for you have to 
 step back from your model before you can get its 
 right proportions ; later might be too late, by lay- 
 ing a haze of oblivion over many even significant 
 details. 
 
 I may as well say at once that I am not the 
 heroine of the romance I am about to recount. 
 In order, once for all, to crush this idea in the 
 reader's mind, the simplest course will be to give a 
 truthful personal description. At the moment that 
 I write this I am thirty-six years old, so even five 
 years ago when the events to be recorded took 
 place, I was out of the twenties. My hair is 
 brown not golden-brown, or ruddy-brown, or 
 " shadowy brown " but just simply a good honest, 
 unexciting brown. My eyes which are grey can 
 likewise lay no claim to any further adjective. 
 My complexion I have heard described as 
 "opaque," and I know that my nose is dumpy. 
 Add to this somewhat broad cheek bones and a 
 figure more remarkable for solidity than grace, and 
 I think that even the most sanguine reader will not 
 expect to find me figuring in any ultra-romantic 
 situation. What Henry could ever see in me has 
 always been a mystery to my humble comprehen- 
 sion. Surely the eyes of all men are not made on 
 the same plan, and very lucky it is for us the plain
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 women of the world. No, I am not the heroine, 
 only a witness of that strange family drama of 
 which my letters to Agnes Jeffrey give the outline. 
 In order to explain how I came to be a witness, it 
 is necessary for me to speak of my own affairs, 
 which I will do as briefly as possible. 
 
 Henry and I had known each other long before 
 I had got into long skirts or he into the regulation 
 manly garment. When we began to be fond of 
 each other I can't rightly say, because I don't re- 
 member any time when it was otherwise. I know 
 that when he told me of his intention of never 
 marrying any woman but myself I was scarcely 
 surprised, nor even pretended to be so ; it seemed 
 such an almost inevitable conclusion to our child- 
 ish intimacy. Neither did it necessarily mean that 
 he would marry me any more than the others, for 
 we both possessed a fair portion of common sense 
 which the sober, middle-class atmosphere in which 
 we grew up had helped to develop. I was only 
 sixteen and he only twenty, yet we had both al- 
 ready found out that, although the little God of 
 Love does make the world go round, he cannot 
 always do the same for the spit, or that, at any 
 rate, he often fails to stick something upon it. I 
 don't remember even feeling particularly aggrieved 
 at this juncture ; merely to know that I stood first 
 in Henry's estimation was contentment enough for 
 me.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 We separated soon after this conversation it 
 could scarcely be called a declaration, since we had 
 both known all about it long before but we oc- 
 casionally met, and frankly enjoyed our meetings. 
 We were not engaged to be married, whatever our 
 friends might pretend, only it had become an un- 
 derstood thing that, unless we were able to afford 
 to marry some day, we should both probably end 
 our lives single. Sometimes we did not meet for 
 months, for circumstances had forced me to take a 
 situation as a governess, and to follow my employ- 
 ers to various parts of England, while Henry, one 
 in the herd of briefless barristers who look to each 
 morrow for their chance, had chosen London for 
 his headquarters. Years passed in this way, and 
 employment did not come, and without it our 
 chances of union naturally remained invisible. 
 Neither of us had allowed our disappointment to 
 spoil our lives we felt that would have been poor 
 spirited but there is no denying that things did 
 feel rather flat at times. We had got into a groove 
 of somewhat blunted, somewhat dogged, patience, 
 and it was beginning to look as though it were go- 
 ing to go on exactly like this to the end when 
 quite suddenly Agnes gave the matter another turn 
 by writing me one of her flurried little notes. She 
 is wonderfully easily flurried, especially when any- 
 thing goes wrong with anybody she cares for, and 
 she cares for a great many people and is horribly
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 anxious to see them all as happy as she is her dear 
 little self. 
 
 41 Do for goodness' sake take care," she wrote 
 to me on this occasion, " or Henry will slip through 
 your ringers, after all. A baby in arms could see 
 that that Somerville girl is setting her cap at him 
 in earnest ; and the worst of it is I do believe she 
 cares for him." 
 
 The news undoubtedly alarmed me, but also it 
 set me thinking, and not exactly in the direction 
 that Agnes had foreseen. I knew that Lily Somer- 
 ville was a considerable heiress, and also a bit of a 
 beauty. For a briefless barrister there could be no 
 doubt that she would be a brilliant catch. Henry 
 might not care for her now, but might he not come 
 to care for her in time, especially if she cared for 
 him ? Not that for a moment I doubted his loy- 
 alty. Although not bound by one word I knew 
 that he would never marry another woman without, 
 so to say, asking my consent. Would it not be 
 better to give it before it was asked ? I had been 
 thirty on my last birthday ; and was beginning to 
 feel almost middle-aged, while for a man Henry 
 was still distinctly young ; was it likely that he 
 would be heartbroken at a release which would be 
 certain to assure his career ? Was it right to go 
 on standing in his way as I now suddenly became 
 aware of having done for years past, barring his 
 free passage, perhaps spoiling his best chances ?
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 He loved me still I believed it, but if I were out 
 
 of the way 
 
 At that very time I was without a situation and 
 looking out for another. On the day before I re- 
 ceived Agnes's letter I had had my name put down 
 at a registry office. Two places had been sug- 
 gested, one in an English nobleman's family and 
 under especially favourable conditions, the other in 
 a Polish family living in East Galicia, but anxious 
 to perfect their daughters in our language, which, 
 as I was told, was beginning to be largely culti- 
 vated among the Polish aristocracy, I had not hesi- 
 tated for a moment in deciding for the English 
 offer. To my insular notions East Galicia sounded 
 about as far away as Japan, offering no tempta- 
 tions to my unenterprising spirit. So it had been 
 yesterday, but to-day an abrupt change had come 
 over me. Half an hour after reading Agnes's let- 
 ter I was back at the office and inquiring whether 
 there was still time to cancel the step taken yes- 
 terday. There was still time, I was told, after 
 which I asked whether the Polish situation was 
 still open. Yes, it was ; it was not so easy, it 
 seemed, to entice a freeborn young Englishwoman 
 to that semi-barbarous region known as East Gali- 
 cia. On hearing that I was willing to open nego- 
 tiations, the head of the registry office nearly em- 
 braced me. She had evidently had a lot of bother 
 over the business already and was overjoyed at the
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 prospect of a termination. I left the office with a 
 strip of paper in my hand on which was written 
 the address : 
 
 Madame Walentyna Bielinska, 
 Ludniki, 
 
 Post Zloczek. 
 
 As I looked at the words a strange sense of 
 finality came over me. I felt certain already that 
 my path lay toward that unknown place called 
 Ludniki, and I felt it with a mixture of pain and 
 satisfaction. Once over there I should in truth 
 have stepped out of Henry's life, leaving him free 
 to make his choice unencumbered by foolish 
 scruples. It was not nearly so heroic as it sounds. 
 The dream of my early girlhood had grown so 
 faint by this time, so far off through constant re- 
 ceding, besides being somewhat overlaid by the 
 dust of this workaday world, that to give it up 
 finally was not much worse than saying good-bye 
 to a corpse. But saying good-bye even to a corpse 
 does hurt a good deal at times, for which reason I 
 will, with the reader's permission, skip my sensa- 
 tions of the next few days, for I repeat it is not 
 my story that I am about to tell, but that of quite 
 another person, whose nature was very different 
 from my own, and whose lovely face was never 
 shone upon by an English sun.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LOOKING through my packet of letters I am glad 
 to find the very first one I wrote to Agnes from 
 Ludniki, a week after my arrival there; it will save 
 me the trouble of recalling those early impressions. 
 
 It was in October that for the first time I crossed 
 the sea, and not under favourable auspices, for an 
 icy north wind seemed inhospitably intent on blow- 
 ing me away from British shores. The strange 
 land I was going to appeared more kindly disposed 
 toward me than my native country, for at Ostend 
 the first ray of sunshine I had seen since quitting 
 London greeted me, and the further eastward I 
 travelled the more the autumn mists rolled back 
 from the many tinted landscape. By the time I 
 reached Galicia the transformation was perfect. A 
 faintly blue, but spotless sky shone down on a 
 brilliantly-painted world, a quite different world 
 from the one I had known hitherto, but whose 
 many startling features were softened by the glamour 
 of that perfect season and that perfect sunshine. 
 But my letter must speak for me, I give it here in 
 full : 
 
 " LUDNIKI, October 8th, 188 . 
 
 " DEAREST AGNES, So I have actually done it ! 
 The sea is safely between me and my old life, my 
 
 9
 
 10 ONE YEAR 
 
 hopes and imaginings, and I am glad it is so. So 
 far as country, surroundings, people, habits go I 
 might as well be on another planet from you all. 
 Don't expect my impressions to be very coherent 
 yet; I am still too dizzy from my rush across 
 Europe to be certain about anything. Above all, 
 don't ask me whether I find the country pretty ; 
 upon my life I couldn't tell you anything would 
 look pretty in this weather. I have an impression 
 that the place might under other circumstances seem 
 rather flat and rather bare, but nothing matters in 
 this sunshine. We are on the beginning of the 
 great Podolian plain, which stretches into Russia 
 miles of cornfields, reaped, of course, by this time, 
 with villages buried in fruit-trees, dotted, about 
 more or less like islands. Except for these islands 
 and an occasional gentleman's park, the country is 
 almost treeless ; the large forests which once cov- 
 ered this tract of land have been cut down long 
 ago to make room for the corn ; the soil is too 
 good, it seems, to be left to trees alone. It may 
 sound a little monotonous ; perhaps it is, but, as I 
 tell you, I can't fairly judge in this weather. The 
 Ludniki park at any rate is not monotonous, could 
 not be so in any weather; it is too full of surprises 
 for that. There is also a flower garden and a 
 kitchen garden as well as an orchard so I am 
 given to understand but all so inextricably mixed 
 up together that I have not yet succeeded in disen-
 
 ONE YEAR ii 
 
 tangling them. Imagine starting along what ap- 
 pears to be a shrubbery and on turning a corner 
 finding yourself close to a strip of onions, or else 
 stumbling upon a hot-bed (with all the panes 
 smashed) in the very midst of a rose plantation. 
 Everything seems to be more or less represented in 
 this bewildering miscellaneous park; you can find 
 there lawns which nobody ever mows and hedges 
 which nobody ever clips, as well as wooden sum- 
 merhouses where the honeysuckle is dragging the 
 rotting pillars to the ground ; a swing which has 
 not been used for so long that a fine, healthy fern 
 has grown up in its hollow. There is a want of 
 accuracy and method about the whole which would 
 probably drive me mad if the place were mine, but 
 which in no way seems to disturb the happy Polish 
 insouciance. And, mind you, it isn't either for want 
 of money or want of hands that these things are 
 so of the former, so far as I can judge, there is 
 plenty, and of the latter so many that even now 
 at the end of a week I have not yet succeeded in 
 taking a proper inventory of the domestics but 
 only because no one feels the need of its being 
 otherwise. To nic nie szkodzie is the first Polish 
 phrase which I have learned, and of which the 
 translation is : " It doesn't matter." According 
 to them very little that we consider vital really 
 matters. 
 
 "The house itself is a crossbreed between a
 
 12 ONE YEAR 
 
 palace and a cottage grey, weather-beaten, roomy, 
 with a pillar-supported verandah, which gives it a 
 sort of sham Greek appearance ornamented with 
 some rather dilapidated stucco-work, but never 
 rising beyond the ground-floor. The entrance is 
 oddly placed toward one end of the long, low front, 
 an irregularity which at first sight offended my 
 highly symmetrical instincts. The reception-rooms 
 are large and appeared to me at first sight so empty 
 that I imagined a house cleaning must be going on, 
 and that at least half the furniture was outside being 
 dusted ; but as a week has passed and no more has 
 turned up I have come to the conclusion that this 
 is the normal state of things. Perhaps it is a 
 mercy, for when I consider the average quantity 
 of sweepings left under each sofa and table now it 
 is easy to calculate what it might grow to if the 
 number of these convenient hiding-places were 
 doubled. Now as to the people who live in this 
 house I have kept them to the last as being the 
 most interesting there are three of them to talk 
 of, and all of my own sex, for it seems that I have 
 come into a family of women exclusively. I got 
 to see them one by one but let me go back to the 
 moment of my arrival. 
 
 " It took three hours and four horses to bring me 
 here from the station, also a coachman in a dark 
 green livery on which at least five of the silver- 
 plated buttons were awanting. Their absence was
 
 ONE YEAR 13 
 
 quite unable to impair the air of consequence with 
 which he flicked up his splendidly- stepping but 
 wretchedly-groomed horses to nic nie szkodzie was 
 what he probably said to himself, if he thought of 
 the matter at all but to me the missing buttons 
 were a positive mercy. As I sat behind him in 
 state the shyness with which the unwonted pomp 
 of my position filled me was marvellously tempered 
 by the contemplation of the empty space at the 
 back of his broad waist, and of the dangling thread 
 on which the pair to the one silver button bearing 
 the Bielinski arms should by rights have sat. But 
 for this I don't know how I should have borne the 
 overpowering respectfulness of the passers-by, for 
 scarcely an urchin on all the way missed running 
 out of his hut to bow generally down to the 
 ground to the carriage and to me as its inmate ; 
 my neck grew quite stiff through returning the sal- 
 utations received ; and whenever we stopped to pay 
 toll some one was sure to seize the opportunity of 
 kissing my unwilling hand. I wish I had time to 
 talk to you of the sheepskin-coated peasants a 
 sort of hairy monsters they seemed to me at first, 
 and a very gentle sort of monster they proved on 
 nearer view and about their steep-roofed, straw- 
 thatched huts, and the dark-brown wooden mina- 
 rets that mark the village church but I know you 
 are impatient to hear of my employers, and so I 
 hurry on.
 
 i 4 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " When, with a final splutter, we drew up on 
 the badly-weeded gravel, the sun was not far from 
 setting. A long, spare, grey-haired individual, 
 likewise in dark-green livery, but with rather fewer 
 missing buttons than the coachman, ran swiftly 
 down the steps to kiss my hand, of course ; noth- 
 ing can be fairly started without that, it seems 
 after which, and having taken a keen, but discreet 
 look at me, he preceded me, smiling, to the en- 
 trance lobby, on to which several double-winged 
 doors stood wide open. In one of them a small, 
 dark, angular figure was standing. 4 You are Miss 
 Middleton, are you not ? ' said a painfully thin and 
 yet perfectly assured voice in excellent French. I 
 said I was, upon which she went on with bewilder- 
 ing rapidity. c Oh, then will you please come in 
 here ? Mamma has asked me to take charge of 
 you, and to see you have everything you want. 
 She is rather worse than usual to-day, and 
 Jadwiga doesn't come back from Limberg till next 
 week. I hope the journey hasn't been too long 
 for you ? Andrej, bring the samovar.' While 
 speaking she had ushered me into the room, a large, 
 handsome, faded apartment, with a few good 
 pictures on the walls and some valuable carpets on 
 the floor, but without a book in it or a sign of oc- 
 cupation beyond the music on the piano, and with 
 holland covers over the chairs. On nearer view 
 my small hostess disclosed herself as a sallow,
 
 ONE YEAR 
 
 dark-eyed, and almost weirdly thin little maiden, 
 at whose age it was hard to form a guess. Her 
 height did not indicate more than eight or nine, 
 but the absolute assurance of her manner and the 
 precocious expression of her peaky little face made 
 her look almost adult. The small eyes were as 
 bright and as black as those of a mouse, and the 
 dry, yellow skin fell into two strangely elderly 
 folds at each side of the thin mouth. Altogether 
 she struck me as more quaint than attractive, and 
 it was with a certain sinking of the heart that I 
 inquired whether I was speaking to my future 
 pupil. The little girl flushed with vexation at her 
 own oversight. ' How stupid of me ! ' she said, 
 positively biting her lip with annoyance. l Natu- 
 rally I ought to have introduced myself. Of 
 course, I am Anulka Anulka Bielinska, mamma's 
 youngest daughter, you know, and Jadwiga's sis- 
 ter, and you are to be my governess. I do hope 
 we shall get on together,' she added kindly. Hav- 
 ing echoed this hope I became lost in the contem- 
 plation of her adroit movements, for the samovar 
 had come in by this time, and Anulka had set about 
 making tea with all the aplomb of a grown-up person. 
 " 4 1 hope they have given you enough water,' 
 she remarked presently. c There was a gentleman 
 here the other day who has once been in London, 
 and he said the only way to make English people 
 feel at home is to give them plenty of water. Will
 
 16 O N E Y E A R 
 
 one bath be enough, or shall I tell them to give 
 you a second ? ' I said that one would be quite 
 sufficient; indeed at that moment, and after the 
 long, dusty journey I should have been thankful 
 for even a basin, but this idea did not seem to have 
 occurred to anybody. I next asked my miniature 
 entertainer how old she was. She said she was 
 ten, l of course.' Everything touching herself or 
 her family seems to Anulka so much a matter of 
 course that it is difficult for her to realise the ig- 
 norance of other people. By way of making con- 
 versation, I went on to ask how old Jadwiga was. 
 I was told that, ' of course,' she had been nineteen 
 on her last birthday. * Then, I suppose, she takes 
 no more lessons ? ' I remarked. Not generally, 
 Anulka said, but she was going to take English 
 lessons from me. She sat staring into her tea-glass 
 for a minute before she added : c But I don't think 
 it will be for long.' 4 Why not ? ' I naturally 
 inquired. 4 Because,' said Anulka, with a gleam 
 in her black eyes, 1 1 think she will be married 
 soon.' I could think of nothing to say on the re- 
 ception of this intelligence. Anulka went on 
 talking in the calmest, most matter-of-fact tone. 
 4 1 do hope she will be, for unless she is married 
 before I am grown up no one will ever look at me, 
 because, you see, I am not pretty at all.' 
 
 " l And Jadwiga is ? ' I asked in growing amuse- 
 ment.
 
 ONE YEAR 17 
 
 " c Just wait till you see ! ' No words can give 
 the conscious triumph of the glance which went 
 along with the words. c There are two gentlemen 
 who want to marry her, only I don't think she 
 has made up her mind yet which of them she likes 
 best.' This seemed to me to be going rather fast 
 for a first interview, and for fear of hearing more 
 of the absent Jadwiga's confidences disclosed, I 
 hastily began talking of something else. But 
 Anulka was not so easily turned from her subject. 
 ' They haven't said yet that they want to marry 
 her,' she explained, l but it is quite easy to guess. 
 They would never drink so many glasses of tea, 
 nor look at her so hard over the edge, and I am 
 sure they would never be so polite to each other 
 if they did not both want to marry her.' I looked 
 across with consternation at the child. The hor- 
 rible acuteness of the remark sent a shiver of re- 
 pulsion down my backbone. I had just made up 
 my mind that I detested the sharp-eyed imp when 
 quite suddenly a lightning-like change shot across 
 her narrow face. c Oh, there is Litawar,' she 
 shrieked in a genuine child's voice, putting down 
 the sugar-basin anyhow, and making a dart at a 
 large, woolly, dirty-white puppy, who had just ap- 
 peared in the open door. c Are you fond of dogs ? 
 You must know Litawar at once.' In another 
 moment she had gone down on her thin knees be- 
 side the cur, the correct hostess attitude cast to the
 
 18 ONE YEAR 
 
 winds, and forgetful of the running samovar, whose 
 tap I was barely in time to turn off before the 
 table was flooded. That was the first moment in 
 which I felt that it might be possible to love my 
 queer little pupil. There have been other moments 
 since, but, on the whole, she is a baffling creature, 
 more witch-like than quite human, rarely coming 
 near to one, and always escaping one again. Much 
 of her oddity is a result of ill-health, I imagine, 
 for if. seems that she has been sickly since her 
 birth, and her family have kept her in cotton-wool, 
 and made her wear respirators, and never given her 
 anything but boiled water to drink, and in general 
 employed all the usual means of making a delicate 
 child more delicate still. 
 
 " I did not see Madame Bielinska until next day. 
 Meanwhile I had slept gloriously on a large bed in 
 a small room, which I can only reach by passing 
 through another, at present unoccupied, bedroom, 
 but which, I am told, is Jadwiga's, and had had my 
 choice of three different sorts of tubs in which to 
 perform my ablutions. That gentleman who has 
 once been in London must have spread a prodigious 
 impression with regard to our national consumption 
 of water, and the domestics of this establishment 
 have evidently been severely drilled, for so brimful 
 is my morning bath I have succeeded in reducing 
 it to one as to demand extreme circumspection 
 in the manner of stepping in and out of it.
 
 O N E Y E A R 19 
 
 " Madame Bielinska is not an old lady, but has, 
 I understand, been a chronic invalid since her hus- 
 band's death, about eleven years ago. She seems 
 to spend her life in a room from which both air 
 and sunshine are carefully excluded. The heavily 
 scented air seemed to grip me at the throat as I 
 entered, and for a moment or two I could distin- 
 guish nothing in the artificial darkness. At last I 
 made out somebody sitting in a deep armchair, 
 with a silk shawl over her shoulders and pale yel- 
 low gloves on her hands. Those gloves fascinated 
 my gaze in the first moment they appeared so 
 oddly superfluous in this atmosphere. She is a 
 small, frail person, with an almost grotesquely 
 long, bloodless face and a generally startled air. 
 And just as the face is too large for the body, so 
 the eyes are too large for the face ; and again, the 
 sockets are too large for the eyes, which used 
 probably to belong to the prominent order, but 
 have come to sink so low that they now roll 
 about, rather at random, in two hollow, purple- 
 veined caverns. There is a scared look some- 
 where in their depths, as of a person who has seen 
 some dreadful sight, the terror of which has re- 
 mained permanently fixed in his eyes. She did 
 not seem to take much interest in my arrival, but 
 spoke to me in a politely weary tone, explaining 
 that it was by the wish of her daughter Jadwiga 
 that she had gone to the trouble of procuring an
 
 20 ONE YEAR 
 
 English governess. Jadwiga was anxious to learn 
 English, principally, it seems, in order to be able 
 to read Byron in the original. I don't know, by 
 the bye, if this argues very promisingly for her lit- 
 erary tastes. After ten minutes' limp talk I was 
 dismissed out of the dim and sickeningly scented 
 little room. I fancy I shall not see very much of 
 my real employer. To my mind she looks like a 
 person who has gone through such heavy troubles 
 that her one desire is for peace and seclusion. 
 
 " As for the eldest daughter, that Jadwiga whose 
 name I had heard so often, it was only this morn- 
 ing that I had my first glimpse of her. All this 
 time she has been away at Limberg, not enjoying 
 herself, however, or, at least, I suppose not, since 
 as I understood from the chatter of Anulka who 
 all this time has very carefully looked after me 
 she has been spending most of her time in the 
 dentist's hands. This morning I was walking in 
 the garden before breakfast, enjoying the pure, 
 keen sunshine and feasting my eyes on the spider- 
 webs all sparkling with dewdrops and stiffened 
 with just the lightest touch of frost, when, on 
 turning the corner of a path, I came full upon a 
 brilliant but somewhat startling vision a tall 
 young girl, sauntering idly along, with her hat in 
 her hand and a wreath of crimson and yellow 
 leaves such leaves as hung on every branch in 
 the wide park resting lightly on a rather untidy
 
 ONE YEAR 21 
 
 dark head. Fragments of the very gossamer webs 
 which draped the bushes clung to the shining 
 leaves, and the frosty dewdrops flashed like dia- 
 monds in her hair. She had her loose travelling 
 cloak about her still ; it hung in long, pale folds to 
 her feet, and, in conjunction with that leafy wreath 
 might very fairly represent the garb of some an- 
 cient priestess on her way back from morning 
 sacrifice. She looked white and tired, and her 
 dark eyes were heavy. I fancy that under more 
 favourable circumstances she must be beautiful, in 
 part I am not sure that I did not find her beautiful 
 even in that moment, and in spite of the faintly 
 blue tinge under the eyes, which showed that she 
 had not slept all night, but it was a rather too fan- 
 tastical and unconventional sort of beauty to en- 
 tirely suit my sober taste. At sight of me she 
 brightened suddenly. * At last ! ' she said with a 
 wonderfully radiant smile. C I have been waiting 
 for you so long ! ' I asked in some astonishment 
 how this could be, not immediately realising who 
 she was. c Yes,' she said, c I got home very early, 
 when you were all still asleep, and I knew that if 
 I once lay down I should sleep till evening, for I 
 have been travelling all night, but I was too curi- 
 ous to see you. I am to be your pupil, too, you 
 know in English and I am just dying to begin.' 
 * But surely not to-day ? ' I objected, both pleased 
 and amused with her eagerness. c No,' she said,
 
 22 O N E Y E A R 
 
 4 of course, not to-day ; to-day I only meant to 
 look at your face, so as to make up my mind about 
 you. I could not have slept quietly without that. 
 You kept me waiting rather long ; and I passed 
 the time by making this wreath do you think it 
 very ridiculous ? ' I said I found it very becoming, 
 as was not to be denied, and asked her then 
 whether she had yet made up her mind about me ? 
 She looked at me very long and earnestly before 
 she said : * I believe I have ; it sounds sudden, 
 doesn't it ? but I do most things suddenly. Oh, 
 Miss Middleton, I wonder whether you will be my 
 friend ? ' As I am not able to do things as sud- 
 denly as this, I could only say that I hoped I 
 should, but the eager look in her beautiful eyes and 
 the wonderful radiancy of her smile made me feel 
 horribly prim and British as I expressed this meas- 
 ured desire. 4 1 want a friend very badly,' said 
 Jadwiga, but she was already beginning to yawn ; 
 4 we shall talk about that later ; good-bye in the 
 meantime, and good-night,' and with another 
 sleepy smile she turned away. Having gone only 
 a few steps she came back again abruptly. 4 Is it 
 is it not very dreadful to be so far away from 
 one's country ? ' she inquired, almost shyly, and 
 looking at me with quite a new expression in her 
 eyes. * Sometimes it is better to be far away,' I 
 evasively replied. ' You must try not to be un- 
 happy with us,' she said earnestly. l If I can help
 
 ONE YEAR 23 
 
 you to forget how far away you are, I shall do so,' 
 and then I felt my two hands taken and sharply 
 pressed, while a quick, hot, little kiss fell on my 
 cold cheek, and then she was gone again, and I 
 was alone. Sudden, yes, undeniably it was sud- 
 den, but I cannot say that it was unpleasant. Is it 
 not almost enough to make one love her already ? 
 
 " Presently, when I passed through the outer 
 room, I could see a slender form lying on the 
 hitherto vacant bed, where Jadwiga had flung her- 
 self down, travelling cloak and all, not having taken 
 the time to wash her hands or even to remove her 
 wreath. She has not moved since; each time I 
 pass through the room I can see the fantastically 
 crowned head half buried in the pillow, and hear 
 the sound of her regular breathing. I shall tell 
 you more of her when I know more ; the impres- 
 sion she has left on my mind is as yet a mixture of 
 fascination and consternation. If we ever become 
 friends it could only be through the working of the 
 law of contrast. 
 
 " This is all for to-day. With Jadwiga's appear- 
 ance the small family circle appears to be complete, 
 and she promises to be the most interesting mem- 
 ber of the group. By next time I write I shall 
 probably have got more used to my surroundings. 
 The owls in the bushes that grow straight against 
 my windows hoot at night rather more than is 
 pleasant, also there is a pane broken in my win-
 
 24 O N E Y K A R 
 
 dow. I have mentioned the matter to Andrej, the 
 venerable footman, who appears to be the person 
 of most authority in the establishment, but he 
 pointed out to me that, as the whole panes were 
 decidedly in the majority, there could not be much 
 wrong, an argument which had not before struck 
 me. No doubt he is right to nic nie szkodzie 
 you see I am doing my best to assimilate myself to 
 my surroundings. 
 
 " Good-bye, my dearest. Write soon to the 
 poor exile, but remember to send me no messages. 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " ELEANOR MIDDLETON."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IN the days that followed on the writing of that 
 letter I was able to form a clear opinion both of 
 Jadwiga's looks and of her character. About the 
 former I had no difficulty in making up my mind. 
 In the moment that she made her appearance at 
 tea that afternoon, rested, in fresh attire and with 
 her hair in order, I felt satisfied that she was beau- 
 tiful, although not in any style that I had hitherto 
 had personal experience of. Perhaps she was al- 
 most more graceful and charming than strictly 
 speaking beautiful ; it is even quite conceivable 
 that but for the light behind it, that delicately pale 
 face with the rather full lips and the unimportant 
 nose might have missed being beautiful. Anulka 
 had the same cast of features and almost the same 
 colour of eyes, only with a keener look in them, 
 but it was quite clear even now that, although she 
 might possibly become what is termed " piquante," 
 she could never be beautiful, and just because that 
 light was awanting. 
 
 To my mind Jadwiga had something of the ap- 
 pearance of a plant grown up in the dark; her 
 beautifully clear complexion had grown over-white 
 from want of fresh air, and over-soft, too, as I 
 25
 
 26 ONE YEAR 
 
 gradually found out. Constitutionals are unknown 
 things in Poland, and nobody in their senses thinks 
 of going out except in fine weather, by which is 
 understood not only absence of rain, but also of 
 wind or mud or dust, or anything beyond the most 
 moderate frost. As the winter lasts quite six 
 months it is easy to calculate the amount of fresh 
 air imbibed by the regulation Polish lady. Except 
 on the balmiest summer afternoons or the most 
 tepid moonlight nights going out seems in general 
 to be considered in the light of a necessary evil. 
 Jadwiga's face looked as if it had never encoun- 
 tered a cutting wind, and probably it never had. 
 But that colourless skin was not the result of ill- 
 health indeed if her health had not been excep- 
 tionally good it could never have stood the indoor 
 regime but only of circumstances. Her eyes 
 looked all the darker for it; they were really 
 brown, but by contrast with that almost dead white 
 skin looked black. When she was tired or out of 
 spirits the whiteness became almost ghastly ; when, 
 on the other hand, exercise or excitement brought 
 a faint tinge of colour to her cheeks, she became 
 in one moment ten times more beautiful than 
 usual. Her hands were models of what a hand 
 should be, given that it is not meant to be used in 
 any sense as an instrument beautifully slender and 
 beautifully white, and so soft that even to dream 
 of its caresses was bliss quite useless, indeed, so
 
 ONEYEAR 27 
 
 far as work was concerned, but so good to look at 
 that the spectator felt a sense of personal gratitude 
 toward the person who afforded him this treat. 
 From the first the mere sight of these hands made 
 me feel painfully conscious of my own, but I do 
 not think that even the hope of rivalling these 
 works of art could have reconciled me to wearing 
 gloves in the house as Jadwiga was apt to do on 
 the smallest provocation. Her proximity alone 
 had a way of making me feel unpleasantly com- 
 monplace and vulgarly robust. I think I must 
 have liked her from the first in spite of this hu- 
 miliating observation, and in spite of much that 
 startled my somewhat narrowly British ideas. I 
 came soon to understand that she was an outcome 
 of her country and social usages, and to accept her 
 unmurmuringly as such. It was indeed hard not 
 to fall under the charm of her frankly enthusiastic 
 personality. There was something peculiarly in- 
 sinuating about Jadwiga, something that wound its 
 way into your affections before you were aware 
 that you had left a chink open. Her ardent tem- 
 perament was joined to a child's candour; she had 
 the carriage of a queen and the caressing ways of 
 a kitten but of a kitten whose whole soul looked 
 out of its eyes. There never was the shadow of 
 mystery about Jadwiga ; her openness at first often 
 embarrassed me. 
 
 " I had three teeth stuffed this week," she an-
 
 28 O N E Y E A R 
 
 nounced to me smiling, as she sipped her tea, 
 " and you can't imagine how happy I feel after it. 
 I had been .putting it off as long as I could, for I 
 am an awful coward, but then I began to be afraid 
 I should lose a tooth, and that would never have 
 done, for I am also awfully vain ; and besides 
 that it hurt me to eat jam, and I am awfully 
 greedy " 
 
 " Cowardly, vain, and greedy," summed up 
 Anulka, with her elderly smile, " what a nice idea 
 Miss Middleton will get of you." 
 
 " It's better she should know the worst at 
 once," laughed Jadwiga. " Oh, Anulka, do give 
 me some more of that rose jam ; I can eat it now 
 with a good conscience." 
 
 " It was with rose jam that you spoiled your 
 teeth last time," remarked Anulka almost severely, 
 but she handed the plate all the same. 
 
 " Is that your real Polish rose jam ? " I asked. 
 " If you will give me some, too, Anulka, I shall 
 risk spoiling my teeth with it, and if it does not 
 spoil them more than it has done your sister's I 
 shall be able to bear the consequences." As I 
 spoke I could not help glancing at the tiny, shin- 
 ing teeth, white as porcelain, which kept appearing 
 between Jadwiga's crimson lips each time she car- 
 ried the spoon to her mouth. Certainly she did 
 not look in need of a dentist. I have generally 
 noticed that it is the people who are always talking
 
 ONE YEAR 29 
 
 about their dentist who have, apparently, the most 
 perfect teeth, perhaps because of the constant at- 
 tention paid to them ; at least it is so in Galicia, 
 where dentists play as great a role as do confection- 
 ers, and owe to the latter at least half of their oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 Jadwiga laughed over my last remark. She had 
 a wonderfully low and yet clear laugh. 
 
 " Can you English pay compliments, too ? " she 
 asked. " I thought it was only we who did that, 
 and that you were all much too sensible and prac- 
 ticable. I wonder if I should like England ? Is 
 it really true that one is not allowed even to play 
 the piano on a Sunday ? I don't think I could 
 stand that part." 
 
 " I think there would be several parts you could 
 not stand," I said, and proceeded to give her a 
 sketch of an orthodox English Sunday, as spent in 
 the last family I had been in rigidly strict, Low 
 Church people. The eyes of both Jadwiga and 
 Anulka widened with amazement as they listened. 
 
 " But that is worse than Ash Wednesday or 
 Good Friday," said Anulka in horror-stricken 
 tones, "except for the eating. I suppose you are 
 at least allowed to eat as much as you like ? " 
 
 I replied that that consolation was left us, which 
 slightly relieved Anulka's mind, but Jadwiga re- 
 mained pensive. 
 
 u But does it not just kill you with dulness ? "
 
 3 o ONE YEAR 
 
 she asked at last. " Do you not all hate Sun- 
 day ? " 
 
 " Not those to whom dulness means rest," I re- 
 plied. 
 
 She gave me a quick, deprecating glance ; no 
 words could have begged my pardon more dis- 
 tinctly. " Oh, how stupid I am. Of course the 
 dulness does not matter when one is tired, and I 
 am sure you have been tired very often, but we 
 will not let you tire yourself here," and putting 
 out her hand she touched mine with the lightest 
 and yet softest of caresses. 
 
 " Now with us," she went on, " Sunday is just 
 the least dull day in the week, sometimes quite gay, 
 for very often our neighbours come and look us up 
 in order to exchange the impressions of the week. 
 It's the only day they are not bothering about their 
 fields, and about the only day that Mamma comes 
 out of her room in order to do the honours of the 
 house ; it's only on Sundays that our board ever 
 becomes festive now or that the cards are brought 
 out. By the bye, Miss Middleton, will you not be 
 horrified to see playing-cards on a Sunday ? Will 
 you be able to get used to them ? " 
 
 I replied that I should do my best. " But your 
 Sundays are not always so gay," I objected, " for I 
 have spent one here, and there were no visitors at 
 all." 
 
 u That was because Jadwiga was in Limberg,"
 
 ONE YEAR 31 
 
 promptly replied Anulka, with the odiously acute 
 smile which at moments made me detest her. 
 " They don't come here to talk to Mamma, or me, 
 I'm quite sure about that ; and they all knew she 
 was away we always know everything about each 
 other here j you just see if they don't turn up next 
 Sunday, just as if cards of invitation had been sent 
 round." 
 
 44 Very likely they will," said Jadwiga, with an 
 inscrutable smile, delicately licking a morsel of 
 sugared roseleaf from off her spoon. " But that 
 won't necessarily make it gay, not unless the right 
 ones come." 
 
 " Make your mind easy on that point, " said 
 Anulka soothingly, "the right ones will come, and 
 the wrong ones too, and ah, I do hope that Wlad- 
 imir will bring me the grapes he promised." 
 
 "And that Mazurka of R.oszkowski's," added 
 Jadwiga. 
 
 41 You haven't heard Jadwiga play yet ? " asked 
 Anulka abruptly. 
 
 "You sweet little goose," laughed Jadwiga, 
 " when should Miss Middleton have heard me ? 
 While I was asleep ? " 
 
 41 But play something for her now. I am sure 
 you must want to hear Jadwiga play ? " she asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 44 Let it be," said Jadwiga, rising and going some- 
 what languidly to the piano.
 
 32 ONEYEAR 
 
 The first thing she played did not enchant me, 
 being the elaborate rendering of " Home, Sweet 
 Home," and played in a somewhat laborious fash- 
 ion which betrayed more drill than anything else. 
 The intention was obvious, but the result calcu- 
 lated to raise her kindness in my estimation, rather 
 than her talent. But then, without any pause, she 
 went on into Chopin, and immediately a marvel- 
 lous change came over the spirit of her play. She 
 was doing something now that she understood and 
 loved, something that helped her to express a little 
 of what was within her; and there was a great 
 deal within her, as I was to find out in time. With 
 astonishment I hearkened to the vibrating force 
 of the chords struck by that slender and seemingly 
 so fragile hand ; almost with consternation I recog- 
 nised the breathless passion that seemed to cry out 
 of some of those wonderful notes, a rebellious pas- 
 sion, unable, or perhaps only unwilling, to contain 
 itself. Chopin's mode of expression was one pe- 
 culiarly congenial to her nature, which either by 
 the affinity of race or some more subtle affinity of 
 spirit, seemed to guess the composer's intention in 
 passages which hitherto had always failed to move 
 me, and at which I now suddenly felt the tears 
 standing in my eyes. For nearly an hour she 
 played on wandering from Mazurkas to Impromptus 
 and back again to Mazurkas and Nocturnes, with 
 a scrap of the funeral march in between. I have
 
 ONEYEAR 33 
 
 never been a musician myself in the sense of never 
 having played any instrument, but I have always 
 been ridiculously susceptible to good music, and as 
 I now listened in the falling dusk I felt that Lud- 
 niki was going to possess at least one great charm 
 for me, independent of the personal one of the 
 player, whose slender silhouette was growing every 
 minute more phantom-like against the fast-failing 
 light. I was alone with her now, for Anulka had 
 early disappeared. She could not have rested until 
 I had heard Jadwiga play ; indeed, her undisguised 
 pride in her sister was one of the redeeming points 
 in the little imp's character, but a small dose of 
 music sufficed for her personally. 
 
 That evening while I was brushing out my hair 
 for the night, my door opened, without any previ- 
 ous knock, and Jadwiga's head appeared. 
 
 " May I talk a little ? " she asked almost humbly, 
 " or are you too sleepy to listen ? You see I have 
 slept all day and I am horribly wide-awake." 
 
 Although a little startled at the intrusion I felt it 
 morally impossible in face of those pleading eyes 
 to say No. It took me some time to learn that 
 what we call intrusion is here only neighbourly, for 
 the idea of privacy is very faintly developed in 
 those countries. 
 
 Jadwiga, without further invitation, sat down in 
 her embroidered dressing-jacket upon my bed, and 
 went on plaiting her hair, with a pensive smile
 
 34 ONEYEAR 
 
 about her lips, as though amused in spirit at some- 
 thing. 
 
 " I wonder how you will like our neighbours," 
 she presently began. " I mean those that you will 
 see on Sunday. I do hope the right ones will 
 come ; I should like to show them to you. By 
 the bye, Miss Middleton, are you good at keeping 
 secrets ? Oh yes, I know you are, I saw that in 
 your face at once." 
 
 "You are not going to tell me any ? " I asked in 
 some apprehension ; this really was a little too 
 sudden. 
 
 " Not to-day," said Jadwiga, " because I have 
 not got any quite ready to tell, but perhaps I shall 
 have soon. Would you mind very much if I 
 bothered you with my secrets ? " 
 
 "N no," I said, not quite truthfully, for un- 
 asked-for confidences are things I have suffered 
 from all my life. How it comes that people should 
 always be so anxious to tell me their secrets I can- 
 not imagine. I certainly never press them, and I 
 take myself to be a rather uninviting sort of per- 
 son but so it is. Formerly I used to mind it 
 more than I do now, for I fancied that they would 
 expect confidences in return, but I generally dis- 
 cover to my relief that the arrangement is not 
 meant to be reciprocal. 
 
 " You see," went on Jadwiga, picking out of her 
 hair a red maple-leaf which had stuck there among
 
 O N E Y E A R 35 
 
 the thick, black tresses, a remnant of that morning's 
 wreath, " if I ever have anything to say about it I 
 don't know to whom to talk. Mamma is much 
 too unwell and well, just tired of everything to 
 take a lively interest in my small affairs. I know, 
 of course, that she loves me, but I do not want to 
 weary her, and Anulka is much too young to un- 
 derstand " I rather doubted this in my own mind 
 " and every one else is far away. I want some 
 one dreadfully ; even before you came I wanted to 
 tell you everything ; that is what made me so fear- 
 fully anxious to know what you were like. I had 
 been waiting for you so impatiently. Of course 
 there have been other governesses in the house, but 
 one of them I did not like, and the other had so 
 many secrets of her own that she had no room for 
 mine." 
 
 " You do sound rather lonely," I remarked ; 
 " has it always been like this ? " 
 
 " Not while Papa was alive ; at that time 
 Mamma was quite different. I was always about 
 her, and she used to give me piano lessons herself, 
 for she played beautifully once, far better than I 
 do, but she has not played for nearly eleven years." 
 
 " Your poor mother must have felt her loss ter- 
 ribly," I ventured to observe, for, indeed, it had 
 struck me that this complete breakdown, both 
 physical and mental, was scarcely quite explained 
 even by her widowhood. Had she not her chil-
 
 36 O N E Y E A R 
 
 dren to live for ? I never could spare much pa- 
 tience for people who indulge their grief at the 
 cost of their duty. 
 
 " Terribly," said Jadwiga, very low. Her hands 
 rested in her lap as she spoke, with the black hair 
 wound about them ; for a moment or two she re- 
 mained quite still looking fixedly at the floor. 
 
 " If your father has been dead for ten years I 
 suppose Anulka can scarcely remember him ? " I 
 remarked. 
 
 " She does not remember him at all ; she was 
 born after his death." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 " I remember him, oh yes ; I shall always re- 
 member him." There was a ring of pain in the 
 words of a pain that seemed mingled with fear, 
 and as she spoke she got up from my bed. 
 
 " Miss Middleton, I think I am getting sleepy 
 after all," she added, in a different tone. " Good- 
 bye till to-morrow." And merely nodding to me 
 with a faint smile, she left me alone, a little sur- 
 prised at this abrupt termination of the interview, 
 and wondering whether I had been in any way in- 
 discreet.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ON Sunday, as Anulka had predicted, I had my 
 first view of our neighbours, and also for the first 
 time saw Madame Bielinska outside her private 
 apartment. In broad daylight she looked even 
 more ghastly than I had expected ; these periodical 
 appearances in public were to her obviously a phys- 
 ical and mental torture, undergone solely for the 
 sake of satisfying conventionality, and unable to 
 rouse her from her chronic apathy. Dressed care- 
 fully in her best silk, of a fashion of a dozen years 
 back, and with a new pair of yellow gloves on her 
 hands, she remained crushed into a corner of the 
 big sofa or sat throned at the head of the long 
 table, taking no interest in her guests and no part 
 in the conversation ; not embarrassed, not ridicu- 
 lous, but simply wearied, only calling up a tired 
 smile when addressed, and evidently counting the 
 moments to her deliverance. On a stranger the 
 effect was depressing ; but the habitual visitors 
 were evidently too well used to the neutral attitude 
 of their hostess to let the entertainment suffer 
 thereby, beyond punctually fulfilling their fixed 
 forms of politeness and these forms are tolerably 
 complicated, as it is de rigueur after every meal for 
 
 37
 
 38 ONE YEAR 
 
 every gentleman to kiss the hostess's hand and 
 every lady to shake it they did not trouble them- 
 selves further about her. They all knew that she 
 wanted to be let alone. That poor, weary hand 
 was kissed pretty often of a Sunday, for the guests 
 were numerous and the meals frequent. A visit 
 paid in the country in Poland often begins at 
 breakfast-time and never ends till after supper. By 
 one o'clock the big, bare Ludniki drawing-room 
 was quite tolerably peopled, chiefly by the stronger 
 sex that little wretch of an Anulka had been right 
 about the news of Jadwiga's return having spread 
 and we sat down to dinner, not much under 
 twenty head high. In one of my early letters to 
 Agnes I find my first impressions of these people 
 put down. 
 
 " Perhaps the most curious specimen in the col- 
 lection," I wrote to her on that occasion, " was a 
 large, elderly, gentlemanlike barbarian in the Polish 
 national dress, who smelt frightfully of strong to- 
 bacco, and ought never to move without a spittoon 
 at his elbow, but who makes so splendid a picture, 
 and has so completely the grand air, that it is im- 
 possible quite to disapprove of anything he does. 
 His name is written Lewicki, I believe, and he is a 
 near neighbour and large landed proprietor. He 
 had his son with him the nearest approach to my 
 idea of a fairy-tale prince that has ever come my 
 way ; long, slender limbs, a beardless boy's face, a
 
 ONE YEAR 39 
 
 particularly delicate curve of jaw, a marvellous line 
 of throat, long-cut brown eyes, ready either to melt 
 or to kindle, as occasion demanded you know the 
 sort of thing, don't you ? Often enough seen in 
 print but hardly ever in flesh and blood. There is 
 just enough curl in his silky, yellow hair to make 
 his head at a little distance look as though it were 
 moulded out of solid gold. Seriously he seems to 
 me to be about as good looking as a man can be 
 out of a story-book, and also to be quite aware of 
 his good looks and fond of displaying them to the 
 best advantage. I should not call it affectation 
 it is too naif and straightforward for that but 
 rather a childishly frank pleasure in what he knows 
 himself to possess. 
 
 " Of the other young men present the one with 
 whom I had most conversation was a dark, regular- 
 featured man of somewhere about thirty, who prob- 
 ably would likewise be good looking if he were not 
 quite too unreasonably thin, with a nose that posi- 
 tively looks as though it were coming through the 
 skin, and a perpetual blotch of shadow under the 
 cheek-bones. This, too, is a neighbour, it seems, 
 although not in such good circumstances, as, in- 
 deed, his very clothes testify. I don't think I 
 have ever seen within polite walls a black coat so 
 perilously near to the border of the inadmissible. 
 Among the further guests I must not forget to note 
 down the doctor and his wife, inhabitants of Zloc-
 
 40 O N E Y E A R 
 
 zek, our post-town, and a queerly assorted couple 
 he ponderous and elderly, with a shock-head of 
 grey hair and a face that seems to consist of a 
 series of lumps ; she at least twenty years younger 
 and almost as pretty as her husband is ugly dark- 
 eyed, bright complexioned, lively, and neat as a 
 bird dressy, talkative, almost obtrusively oblig- 
 ing, and I should guess frankly frivolous too 
 frankly in fact, for it is embarrassing to have to 
 listen to denunciations of the sort of: ' I can't 
 manage to be serious like other people ' * I don't 
 pretend to care for anything except amusement,' 
 and difficult to know what to answer. It was all I 
 could do to defend myself from her proffered offers 
 of service, for the little woman seemed to take a 
 fancy to my society, or perhaps was only curious 
 to see what a real Englishwoman was like at close 
 quarters. With clasped hands she implored me to 
 let her do all my shopping for me at Zloczek, in- 
 forming me in the same breath that nothing decent 
 was to be got there for love or money ; if I wanted 
 either letter paper or elastic for my hats I had only 
 to drop her a note and she would immediately aban- 
 don all other occupations to fulfil my wishes. 
 When told I was provided with both letter paper 
 and elastic she appeared inconsolable. But, per- 
 haps, I had a desire for thread and needles ? No ? 
 Was there absolutely nothing that she could get for 
 me ; or do for me ? Well, then, at least I must
 
 ONE YEAR 41 
 
 promise to come and see her, and let her show me 
 her children. It sounds too spasmodic to be genu- 
 ine, but it is genuine all the same. Very likely she 
 would forget all about the elastic if I did ask her to 
 procure me some, and would send me quite the 
 wrong number of thread, but that does not alter the 
 kindness of the intention. Many of them are like 
 that ; it is their way of making one feel at home." 
 
 There are more portraits sketched in this same 
 letter, but I have picked out only those of persons 
 who afterward came to play at least some slight 
 part in the story I am telling ; the other 
 principally smooth-faced young men, with won- 
 derfully cut finger nails and rather too exquisite 
 manners, accompanied here and there by a sister 
 or a mother never came to act as more than 
 chorus. 
 
 Despite this wide selection of youths, despite 
 the fact that each of them tried to secure the 
 place beside Jadwiga, it did not take me long to 
 pick out the two most serious candidates for her 
 favour those referred to by Anulka on the very 
 day of my arrival. That one of them was the fair- 
 haired, fairy-tale prince I had early suspected 
 those melting brown eyes of his were too tell-tale 
 in their expression but whether or not his rival 
 was present it took me a little time to ascertain. 
 It was not until we had risen from table, and the 
 customary salutations were going on, that my at-
 
 42 ONE YEAR 
 
 tention was directed to the gaunt, shabbily-dressed 
 man aforementioned. His turn had come to kiss 
 Jadwiga's hand the last of the row of black coats 
 filing off toward the drawing-room. By chance I 
 was looking in that direction, and saw how in the 
 moment of raising her hand he quietly and deliber- 
 ately put back the edge of the glove into which she 
 had already slipped her fingers, and then only pro- 
 ceeded to imprint upon her bare wrist the custom- 
 ary salute. Done clumsily the thing would have 
 been an impertinence, but the sort of respectful 
 audacity of the gesture saved it even in Jadwiga's 
 eyes, though she coloured faintly and attempted to 
 frown. The delicate French kid of her pearl-grey 
 glove was unimpeachable, and yet it was evidently 
 not to his taste. Just then I remembered that this 
 dark, thin man, my opposite at table, had eaten his 
 dinner almost silently, and that his eyes had often 
 strayed toward where Jadwiga sat with the fair- 
 haired youth beside her. From that moment I be- 
 gan to observe him more carefully. The interest 
 I already felt in Jadwiga naturally awoke an inter- 
 est in her possible wooers. 
 
 In the big drawing-room the card tables stood 
 ready a strange sight to my English eyes by 
 broad daylight and on a Sunday, but to every one 
 else quite natural, almost inevitable. While black 
 coffee was being drunk the old gentlemen began to 
 recruit for their sets, and without much difficulty
 
 ONE YEAR 43 
 
 either, for young men in this country love tarac 
 and cigarettes almost as much as flirtation and 
 cigarettes. By this time nearly every man in the 
 room and several of the ladies were rolling one of 
 the latter between their fingers. About the only 
 man not doing so was my vis-a-vis at dinner, 
 whose name I presently learnt to be Krysztof 
 Malewicz. I was close to where he stood, unoc- 
 cupied, with his back against the wall when Jad- 
 wiga, in her character of quasi hostess, intent on 
 seeing every one disposed according, to his inclina- 
 tions, came flitting toward us. 
 
 " Oh, Krysztof," she said, eagerly, " would you 
 not take a hand at Pan Barnowski's table ? They 
 are short of a player over there." 
 
 " I never play cards," replied Malewicz with a 
 touch of haughty surprise ; " surely you know 
 that ? " 
 
 "Yes, I know; but just for to-day perhaps?" 
 she persisted. 
 
 " It is quite impossible," he said, a little 
 brusquely. 
 
 " Even if I ask you ? " And I must confess 
 that as she said it she put a not quite legitimate 
 amount of pressure into her eyes, for even the 
 truest and least frivolous Polish woman has at least 
 one grain of the coquette in her composition. 
 
 I could see him thrill, but, although his mouth 
 contracted, he answered without hesitation : " Even
 
 44 ONE YEAR 
 
 if you asked me," and he looked at her very stead- 
 ily, and, as it seemed to me, sadly, as he spoke. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders impatiently and was 
 gone, but after two minutes was back again. 
 
 " I have found somebody you are let off for to- 
 day but since you are not going to play cards, 
 what are you going to do ? " I must explain here 
 that a Polish hostess has the terrible habit of 
 never leaving her guests to their own devices. 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " returned Male- 
 wicz with his keen, dark eyes upon her face. 
 
 " I am going to play presently. Wladimir has 
 brought me that Mazurka he raves about. You 
 can listen if you have nothing better to do, but, by 
 the bye, you don't care for music, I think ? " 
 
 " I never said I did not care for music," he re- 
 plied with almost unnecessary deliberateness, " but 
 only that I range music among the luxuries, not 
 the necessities of life." 
 
 " Well, Sunday is a day for luxuries, is it 
 not ? " she lightly retorted. " You really might 
 do worse than listen." 
 
 " Is Wladimir going to listen, too ? " he asked 
 without moving a muscle of his face. 
 
 u Of course, since it was he who brought me the 
 music. Has he not the first right to hear it ? " 
 
 " Then I think I shall listen another time 
 some day perhaps when you think that / have a 
 right to hear it."
 
 O N E Y E A R 45 
 
 Jauwiga looked a trifle put out, I thought. 
 
 44 As you like," she said, turning from him, 
 44 you seem in a difficult humour to suit to-day ; I 
 am not going to make any more suggestions for 
 your benefit. And you, Miss Middleton, how are 
 you going to amuse yourself? " 
 
 I begged to be allowed to look after myself, 
 being just on the point of slipping away for a walk. 
 Even the Mazurka could not keep me indoors on 
 such an afternoon as this ; I knew that I should 
 hear it another time and under more favourable 
 circumstances. 
 
 41 May I walk with you ? " said my neighbour 
 abruptly. 
 
 Much though I should have preferred solitude 
 there was nothing for it but to say Yes, and pres- 
 ently, while the cards began to fall on the tables 
 and the cigarette smoke to curl up to the ceiling 
 and the first notes of the Mazurka to float out of 
 the windows, I walked out into the autumn sun- 
 shine tete-a-tete with this stranger whose name I 
 had not yet mastered, and who already was begin- 
 ning to interest me by proxy, so to say. 
 
 It was a long, straight walk we struck into, the 
 longest and the straightest in the whole park, the 
 only one which seemed to give it a sort of moral 
 backbone ; anywhere else it would have led to a 
 summerhouse, here it led to nowhere in particular. 
 To judge by the profusion of scarlet hips branch-
 
 46 O N E Y E A R 
 
 ing like coral on both sides of the way, there must 
 be a fine show of roses here in summer. I had 
 already adopted this rose-walk for my constitu- 
 tionals, allured by its privacy as well as its com- 
 parative evenness. 
 
 To my relief I soon perceived that my com- 
 panion did not think it necessary to entertain me. 
 Just at first, in fact, he seemed to have forgotten 
 my existence ; with his hands behind his back and 
 his eyes fixed abstractedly on the ground he moved 
 along by my side as though I had not been. We 
 were half way down the rose-walk before he 
 remarked unexpectedly : 
 
 "You must have thought me very ungracious 
 just now ? " 
 
 " About the music ? " I said. " Well, so was I, 
 if it comes to that ; but I never find that music and 
 society agree." 
 
 " No, not about the music, about the cards. 
 Do you think I was rude to Mademoiselle 
 Bielinska ? " 
 
 I hesitated. "Not rude, perhaps, but rather 
 more categorical than the occasion demanded. 
 You spoke as though you had a positive dislike to 
 cards." 
 
 " So I have, and with good reason, too. My 
 father lost his fortune at cards," he added with 
 a simplicity which, to my ideas, was a little start- 
 ling.
 
 O N E Y E A R 47 
 
 " Does Jadwiga know of this ? " I asked, after a 
 moment. 
 
 " Every one knows it. Many is the night that 
 her father and mine have spent with a green table 
 between them. Ask Pan Lewicki, Wladimir's 
 father, he knows it better than anybody, since he 
 is the only one of that gay trio remaining the 
 trots mousquetaires, as they used to call them in 
 Paris long ago. Oh, yes, of course she knows it ; 
 but you must not imagine her unkind because of 
 having asked me," he added, quickly, " she is only 
 thoughtless and young oh, ever so much younger 
 than I am ! " 
 
 By the ring in his voice I felt certain from that 
 moment not only that he was seeking Jadwiga, but 
 also that he loved her, and with this conviction in 
 my mind I gave him another and more critical 
 side-glance. He was exaggeratedly thin, certainly, 
 but it was a thinness which did not give the 
 impression of ill-health rather of extreme wiriness 
 and toughness of fibre. The eyes were black and 
 keen, rather deep-set, with a flame ready to spring 
 to the surface each moment, the forehead well 
 moulded, the whole face eager and strong. Per- 
 haps he was a little too tall for the breadth of his 
 shoulders, but he held himself well. Such as he 
 was I could see no reason why Jadwiga should not 
 love him, and already, unconsciously, I was begin- 
 ning to hope that she would.
 
 48 ONEYEAR 
 
 "You don't seem to be so very old yet," I could 
 not help observing in answer to his last remark. 
 He did not seem to me to be more than thirty at 
 the outside. 
 
 " Do you count age by years ? " he replied, " or 
 not rather by what those years have been full of, 
 whether of joy or pain, play or work ? I have 
 played very little in my life ; perhaps that is why I 
 sometimes think that I have never been young. 
 No, I could not have done what she wanted of 
 me," he went on in the same breath, " but I wish 
 I could teach myself to be smoother in my refusals. 
 Roughness is not generally the fault of my nation ; 
 I think I must have picked it up in the fields among 
 the workmen." 
 
 I believe it was this very roughness which, in 
 the midst of so much smoothness, had awakened 
 my sympathies from the first, by its distant 
 resemblance to British bluntness; but I could 
 scarcely tell him so, and presently the talk such 
 desultory talk as we carried on had drifted into 
 other and less personal channels. It was only at 
 the end of our stroll, when we were close to the 
 house again, that there passed some more words 
 which I can still recall. 
 
 " Your nation may be both musical and artistic," 
 I could not help remarking, as we approached the 
 oddly-placed entrance, "but it certainly has no 
 passion for symmetry. What, for instance, could
 
 ONE YEAR 49 
 
 have induced the person who built this house to stick 
 the front door into such an improbable place ? Why 
 on earth should it not stand in the middle ? It is 
 its only legitimate place in a building of this style." 
 
 " The person who built the house is not respon- 
 sible," replied my companion. " The entrance 
 used to be in the middle. Have you not noticed 
 the old door walled up over there between the 
 two centre windows ? " 
 
 I certainly had observed a large patch in the 
 masonry, whose colour betrayed it as if of a differ- 
 ent date from the rest of the surface. " And that 
 was the entrance ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes, I never alighted at any other door when I 
 was a child. You can still trace the bit of road 
 that led up to it, although the grass has grown 
 thick there now." 
 
 " And what made them change it ? " I asked. 
 
 " It was walled up after Pan Bielinski's death," 
 said Malewicz, a trifle curtly. " Probably the 
 family did not care to use it again." 
 
 This struck me as curious, but Malewicz was 
 evidently not inclined to say more, and, besides, we 
 had reached the house already. 
 
 By this time the big drawing-room was dim and 
 blue with the smoke of innumerable cigarettes, and 
 the tables laden with trays of glasses, and crystal 
 dishes on which marvellous cakes and extraordinary 
 jams lay temptingly displayed, while somewhere in
 
 50 ONE YEAR 
 
 the corner a big samovar was puffing audibly. 
 The cards still fell regularly on the green tables, 
 but Jadwiga had left the piano, and, surrounded 
 by a small group of admirers, was holding what 
 seemed to be an animated discussion. 
 
 " Oh, do come here, Miss Middleton," she 
 cried, catching sight of us, " and listen to my plan, 
 and you, too, Pan Malewicz. I want to arrange 
 a fishing party this week. This is the year for the 
 big pond to be cleaned, you know, and there will 
 be lots of fish. It is as good as a play to see the 
 peasants driving them into the nets we can follow 
 them in a boat. You will be of the party, too, 
 will you not, Pan Malewicz ? The more people 
 there are the merrier it will be." 
 
 " Which day have you arranged ? " asked Male- 
 wicz. 
 
 "Wednesday." 
 
 " I shall not have got my turnips all in by 
 Wednesday," said he after a moment's reflection. 
 
 " As if it was possible to think of turnips when 
 a wish of Mademoiselle Bielinska falls into the 
 balance ! " cried the golden-haired Wladimir, in 
 evidently sincere indignation. " Why, I would 
 abandon a whole corn harvest rather than disap- 
 point her." 
 
 "The question is, whether the corn harvest 
 would suffer greatly by your absence," remarked 
 Malewicz without looking at his interlocutor.
 
 ONE YEAR 51 
 
 41 Really," said Jadwiga, half laughing and half 
 provoked, " it is evidently wasted trouble to ask 
 anything from you to-day. You have said c No ' 
 to me twice to-day, and this is evidently going to 
 be the third time " 
 
 " Never mind the ungrateful man," put in 
 Wladimir eagerly. " Leave him to his turnips and 
 his fate, and let us keep the fishing all to our- 
 selves." 
 
 " No, this is not going to be the third time," 
 said Malewicz quickly. " You are right about my 
 having been very rude to-day. I don't usually take 
 a holiday during the week, but I shall do so this 
 week in order to make amends. At what hour am 
 I to be at the pond, Pani Bielinska ? " 
 
 "That is good of you," said Jadwiga with a 
 frank gratitude, and such a glance as would have 
 unsettled most men's heads, and impulsively she 
 gave him her hand which he carried to his lips, and 
 kept there a moment longer than was absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
 Instinctively I looked at my fairy-tale prince, 
 and saw in his smooth face a shadow of annoy- 
 ance as well as of almost childish surprise.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IT is difficult for me to say when exactly I be- 
 gan to suspect that there must have been some- 
 thing unusual about Mr. Bielinski's death, some 
 circumstance connected with it that seemed to 
 make the family and even their acquaintances shy 
 of speaking of it, and the memory of which hung 
 over the house like a shadow. I think, however, 
 that my suspicions must have come early, for al- 
 ready before the end of October I find myself 
 writing thus to Agnes : 
 
 " I cannot explain to you why it is, but I have 
 lately begun to scent an element of mystery in the 
 family atmosphere, and at a guess I should say that 
 the mystery points to the defunct Mr. Bielinski. 
 Many circumstances lead me to this conclusion : 
 the reserve of the usually so unreserved Jadwiga 
 concerning her father ; that walled-up entrance 
 used apparently for the last time at his funeral ; an 
 unoccupied room which goes by the name of the 
 c master's room,' and which I have noticed that 
 the servants avoid entering after dark ; above all, 
 that stricken woman shut up from the light of day, 
 and who, as I am told, was gay and lively until the 
 day of her widowhood. Surely that man cannot 
 
 5*
 
 ONE YEAR 53 
 
 have died quietly in his bed, but rather in some 
 exceptional way, the impression of which has re- 
 mained with his family until now. All that I have 
 learnt is that he was a gambler in his youth ; but 
 in a country where every second man is a gambler 
 this scarcely even calls for remark, and his fortune, 
 at any rate, does not seem to have suffered from 
 those early excesses. In the room I spoke of there 
 hangs his portrait beside that of Madame Bielinska, 
 both taken at the time of their marriage. It is 
 from him, evidently, that Jadwiga takes her 
 looks, not from her mother a splendily moulded, 
 but with far too soft curves for a man, with his 
 daughter's eyes, yet without her straightness of 
 gaze, and a mouth that lacks strength. The of- 
 tener I look at the portrait the more so I wonder 
 what his history can have been, and yet I do not 
 well see whom I could ask." 
 
 Just about the time of the writing of this letter 
 my suspicions received new food. This was on 
 the day of the fishing party. On that day, too 
 memorable to me in various ways Anulka gave 
 us all a fine fright ; but before I come to the results 
 of the fishing I have something to say of the fish- 
 ing itself. This afternoon it was which brought 
 me into better acquaintance with the fair-haired, 
 fair-faced Wladimir, whom at our first meeting I 
 had only admired at a distance, as one admires a 
 picture. The closer view I had that day of him
 
 54 ONE YEAR 
 
 was calculated only to heighten the favourable im- 
 pression already received. 
 
 I was standing almost solitary on the broad, flat 
 bank which ran round the pond when Wladimir 
 first approached me. It was at the further side of 
 the village, whose straw-thatched hovels crawled 
 up to the gates of Ludniki and whose wide, mud- 
 paved, swine-encumbered street had to be traversed 
 each time you desired to walk outside the park, 
 that lay the pond a small lake we would have 
 called it at home about two acres in extent, I 
 should say, almost square, obviously artificial, and 
 fed by a sluice from the neighbouring stream. It 
 formed part of the Ludniki property, but was let 
 to a Jew, as Jadwiga explained to me, and once in 
 three years was run dry in order to be cleared of 
 all fish beyond a given size. This was the event- 
 ful year, and consequently the whole interest of the 
 village was centred round the staw (pond). On 
 this Wednesday afternoon its low banks were 
 thickly studded with groups of shaggy, flaxen- 
 haired, scantily-covered children, together with 
 their sheepskin-coated elders, all intent on at least 
 shouting out directions, even if not called upon to 
 take an active part in the sport. The pond itself 
 was more of a curious than a beautiful sight to- 
 day, for all but the last and muddiest two feet of 
 water had been run off, and on the slippery floor 
 of this dingy fluid men and women were staggering
 
 ONE YEAR 55 
 
 about bare-legged, dragging their heavy nets behind 
 them, and slipping each fish secured into the sack 
 slung round their necks. Sometimes a larger 
 net, held by the occupants of two flat-bottomed 
 boats, was slowly swept toward some particular 
 point, from where a long line of peasants, destined 
 to cut off the retreat of the fish, advanced amid 
 wild shouts and much throwing of stones. All 
 these people were in the service of the Jew farm- 
 ing the pond, and who now moved about the bank 
 from point to point, a restless black figure which 
 seemed to want to be everywhere at a time, and 
 with uneasy eyes that attempted to keep note of 
 every fish slipped into every sack, for fear of being 
 cheated of even one. 
 
 Jadwiga and Anulka with Madame Kouska, the 
 doctor's wife, had entered a boat in order to ob- 
 serve the sport more closely, and several of the 
 young men were preparing to follow in a second 
 boat. Left to my own society I was just about to 
 take my place on a stem of one of the old willows 
 with which the bank was planted at regular inter- 
 vals, and one of which had stooped so low just 
 here that it appeared to be almost crawling on the 
 earth, when Wladimir, who was in the second boat, 
 perceived me, and springing to the shore, came run- 
 ning up the bank. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Miss I am afraid I have forgot- 
 ten your name," he said, with a most engaging
 
 56 ONE YEAR 
 
 smile, u but surely you are not going to remain 
 here all by yourself? That would be too dread- 
 fully dull for you ! " 
 
 He looked so genuinely distressed that I almost 
 laughed in his face. How could he know that 
 some people are conceited enough not to find their 
 own company dull ? 
 
 " There seems no help," I said, " since the boats 
 are full." 
 
 "Will you not take my place?" he asked 
 earnestly. 
 
 " And leave you alone on the bank ? Certainly 
 not ; why you have just said that it would be ter- 
 ribly dull. You had better make haste and re- 
 gain your place; your friends are just pushing 
 off." 
 
 He looked after the departing boats, then turned 
 back resolutely toward me. 
 
 " Since there is not room for both of us I shall 
 stay here. It would spoil all my pleasure to think 
 of you sitting all alone on this rotten old willow." 
 
 I looked at him incredulously, and saw, to my 
 surprise, that he actually meant what he said. 
 From what I learnt to know of him later I really 
 do believe that his pleasure would have suffered 
 considerably from the knowledge that some one 
 was feeling dull on the bank. There is a certain 
 sort of people and they are always most intrin- 
 sically lovable people who cannot enjoy them-
 
 ONE YEAR 57 
 
 selves properly unless they know that every one 
 else is doing the same. 
 
 " If there was no room for you in the boat at 
 least there is for me on this trunk," he said gaily, 
 and without further leave took his place at my 
 side. It was done with such boyish grace, and the 
 whole act was in itself so graceful and so kindly 
 meant, that I do not deny having felt touched. 
 That a young man, in an advanced stage of the 
 tender passion, and with the object of his devotion 
 present, should find time to look after a plain-faced, 
 elderly stranger, and this a governess, was, indeed, 
 unusual. Truly the fairy-tale prince kept up his 
 character in his acts as well as his looks ; this was 
 exactly the sort of youth who would alight in order 
 to give a lift to the inevitable old hag, or would 
 stop to bind up the sick wolf's paw, or to let the 
 mouse out of the trap. True, in the fairy tales, 
 the young man never fails to reap his reward in 
 the shape either of a beautiful princess or of a 
 golden castle built over-night, but what reward 
 could Wladimir ever hope to get from me ? 
 
 And yet though he had expected both the castle 
 and the princess he could not have been more 
 assiduous than he showed himself during the next 
 hour. A wistful glance in the direction of the dis- 
 tant boats, a momentary cloud of anxiety on his 
 fair forehead when some especially clear peal of 
 laughter came to us across the water was all that
 
 58 ONEYEAR 
 
 showed his occasionally wavering attention. Why 
 he should desire to win my sympathy I could not 
 possibly imagine, yet the symptoms seemed to point 
 that way. On Sunday he had presumably not dis- 
 covered me yet, or had been too much engrossed 
 by the reappearance of Jadwiga to have quite real- 
 ised who I was ; but to-day he had apparently 
 singled me out, perhaps only from the same spirit 
 of overflowing hospitality which had moved Ma- 
 dame Kouska to charge herself with my shopping. 
 
 "You must find our customs very barbarous," 
 he said once with a sigh, as the yells of the bare- 
 legged peasants rose in a fresh chorus, for it be- 
 longed to the principle of the thing to make as 
 much noise as possible. I could see that he was 
 watching me anxiously, as though to observe the 
 effect of the somewhat uncouth exhibition on a 
 stranger. 
 
 " Picturesquely barbarous," I replied. 
 
 " But still, barbarous," he persisted, evidently 
 dissatisfied. "Tell me, do such exhibitions make 
 you think worse of the nation which tolerates them ? " 
 ^" Really ! " I said, amused at his over-great earn- 
 estness, " I have not considered that point seriously 
 yet. Your nation is altogether so puzzling and 
 so well so inconsistent in its qualities that I have 
 not come to any conclusion about it yet." 
 
 He moved a little nearer to me on our rustic 
 seat, his interest evidently aroused.
 
 ONE YEAR 59 
 
 " Tell me, now ; in what ways ? How do you 
 find us inconsistent ? What qualities do you grant 
 us, and which deny ? " 
 
 " Order, to begin with, and method, which really 
 means steadiness and perseverance, while courage 
 and chivalry you have in far greater proportion 
 than even most brave and chivalrous nations." 
 
 Wladimir's eyes shone at my words. 
 
 " They are noble qualities which you accord us, 
 nobler than those you deny." 
 
 " But not always so useful in the history of a 
 people." 
 
 " Courage and chivalry," he repeated, as though 
 taking pleasure in the sound of the words ; " then 
 you admit that we can be loyal ? " 
 
 u Indeed I do, and generously kind ; to the 
 stranger above all," I said with perhaps a little 
 emotion in my voice, for nothing had touched me 
 so much as the warm reception on all sides. 
 
 " You are thanking me for having stayed beside 
 you," said Wladimir, in a burst of delight, " please 
 believe that it was a pleasure." And to my con- 
 sternation he took hold of my hand and fervently 
 kissed it. 
 
 I had not been thinking more specially of this 
 instance of kindness than of many others, but in 
 face of the boy's artless conviction it was impos- 
 sible to disclaim. 
 
 " If you were as steady as you are hospitable, as
 
 60 ONE YEAR 
 
 robust and vigorous as you are generous/' I re- 
 marked, partly as a means of damping his enthu- 
 siasm, for I did not care to have him any nearer to 
 me on the willow stem, " then your nation would 
 never have failed." 
 
 " You find us effeminate ? " he asked, with an 
 instant return of anxiety. 
 
 " I should not say that a people which has 
 died in heaps on battlefields can never be called 
 effeminate, but you seem to keep all your moral 
 energy for extraordinary occasions, and to lock it 
 away carefully in every-day life that is what 
 makes you so puzzling. Even your clothes and 
 your boots proclaim the difference between Poles 
 and Englishmen ; yours are so obviously calculated 
 for drawing-rooms, ours for muddy roads and 
 thorns and heather. Take, for instance, the ques- 
 tion of galoshes ; I must honestly confess that I 
 had never even seen a man under sixty in galoshes 
 until I came here." 
 
 " But what do they do when the weather is 
 wet ? " asked Wladimir with charming naivete, 
 looking down reflectively on his own faultless pat- 
 ent leather shoes. 
 
 " They get their feet wet," I gravely replied. 
 
 " And do you find it ridiculous for a man to 
 keep his feet dry ? " 
 
 " Ridiculous ? No. Nothing is really ridiculous 
 except to the narrow-minded. It all depends on
 
 ONE YEAR 61 
 
 the point of view. I only meant that the idea is 
 new to me. And, besides, what can it matter to 
 you what I find or do not find ? " I added, fearing 
 that I had gone too far in my strictures. " I do 
 not pretend that my opinion has any weight ; 
 indeed it is scarcely an opinion at all, only a first 
 impression." 
 
 " It matters to me a great deal what you think," 
 he said with a seriousness which annoyed me then, 
 but which came to explain itself in a hundred ways 
 later. " They are coming back," he said in the 
 same breath, but in quite a different tone, rising to 
 his feet as he spoke. 
 
 From the moment that the boats touched the 
 shore I was rid of my almost obtrusively attentive 
 squire. He had fasted too long from the be- 
 loved presence to be able to restrain himself any 
 longer. Indeed when I think of the pangs of 
 jealousy which his susceptible heart must have 
 been undergoing while sitting beside me on that 
 willow stem, knowing all the time his rival to be 
 in full possession of the field, I feel remorse even 
 now. But he made up amply for lost time. Dat- 
 ing from the landing of the party he had eyes and 
 ears for one person alone. The rest of the after- 
 noon was, in fact, a sort of moral duel between 
 him and Malewicz, in whom I had pains in rec- 
 ognising my taciturn companion of last Sunday. 
 By the restless light in his black eyes and the
 
 6i ONEYEAR 
 
 somewhat restless gaiety of his whole bearing it 
 was easy to see that, having once made up his 
 mind to the infringement of principle which to him 
 was included in this week-day holiday, he was de- 
 termined to drain the pleasure to the dregs. To- 
 day he was as quick as even Wladimir, in reading 
 every wish in the eyes of his mistress. And she 
 had a good many wishes to-day, as indeed she was 
 apt to have. She had brought one with her back 
 from the pond, and as she stepped on shore aided 
 by Malewicz, it was put into words. 
 
 " How would it be to drink tea here ? " she ex- 
 claimed gleefully. " Is there any reason why I 
 should not send for the samovar ? It is much too 
 early to go home yet, and it will taste ever so 
 much better here that willow is a sofa ready 
 made." 
 
 It is needless to say that the idea was enthusi- 
 astically taken up, affording the two rivals endless 
 opportunities of outdoing each other's zeal. One 
 charged himself with procuring the samovar from 
 the house, the other with collecting sticks for heat- 
 ing it ; both seemed bent on cracking their cheeks 
 with blowing on the recalcitrant coals that would 
 not glow as they ought, and their endeavours to 
 distribute glasses and plates were so much more 
 strenuous than judicious as to prove fatal to more 
 than one piece of crockery. Wladimir it was 
 whose skill in cutting up the cakes called forth
 
 ONE YEAR 63 
 
 Jadwiga's outspoken approval, but a greater tri- 
 umph was reserved to Malewicz. 
 
 " What a pity we can't have one of those big 
 carps to tea," Madame Kouska had observed. 
 " They did look so appetising flashing about in 
 the net." 
 
 " That is an idea ! " cried Jadwiga, always ready 
 for anything new. " Why do you say l a pity ' ? 
 We have only got to buy one from the Jew 
 and roast it on the spot, here, under the trees ah, 
 it makes me feel hungry already let us do it at 
 once, this very moment ! I can't possibly wait for 
 more than five minutes." 
 
 It was Jadwiga's habit to want everything to 
 happen at once ; any space left between a sugges- 
 tion and its execution was to her impatient cast of 
 mind a sort of agony. She had scarcely done 
 speaking when Malewicz had already started along 
 the bank toward where the Jew, surrounded by large 
 water barrels, was superintending the sorting of the 
 fish. Wladimir, busy with artistically disposing 
 his slices of cake, had missed his opportunity this 
 time. In a few minutes Malewicz was back hold- 
 ing a magnificent carp in his hands. A radiant 
 glance rewarded him far too radiant it seemed to 
 my perhaps rather rigid principles. Jadwiga, in- 
 toxicated either by the brilliancy of the dazzling 
 autumn day for the magnificent weather of my 
 arrival had not yet broken or by the ardour of
 
 64 () N E Y E A R 
 
 her admirers, seemed possessed to-day by a devil 
 of coquetry which obviously delighted in pitting 
 the two men against each other. Dressed in a 
 pearl-grey cashmere which she had brought with 
 her from Limbcrg and with a broad-brimmed, soft 
 felt on her head, her cheeks faintly coloured by 
 the crispness of the air, she was looking beautiful 
 enough to make her task easy indeed. 
 
 "You are dropping the water on to the ladies! " 
 cried Wladimir, in accents of true horror. " Why 
 did you not take a boy to carry it ? " 
 
 Then came the difficult question of cleaning, 
 solved by calling in a peasant girl from the gaping 
 crowd around us. 
 
 Soon a most appetising scent arose from the hot 
 coals on which the carp was grilling, and by this 
 time, too, the samovar had allowed itself to be 
 coaxed into a good humour; more baskets of pro- 
 visions had arrived from the house, and our little 
 feast gaily took its course. When I look back in 
 memory to that day, which, to my mind, always 
 remains a turning-point in Jadwiga's history, I 
 still quite vividly feel the impression of the keen, 
 radiant sunshine so keen that it drew flashes even 
 from the brown dregs of the pond of the old 
 burst willows leaning all aslant, as though search- 
 ing for their images in that dingy mirror, of the last 
 yellow willow leaves that fluttered into our plates 
 from off the almost naked branches and the gossa-
 
 ONE YEAR 65 
 
 mer threads that kept slowly floating past before 
 our eyes. Close at hand there was a hedge of 
 women and children, devouring us, and more espe- 
 cially our victuals, with their eyes, and beyond 
 there was the flat, treeless country, looking flatter, 
 and to-day, because of the intense transparency of 
 the atmosphere, the mushroom-like huts of distant 
 villages were clearly visible, the brown of the 
 newly-turned fields contrasting sharply even with 
 those that had been turned a week ago and, above 
 it all, and through it all, there were the yells of the 
 wading peasants in the water. 
 
 All at once we were far on in our feast by 
 that time the yells rose in an acuter chorus. 
 From a group somewhere about the middle of the 
 pond something apparently exciting but quite in- 
 comprehensible was being shouted to us. 
 
 " What are they saying ? " asked Jadwiga of the 
 bystanders. 
 
 "They have caught the biggest fish in the 
 pond," explained a woman, " and they believe it is 
 going to break the net." 
 
 " Oh, that must be the old carp they put back 
 again each time," said Jadwiga. " He has been 
 here since the time of my grandfather; the Jew is 
 not allowed to take this one out he is supposed to 
 bring luck to the pond. I saw him three years 
 ago ; let us go and look at him now." 
 
 Some of the ladies, having apparently had
 
 66 ONE YEAR 
 
 enough boating for the day, pretended not to hear, 
 but Jadwiga ran down to the bank, without stop- 
 ping to see who was following. The two boats 
 were still lying side by side ; I saw Malewicz help 
 her into one and begin rapidly to push away from 
 the shore with the long pole used by the peasants 
 on the pond, for it was too shallow now for oars. 
 I cannot exactly say how the thing happened, for I 
 had remained on the top of the bank, but I suppose 
 that Anulka in her haste had jumped into the wrong 
 boat, and when she saw the first one moving away 
 and in her fear of being left behind tried to jump 
 from the one into the other and fell short. At any 
 rate, not a minute after Jadwiga had left us we 
 heard a double shriek, and, rushing to the top of 
 the bank, saw Anulka splashing wildly in the 
 water, only a few yards from the shore, while the 
 boat with Malewicz and Jadwiga, following the 
 impulse of the last stroke given by the pole, was 
 moving away from her. 
 
 " Save her ! " cried Jadwiga, standing upright 
 in the boat, and looking as pale as though her 
 sister had fallen into the sea instead of into two 
 feet of water. Having slipped to her knees in 
 falling there was of course not much to be seen 
 of Anulka's small person, which naturally increased 
 the flurry of the beholders. 
 
 I heard Malewicz shouting something, as, hav- 
 ing with a rapid movement changed the course of
 
 ONE YEAR 67 
 
 the boat, he held out the end of the pole toward 
 Anulka. She grasped it convulsively with her 
 wet hands and would have been in the boat al- 
 most immediately, but at that moment some one 
 snatched her up bodily and carried her to the bank. 
 It was Wladimir, who arriving just one moment 
 too late to help Jadwiga into the first boat had been 
 preparing to board the second when Anulka took 
 her fatal leap. With his dripping burden in his 
 arms he now climbed the bank, and as he put her 
 down cautiously on the grass his hard breathing 
 and high colour betrayed an excitement which 
 even then struck me as not quite in proportion to 
 the deed accomplished. 
 
 " She is saved," he said, turning with a certain 
 solemnity to Jadwiga, who had already regained 
 the bank. 
 
 " Yes, she is saved," said Jadwiga, as she knelt 
 down beside the shivering, whimpering little 
 bundle, and talking almost as solemnly as he ; "I 
 shall never forget it." 
 
 41 It was a useless expenditure of valour and of 
 clothes," remarked Malewicz, in an almost bitter 
 tone, casting an indescribable glance at the lower 
 portion of Wladimir's recently so elegant attire. 
 " It would have been just as easy to pull her into 
 the boat." 
 
 " Clothes cannot matter at moments like that," 
 replied Wladimir, and as he said it his eyes sought
 
 68 ONEYEAR 
 
 mine with a clearly triumphant glance which 
 seemed to be saying : " Where is your theory of 
 the wet feet now ? " Was it indeed possible that 
 this fascinating but puzzling young man had 
 walked into the water, not only to please Jadwiga, 
 but also in order to give me the lie ? At any rate, 
 there could be no doubt that the honours of the 
 day remained with him.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WITH as little delay as possible Anulka was 
 got home and to bed, and the gay afternoon ended 
 in a somewhat disturbed evening. " She will be 
 ill I am quite sure she will be ill," Jadwiga 
 kept repeating, all the time she was rubbing the 
 little creature down what a meagre little lady it 
 was out of its clothes and plying her with hot 
 tea ; but when she had been safely buried in blank- 
 ets and her small teeth had at length ceased chat- 
 tering, alarm gave way to relief. It really looked 
 as though the dreaded chill had been averted, 
 and the house resumed its normal physiognomy. 
 
 We all went to our rooms rather earlier than 
 usual that night, but I was scarcely in mine when 
 the door opened, as it so often did now, and Jad- 
 wiga said : " May I ? " and then without awaiting 
 permission, glided in and took up her usual station 
 on the edge of my bed. This was quite an estab- 
 lished thing now ; hardly an evening passed on 
 which she did not wander in in her dressing-gown, 
 her bare feet in slippers, her fingers busy plaiting 
 up her hair. Anulka slept at the far end of the 
 house, in her old nursery, under charge of the 
 elderly woman who had been with her since her
 
 7 o ONEYEAR 
 
 birth ; we had this wing almost to ourselves, Jad- 
 wiga and I. This offered ideal opportunities for 
 confidences, but until now she had apparently 
 nothing to confide in me beyond her opinion on 
 the last poem read, or some rather fantastical news 
 of life in general. To-day it almost seemed as 
 though something more definite were coming ; I 
 could see it by the very silence which marked the 
 first few minutes of her presence, and by the 
 lights and shadows that chased each other over her 
 expressive face. I was wondering whether she 
 was going to speak at all when she said without 
 preliminary : 
 
 11 What would you do if you were me ? " 
 
 " About what ? " I asked, not guessing the drift 
 of her question. 
 
 " About those two men. I don't think I am in- 
 ordinately conceited in fancying that both care for 
 me." 
 
 " You would need to be very blind not to see it," 
 I replied. 
 
 " Well, and what would you do ? " 
 
 " Encourage the one I liked best." 
 
 " That is exactly the difficulty," said Jadwiga, 
 beginning to laugh with a delicious helplessness ; 
 " I am not quite sure which I like best. Some- 
 times I think it is the one and sometimes the 
 other; they both seem to me to have their 
 points."
 
 ONE YEAR 71 
 
 " Which simply means that you don't care for 
 either properly, or at least not yet." 
 
 u Oh, but I want to," cried Jadwiga, with almost 
 comical eagerness. " I feel that I shall never be 
 quite satisfied until I care for some one person very 
 much, and I know that when once I begin I shall 
 care more seriously than most people do. Perhaps 
 it is this that has kept me back until now," she 
 added reflectively ; " the sort of feeling that it 
 would be dangerous to let myself go." 
 
 " I should advise you to keep yourself back a 
 little longer," I remarked, " until you know for 
 certain in which direction you want to go." 
 
 " No, no ! " she said impatiently, " it is time 
 now. It is only when one has given one's heart 
 entirely to some one that one can speak of living a 
 woman's real life and I want to give mine en- 
 tirely. It is only that which can help one to un- 
 derstand all the poems that have ever been written, 
 it is that which explains all the music. I know I 
 shall live a fuller and happier life when I have got 
 one point round which to group all my thoughts, 
 my hopes, my fears, my prayers. At present when 
 I read a love-song of Heine's I feel as though it 
 were not written for me, and I want it to be writ- 
 ten for me I want to have a part in its beauty and 
 in its pain. Each time I sing : * Voi che sapete 
 che cosa e amor,' I feel ashamed, because I, too, 
 am a woman, and do not yet know what love is.
 
 72 ONE YEAR 
 
 It is like worshipping at an altar without an idol 
 on it. Oh, surely you must understand what I 
 mean ? " 
 
 I could not say that I exactly did, never myself 
 having had experience of this curious state of mind, 
 but looking at Jadwiga's shining eyes and glowing 
 lips and at the heaving of the soft white frill that 
 covered her beautiful breast, I dimly understood 
 that all natures are not alike, and that to some 
 women perhaps I should rather say to the women 
 of some nations that sentiment of love is so great 
 a necessity as to make the object on which it is 
 expended of less vital importance than the fact of 
 being able so to expend it. I have always thought 
 that if I had not happened to know Henry I would 
 never have wanted to love at all, but I am told that 
 this is nonsense, and perhaps it is, and perhaps 
 Jadwiga's case is really the more normal of the 
 two. 
 
 " You might have pity on my perplexity," said 
 Jadwiga with mock gravity. " I tell you I have 
 never had such difficulty in making up my mind." 
 
 " You surely are not going to ask me to do so 
 for you ? " I inquired in alarm. 
 
 Jadwiga began to laugh at my distressed mien, 
 I suppose. 
 
 " Why not ? You are older than I am, and at 
 least ten times more sensible. The balance hangs 
 quite even at present at least I think it does a
 
 ONE YEAR 73 
 
 word of yours will make it dip one way or the 
 other. Out with it, then. Whom do you vote for 
 Wladimir or Krysztof ? " 
 
 She looked at me with audaciously laughing 
 eyes, her head a little thrown back, her white throat 
 displayed. It was evident that the edge of the 
 fright concerning Anulka once being over her 
 easily moved spirits had leapt up in reaction ; the 
 triumphs of the afternoon had resumed their sway. 
 She was joking, of course, and yet she was not 
 only joking either. I verily do believe that on that 
 evening she was standing at the cross-roads of her 
 fate, inclined superficially to both of her suitors, 
 but deeply as yet to neither, and in a state of mind 
 which made it possible for her to fall in love with 
 either of them, according as mere chance would 
 decide. 
 
 u I think Wladimir would make the better lover 
 of the two," I reflectively replied, wishing to be 
 conscientious even if it were only a joke " an 
 ideal lover, but I can't help fancying that the other 
 would make a better husband." 
 
 " That is as much as voting for Krysztof, since a 
 husband lasts longer than a lover. 
 
 "Yes, if you insist on having my opinion that 
 is the one I should recommend." 
 
 The recollection of Wladimir's boyish smile 
 and of that hour spent on the willow trunk 
 made me feel rather ungrateful as I said it, and
 
 74 ONE YEAR 
 
 yet for the life of me I could not have done other- 
 wise. 
 
 u What objection can you possibly have to Wlad- 
 imir ? " asked Jadwiga contradictiously. 
 
 " What objection can you have to Pan Male- 
 wicz ? He is not so good-looking as his rival, 
 but " 
 
 " Oh, yes, he is good-looking, too, but Wladimir 
 is beautiful." 
 
 " It seems to me that my advice is not wanted," 
 I said, laughing. 
 
 u Yes, it is, it is," she urged. " Go on, please ; 
 what was going to come after that 4 but ' ? " 
 
 " 1 only meant to say that if he would do proper 
 justice to himself Pan Malewicz could not help be- 
 ing a remarkably fine man, but he never seems to 
 take time to eat, and scarcely to tie his boot laces, 
 and that is what gives him that overdriven look." 
 
 Jadwiga made a little grimace. "You see that is 
 one of the things. I have really no doubt of his 
 worth, but I am not sure that I could pass my life 
 with a man who wears his coats as long as Krys- 
 ztof does. I know he is a model farmer and does 
 wonders with what remains of the estate, but I do 
 like a man to be turned out well, and not always to 
 be talking of his potatoes and his turnips when- 
 ever he talks at all. If he were my husband I 
 should not know to whom to rave about Chopin or 
 Byron, since both poetry and music seem to be to
 
 ONEYEAR 75 
 
 him a sort of forbidden luxuries. There is noth- 
 ing but work in his head ; work, work, work; how 
 can that help making a man dull ? " 
 
 " Does he work for himself alone ? " I asked. 
 
 " For himself and his mother, and I suppose he 
 works for her really more than for himself. Still, 
 that does not make him a more amusing compan- 
 ion." 
 
 " But it throws another light on his manner of 
 being," I remarked. " It shows that he can devote 
 himself." 
 
 " Don't praise him too immoderately," laughed 
 Jadwiga, " or you will be damaging his chances." 
 
 " Well, decide for yourself, since it is evident 
 that I cannot decide for you, but whichever way it 
 is do not let them both go on hoping ; it is a cruel 
 sort of kindness." 
 
 As I said it there came steps through the adjoin- 
 ing room, and Anulka's attendant put her head in 
 at the door and said something in Polish to Jad- 
 wiga. She was on her feet in an instant, white as 
 death. 
 
 " What is it ? " I asked. 
 
 " I told you how it would be," said Jadwiga, ex- 
 citedly. " She is worse Anulka. She awoke in 
 high fever and they have sent for the doctor," and, 
 pushing the nurse to one side, she left the room. I 
 followed in silence. In the old nursery at the end 
 of the house we found a strange, shrunken figure in
 
 7 6 ONE YEAR 
 
 a limp white dressing-gown and a lace night-cap, 
 sitting motionless beside the bed. The figure did 
 not turn its head at our entrance, and it was not 
 until I was close to the bed that I recognised Ma- 
 dame Bielinska. Her large cavernous eyes never 
 moved from Anulka's face, and the habitual terror 
 which dwelt in their depth seemed to have crept 
 out of them and to have spread over the whole of 
 her emaciated features. 
 
 One glance at the ghastly face on the pillow 
 showed that we had rejoiced too soon, and that the 
 dreaded chill had, after all, not been averted. 
 Anulka, her teeth chattering worse than ever, lay 
 cowered up into herself, for the cold fit of the 
 fever was upon her. 
 
 There was little rest for the household after 
 that. First there came the long anxious wait for 
 the doctor, then the doctor himself, then the bustle 
 produced by the carrying out of his prescriptions. 
 It was long past midnight when Madame Bielinska 
 allowed herself to be led back to her room. Jad- 
 wiga refused to leave her sister, but fell asleep on 
 a sofa in the corner of the nursery, exhausted with 
 the various experiences of the day. Anulka her- 
 self had dropped into an uneasy slumber, and to 
 all intents and purposes I found myself alone with 
 Mary a, the white-haired nurse, who gave no fur- 
 ther vent to her feelings than by the utterance of 
 portentously deep sighs, as she moved about the
 
 ONE YEAR 77 
 
 room, busy with compresses and basins and night- 
 lights, and all the paraphernalia of a sick-room. 
 Presently she came and sat down beside me, still 
 sighing softly to herself. 
 
 " Has she often been taken like this before ? " I 
 asked in a whisper of my companion, for in the 
 course of her lengthy career she had picked up 
 enough German to make a sort of roughshod con- 
 versation possible between us. 
 
 " Often, often," replied old Marya with an 
 extra deep sigh. " I have thought to bury her ten 
 times at least." 
 
 " It is strange she should be so delicate when 
 her sister appears to have such good health," I re- 
 marked. "It really was nothing of a chill to 
 speak of a mere mud bath, that was all." 
 
 The woman looked at me as though not sure 
 whether to be indignant at my ignorance or com- 
 passionate with it. 
 
 " Strange ? Would it not be stranger far if she 
 had her sister's health ? Poor mite, poor mite ! 
 she has never had a chance. Her father himself 
 took it from her. It is him she has to thank for 
 that puny little face of hers and those narrow 
 shoulders." 
 
 " Her father ? " I repeated in surprise. " But 
 to judge from his portrait he must have been a re- 
 markably fine man, with anything but narrow 
 shoulders."
 
 78 ONEYEAR 
 
 Marya laughed under her breath, and went on 
 in her hoarse whisper : 
 
 " Ah, so he was, so he was it is not of what 
 he was in life that I am speaking, but of what he 
 was in death; it is that which frightened our gra- 
 cious lady to the point of bringing her to bed pre- 
 maturely, and to make of her babe almost a cripple. 
 Did you not know that she was a seven month 
 child ? " 
 
 I felt now that I was close to that mystery 
 which I had until now only vaguely suspected, that 
 a question would probably be enough to disclose to 
 me the history of the family, but I shrank from 
 asking it of a servant, and apparently it did not 
 occur to her to tell me more, probably because to 
 her it was no mystery, but an open secret, known 
 to every child within ten miles of Ludniki. This 
 very publicity it was which kept me from knowing 
 it, every one taking for granted that I had heard 
 the truth already from some other person. 
 
 We relapsed into silence, and presently Marya 
 left the room to fetch some article required. As 
 the door softly closed I saw Anulka's fever-bright 
 eyes opening wide. The heat fit was upon her 
 now, as I could see by the streak of scarlet on her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " I was not asleep," she said with a grotesquely 
 sly smile on her burning face. " I heard you and 
 Marya talking, but she did not tell you everything.
 
 ONE YEAR 79 
 
 Shall I tell it you ? Come here and I will whis- 
 per." 
 
 She stretched out one of her thin arms, and 
 clutching hold of the sleeve of my dressing-gown, 
 pulled my head down to the pillow beside her. 
 
 " Papa was mad," she said in my ear, upon 
 which I could feel her dry breath like that of a 
 furnace. " I never saw him, but Marya told me 
 he was mad, and so did Jadwiga, so it must be 
 true. Have you ever seen a mad person ? " 
 
 " Lie still," I urged, trying to speak calmly, al- 
 though painfully impressed. " The doctor said 
 you were not to talk," and I gently disengaged my- 
 self from her arm. Anulka stared at me in si- 
 lence, with wide uncomprehending eyes which 
 seemed to have lost the sense of my identity. 
 
 When I got back to my room the owls had 
 ceased to scream in the bushes that grew close 
 against the windows, and the birds were beginning 
 to stir, for daylight was near. I lay down on my 
 bed, but what uneasy slumber I snatched was 
 crossed and intercrossed by confused and phantas- 
 mal dreams of the muddy pond, the wading peas- 
 ants, the dripping Anulka, with a mad father hov- 
 ering somewhere in the background, but always 
 vanishing each time I tried to examine him more 
 closely.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 "LUDNIKI, November 3Oth, 188 . 
 
 " MY DEAR AGNES, I have got the whole story 
 at last, and a ghastly enough story it is, but it 
 leaves me as puzzled as ever. There is a mystery 
 behind the mystery to my mind, at least and 
 which seems to me ten times more bewildering 
 than the thing I have discovered. But in order to 
 explain how I came to discover it I must tell you 
 of one of the most exciting experiences that has 
 ever come my way. 
 
 " I think I told you that our little convalescent is 
 always springing the most exotic wishes upon us, 
 which have to be fulfilled on penalty of a relapse, 
 brought on by sheer irritation. Well, the other 
 day she was seized with the desire of can you 
 guess what? No, of course you can't of a 
 cigarette. She has smoked some surreptitiously it 
 seems, and so ecstatically enjoyed the forbidden 
 fruit that its recollection came over her, like a 
 craving, the other afternoon. Great consternation 
 in the house; nobody knew exactly what to do; 
 torn between the fear of harming her by either an 
 acquiescence or a refusal and the chances seemed 
 about equal everybody began by losing their 
 80
 
 ONE YEAR 81 
 
 heads. Marya, having spent half an hour in use- 
 less argument, came running in distress to Jadwiga, 
 Jadwiga came to me for advice. I sent her to her 
 mother, from whom she came back more be- 
 wildered than ever, for Madame Bielinska had 
 given up deciding things so long ago, that she has 
 forgotten how to do it. It was finally I who had 
 to speak the last word. Of course I decided 
 against the cigarette, and, of course, every one 
 instantly turned upon me. Could I really take 
 upon me the responsibility of the precious darling 
 fretting herself into a fever ? 4 Well, then, give 
 it her, in Heaven's name ! ' I said desperately, 
 * since you are so certain it will kill her not to 
 have it.' * But supposing it does her harm ? 
 Do you really think it will do her harm ? ' I 
 returned that, not being a doctor, I could be sure 
 of nothing. Then a simple solution struck me : 
 4 Why not send to Doctor Kouski and put the 
 case before him ? Clearly it is his business to 
 decide.' This meant a delay of at least two 
 hours, but, after an excited debate, and after 
 Jadwiga had with tears in her eyes implored her 
 sister to be patient for just a little longer, the pro- 
 posal was adopted. 
 
 " ' I will write a note to Doctor Kouski,' said 
 Jadwiga, 'and beg him to be lenient.' 
 
 " 4 But supposing Doctor Kouski is not at home? ' 
 objected Anulka fretfully.
 
 82 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " c Then Jan must, of course, go to Doctor 
 Lanicz.' 
 
 " Jan was the coachman who was to go on horse- 
 back. 
 
 " l Jan is so stupid,' said Anulka, 4 he is sure to 
 make a mess of it, and to come back without an 
 answer. Couldn't some one else go ? Some one 
 who could explain it all to him ? ' 
 
 " c It is too cold for Marya, or else we might have 
 sent the sledge,' Jadwiga was beginning, when I 
 had a second idea. 
 
 " l Let me go ! ' I said with alacrity, for the pros- 
 pect of a sledge drive to Zloczek was strangely 
 enticing. Perhaps it will astonish you to hear me 
 talking of sledges already, but I forgot to explain 
 that we have jumped almost at one bound from 
 after-summer to mid-winter. The fine weather 
 had lasted till past the middle of this month only 
 the air growing a little keener every day and the 
 sky of a fainter blue, and then one night a vague 
 moan was heard in the distance, and presently grew 
 into a howl, and next morning the view was veiled 
 by a whirl of snowflakes. For three days it was 
 impossible to take a step outside the house ; even 
 the servants had to shovel their way before them 
 across the yard and arrived in the kitchen with 
 clumps of snow on their hats. We lived in a sort 
 of semi-darkness, and verily believed we were 
 going to be buried alive. Then on the fourth
 
 ONEVEAR 83 
 
 morning an equally abrupt change : a cloudless sun 
 rising on a transformed world ; everything, as far 
 as the eye could see, of a dazzling white ; the trees 
 no longer trees but branches of white coral, 
 immaculate cushions of snow on the window 
 ledges, the top of the park wall padded with snow 
 and apparently powdered over with diamond dust. 
 After my three days' imprisonment I was gasping 
 for air ; you can imagine with what zeal I offered 
 myself as messenger. After a little more debate I 
 was accepted, and, laden with injunctions and fur 
 rugs, I set forth on my first sledge drive, promising 
 to be back in the smallest possible time. But 
 in the event Anulka had to wait much longer 
 for her cigarette than either she or I had bargained 
 for. 
 
 " I wish I could give you even a faint idea of the 
 beauty of that drive and of its exhilaration, or could 
 make you see the almost painful brilliancy of that 
 vast plain of virgin snow, as yet untrodden by any 
 foot, unmarked by any vehicle, and on which we 
 carved out our way for ourselves, as a ship does 
 upon the ocean its whiteness broken only by the 
 blue shadows of solitary trees. And everything on 
 which you attempted to rest your dazzled eyes was 
 equally fatiguing to look upon the huts were not 
 thatched with straw to-day, but with snow ; the 
 pollard willows which grew in the palings wore 
 white snow-caps upon their clumsy round heads,
 
 84 O N E Y E A R 
 
 and even the beams of the draw-wells were thick- 
 ened to twice their natural size by the ridges of 
 snow they bore. If the drive had lasted four hours 
 instead of one I could not have tired of observing 
 the work of the last three days. We were not yet 
 half way to Zloczek, however, when I began to be 
 aware of an indefinable change in the atmosphere. 
 Until then the air had been motionless, though 
 keen, but gradually I began to feel its edge grow 
 sharper in my face, while it piped more shrilly past 
 my ear. I had just observed this when Jan turned 
 on the box and said something to me, which, of 
 course, I did not understand. He pointed forward 
 with his whip at the same time, and I now per- 
 ceived that the blue vault of the sky which had 
 been so uniform half an hour ago was covered in 
 the west by a whitish grey cloud mass, so compact 
 and so clean cut at the edges that it looked like 
 nothing so much as a vast round hood, gradually 
 mounting higher. It had not yet reached the sun, 
 which still shone in undisturbed brilliancy, but was 
 creeping nearer to it every moment. I had been 
 so busy looking about me at the wonders of this 
 white world that I had had no time to glance ahead. 
 Evidently this was a fresh instalment of the snow- 
 storm which had lasted three days, a sort of after- 
 thought, as though the Ice King had repented of 
 having let us off so cheap. l Well, we are going 
 to have another shower,' I thought to myself,
 
 ONE YEAR 85 
 
 smiling a little at Jan's evident anxiety. Zloczek 
 lay somewhere between us and the monstrous snow- 
 hood, and from the way he began to lash out at the 
 horses it was evident that he was making every 
 effort to get there before the snow began. It was 
 a sort of race between us and that cloud, although 
 each was coming from a different direction. At 
 first it seemed as though we were going to win it 
 was the brilliancy of the sunshine that deceived us 
 but soon the increased current of air warned us 
 of the approach of the enemy. The grey mantle 
 drew over the sky with amazing rapidity ; the 
 church spire of Zloczek, which had already been 
 clearly visible, first disappeared behind it, then I 
 missed a clump of trees I had been observing one 
 landmark after another was blotted out, until sud- 
 denly in one moment the sun was gone, as abruptly 
 as a candle blown out, and leaving us in what, by 
 contrast with the recent brilliancy, seemed almost 
 like darkness. At the same instant the cold became 
 deadly, and, looking past Jan's shoulder, I said 
 aloud instinctively : 4 Good gracious ! what is 
 that ? ' forgetting that he could not understand me 
 for a wall seemed rushing upon us, a white, 
 wild-looking wall, with a furious face and a raging 
 voice that struck terror into my heart even before 
 I realised what there was to fear from it. At the 
 same moment the sledge gave a violent jerk ; I saw 
 that Jan was pulling round the horses, and wondered
 
 86 ONE YEAR 
 
 vaguely whether he had gone mad, for he was also 
 making frantic signs to me with the flat of his left 
 hand. In the next moment he had checked the 
 horses sharply, and, throwing down the reins, had 
 flung himself face foremost on the back of one of 
 them. And after that I had not time to observe 
 anything more, for I was gasping for breath and 
 fighting with the wind for my head covering, for 
 that white wall was upon us. I cannot tell you 
 what a real Polish snowstorm looks like seen at 
 close quarters, for to open my eyes was as impossible 
 to me as to lift my head. Instinctively I crouched 
 to the bottom of the sledge I knew not what Jan 
 had meant by that frantic pantomime and as I did 
 so I could feel the lightly-built thing shuddering 
 through each wooden member under the onslaught 
 of the hurricane. For one moment it seemed verily 
 as though it must lift us from our place. I could 
 not exactly say how I expected to be killed 
 whether by sheer cold, or breathlessness, or by 
 suffocation under the snow, but I remember having 
 felt as though it could surely not be possible to 
 come out of this alive. I cannot tell you either 
 how long it lasted, if it was really only ten minutes, 
 as I have since been assured, then they were cer- 
 tainly the longest ten minutes I have known in my 
 life each minute was a terror in itself, and yet there 
 was also a mild sort of exhilaration about it which 
 was a better support than all my fur coverings. I
 
 ONE YEAR 87 
 
 am not sure even that there was not a little regret 
 mingled with the real relief I felt when I became 
 aware that the climax had been passed. As soon 
 as my breath began to come more easily I cautiously 
 looked up and immediately received a fresh shower 
 of snow upon my face, that which had accumulated 
 on my head during the past minutes. Just at first 
 I imagined that somehow I was no longer in the 
 sledge, for to the right and to the left of me the 
 snow was on a level with my elbows, completely 
 masking the woodwork on all sides. The snow- 
 flakes still flew past us, but growing thinner every 
 instant, while ahead of us the landscape was wiped 
 out by the retreating snow-cloud. The horses 
 stood with drooping heads, trembling in every 
 limb, up to their bellies in snow, with the scared, 
 yet submissive look of chastised creatures. Jan, a 
 prostrate man of snow, still lay motionless, but 
 presently raised himself slowly and turned toward 
 me, as though to see if I were still alive. We 
 looked at each other in silence, no words were 
 necessary, nor would have been wanted, even with 
 better means of communication. Of course, he 
 had gone through this sort of thing before, and I 
 had not, which no doubt made him the calmer of 
 the two at this moment, in contradistinction to my 
 foolish calmness of ten minutes ago. 
 
 u I will skip the next hour or so, which was spent 
 partly in shouting for help and partly (by me) in
 
 88 ONEYEAR 
 
 waiting for it, for Jan had ended by wading off 
 waist-deep in snow toward the first houses of 
 Zloczek, not more than a quarter of a mile distant. 
 He returned heading a party of men with spades, 
 and presently the half-frozen horses dragged us 
 slowly into Zloczek. The sun was actually out 
 again by this time, although near to setting, and 
 the remnant of the snow-cloud fast disappearing on 
 the horizon. On the whole, I was agreeably sur- 
 prised by my first view of Zloczek, which had 
 been described to me as * a dirty hole full of Jews.' 
 How much the snow had to answer for I don't 
 know, of course, but my impression of the long, 
 wide street and the big, square market-place was 
 not unfavourable, perhaps partly because they were 
 empty of Jews as well as of anything else, for 
 every one was still safe behind doors and windows. 
 The panic of the last half-hour was still written 
 plainly over everything, and, although it was still 
 broad daylight, the bells of our sledge rang out in 
 an almost unbroken silence, as though in a town 
 of the dead. 
 
 41 1 confess I was glad to find myself under the 
 doctor's roof, and only when good little Madame 
 Kouska had pulled the gloves of? my numb fingers 
 and unbuttoned my sealskin for me did I realise 
 how very nearly I had been frozen to death. I was 
 greeted with exclamations and overwhelmed with 
 questions, but at the same time entreated not to
 
 ONE YEAR 89 
 
 answer them and neither to stir out of the roomy 
 armchair into which I had been almost forcibly 
 pushed nor to fatigue myself with speaking until I 
 had swallowed at least three glasses of hot tea. At 
 the third glass I began to be aware that my blood 
 was again circulating and, with reviving senses, re- 
 membered my actual errand. But scarcely had I 
 explained and expressed a wish for a speedy settle- 
 ment of the question, than Madame Kouska 
 laughed in my face. 4 One sees you are a stranger 
 here,' she gleefully exclaimed. l Do you actually 
 imagine that you will get back to Ludniki to-night ? 
 Not even a maniac would think of it. Of course 
 you will have to sleep here, whether you like it or 
 not, and if you don't like it, it will be a proper 
 punishment for not having visited me yet Provi- 
 dence is on my side, you see. Besides, my hus- 
 band is not at home, and will not be for two days 
 more, so you can't ask your question.' 
 
 " 4 But Anulka will go into a fever if she does 
 not get her cigarette,' I said in distress. Upon 
 which Madame Kouska assured me that Anulka 
 would be sure to be so frightened about me that 
 she would not even think of her cigarette. The 
 snowstorm was quite certain to have put it out of 
 her head, and everybody at Ludniki knew too well 
 what a snowstorm was to think of expecting me 
 back that night. 
 
 " I protested vigorously, and it was not until I
 
 9 o ONE YEAR 
 
 had from Jan's pantomime understood the utter 
 unfeasibility of getting through the snowdrifts that 
 night that I resigned myself to my fate. 
 
 " Except for my qualms regarding Anulka, it really 
 was not a hard fate, for my dark-eyed little hostess 
 was evidently brimming over with gratification at 
 having captured me thus unawares, and presently 
 proceeded with great delight to show me over the 
 house. The children I had been seeing ever since 
 my arrival three or four sturdy, but somewhat 
 grimy looking little mites, who kept climbing on to 
 their mother's knee, and rolling off again, and 
 bumping their heads, and howling, and getting con- 
 soled, and poking their fingers into her eyes, with- 
 out ever succeeding in disturbing her equanimity. 
 She is one of those happy people who seem to be 
 pleased with everything. 4 This is my store-room,' 
 she said to me with conscious pride, opening the 
 door of a small closet off the dining-room, so 
 placed that somebody has to get up from table each 
 time that something is wanted out of it. In the 
 store-room I caught sight of a pleasing mixture of 
 dress-baskets, empty bottles, flour sacks, soap and 
 candles, together with a sprinkling of baby linen 
 hung up to dry. 7 should have called it a superior 
 sort of dusthole, but she called it a store-room, and 
 was evidently happy in its possession ; and there- 
 fore to be envied, I suppose. The rest of the 
 house was to match, but, indeed, I feel almost
 
 ONE YEAR 91 
 
 wicked in causing you to smile over these things, 
 for what can empty bottles and broken mouse-traps 
 and even spider-webs matter when they are coupled 
 with so much true kindness of heart ; and what is 
 the odds of the sideboard having to stand in the 
 nursery, because of there being no room for it in 
 the dining-room, so long as there is no false shame 
 about the matter ? It was delightfully unconven- 
 tional to be waited on by a barefooted peasant girl, 
 and there was something refreshingly natural in the 
 open and above-board way in which the best china 
 and the ' company spoons ' were dealt out in my 
 honour as well as in my presence. Perhaps my 
 tastes are changing, but I can assure you that all 
 the comparisons I made that evening between this 
 and the more correct forms of entertainment I had 
 hitherto been used to, turned out to the disadvan- 
 tage of the latter. 
 
 " It was not until we had had our supper and the 
 children had been put to bed that the conversation 
 became interesting. Despite my partiality for Ma- 
 dame Kouska I must admit that her range of topics 
 is limited, varying principally between babies and 
 frocks, and mingled with a good many confessions 
 touching the incorrigible frivolity of the speaker. 
 4 1 am afraid I am amusing you very badly,' she 
 said at least ten times that evening, c but I don't 
 know how to talk of anything except balls and 
 fashions.' Nevertheless I mistrust the genuine-
 
 92 ONEYEAR 
 
 ness of that absolute frivolity she claims one 
 thing which leads me to do so is the observation 
 that she dotes on her children, sleeps in a room 
 with three babies, feeds the youngest one on her 
 knee at table, can't enter the nursery without see- 
 ing at once who has been crying and who has not, 
 and in general leads the life of a dog at home, 
 though seen out of it no one would guess this 
 smiling model of fashion had any interest higher 
 than her dress. There are also strong grounds for 
 suspicion that she possesses several housewifely 
 virtues, and is as practical about pickling cabbages 
 as about making ruches. 
 
 " But to return to this particular conversation. 
 We were sitting alone in the little sitting-room, 
 with the albums on the table and the paper flowers 
 in the vases tout comme chez nous, as you see. 
 The small, middle-class apartment with the wood 
 fire crackling in the stove felt wonderfully snug 
 after my experiences of the afternoon, and a gentle 
 drowsiness was beginning to steal over my senses 
 when Madame Kouska startled me by saying : 
 1 Tell me, are you not afraid of ghosts in that big 
 house over there ? ' I replied drowsily that I was 
 not, and had not even heard that the house was 
 supposed to be haunted. * Neither have I,' she 
 replied, ' but it ought to be, if ever any house 
 was. That Ludniki should not have a ghost 
 of its own is enough to make one disbelieve
 
 ONE YEAR 93 
 
 in ghosts altogether surely you must confess 
 
 that ? ' 
 
 " ' How can I without knowing the reason ? ' I 
 said. 1 1 have, indeed, noticed that there is a 
 room which the servants don't like entering after 
 dark, but they have not told me why, and I would 
 not understand if they did.' 
 
 " c Well, surely that is comprehensible,' said my 
 hostess, with a little shiver. 4 1 know that nothing 
 would induce me to go into that room after eight 
 in the evening.' 
 
 " 4 Has anything particular happened there ? ' I 
 asked, still a little sleepily. 
 
 " Madame Kouska's looks betrayed undisguised 
 amazement. 
 
 " l But surely you know,' she persisted. * It 
 can't be that you don't know living in the 
 house.' 
 
 " ' No, I don't know,' I said, a little impatiently, 
 I think, l and exactly because I am living in the 
 house ; though I am always hearing hints dropped 
 and catching half remarks which I don't know 
 how to interpret. If you know and if it is no 
 secret I wish you would tell me once for all, so as 
 to let me feel a little less foolish when the matter 
 is alluded to.' 
 
 " 4 Then you know absolutely nothing about Pan 
 Bielinski's death ? ' she asked, still amazed. 
 
 " ' Nothing,' I said.
 
 94 ONEYEAR 
 
 " l You don't know that he was a murderer ? ' 
 
 " I think I must have jumped on my chair, for 
 she put out her hand as though to soothe me. 
 
 "*I don't believe it,' I said instinctively, and 
 merely because I loved Jadwiga. 
 
 " ' How strange you should not know,' was all 
 she said, "and yet it is comprehensible, for of 
 course the family would not speak of it. I will 
 tell you if you wish it is no secret, since every 
 one here knows it. It happened nearly eleven 
 years ago it will be eleven years in spring just 
 after we married you wouldn't take me to be 
 thirty, would you ? Bazyli that is my husband 
 was the Bezirks Arzt (doctor appointed by Gov- 
 ernment) then, as he is still, and of course was in 
 the middle of it all, in his official capacity. It 
 was a terrible beginning for me, and gave me a 
 painfully vivid idea of a doctor's experiences.' 
 
 "And then she gave me the following facts in a 
 somewhat sprawling and not always clear shape 
 for her French is distinctly ricketty and which I 
 find easier to condense into my own words. 
 
 " It appears then that eleven years ago come the 
 next i ith of April a wandering monk had come 
 to the Ludniki house toward evening. He was 
 one of those begging friars who travel about the 
 country for weeks at a time, collecting alms for 
 the poor. All their journeys are done on foot, and 
 this one, too, had come alone and unattended. In
 
 ONE YEAR 95 
 
 Poland, the land of universal hospitality, it stands 
 to reason that these holy mendicants are received 
 with open arms, and Pan Bielinski did not fall 
 short of what was expected of him in this respect. 
 He was alone at home, his wife and little girl 
 Jadwiga was then eight years old having gone to 
 Limberg for some days (to the dentist, I should 
 risk guessing), and being expected home next morn- 
 ing. The friar was received, not at the back door, 
 but at the front, and, as a matter of course, sat at 
 the table of his host. The servants who waited on 
 the tete-a-tete meal afterward deposed that there 
 had been a great deal of excited talk between host 
 and guest, none of which they could, however, 
 understand, as it was not conducted in Polish. In 
 all probability it was French, as after circumstances 
 showed. The discussion if it was a discussion 
 was continued in the drawing-room until a late 
 hour, after which the friar retired to the room 
 which had been prepared for him. At break of 
 day next morning he was to continue his journey. 
 Pan Bielinski in person conducted him to the house 
 door, and there bent his head to receive his parting 
 blessing. All this was in strict accordance with 
 usage ; but after that he did something quite un- 
 expected. At the very moment that the friar's 
 bare, sandalled foot was in the act of crossing the 
 threshold he took a revolver out of his pocket and 
 shot him straight through the head ; then, before
 
 96 ONE YEAR 
 
 the servants standing by had time to collect their 
 senses, he turned, walked back into his own room, 
 and put a second ball into his own brain. He 
 must have been a first-rate shot, for he seems to 
 have killed both his man and himself instanta- 
 neously. 
 
 " l They were both still lying exactly as they had 
 fallen when my husband and the judge arrived at 
 the house two hours later,' said Madame Kouska, 
 at this point of the narrative, her pretty face pale 
 with the revival of the awful recollection. l An- 
 drej, the old footman, had sense enough left to for- 
 bid any one to touch them before the appearance 
 of the authorities. Bazyli says it was the most 
 awful sight he has ever seen, and yet he has seen a 
 good many. In the open house door, exactly on 
 the threshold, which was splashed over with his 
 blood, the monk sat as though cowering on the 
 ground, with his back propped against the door- 
 post. In his left hand he clutched his rosary, his 
 right arm stretched out, and the forefinger extended, 
 as though he were pointing at something ; his eyes 
 were wide open. In the first moment it seemed as 
 though he must be still alive, but soon Bazyli saw 
 that the finger was quite stiff* and that the eyes 
 were broken. He says the other body was worse 
 to look at, for Pan Bielinski had fired into his 
 mouth, and in consequence of the concussion the 
 skull was smashed and the muzzle of the revolver
 
 ONE YEAR 97 
 
 looked out at the top of his head. Oh, it makes 
 me quite sick to think of it even now, although I 
 only heard it described,' and the little woman 
 covered her eyes, shivering. 
 
 ut But Madame Bielinska ? ' I asked aghast, with 
 a swift recollection of what Marya had said, 
 4 surely she did not see.' 
 
 " 4 Yes, she did,' said my hostess. l The car- 
 riage had been already sent to the station during 
 the night, and in the flurry every one forgot about 
 her, and she walked straight into the house while 
 the commission was verifying the facts, with that 
 darling Jadwiga by her side, past the dead monk, 
 and found her husband just as I have described. 
 She very nearly died of it, poor thing, and of 
 course Jadwiga will never forget.' 
 
 " 1 1 should think not,' I said, and I remembered 
 that Jadwiga had used almost those very words her- 
 self the first time I had unwittingly alluded to her 
 father. No wonder her natural communicative- 
 ness halted before that terrible subject, which surely 
 must have haunted her childish recollection like a 
 spectre, and no wonder too that Madame Bielinska 
 should bear the reflection of an undying fright in 
 her eyes ! 
 
 " l But the sequel ? ' I asked. l How was it 
 cleared up ? What was his motive ? ' 
 
 " l There is no sequel,' Madame Kouska told me, 
 1 and the only explanation is, of course, that he
 
 98 ONEYEAR 
 
 went suddenly mad, poor man. He used to be 
 very gay in his youth, and even rather wild, but in 
 after years he showed symptoms of melancholy, 
 and grew more nervous and irritable year by year.' 
 
 " 4 Still that does not seem to explain such a des- 
 perate act,' I objected. 'Were there no re- 
 searches made ? ' 
 
 " 4 Oh, yes,' she said, 4 but there was nothing to 
 be discovered, except that the friar was a French- 
 man, but nobody knew him, or anything of him, 
 nor where he came from exactly, and beside, there 
 was nobody to be punished for the murder, since 
 the murderer had dealt with himself, so really the 
 authorities had no further cause to act.' 
 
 " 4 And his friends ? ' I asked, t did they also ac- 
 cept the theory of the madness ? ' 
 
 44 4 They had to. Just at first a few people broke 
 their heads over it and expected some explanation 
 to follow, but when time passed and nothing fol- 
 lowed, they began to be of the opinion of every- 
 body else.' 
 
 44 4 Even his family ? ' I asked. 
 
 44 Madame Kouska shrugged her shoulders. 4 Ap- 
 parently even his family,' she said. 4 The dead 
 monk was as much a stranger to them as to the 
 rest of us. Madame Bielinska herself told my 
 husband that she had never seen his face before, 
 and by all accounts it was not a face to be easily 
 forgotten a dark, fiery face, with piercing black
 
 ONE YEAR 99 
 
 eyes, and a coal-black beard just beginning to be 
 streaked with white. Bazyli said to me then that 
 the very gesture in the act of which he had died 
 somehow gave an impression of quite unusual 
 mental energy.' 
 
 " This is the story, Agnes, but somehow I feel 
 my doubts as to their theory, and have been trying 
 to build myself up another. Men do not usually 
 go mad quite so suddenly as this, and if they do, 
 it generally is not strangers they go for. But sup- 
 posing that monk was not a stranger to Pan 
 Bielinski, although he was to every one else ? 
 That is the starting-point of my theory. One 
 does not generally discuss excitedly with strangers, 
 does one ? He was a Frenchman, remember, and 
 Pan Bielinski had spent part of his youth in Paris, 
 and, according to what Madame Kouska tells me, 
 the servants all received the impression of his be- 
 ing a gentleman. How if some long-buried ro- 
 mance were at the bottom of it all ? May these two 
 not have been rivals once upon a time ? All the 
 circumstances seem to point to some bitter grudge 
 borne by Pan Bielinski against his chance guest. 
 
 " Yet other theories occurred to me as I lay wide- 
 awake in the excellent bed to which Madame 
 Kouska conducted me. I had been dropping with 
 sleep after supper, but the picture of the dead 
 monk and of his murderer had effectually banished all 
 traces of drowsiness, and so I amused myself by
 
 ioo O N E Y E A R 
 
 combining. Yet, on the whole, my first theory 
 seems to me most plausible, and I mean to stick to 
 it for my own private satisfaction. Every one else 
 seems content with the version of insanity, but I 
 prefer my supposition. Madame Bielinska never 
 can have been beautiful ; let us say that Pan 
 Bielinski's marriage was one * of reason,' while 
 the real attachment of his life had Paris for its 
 scene and was, of course, of an unhappy de- 
 scription, the disappointment shadowing all his life 
 and causing the melancholy which Madame 
 Kouska speaks of; that the subsequent friar was 
 the ci-devant successful rival, who, having betrayed 
 and abandoned the object of their mutual passion, 
 had turned into a repentant sinner; that Bielinski, 
 on seeing him again unexpectedly, could not re- 
 strain the impulse to avenge his own defeat and the 
 girl's dishonour. 
 
 " But I had better stop, or else you will think that 
 my imagination is bolting with me. I wonder if 
 the truth will ever be known ? I hardly think so. 
 It remains for me only to wind up this indecently 
 long scrawl by telling you that, despite both the 
 snowdrifts and Madame Kouska's constraining 
 hospitality and it was as difficult to get away 
 from the one as from the other I succeeded in 
 reaching home next day, and was relieved to find 
 that Anulka had managed after all to get her cigar- 
 ette by bribing Marya (with a holy picture), and
 
 ONE YEAR 101 
 
 was none the worse for it. I must confess that as 
 we drove up to the house I cast a glance of a 
 quite new sort of interest toward the spot at which 
 I knew the old front door to have been, and whose 
 condemnation I now completely understood. To 
 a Polish mind the thought of that desecrated 
 threshold, stained by the blood of the departing 
 guest, must always remain a blot of ignominy. 
 No wonder indeed that the family should not have 
 been able to make up its mind ever again to cross 
 it. 
 
 " My candle is burning down, I have barely light 
 to finish by. 
 
 " Ever your affectionate 
 
 " ELEANOR."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MY last quoted letter to Agnes has been given 
 without either selection or comment, but, of course, 
 it does not exhaust my reflections on the discovery 
 I had made. It is probable that the details of Ma- 
 dame Kouska's story would have kept my imagina- 
 tion yet easier if it had not been for a letter which 
 I received about this time from my friend, and in 
 which she mentioned that Henry and Lily Somer- 
 ville were going to spend Christmas in the same 
 house. Agnes had been more than surprised, she 
 had been honestly shocked at what she called the 
 " barbarism " of the act which had separated me 
 from my lover, and, despite my stern command 
 never lost an opportunity of keeping me informed 
 of what was going on at home. She gave me this 
 latest news with a tremour of desperation which I 
 could trace in her very handwriting. " There 
 would yet be time for you to be back," she added ; 
 " if you give up your situation at once you could 
 still spend Christmas with us and naturally so 
 would Henry." 
 
 Of course, I never for a moment contemplated 
 acting in this suggestion, but I confess that the 
 news had made my heart beat faster. For weeks 
 102
 
 O N E Y E A R 103 
 
 past I had been living in expectation of hearing 
 that the engagement was accomplished ; I had been 
 away now for two months ; time enough for the 
 cure to have worked. Surely the moment was ap- 
 proaching now. To judge from his silence Henry 
 was either tired of me or angry with me, and I 
 knew the opportunities generally afforded by a 
 Christmas party ; it was far better so, but I should 
 feel quieter and more able to settle to my work 
 when something definite had happened. 
 
 Here, too, Christmas was already lying in the 
 air, but a different sort of Christmas from any I 
 had hitherto known one in which holly and mis- 
 tletoe played no part, and plum pudding and mince 
 pies were replaced by such delicacies as fish fried 
 in honey, cold almond soup and cakes filled with 
 chopped cabbage. The memory of the single 
 Polish Vilia which it has ever been my fate to at- 
 tend, remains in my mind as a sort of culinary 
 nightmare, sufficient to make me for ever after 
 thankful for plain food. It is natural that the prep- 
 arations for this huge feast which, in that part of 
 the country, was still conducted after the most 
 generously patriarchal style, should likewise be 
 huge, and perhaps it is equally natural that these 
 vast arrangements should be used by the young 
 people as a pretext for sociable gatherings. For 
 generations past it had been the custom here for 
 near neighbours to lend each other a helping hand
 
 104 O N E Y E A R 
 
 on occasions of this sort. There was a certain 
 amount of system about the thing ; each house in 
 the neighbourhood having one day that was fixed 
 as " markday," on which any one who had time 
 and inclination was requested to step in and spend 
 the afternoon in shelling almonds or stoning raisins 
 in company, or at least in pretending to do so, for, 
 of course, the excellent opportunities for flirtation 
 afforded by these simple occupations were not neg- 
 lected, and had the less chance of being so among 
 young men and women who had known each other 
 since their babyhood. 
 
 Needless to say that the Ludniki " markday " 
 was better attended than any other in the neigh- 
 bourhood ; was it not presided over by Jadwiga ? 
 The young men came because she was there, and 
 the ladies came because they did not dare to leave 
 them entirely to her, and the result was that one 
 dull December day a large and gay society found 
 itself assembled in the big space adjoining the 
 kitchen, which generally played the part of a serv- 
 ants' hall. From the first the scene was a lively 
 one. Having peeled themselves out of their furs, 
 the ladies began by quarrelling over the white aprons 
 distributed for the protection of the dainty winter 
 gowns, for although every one was regularly re- 
 quested to come in their worst clothes, no one ever 
 had the abnegation to do so. Then came the al- 
 lotment of occupations a wide field for showing
 
 O N E Y E A R 105 
 
 favour. I confess I was rather curious as to how 
 Jadwiga would exercise her authority. Owing first 
 to Anulka's illness, and lately to Madame Bielin- 
 ska's state of health, which anxiety had aggravated, 
 there had been next to no visitors in the house for 
 weeks past. Since the day that she had consulted 
 me as to her choice between her two admirers I 
 had not seen her in the same room with them, and 
 had therefore had no opportunity of judging of 
 whether she had come to a decision or not. To- 
 day my doubts were to be put at rest. 
 
 " I may peel the almonds, may I not ? " Wladi- 
 mir had asked at the very outset. He had been 
 among the first arrivals, and had looked wonder- 
 fully handsome as he stepped out of the sledge, his 
 fair cheek brightly flushed with the cold air and 
 half buried in the costly fur of his cloak. " You 
 know I peeled them last year, and I am sure I did 
 it well." 
 
 " I know why Wladimir wants to peel the al- 
 monds," remarked a fair and fuzzy-haired young 
 lady, one of a pair of fair and fuzzy-haired sisters, 
 who seemed to regard the whole thing as one vast 
 opportunity for giggling ; " it's because the almonds 
 are in hot water, and he can warm his finger-tips 
 while fishing them out ; as if we hadn't all got 
 cold fingers ! Just look at the egoism of men ! " 
 
 " Oh, dear me, Pani Jusia, are your fingers 
 really cold ? " asked Wladimir, with most sincere
 
 106 O N E Y E A R 
 
 concern. " Then, of course, I waive my claim to 
 the almonds. Here is the pot. Pani Jadwiga will 
 give me some other occupation ; I am prepared for 
 anything." 
 
 a Even to grind the chocolate ? " asked the sec- 
 ond of the giggling sisters. " You know it makes 
 the fingers brown," and she cast a half admiring, 
 half mocking glance toward Wladimir's white, 
 carefully tended hands. 
 
 " Even to grind the chocolate or to pound the 
 pepper, for the matter of that," said Wladimir 
 magnanimously. " I know that none of the ladies 
 like pounding the pepper for fear of getting it into 
 their eyes well, I am ready to do it; may I, Pani 
 Jadwiga ? " He looked round him with the air of 
 a person who feels that he is doing something at 
 least creditable. 
 
 " No," laughed Jadwiga, " we shall save the 
 pepper for somebody more tiresome ; it will be an 
 excellent excuse for sending him into a corner of 
 the room, don't you see ? " and she laughed mis- 
 chievously. " Here, you can help me to peel the 
 apples instead." Apples can be peeled without in- 
 jury to even the daintiest fingers, and I half suspect 
 my lovely Jadwiga of a little egoism in her choice 
 of occupation, for she certainly watched over her 
 exquisite hands as a mother does over her babes. 
 At her words Wladimir had flushed with pleasure. 
 He was as little able as a child to conceal his feel-
 
 O N E Y E A R 107 
 
 ings, and gratification at the compliment implied 
 now shone out of his brown eyes. 
 
 In a few minutes more every one was occupied, 
 more or less strenuously, around a long deal table, 
 on which pyramids of raisins and almonds, blocks 
 of chocolate, and whole sugar loaves were dis- 
 posed. It looked verily as though we were prepar- 
 ing a meal for an army, or, at least, a giant. 
 Tongues moved of course, at least as fast as 
 fingers, and seriousness had little part in the work ; 
 were there not the clumsy to mark, the ignorant to 
 instruct, and the greedy to unmask ? For, of 
 course, despite the prospect of the excellent tea 
 which was to rest the labourers from their toils, 
 many of the almonds and raisins never found their 
 way into the vessels destined for them, and a handy 
 lump of chocolate frequently proved itself to be 
 irresistible. What between laughing reprimands, 
 feigned anger, and mock exclamations of distress, 
 mingled with a good deal of giggling, the first hour 
 passed in a very lively fashion. 
 
 Our number had swelled to close upon twenty, 
 when, after a longer pause than hitherto, another 
 sledge was heard driving up to the front of the 
 house. 
 
 "Who can it be?" asked Wladimir; "not 
 Krysztof, surely ? " 
 
 " Not he ! " laughed Jadwiga, " our occupations 
 are far too frivolous for him. I remember his
 
 io8 O N E Y E A R 
 
 saying last year that we were only playing at 
 work." 
 
 But it was Malewicz, after all. As he entered 
 the room, a minute later, looking somewhat 
 pinched about the eyes and mouth for he had no 
 such luxurious fur to wrap himself in as had 
 Wladimir a chorus of astonished voices greeted 
 him. 
 
 " Can it be possible ? " 
 
 "You have actually managed to tear yourself 
 away from your threshing machine ? " 
 
 " What ! another holiday ? " 
 
 " You don't mean, surely, that you, too, are go- 
 ing to play at work ? " asked Jadwiga, looking at 
 him a little doubtfully, as though not quite sure of 
 whether or not she was glad to see him. 
 
 " Playing at work is better than no work at all," 
 replied Malewicz quietly, as he saluted Jadwiga; 
 " and just now there is nothing waiting for me at 
 home." 
 
 " A gracious speech, truly," said Wladimir, 
 honestly aghast, as he always was when any one 
 fell short in his presence of the highest standard of 
 amiability. 
 
 " Pan Malewicz likes to be ungracious," put in 
 Jadwiga, possibly a little piqued. u Don't you 
 know that he considers ungraciousness to be his 
 role, and cultivates it as a virtue ? Play at work ? 
 Oh, yes, there is nothing to prevent you doing that.
 
 O N E Y E A R 109 
 
 What is there still ? Let me see to be sure the 
 pepper has still to be pounded. It is warm work, 
 but you look half frozen as it is. It will be the 
 very thing for you. There ! But please take it to 
 the window, as otherwise it will be flying about 
 and getting into our eyes." 
 
 Malewicz, who knew nothing of the remarks 
 lately passed concerning the pounding of this very 
 pepper, resignedly took the articles handed to him 
 and retired in silence to the window, but the rest 
 of the company glanced at one another with a sort 
 of guilty sense of understanding, while the two 
 fair-haired sisters burst into a fresh, but somewhat 
 subdued, titter. 
 
 A little later, when the pepper had been disposed 
 of, there came another moment likewise calculated 
 to put a less self-possessed person than Malewicz 
 somewhat out of countenance. 
 
 The question of sifting the flour had been raised 
 an employment which likewise did not range 
 among the favourites, in view of the possible dis- 
 figurement of garments, and again it was Wladimir 
 who offered himself. 
 
 " I would do it in a moment," a young married 
 woman of the party declared, " if I only had any 
 other dress on but a black one but, flour upon 
 black, you know " 
 
 Then it was that Wladimir stepped into the 
 breach.
 
 no O N E Y E A R 
 
 Jadwiga looked doubtfully at the fine, dark cloth 
 of his winter suit. Perhaps she was reflecting that 
 it would be a pity to transform the fairy prince into 
 a miller's lad. 
 
 " It would be a sin to spoil that coat," she de- 
 cided. " You would need at least to put something 
 over it." 
 
 "Let's dress him up in aprons!" cried the 
 ladies in chorus, delighted at this new pretext 
 for merriment. " He would look delicious as a 
 cook." 
 
 " No, I don't think he needs any change," said 
 Jadwiga with a demure little smile. " Pan 
 Malewicz, you are done with the pepper, are you 
 not ? Do you mind taking the flour ? I fancy it 
 won't make much difference to your coat." 
 
 I looked in some surprise at Jadwiga, and so 
 did Malewicz. There had been the slightest pos- 
 sible stress laid on the your^ and yet enough to 
 make all eyes turn critically from the contempla- 
 tion of the one coat to the other. Impossible even 
 in a cursory glance not to note the difference of 
 texture and condition, the intention seemed unmis- 
 takable, but it was unlike Jadwiga, and shocked 
 me, almost disappointed me in her. After the first 
 moment of astonishment Malewicz quickly recov- 
 ered himself. 
 
 " You are right," he said, before any one else 
 had spoken. " A coat that has swallowed dust and
 
 ONE YE AR 
 
 drunk mud may well also digest a little flour with- 
 out harm ; " and, taking the sieve, he set about his 
 task in an almost unnecessarily energetic fashion. 
 This time none of the ladies saw the need of an 
 apron, and only the good-natured Wladimir made 
 suggestion to that effect, to which Malewicz, re- 
 plied with, perhaps, a shade of bitterness: 
 
 " No, thank you, I don't think I would look at 
 all delicious as a cook." Which was indeed so 
 true that the mere vision of his tall, gaunt figure 
 thus equipped set the tittering sisters off once 
 more. 
 
 But in time the flour was sifted as the pepper 
 had been pounded, and Malewicz joined us at the 
 table. By this time the lamps had been brought. 
 
 " And now for a story ! " cried one of the gen- 
 tlemen. "The stories always used to come with 
 the lamps. It's the bit of the evening I like 
 best." 
 
 " Is it to be a funny or a serious story ? " asked 
 Jadwiga. 
 
 " Oh, nothing serious, for Heaven's sake ! " im- 
 plored the majority of the ladies ; " rather fairy 
 tales than that." 
 
 " I have it ! " said Jadwiga, looking in my direc- 
 tion. " We needn't have fairy tales exactly, but 
 we can have some of our legends. Miss Middle- 
 ton was just saying the other day that she knows 
 none of our national traditions. Here is an oppor-
 
 ii2 ONE YEAR 
 
 tunity for instructing her. Let any one who will 
 come out with the tale they know best," and she 
 smiled at me down the length of the table, with 
 that irresistible smile of hers which warmed the 
 heart so suddenly by giving you the feeling that 
 even .in the midst of more brilliant and more im- 
 portant people you were not quite forgotten. 
 
 " Filko must stop pounding the sugar," decreed 
 Jadwiga, " or we shall not be able to hear." 
 
 And after that the legends began for my benefit, 
 told by most of the company in turn weird and 
 fantastic tales of spirits and warnings and warlike 
 deeds, recounted either briefly or lengthily, either 
 flatly or brilliantly, according to the individuality 
 of the narrator, but all with a dash of poetry, and 
 many with the ring of despair about them, as befits 
 the traditions of a fallen nation. When it came to 
 Wladimir's turn he told the story of the vanished 
 fern blossom, and this tale I remember better than 
 any, perhaps because of the remarks that passed 
 concerning it, or perhaps because of the way it was 
 told, for Wladimir proved by far the best narrator 
 of the company. In the moment that he was pre- 
 paring to speak and while all eyes turned upon 
 him, it was evident that he felt thoroughly in his 
 element. Having cast a glance down the table to 
 assure himself that the attention was general, and 
 with the long, snaky apple peelings still falling 
 regularly from between his dexterous fingers, he
 
 ONE YEAR 113 
 
 began, without any ostentation but only a sort of 
 modest confidence in his own powers : 
 
 " The story of the vanished fern blossom is 
 really a summer story, and I don't know how it 
 will sound with a lamp on the table and snow on 
 the ground, but I will try. Well, Miss Middle- 
 ton," and he turned courteously toward me, " you 
 know, of course, that ferns do not blossom nowa- 
 days, and yet this is said to have been the case in 
 times long past. Here, then, is the way that we 
 account for its disappearance. Many, many years 
 ago the ferns blossomed with us, as they did else- 
 where, and their blossoms were quite white and 
 very beautiful, as white as the heart of a child, or 
 of a man who has done no harm, and only a child, 
 or a perfectly good man or woman could either see 
 it or gather it, for this flower was visible on one 
 night only of the year, and was guarded by many 
 spirits against the approach of man. In the night 
 of mid-summer, on the stroke of midnight, the 
 bud opened, and who ever, being good and pure, 
 went to the forest alone at that hour, could gather 
 it for against perfect innocence the spirits had 
 no power and having gathered it, he could, by 
 only a wish, become possessed of the greatest 
 riches of the world, which nothing could again 
 take from him excepting his own act. And on 
 every 24th of June it happened that hundreds of 
 men and women who held themselves far better
 
 ONE YEAR 
 
 than they were, wandered uselessly through the 
 woods, while only one saw the flower, or, some- 
 times, not even that one, because even he was 
 not spotless enough, and when morning came the 
 flower had vanished, and would not blossom again 
 for a year. Well, years and years ago there lived 
 a little peasant lad, whose mother had so little to 
 give him to eat that she sent him to herd the 
 neighbours' geese. And while he sat for hours on 
 the wide plain, with his willow wand in his hand, 
 he would wonder in his mind whether there would 
 ever come a time when he should have enough to 
 eat, and whether he should always see his mother's 
 eyes red with weeping at night, and always have to 
 watch her poor, tottering steps moving between 
 the fireplace and the wood heap, and her poor, 
 shaking hands striving to twirl the spindle. 
 1 When I am big it shall not be so,' he said to 
 himself. l But it will be ten years before I am 
 big, and she will die before then.' And he began 
 to turn over in his small head all the ways that 
 people had of getting money quickly, but could 
 find none. At last some one told him the story 
 of the fern blossom which makes rich in an hour, 
 and immediately a new hope sprung up in his 
 heart, for this rosy-faced little lad with the great, 
 clear eyes had never done harm to either man or 
 beast, and scarcely even knew the name of evil." 
 Wladimir made a pause here in order to ask for
 
 O NE YE A R 115 
 
 a fresh batch of apples. As he glanced round 
 the table he must have been gratified to see noth- 
 ing but attentive faces. They had all heard the 
 legend times enough, but perhaps not told so well 
 as Wladimir told it, and not in his sensitive, 
 musical voice. At any rate, they all listened as 
 though the story was as new to them as to me. 
 With his youthful face and frankly childish eyes, 
 Wladimir might almost have stood for the hero 
 of his own story, grown up to man's estate, and 
 surely this sweet-tempered and obviously kind- 
 hearted youth had done no more harm in his life 
 than the little peasant lad. 
 
 Presently he took up his story. 
 
 " Over at the end of the plain there stood a 
 forest, huge and dark, through which few paths 
 led, where the ground was tangled with ferns and 
 high grasses and strewn with rude blocks of rock. 
 There the boy resolved to go on the next mid- 
 summer night. He had never been there before, 
 but he was not afraid, or if he was afraid he had 
 only to think of his mother's red eyelids in order 
 to get courage. The time came at last, and he 
 crept from the hut and ran across the plain which 
 the moonlight made as light as day, and plunged 
 at last into the big forest where it was as dark as a 
 cellar, for here the moonlight could not reach the 
 ground. And before he had gone a hundred paces 
 he saw the flower shining like a lamp in the black-
 
 u6 O N E Y E A R 
 
 ness, and he climbed the rock on whose crest it 
 grew, and in another minute it was his. He fell 
 asleep then, tired with running, and with all sorts 
 of confused wishes on his lips and in his heart, and 
 next morning, when he awoke, he was resting on a 
 velvet couch in a palace, and the attendants who 
 flocked round him told him that he was richer than 
 any man in the world. After he had begun to be- 
 lieve, his first thought was his mother. He would 
 have run off to fetch her instantly, but his servants 
 held him back. The riches were his, they told 
 him, but only his alone, in the moment that he at- 
 tempted to share them with any one, and be it 
 even his mother, they would vanish like dew. He 
 had not heard that part of the story before, and 
 when he heard it now, he sat down on the floor of 
 the room and wept, and wept, and would not be 
 consoled. * It was for my mother that I wanted it 
 all,' he said sobbing. c What use is it to me if I 
 cannot give it to her ? ' c Your mother is old,' they 
 told him ; * she has one foot in the grave already 
 let her die in peace as she has lived, and enjoy 
 what Fate has given you.' But he only wept the 
 more, and said he would take a sack of gold to her 
 that very day. * Do so, if you like,' they said, 
 1 but when you open the sack there will be nothing 
 in it but rotten wood, and when you come back to 
 your palace you will find a heap of stones. You 
 will be as poor as before, and so will your mother.
 
 ONE YEAR 117 
 
 What good will that do her then ? While now, at 
 least, she is quit of all anxiety on your behalf.' 
 Although the boy would not listen, he could not 
 help hearing, and by degrees the words found their 
 way into his mind and he began to tell himself that 
 it was true, that by ruining himself he would not 
 be helping her. Then he set to work to enjoy his 
 riches, and for a time he succeeded, but when he 
 had got used to eating his fill, something would 
 take hold of him and draw him out of his palace 
 and across the plain to the hut, and would make 
 him look in at the little square window to see what 
 his mother was doing. She was always either 
 weeping by the fire or turning her spindle sadly by 
 the table, but never did he find courage to lift the 
 latch, for he was ashamed somehow to bring his 
 silken clothes into that mud hut. And each time 
 he went back vowing that he would give up all his 
 splendour and return to be poor with her, and 
 never did he do it, for he had got used to soft liv- 
 ing and could not make up his mind to rob himself 
 by his own act. Yet, despite all his riches, he 
 grew unhappier day by day. One day, at last, 
 when he looked into the hut, his mother was not 
 sitting either by the fire or by the table ; she was 
 lying on the bed with her hands crossed, and two 
 candles burning at her feet. Then he knew that 
 it was too late to go back to her, and, throwing 
 himself on the ground, he tore his silken clothes,
 
 n8 O NE Y E A R 
 
 and then, rushing back across the plain, he clam- 
 bered up the very rock on which he had gathered 
 the white flower, and springing off it, dashed out 
 his brains against its foot, and in that same moment 
 the palace melted into air with all the attendants, 
 and from that moment no fern has ever blossomed 
 again. The flower had cost the life of a man, and 
 therefore it was condemned to be blotted out of the 
 world forever." 
 
 Wladimir, carried away by his theme, had ended 
 with a certain emotion in his vibrating voice. 
 There was a short silence after he had done speak- 
 ing, but the first remark, made somewhat rudely, 
 disturbed the dreamy mood that had settled on the 
 company. It was Malewicz who spoke. 
 
 "I think that boy was a fool," he observed, 
 with something harsh in his voice. 
 
 Every one looked at him in surprise. 
 
 " Why ? " asked several of the ladies together. 
 
 " Because he did not know what he wanted. 
 Either he could bear to look on while his mother 
 starved, or else he could not. If yes, then he 
 ought to have got the most out of his money ; and 
 if not, he should have let his palace go to dust on 
 the first day, without all that fuss about it." 
 
 " Surely nobody can really bear to see his mother 
 starve ? " began Wladimir, but Malewicz almost 
 roughly interrupted him : 
 
 " Why not ? " he said with a sort of deliberate
 
 O N E Y E A R 119 
 
 and ostentatious callousness, which did not quite 
 convince while yet it shocked. " It is all a matter 
 of habit, I assure you, and it all depends upon the 
 price that is asked." 
 
 A little indignation was now mingling with the 
 astonishment in the eyes turned upon him. Com- 
 ing from the lips of a man who himself had a 
 mother not exactly in the position of the mother 
 in the legend, but, nevertheless, within measurable 
 distance of it the remark sounded unnecessarily 
 brutal. I confess that I felt as much astonished at 
 him as I had felt a little while ago at Jadwiga. 
 She herself was obviously indignant. 
 
 " Surely this is carrying ungraciousness just one 
 point too far," she said, with a flash of beautiful 
 anger in her eyes. " I think you might speak dif- 
 ferently of your mother." 
 
 "Perhaps I might," he answered immediately, 
 looking her hard in the face as he spoke, " and per- 
 haps, also, I might have acted differently toward 
 her. I am not defending my filial conduct, but 
 only maintaining that, under similar circumstances, I 
 would have known my mind better than did that 
 young man in the story." 
 
 The discussion evidently threatened to become 
 too serious for the occasion, and, but for the timely 
 interference of Wladimir Wladimir always did 
 and said the right thing at the right moment who 
 began earnestly demanding some instructions with
 
 120 ONE YEAR 
 
 regard to the apples he had peeled, a shadow would 
 probably have settled on the humour of the com- 
 pany. In this way, however, the subject was for- 
 gotten in a few minutes, and the rest of the even- 
 ing passed off smoothly and gaily so gaily, in 
 fact, that nothing but the thought that it was Ad- 
 vent prevented its ending in a dance. 
 
 That night in my room I said to Jadwiga a little 
 reproachfully, " What was the matter with you this 
 afternoon ? I have never seen you like that be- 
 fore. You seem to have made a regular task of 
 snubbing that poor man at every turn." 
 
 " Malewicz ? " she asked, laughing. " Why, I 
 was only following your advice. Don't you re- 
 member telling me that it would be unnecessary 
 cruelty to keep up his hopes ? " 
 
 "That means, then, that you have made your 
 choice ? " I asked, with a little unaccountable dis- 
 appointment. But Jadwiga only laughed and dis- 
 appeared into her room with shining eyes. 
 
 I did not require an answer ; the events of the 
 afternoon had been amply sufficient to tell me that, 
 like a true woman as she was, she had taken the 
 exact reverse of the advice I had given her.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE weeks that followed were in their main 
 features a reflection of the afternoon described in 
 the last chapter, inasmuch as in a hundred ways 
 they marked the progress of Wladimir in Jadwiga's 
 favour, and the defeat of Malewicz. Once hav- 
 ing made up her mind Jadwiga had thrown herself 
 into her new part with all the unregulated ardour 
 of her temperament, and scarcely an evening now 
 passed without my having to listen to glowing 
 eulogies on her elected hero, for she belonged to 
 those excessively open natures who, in order to 
 taste their emotions to the full, require to share 
 them with another. 
 
 u Do you not think he is as perfect a lover as 
 any one has a right to expect ? " she would ask me. 
 " Each time I see him he seems to me handsomer, 
 and he is not only beautiful, he is good too ; I am 
 sure he has never done any harm in his life." 
 
 " I don't think he has ever done anything in his 
 life," I replied, " either harm or the reverse. He 
 has scarcely had time, for the matter of that. He 
 seems to me like an unwritten page, still waiting 
 for its stamp." 
 
 " Nothing but noble things could be written on 
 121
 
 122 O N E Y E A R 
 
 so fair a page," said Jadwiga, with characteristic- 
 ally frank enthusiasm. 
 
 Sometimes I was pushed to remonstrate with 
 her, as I had done on the evening of the Christ- 
 mas u markday." Because she had finally lost her 
 heart to Wladimir seemed to me no adequate rea- 
 son for slighting his unsuccessful rival at every 
 turn. In a person whose true goodness of heart I 
 had instinctively felt convinced of from the first 
 this show of unkindness continued to puzzle and 
 pain me. No opportunity was lost of placing 
 Malewicz himself or his acts in the most unfav- 
 ourable light possible, and of throwing upon his 
 gaunt and somewhat uncouth figure as much ridi- 
 cule as would stick and this both in his presence 
 and out of it. His very horses and his very 
 clothes were made to serve the occasion, although 
 if she had but taken time to reflect I know she 
 would have shrunk with horror from the idea of 
 throwing up his poverty even indirectly in his 
 face. But Jadwiga was always more given to im- 
 pulse than to reflection, and never having tasted 
 poverty she probably did not realise its bitterness. 
 More than once I took up the defence of the at- 
 tacked man, as, for instance, on one occasion, 
 when a collection was being made for some charity, 
 to which most of the proprietors in the neighbour- 
 hood subscribed largely, Malewicz was almost the 
 only one who refused point blank.
 
 O N E YE A R 123 
 
 " If I gave you a florin," he said, " it would be 
 the same as if I gave you nothing, and a larger 
 sum I cannot afford to give." 
 
 " Not even for the sick children ? " asked Jad- 
 wiga indignantly. 
 
 "Not even for the sick children," said Male- 
 wicz, colouring faintly, yet without lowering his 
 eyes. " You must remember that charity begins 
 at home," and he tried to smile. 
 
 " The close-handed wretch," said Jadwiga to me 
 that evening after his departure; " every one is 
 subscribing. Wladimir is even putting off buying 
 a new horse in order to make his subscription 
 larger." 
 
 " Wladimir knows that he will get his horse in 
 time all the same," I remarked, " while Malewicz 
 probably needs the money for more pressing things 
 than riding-horses." 
 
 Another time Carnival had come then it was 
 his ignorance of the Mazur step which filled her 
 with indignation, almost contempt. 
 
 " You call yourself a Pole ? " she asked, in cold 
 amazement. " A Pole who cannot dance Mazur ! 
 Is there such a thing ? " 
 
 " When should I have learnt it ? " asked Male- 
 wicz. " While I was ploughing my fields ? " 
 
 " Other people plough their fields, too," she re- 
 torted, " and yet they find time to cultivate other 
 arts besides those of the farmer."
 
 i2 4 O N E YE A R 
 
 " I know they do," said Malewicz, with his 
 usual grave self-possession, which under ail the 
 moral needle-pricks she was continually administer- 
 ing, never quite deserted him, just as his patience 
 never seemed quite to give way. "There have 
 always been people who find time for everything, 
 even for playing at revolutions and running after 
 national myths." 
 
 There was a general chorus of disapproval, in 
 which Jadwiga's voice was only one of many. 
 
 u Playing at revolutions ! National myths ! " 
 
 " You do not mean surely that you call our glo- 
 rious campaign of '63 a game ? " asked Wladimir, 
 colouring with excitement. " That it ended in 
 disaster is no argument ; we proved with our 
 blood that we were in earnest." 
 
 " I will not call it a game if you object to the 
 term," said Malewicz unmoved, " but rather a 
 piece of childishly naive romance, badly organised, 
 foolishly undertaken, and doomed from the first to 
 failure." 
 
 A fresh chorus of dissent. 
 
 " Badly organised, when everything had been 
 prepared for years ! " 
 
 " Talked about for years, you mean," corrected 
 Malewicz, " not prepared. We are always much 
 greater at talking than acting. All our leaders to- 
 gether had not as much as a pinch of practical sense 
 among them. How else can you explain it that,
 
 O N E Y E A R 125 
 
 while the suppliers of the army were disputing as 
 to whether the loaves for the rations were to be 
 baked round or oblong, our soldiers should be starv- 
 ing for want of bread ? " 
 
 " An accident," said some one, with a pictur- 
 esque sweep of the arm. u They were heroes, all 
 the same." 
 
 " Heroes, perhaps, but they were not organisers, 
 and not politicians either, or they never would have 
 started that bloody and useless dance." 
 
 " And if the call came again you would not an- 
 swer to it ? " asked Wladimir, measuring his rival 
 with beautifully flaming eyes. " You would not 
 be ready to shed your last drop of blood for our 
 unhappy mother country ? " 
 
 " Not as matters stand now," replied Malewicz 
 calmly. " Besides, I know that my blood would 
 do her far more harm than good. Poland is dead, 
 and all the mistakes we make come from imagin- 
 ing that she is only asleep. It is best, surely, to 
 look the truth in the face. We have been tried as 
 a nation and have failed, and if we ever become a 
 nation again it will only be because we ourselves 
 have become different men. Just as a future Po- 
 land could only be a quite different Poland from 
 the past a Poland in which we have learnt to 
 work, rather than to dream and talk. But we are 
 not ready yet, not for a long time yet, and there- 
 fore I mean to work instead of dreaming, as be-
 
 126 O N E Y E A R 
 
 comes a loyal subject of the Emperor Francis 
 Joseph." 
 
 He looked steadily round the circle as he spoke 
 and met nothing but inimical glances. At the 
 sound of the last word there was a restless move- 
 ment in the company, and something was mur- 
 mured between more than one set of teeth, but 
 I cannot vouch for its having been a blessing. 
 There was not much more said ; perhaps the pres- 
 ence of a stranger acted as a restraint, but all drew 
 themselves coldly away from Malewicz, who for 
 the rest of the evening remained well-nigh isolated. 
 
 " He has neither spirit nor enthusiasm," said 
 Jadwiga to me afterward. " I am ashamed of 
 such a countryman." 
 
 " I confess I rather admire his moral courage," 
 I replied. " It certainly required some pluck to 
 confess his opinions in the face of such nationalists 
 as your neighbours seem to be." 
 
 But Jadwiga would not hear a word in his 
 favour and treated him, if possible, more coldly 
 than before, and whenever I ventured to protest, 
 threw up my own words in my face and told me 
 that surely it was kinder to show him plainly that 
 he had nothing to hope for. I have often puzzled 
 over her conduct at this time, and have looked for 
 an explanation of it, and in part, I believe I have 
 found it. It sounds paradoxical, but I believe that 
 it was her very intrinsic kindness which was at the
 
 ONE YEAR 127 
 
 root of her outward cruelty. Of course all that 
 about crushing his hopes was nonsense, but I fancy 
 that what she was trying to do was to harden her 
 own heart against him, for she could not but be 
 aware that he loved her deeply. The thought of 
 what he would suffer when she gave her hand to 
 Wladimir must have oppressed her even in the 
 midst of her own bliss, and it was the effort to 
 throw off this oppression that led her to try and 
 kill the pity within her by every means that came 
 to hand. The easiest way would, of course, have 
 been if she could have succeeded in convincing 
 herself that he was not worth sparing, that she 
 despised him, instead of compassionating him 
 thence the constant endeavour to turn him into 
 ridicule. And just because, despite all her efforts, 
 he would not become ridiculous, and because at 
 the bottom of her heart she was forced to esteem 
 him just because of this did she feel incensed 
 against him. It is a complicated train of thought 
 to follow up, but it tallies with all that I fi^er got 
 to know of Jadwiga. It is possible, also, that the 
 hope of disgusting him with herself, and thus sti- 
 fling his passion, may have influenced her, but of 
 this I feel less convinced, being a sort of motive I 
 do not readily believe in. 
 
 Meanwhile Wladimir had not yet spoken, but 
 there could be no doubt of his sentiments. In- 
 deed, he had on more than one occasion confided
 
 ii8 O N E YE A R 
 
 them to me with childish openness. My position 
 was, in fact, rather comical and exceedingly deli- 
 cate, placed thus between the two lovers, with an 
 ear open, as it were, on either side, to their re- 
 spective hopes and sighs, but I was beginning to 
 get broken in to my role of confidante ; after all, it 
 was about all that I was good for now. It is true 
 that the Christmas party had passed off without 
 Henry having proposed to Lily Somerville, but that 
 could not alter my own position. If not this time 
 it would be another time, and if not her it would 
 be another. All I had to do now was to forget 
 that I had ever dreamt of founding a home of my 
 own, and to try and seek happiness in the happiness 
 of younger and luckier people than myself. 
 
 It seemed difficult to doubt Jadwiga's coming 
 happiness, and yet there were moments in which 
 it was borne in upon me that she had in her a 
 wonderful capacity for being unhappy. A streak 
 of melancholy, a shade of gloom had found its way 
 into her imaginative mind, and would occasionally 
 break out without any apparent reason. I have 
 often thought that her father's terrible end was an- 
 swerable for this incongruity in her otherwise joy- 
 ous disposition. The memory of that awful day 
 must have returned to her at moments irresistibly. 
 Diving into my recollections I come upon one day 
 in especial which revealed to me this side of her 
 character. It was a gloomy day toward the end
 
 O N E Y E A R 129 
 
 of winter, with snow still on the ground, but no 
 longer the spotless mantle of yore. Footsteps of 
 every sort, human and animal, now defaced its 
 original whiteness. In the yard and in the park 
 every beast could be traced there was the deep, 
 small hole of the hare, the flat print of the goose, 
 the more intricate mark of the canine paw ; while 
 outside, upon the plain, the beautiful, white mantle 
 was striped in all directions with sledge marks, 
 turned into slides before every hut, and defaced 
 with the black of its smoke. A tattered and soiled 
 mantle, truly, and time it was either to renew it or 
 to doff it. It was to be doffed apparently, for 
 to-day the thaw was at work. The slush was 
 such as to baffle even my walking powers, and ac- 
 cordingly I had taken refuge in my embroidery, 
 while Jadwiga retired to the piano. She and I 
 were alone in the big drawing-room. To-day it 
 was nothing but melancholy airs which she chose, 
 principally Russian Dumkas, and when she spoke 
 it was only to ask me whether I did not find that 
 music was meant to express sadness far more than 
 joy. Finally she glided into Chopin's funeral 
 march. I had heard her play it before, but never 
 with such deep emotion, I might say conviction, 
 as to-day. When the last note had sounded she 
 turned toward me where I sat in the window em- 
 brasure, trying to catch the fading light on my 
 work.
 
 i 3 o O N E Y E A R 
 
 "I understand that so perfectly," she said, as 
 though continuing a discussion, " do not you ? " 
 
 " How do you mean ?" 
 
 " Chopin's idea ; it is so easy to follow or 
 rather there are three ideas, quite distinct from 
 each other. The first is simply sadness ; deep and 
 dreadful mournfulness ; heavy, heavy tears you 
 can hear them in the chords of the first passage," 
 and she struck them softly as she spoke. "Then, 
 out of the midst of the sadness break the cries of 
 despair, almost of rebellion, but only for a mo- 
 ment; the dull sadness comes back again. All 
 this is in the first movement. In the second there 
 comes the first breath of resignation. Could any- 
 thing be more peaceful and more holy, more like a 
 soothing hand laid on a burning wound than this 
 passage ? " 
 
 " You are right," I said, as I listened with de- 
 light, letting my work drop to my lap. " To hear 
 that is almost to make one submit to anything ; 
 but I am curious how you are going to explain the 
 finale. I have never been able to understand what 
 Chopin meant there ; that wild, breathless, con- 
 fused movement seems to me much more like a 
 sort of insane dance than the termination of a 
 funeral march." 
 
 " I understand that, too," said Jadwiga. " Oh, 
 I understand quite well what he had in his 
 thoughts. He has followed the funeral in mind
 
 ONE YEAR 131 
 
 all the time ; he has reached the churchyard ; the 
 coffin has been lowered ; the clods of earth have 
 fallen upon it ; the prayers are said ; all the train 
 of mourners is gone ; and now the dead are alone, 
 and from the forest the wind comes sweeping and 
 brings with it a swarm of dead leaves to whirl and 
 turn and dance round the newly-made grave, and 
 to smother the fresh flowers that have been laid 
 there." 
 
 Jadwiga had risen from her place by the piano, 
 and was now standing beside me, but looking be- 
 yond me through the darkening window with fixed, 
 heavy eyes, as though she were gazing on the 
 vision which her own words had conjured up. At 
 moments like this I felt sure she was thinking of 
 her father, and perhaps living through in mind the 
 impressions of the days that had followed the 
 catastrophe. It was at these times of spasmodic 
 sadness, too, that the likeness to the portrait of her 
 dead parent came out most strongly, for his 
 handsome face bore a certain shadow of gloom and 
 care upon it. Since I had learnt his history I did 
 not like to note this resemblance ; whether he were 
 criminal or only insane I felt a reluctance to ac- 
 knowledge that Jadwiga could be his daughter by 
 anything but physical accident. 
 
 As regards the question of his sanity and of my 
 self-made theories, although I pondered upon them 
 frequently during these months, I only once had
 
 132 O N E Y E A R 
 
 an opportunity of discussing the question with an- 
 other, on which occasion I discovered that I was 
 not the only person who doubted the accuracy of 
 the general assumption. This other person was 
 Malewicz, and it was under the cover of dance 
 music, and while many gay couples were filing 
 past us in the Mazur, that our remarks on the sub- 
 ject passed. This was not at Ludniki but at 
 Krasno, the Lewickis' residence, in whose hand- 
 some apartments all the society of the neighbour- 
 hood had assembled one day soon after Easter, 
 which was especially early that year, in order to 
 celebrate the feast day of old Pan Lewicki, Wladi- 
 mir's father. Never had Wladimir been in fuller 
 glory than to-day. To see him standing on the 
 doorstep of the house, with the spring sunshine 
 gleaming on the satin of his doublet, and flashing 
 back from the jewels of his belt for, in honour 
 of his ultra-national parent, he had to-day thrown 
 himself into the national costume was in itself a 
 treat to any eye open to artistic effects. It may 
 have been a trifle theatrical, but there could be no 
 doubt about its being successful. To-day he was 
 a fairy-tale prince indeed, not only in form and 
 feature, but in every point of his attire. How 
 should I blame Jadwiga for loving him ? A far 
 colder fancy than hers might well have been fired 
 by this picture, which to such sober eyes as mine 
 was almost too dazzling. And then, what supple-
 
 ONE YEAR 133 
 
 ness of movement, what charm of manner in the 
 task of receiving guest after guest, and conducting 
 them to the presence of his handsome giant of a 
 father, who, being rheumatic, feared to expose 
 himself to the chilly spring air. From beginning 
 to end it was Wladimir who was the soul of the 
 entertainment. 
 
 At Krasno things were conducted on a far more 
 lavish scale than at Ludniki ; and, as a matter of 
 course, some excellent music had been procured, 
 so that, after several sumptuous meals, the evening 
 ended in the only appropriate way for a Polish 
 feast day to end. Then it was that Malewicz and 
 I came to be thrown into each other's society. At 
 first he did not trouble himself to speak much ; 
 this was not the first time that we two had figured 
 as lookers-on, and he had got to understand that I 
 respected his silences; perhaps he even then al- 
 ready vaguely guessed at my sympathy, without 
 having ever appealed to it. To-day, for the first 
 time, he indirectly alluded to his paramount 
 thought. 
 
 "Those two will make a wonderful pair," he 
 said, after a time, in a tone of artificial unconcern 
 which, I think, was scarcely meant to deceive. 
 His eyes rested as he spoke on Jadwiga and Wladi- 
 mir, leading the column of dancers down the 
 length of the long room. Dressed in a pale blue 
 silk which clung to her knee at each gliding step,
 
 134- ONE YEAR 
 
 allowing the wonderfully narrow foot to appear be- 
 neath the hem, her face animated by the congenial 
 movement, her white teeth flashing as she turned 
 toward her partner, Jadwiga was to-day trium- 
 phantly beautiful. There were many imitation 
 Jadwigas in the room, many women that were 
 good-looking in the same style, only in another 
 degree, for dark hair and white teeth, and lithe, 
 animated forms are common in Poland ; but Jad- 
 wiga surpassed them all. I could liken her to the 
 picked specimen in a bunch of one sort of flowers 
 the one that, although of the same colour and 
 the same shape as its neighbours, yet possesses 
 every characteristic of the species more perfectly 
 developed than they. 
 
 When I had murmured some sort of vague 
 acquiescence to Malewicz's remark, he added 
 thoughtfully : " And yet that was not what her 
 father wanted." 
 
 " Had he made plans for her already ? " I asked 
 in order to cover the genuine embarrassment I felt. 
 "Surely she was a mere child when he died ? " 
 
 " So she was, and yet he had made plans. Some 
 fathers look far ahead, you know. He had actually 
 thought of a husband for her, but you would never 
 guess whom." 
 
 "I don't see how I could well guess that," I re- 
 marked. 
 
 " No other than your humble servant," said
 
 O N E Y E A R 135 
 
 Malewicz with a short, hard laugh, which it hurt 
 me to hear. " But, as you see, dead men do not 
 always get their wishes nor living ones either," 
 he added below his breath. Then he went on : 
 " I don't mean to say that his intention was fixed ; 
 probably it was only a passing fancy. My father 
 was an old friend of his, you see, and he thought, 
 no doubt, that he would be doing me a good turn. 
 I daresay you have heard that Pan Bielinski was in 
 general very kind to me ? " 
 
 He looked at me rather closely as he spoke and I 
 assented, having indeed heard from Jadwiga that 
 her father had on more than one occasion offered 
 help to the son of his dead friend, but also that 
 this help had always been refused. 
 
 " He was eccentric in many things," remarked 
 Malewicz, thoughtfully ; "the idea of choosing me 
 as a son-in-law is a proof of it, is it not ? Why, I 
 believe Pani Jadwiga ranges me quite among the 
 middle-aged." 
 
 I knew this to be not exactly true, although, 
 owing to the ten or dozen years difference betweerj 
 them, Malewicz had, of course, never been a play- 
 fellow, in the way Wladimir had been, and there- 
 fore did not enjoy such privileges as, for example, 
 being called by his Christian name. 
 
 " Eccentric ? " I repeated, carefully ignoring the 
 latter half of his remark, " I have heard that he 
 was more than eccentric.'
 
 136 O N E Y E A R 
 
 Malewicz turned quickly toward me. " You 
 have heard that he was mad, I suppose? No 
 doubt somebody has told you the story." 
 
 " I have been told the story," I said, " but I 
 don't quite know what to think of the madness. 
 Tell me, Pan Malewicz," I added on some impulse 
 of curiosity, for the opportunity seemed too good 
 to be lost, " are you too of the opinion of the 
 world ? " 
 
 He met my eyes for a moment, and then looked 
 away across the room. 
 
 " What other explanation can you possibly 
 find ? " he asked, in not quite so decisive a tone as 
 usual. 
 
 " I have not found any, or rather I have found 
 dozens, and I don't know how to choose between 
 them." 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, and looked back at me keenly, 
 and as it seemed to me a little anxiously, " and 
 what may your explanations be ? " 
 
 Then I gave him the outline of the romance I 
 have evolved out of my inner consciousness, as 
 well as of several variations upon the same theme. 
 He listened with his eyes on the dancers, but evi- 
 dently intently. 
 
 " Do you not think I may have got near the 
 truth ? " I asked at last. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I tell? 
 What should I know about it more than any one
 
 O N E Y E A R 137 
 
 else ? " he asked, almost a little impatiently. " The 
 world says he was mad, and perhaps the world was 
 right." 
 
 " Perhaps," I said, " but rather than the world's 
 opinion I would have had that of the old French 
 monk who was the victim." 
 
 " He was not so very old," said Malewicz, 
 " certainly under fifty." 
 
 " Did you see him ? " I asked in some surprise. 
 
 " Certainly I did." 
 
 " Dead or alive ? " 
 
 "Alive and dead. Did you not hear that he 
 came to our house just before he went to Ludniki ? 
 We are on the way, you know." 
 
 " No, I had not heard that before," I said with 
 increased interest. " And what impression did 
 you get of him ? Did you too take him for a gen- 
 tleman and for a Frenchman ? " 
 
 " He certainly was a Frenchman," said Male- 
 wicz, again looking across the room, " and I be- 
 lieve he was a gentleman too." 
 
 " But quite a stranger to you, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Entirely so." 
 
 " I wonder whether he would have been a 
 stranger to your father too ? " I mused aloud. 
 " He also had been in Paris in his youth, but I be- 
 lieve he was dead by that time ? " 
 
 " He died two years earlier," said Malewicz 
 briefly.
 
 138 O N E Y E A R 
 
 I pondered for a moment. " Pan Lewicki, 
 Wladimir's father, was the third of the * Three 
 Mousquetaires,' as I think you said the trio was 
 called in Paris. Did the mysterious monk ever 
 meet his eyes, I wonder ? " 
 
 " No, Pan Lewicki never saw him, he was away 
 from home at the time. But don't you think, Miss 
 Middleton," he added in another tone, " that we 
 might choose a topic more congenial to a ball-room 
 than are these black memories ? " 
 
 I asquiesced, half ashamed of the curiosity that 
 had pushed me so far, and, although this inquisi- 
 tiveness sprang only from my warm interest in 
 Jadwiga, and anything that touched her, even in- 
 directly. We talked of other things after that, but 
 I carried away with me the impression that Male- 
 wicz too disbelieved in Bielinski's madness, and 
 had possibly even formed a theory of his own, dis- 
 tinct no doubt from mine, as well as from that of 
 the public.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SCARCELY a fortnight after the dance at Krasno 
 I find myself writing thus to Agnes : 
 
 " I have seen my first stork or rather storks, 
 for there were more than twenty of them. Ever 
 since on my arrival last October I inquired what 
 the untidy, black lumps were which decorated 
 many of the straw roofs in the village, and was 
 told that they were storks' nests ; I have been 
 waiting eagerly for the return of the occupants. 
 But now that they have come something else has 
 happened whose interest quite puts the storks into 
 the shade. To come to the point at once, that 
 which has been preparing all winter has come to 
 pass since yesterday Jadwiga and Wladimir are 
 betrothed. I rejoice with the sweetest girl I ever 
 knew, and at the same time I feel as though I must 
 pray very hard for her happiness. Why ? I am 
 sure I don't know, but I can't quite suppress a 
 shade of anxiety. Jadwiga is generous in her love, 
 but she expects the same measure in return as she 
 gives largely, so she wants to be given to largely, and 
 her own spirit is so high, her temperament so in- 
 tolerant of anything below the most ideal standard 
 of self-devotion, that it would be difficult for any 
 139
 
 i 4 o O N E Y E A R 
 
 man quite to come up to her ideal. Will Wladi- 
 mir do so, morally, when the first glamour of their 
 love is passed ? He is a dear, good boy, and he 
 loves her devotedly it is scarcely too much to say 
 that he adores her but I cannot quite rid myself 
 of the feeling that there is a certain want of 
 stamina about him, something too ornamental even 
 to allow of his being useful, a thing, in short, 
 which is intended more to be gazed at than leant 
 upon. It may be that my partiality for Jadwiga 
 makes me hypercritical, but she is perfectly and 
 entirely happy, and so I must not repine." 
 
 And now, leaving the rest of this letter aside, as 
 irrelevant to my subject, I must enter more closely 
 into the circumstances under which I saw my first 
 storks. 
 
 A cruel and, so to say, ironical chance had 
 thrown the names-day of Madame Malewicz 
 within the same fortnight as that of Pan Lewicki, 
 and after the comfortable, almost sumptuous, 
 Krasno, it was at the bare and dilapidated Roma 
 Wielka that the society of the neighbourhood 
 assembled. No contrast could have been sharper. 
 Both houses were planned on about the same scale. 
 In times long past Roma Wielka may even have 
 been the more luxurious of the two, whereas now 
 the great rooms looked as empty as though sacked 
 by an enemy. Nothing more mournful to see 
 than poverty in the wrong place ; so long as shff
 
 ONE YEAR 141 
 
 keeps to her proper sphere and hides her head 
 under thatched roofs, she is not without a certain 
 grace of her own ; but poverty in halls is quite a 
 different thing from poverty in cottages. To see 
 the steps of a nobly broad terrace crumbling for 
 want of repair ; tiles missing from an almost 
 palatial roof; while a park that would require a 
 staff of gardeners to keep it in order is abandoned 
 to a lad with a hoe powerless, of course, against 
 the invading army of weeds is enough to strike 
 sadness even to the heart of a stranger. In its 
 golden days the Roma Wielka park must have 
 been a far more ambitious affair than that of 
 Ludniki, as was testified by traces of fountains, 
 remains of plaster figures, and ruins of summer- 
 houses, yet, despite its comparative neglect, Ludniki 
 was a model of order compared to this. 
 
 If anything could have enhanced the tragi- 
 comical side of this caricature of former grandeur, 
 I think it was the festive air it assumed on the 
 April day of which I am writing. Every effort 
 had, of course, been made to receive the guests 
 becomingly the same guests that had been feasted 
 at Krasno a fortnight ago but ah, how apparent 
 the effort was, how thin the mask spread over the 
 features of grinning poverty ! What Polish tact 
 could do to smooth over the difficulties of the 
 position was, of course, done. The bare apart- 
 ment positively shone with the hot-house flowers
 
 i 4 2 O N E Y E A R 
 
 brought as feast-day offerings to Madame Male- 
 wicz, and whose bright colours so mercifully clothed 
 the nakedness of the rooms which all the elders 
 remembered in their time of prosperity. Yet, 
 despite their smiling unconsciousness, each guest 
 must have known that, in order to spread even this 
 poor fare before them, mother and son would have 
 well-nigh to starve themselves for a month to 
 come. What Malewicz must have suffered on 
 occasions like this it is difficult to conjecture; to 
 his proud and over-sensitive spirit this day must 
 have been one of ever recurring torture, as was to 
 be read in the exaggerated brilliancy of his black 
 eyes, and the tight look about his lips, as gravely, 
 punctiliously, without a trace of Wladmir's playful 
 grace, he did the honours of his bare home. 
 
 Fortunately, his mother saved him almost the 
 entire trouble of being amiable. I had seen her 
 once or twice in the course of the winter, when 
 visits had been exchanged between Ludniki and 
 Roma Wielka, and in an earlier letter to my 
 friend I find my first impressions to her thus 
 given : 
 
 Madame Malewicz is a very charming, rather 
 helpless old lady, with a delicate nut-cracker face, 
 and the same black eyes as her son, who has 
 evidently been accustomed until nearly middle-age 
 to be waited on by troops of servants, and who, not 
 being used to think for herself, is always leaving
 
 O N E Y E A R 143 
 
 her shawl and her cigarettes lying somewhere about 
 the place. I should say, at a guess, that she is 
 exceedingly unpractical and somewhat vague. She 
 bears her privations with the most delightful good 
 humour, and seems to have what people call a 
 " happy disposition," but after nearly twenty years 
 she doesn't seem to have in the least adapted her- 
 self to her " new " position. Obviously, she is the 
 sort of person who is meant to be rich, and I don't 
 think I am wrong in supposing that she adds con- 
 siderably to her son's difficulties by not under- 
 standing what she can afford, and what she cannot. 
 Although she is certainly not stupid, she gives me 
 the impression of never quite realising her financial 
 position. 
 
 It may have been exactly this last-named 
 deficiency which made of Madame Malewicz so 
 perfect a hostess. If she had had a dozen footmen 
 behind her, and a gorgeously-furnished hall in 
 which to receive her guests, she could not have 
 greeted them with more smiling cordiality, nor 
 when the time for refreshment came could she 
 have pressed food upon them with more complete 
 self-confidence had her table been laden with the 
 most costly meats. Nothing but her complete 
 unconsciousness of the deficiencies around her 
 could have made the situation bearable. The 
 occasion which to the son was one of mental 
 agony, was to the mother obviously one of pure
 
 i 4 4 O N E Y E A R 
 
 enjoyment. It was clear at a first glance that she 
 was created for society, and merely to put on a 
 silk dress and shake the hands of her acquaintances 
 was bliss to her. I doubt not that her spirit carried 
 her back to similar occasions in a more brilliant 
 setting, and that she lived so entirely in the memory 
 of those fortunate days that the distasteful details 
 of the present escaped her. There was no guest so 
 insignificant but that she had not an appropriate 
 word for him. 
 
 " Whom do I see ? actually Wandusia ? " she 
 exclaimed, on catching sight of a young girl follow- 
 ing close upon her mother. " Wandusia in long 
 skirts put on in my honour, of course ; this is 
 good of you, Stasia. I always said that she must 
 make her debut at Roma Wielka ; we have room 
 enough here, even if the floor is not quite so good 
 as it used to be, and let me whisper it in Wan- 
 dusia's ear we have three fiddlers coming ! What 
 do you think of that ? from Zloczek only, it is 
 true. I had wanted to get the music from Lim- 
 berg, but that economical son of mine he's a 
 tyrant, I assure you declared it would be ex- 
 travagant," clapping him affectionately on his 
 sleeve with her fan. " But he has extravagant 
 moments, too let me see, where have I got it ? 
 Krysztof, my love, just run and fetch me the new 
 cigarette case, I had it a moment ago it will be 
 cither in my bedroom or the dining-room, or, if
 
 O N E Y E A R 145 
 
 not, Hania will know. Ah, Zygmunt Rapinski ! 
 this does my eyes good ! " she went on in the 
 same breath, addressing a white-haired gentleman. 
 " I knew you would not forget old friends, and you 
 will get your reward too, for the last bottle of 
 mibd" (a sweet liqueur in which honey is the chief 
 ingredient) " is to be opened to-day ; you see I have 
 not forgotten your tastes just imagine what you 
 would have missed by not coming ! And Elzbieta 
 too ! quite right, my dear, a husband who is as fond 
 of miod as Zygmunt had better not be left to him- 
 self. There, that sofa is very comfortable; I 
 advise you to take possession of it in good time," 
 pointing with the affability of a queen to a seat on 
 which the frayed satin hung in fringes. "Ah, 
 there comes Krysztof with the cigarette case I 
 wonder where he found it ? Now, my friends, 
 don't you call this good taste ? " exhibiting an 
 extremely handsome cigarette case of chased silver, 
 decorated with the Malewicz arms. " Isn't it 
 foolish of him, and isn't it also sweet of him ? I 
 have told him a hundred times that I can do with- 
 out these things, that I can do without anything, 
 that I have no wants ; but it is no use, and just 
 because I lost my old one last week he goes and 
 buys me this as a feast-day present ! " 
 
 The case was indeed so out of keeping with the 
 establishment that I looked instinctively toward 
 Malewicz. There was the ghost of a smile play-
 
 146 O N E Y E A R 
 
 ing about his tight lips, which helped me to guess 
 part of his thoughts. It was not the first time 
 that I had heard Madame Malewicz protest her en- 
 tire independence of such trifles, but I had also 
 observed that she did not quite live up to her prin- 
 ciples. No doubt her son knew better than her- 
 self which things were necessary to her happiness, 
 and which not, and mercy knows at what personal 
 sacrifices that cigarette case had been purchased. 
 
 "Have any of you gentlemen got any matches 
 about you ? " went on the old lady, opening her 
 case, " I had mine a minute ago " Madame 
 Malewicz always had everything a minute ago 
 " Elzbieta will join me, I know, but I am not go- 
 ing to give Jadwiga any ; it is all very well for old 
 women like us to dye our teeth any colour we like, 
 but it would be a sin to stain those pearls even by 
 a shade," and she smiled at Jadwiga affectionately, 
 displaying a set of still regular, but almost canary- 
 coloured teeth. 
 
 Thus she chattered on with the lightheartedness 
 of a child for whom embarrassment does not exist. 
 
 When I had amused myself sufficiently with 
 watching her and admiring her for it was impos- 
 sible to do otherwise I took an opportunity of 
 slipping unobserved from the room and out into the 
 great wilderness which still went by the name of 
 park. The weather at least had been kind to 
 Madame Malewicz ; this was a far more perfect
 
 O N E Y E A R 147 
 
 spring day than the one spent lately at Krasno. 
 True it was only the willows and the hazel-nuts 
 that were tufted and tasselled as yet, and the 
 tangled beech branches overhead were almost black, 
 but among them the birds were pouring out their 
 hearts in a perfect flood of melody, and in sheltered 
 places the ground was streaked with vivid green. 
 I had only gathered snowdrops as yet, and was 
 hungering after violets, cowslips, anything to tell 
 me more plainly that the long winter was really 
 over. But, although my mind was bent on flow- 
 ers, the surroundings necessarily took my thoughts 
 back to Malewicz. Since seeing him in his own 
 home I had got to understand the whole history of 
 the man better. He had not quite reached man- 
 hood when his father died, leaving him only the 
 wreck of a princely fortune and his mother to sup- 
 port. Since then he had done nothing but struggle 
 to keep together the remnants of the paternal acres, 
 with the additional difficulty of distinctly remem- 
 bering the time of luxury. That the responsible 
 position in which he had been prematurely placed 
 should have put a stamp of almost exaggerated 
 seriousness upon him was not to be wondered at, 
 and as easily could I understand that the almost 
 monastic seclusion in which he lived had caused his 
 unfortunate passion for Jadwiga to take entire pos- 
 session of his soul, standing as it did in place of 
 everything that generally makes life agreeable at
 
 148 O N E Y E A R 
 
 his age. An unfortunate passion indeed ! The 
 thought of it oppressed me more than ever. I felt 
 that the crisis was approaching, although I did not 
 know how near it was. Jadwiga had come re- 
 luctantly to Roma Wielka, and only because she 
 could not avoid doing so without exciting remark, 
 and I do not think that she herself foresaw the end 
 of the day. 
 
 I must have been wandering about for an hour 
 on paths barely to be traced and often obstructed 
 by a self-planted bush, and the bunch in my hands 
 was growing to quite respectable dimensions, when 
 I heard swift, light steps behind me, and turning 
 saw Anulka trying breathlessly to reach me. 
 
 " Miss Middleton, oh, Miss Middleton, wait for 
 me ! " she panted in her thin voice, and in another 
 moment had reached me, exhausted, but with shin- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 "Oh, I had to catch you," she said, cutting 
 short a remonstrance from me. " I have discov- 
 ered something so delightful you can't imagine 
 nobody knows it yet." 
 
 " Well, what is it ? " I asked, trying to make 
 her stand still, but she had hold of my hand and 
 was dragging me feverishly forward. 
 
 " I can't tell it you ; it is something I must 
 show you ! Oh, do come quickly or it may be 
 gone ! " 
 
 There was no opposing Anulka when in this
 
 O N E Y E A R 149 
 
 mood, and only doing my best to moderate the 
 pace I allowed myself to be pulled along between 
 the trees in a different direction from the one I had 
 come by, and with my curiosity only half-awakened 
 and bent chiefly on some new sort of flower, or 
 possibly a bird's nest. We had left the path and 
 were making our way across country, as it were, 
 often having to skirt some spot where the melted 
 snow still lay in compact pools, and passing by 
 patches of hepatica and anemone which my fingers 
 were itching to be at, but which Anulka, in her 
 eagerness, scarcely worthied with a glance. 
 
 " Wait only," she kept repeating, " I have some- 
 thing much more exciting to show you." 
 
 At last, just as the trees were lightening, she 
 stood still, and peered out cautiously from between 
 a fringe of green hazel-nut tassels. There was a 
 clearing in the park just here, a stretch of marshy 
 meadow which was greener than any grass I had 
 yet seen. 
 
 " Are they still there ? " Anulka was saying un- 
 der her breath. " Yes, they are ! There ! Look 
 through here, Miss Middleton." 
 
 I looked, and uttered an exclamation of sur- 
 prised delight, for the whole green surface of the 
 little meadow was dotted over with tall, white 
 birds, stalking along on their red legs with a so- 
 lemnity impossible to describe, and gravely poking 
 about for the frogs, more than one of whom
 
 150 O N E Y E A R 
 
 must have wakened from his winter's sleep only to 
 find himself inside a stork, for, although I had 
 never seen a stork out of a picture-book, I had 
 yet vaguely and incredulously guessed at the iden- 
 tity of the mysterious white birds. I say incredu- 
 lously, because it seemed so much more like Hans 
 Andersen fairy tale than anything in real life. 
 
 " Have you counted them ? " I whispered to 
 Anulka, quite as interested as she by this time ; 
 " there must be more than twenty." 
 
 " But there are only two," was the unexpected 
 reply. 
 
 " Are you blind ? " I inquired amazed. 
 
 " Are you looking at the storks ? " retorted 
 Anulka. 
 
 " Of course. What are you looking at ? " 
 
 "Why, at Jadwiga, of course. At Jadwiga 
 and Wladimir. They are much more interesting, 
 surely, than the storks. Bother the storks ! Al- 
 though, to be sure, it was they who led me here. 
 I saw the flight, and wanted to see where they 
 would aljght, so I followed them and saw well, 
 just what you see over there, between these two 
 twigs." 
 
 Then I looked again mechanically, and, sure 
 enough, right opposite, just across the green 
 meadow, Jadwiga and Wladimir were sitting side 
 by side on a bench beneath a mighty but still naked 
 beech, and even from here it was perfectly clear
 
 O N E YE A R 151 
 
 that their hands lay in each other's and that his arm 
 was round her waist. They must have sat so for 
 long, for the birds did not mind them, stalking about 
 peacefully till within a few yards of the motionless 
 lovers and this made it all more like a fairy tale. 
 
 " And you thought it was for fear of frightening 
 the storks away that I was speaking so low ? " tit- 
 tered Anulka by my side. 
 
 I turned upon her angrily, provoked by the role 
 of eavesdropper into which I had been betrayed 
 unawares. With her shining black beads of eyes 
 and the grin of delight on her weazened face she 
 seemed the very embodiment of an imp of evil. 
 This was one of the moments in which I posi- 
 tively hated her. 
 
 " How could you dare to bring me here ? " I 
 was beginning when I became aware that some- 
 body was standing behind me. I turned quickly 
 and saw Malewicz only two paces off, and he, too, 
 was looking straight in front of him, across the 
 meadow with the storks but not at the storks, of 
 course. His face was so white, his eyes so fixed, 
 and his mouth so pinched, that he looked physic- 
 ally ill. As for Anulka, she only stopped to whis- 
 per, " I am frightened of him," and then darted 
 away among the bushes. 
 
 " We had better be going," I said unsteadily, 
 but I had to touch him on the sleeve before he 
 seemed to notice me. Then he turned his stiffly
 
 i 5 2 O N E Y E A R 
 
 moving eyes upon me, and seemed to take another 
 moment or two to recognise me. 
 
 " Yes, we had better be going," he repeated in a 
 rough, uneven voice, and walked two steps away, 
 like a man dazed, then abruptly stood still and 
 looked at me again, his white face working. 
 
 " You know that I love her ? " he said still in 
 that curiously rough voice, and measuring me al- 
 most angrily with his eyes, as though the words 
 had been a challenge. 
 
 " I have guessed it," I said as quietly as I could, 
 for indeed my heart was bleeding for him. 
 
 He walked on, speaking rapidly as he went. 
 
 " I knew, of course, that I should lose her that 
 is, that I should never win her. The day had to 
 come, but why this day? Why here? Is it not 
 bitter enough without that ? " 
 
 " They probably forgot where they were," I said 
 stupidly, which was about the most injudicious re- 
 mark I could make. 
 
 Malewicz gave a desolate laugh. 
 
 " You are right to real lovers the surroundings 
 are as nothing nothing exists but just they them- 
 selves. I daresay they will be quite surprised to 
 hear that it was at Roma Wielka that they plighted 
 their faith to each other. To them it is not Roma 
 Wielka, it is Paradise, and they the only two in- 
 habitants. Oh, to have been only an hour inside 
 that Paradise."
 
 O NE YE A R 153 
 
 He stopped again abruptly, and bent his shoulder 
 against a tree stem as though taken with some sud- 
 den spasm. I, too, stopped perforce, not knowing 
 whether it would be more merciful to keep my 
 eyes on him or turn them away. It was the first 
 time that I had seen the soul of a man in mental 
 agony, thus bared, as it were, to my gaze, and the 
 spectacle shook me as I had seldom been shaken 
 before. Within the last months I had become al- 
 most intimate with Malewicz, but he had always 
 been reticent for a Pole and I had not been pre- 
 pared to see him throw off the mask thus entirely. 
 
 " If there was a God in Heaven," he said 
 fiercely, while he still leaned against the tree and 
 picked at the bark with nervous fingers, " it would 
 not be possible that one man should have his hands 
 full and the other entirely empty. By what fault 
 of mine am I robbed of everything that makes life 
 sweet ? My father was the first who robbed me. 
 Do Paryzie ! Do Paryzie ! (To Paris). It used 
 to be the cry of young men in his day, and he fol- 
 lowed it, and the gold that had been gained by the 
 sweat of Polish peasants' brows was all tossed 
 away on the Paris gaming tables, and because he 
 had a gay youth I must have a dark one ; because 
 he played I must work beyond my strength and 
 yet that is not small. One hope, one flower, grew 
 up in my wilderness, and that to-day has been 
 gathered by another ! "
 
 154 O N E Y E A R 
 
 He broke off with a sort of gasp, and turned his 
 face toward the tree. There passed only a few 
 moments, during which he was obviously struggling 
 for mastery over himself, and then he looked back 
 at me, and I saw that the victory was gained. 
 After his brief outburst of rebellion he had stooped 
 and again taken up his burden. 
 
 " Have I frightened you ? " he said with rather 
 a ghastly smile. " It does not happen to me often ; 
 only now and then the injustice of it all seems to 
 get upon me. Please forget all I have said ; I was 
 probably raving. Of course I knew that this con- 
 summation was coming I have had the whole win- 
 ter to prepare in, but it seems that it was too short, 
 after all. I sincerely wish them all happiness. I 
 am sure that Wladimir loves her, and will try to 
 make her happy. I pray to God that he may suc- 
 ceed. I have known him from a boy, and there is 
 no harm in him beyond a little pardonable vanity, 
 and that surely is justified by circumstances," and 
 he smiled again, a little more successfully. 
 
 To say that there was no harm in Wladimir 
 somehow seemed always the first thing that his 
 friends were moved to say about him, but of Jad- 
 wiga's elected husband I should have liked to hear 
 praise that was a little less negative.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 DURING the weeks that followed her betrothal I 
 believe Jadwiga was as happy as it is possible for a 
 mortal creature to be. She had found her ideal 
 or believed she had done so, which comes to ex- 
 actly the same thing. She had got hold for life of 
 a congenial spirit, of somebody who could listen to 
 Byron or Chopin for hours without signs of weari- 
 ness, and could enter with enthusiasm into her 
 most ideal views of life. Personally I doubt 
 whether Byron read by other lips, or Chopin 
 played by other fingers, would have had the same 
 power of entrancing young Lewicki, but to Jad- 
 wiga I dared not hint at anything but the most 
 perfect identity of tastes. 
 
 Just at first the happy bridegroom was a little 
 disturbed by one thought. 
 
 " Do you think anybody guesses which day it 
 was that I spoke to her ? " he anxiously inquired 
 of me. " I should be awfully vexed if Krysztof 
 were to know that it happened at Roma Wielka. 
 You see it came over me somehow quite sud- 
 denly." He looked at me with such a boyishly 
 deprecating air as he said it that I could almost 
 have kissed him. 
 
 155
 
 156 ONE YEAR 
 
 " It would make it harder for Krysztof, don't 
 you see," he added thoughtfully, " and besides, it 
 would look in such awfully bad taste " it was 
 here evidently that lay the rub. The thought of 
 doing anything that was not in the most perfect 
 taste must certainly have been acutely painful to 
 any one of Wladimir's cast of mind. 
 
 To Jadwiga the same thought had doubtless oc- 
 curred, but she did not speak of it to me. Since 
 her engagement she had no attention of any sort, 
 even for Malewicz. I remember one occasion 
 only in which his name was mentioned between 
 us. I had been defending him against some pass- 
 ing attack, when Jadwiga laughingly broke in : 
 
 " If you find him so perfect why don't you 
 marry him yourself," she asked, carried away by 
 her exultant spirits. " You're always sticking to- 
 gether in a corner, at any rate. Oh, have I said 
 anything to hurt you ? " she checked herself ab- 
 ruptly, for her quick perception probably showed 
 her some change in my face. 
 
 " You have not hurt me," I said, " but you may 
 as well know that I don't mean ever to marry. If 
 I feel drawn toward Malewicz it is principally be- 
 cause he too has been unlucky in love." 
 
 " He too ! Oh, Miss Middleton Eleanor ! then 
 you have a secret which you have never told me ; 
 you are unhappy and you have not allowed me to 
 console you ! "
 
 O N E Y E A R 157 
 
 I don't know what made me so foolish, but just 
 then my eyelids began to burn most suspiciously 
 and my sight grew blurred. Perhaps it was the 
 contrast between her fate and mine that over- 
 powered me thus unexpectedly. 
 
 Her arms were round my neck in a moment, her 
 soothing voice in my ear, murmuring all sorts of 
 the most ingenuous words of endearment. Never 
 before or since has it been my fate to be called " a 
 little dove " or a " sweet lamb " things to which 
 I am aware of bearing no resemblance, but that 
 was Jadwiga's way, for her nature was essentially 
 caressing. In a few minutes more she knew all 
 about my poor little dead romance. I should need 
 to have been of wood to resist her. She listened 
 with an astonishment that was evidently as bound- 
 less as her sympathy. That common sense could 
 have anything to do with sentiment was a thing 
 which had evidently not occurred to her before. 
 
 " And you went away of your own free will ? " 
 she asked, incredulously. "Nobody forced you? 
 Why did you not marry and then trust to Provi- 
 dence ? " 
 
 " Because neither Henry nor I are idealists," I 
 replied, smiling, recovered by this time from that 
 moment of weakness, " and because we can both 
 make a sum in addition. We knew that by mar- 
 rying we should be risking starvation, not only for 
 ourselves, but possibly for others."
 
 158 O NE Y E A R 
 
 " I don't understand that at all," said Jadwiga, 
 thoughtfully. She was kneeling beside me, with 
 one arm still round my neck, and gazing with 
 wide, dreamy eyes through the open window be- 
 yond at the blue of the spring sky. 
 
 " If two people really are fond of each other, 
 what can want of money matter what ran any- 
 thing matter ? " 
 
 "You have never wanted it, you see," I gently 
 observed. 
 
 " No, but I almost wish I had, just to be able to 
 show what / understand by love. That about the 
 world being well lost is no nonsense to me ; it is 
 the only thing that I entirely subscribe to a com- 
 plete devotion, an entire giving away of oneself, a 
 merging of one soul into another it is the only 
 sort of love that seems to me possible. What can 
 poverty, or pain, or shame, or any of the misfor- 
 tunes of life do to such a love as that, except to 
 make each cling closer to the other ? " 
 
 Her dreamy eyes took fire as she spoke, and I 
 felt the hand that lay about my neck thrill with the 
 inward emotion. She looked infinitely beautiful 
 and infinitely in earnest as she gazed past me into 
 the blue distance, and inwardly I prayed that her 
 high ideal might never be put to too hard a test. 
 
 But the test was coming sooner than it was pos- 
 sible to foresee, and was to prove far harder than 
 anything I dreamed of.
 
 ONE YEAR 159 
 
 Even although I should live to be a hundred I 
 shall never be able to forget the smallest details 
 of the day which abruptly broke in upon Jadwiga's 
 dream of bliss, turning the peaceful monotony of 
 Ludniki into agitation and perplexity. Her en- 
 gagement was nearly three months old by this time, 
 and the outfit was making great progress, for the 
 wedding had been fixed for August. This very day 
 we were expecting the post to bring us the patterns 
 for the wedding-gown, and were accordingly looking 
 forward to its arrival with more than the usual in- 
 terest. Of late Wladimir had spent his afternoons 
 entirely at Ludniki, for his father had gone off to 
 nurse his rheumatism at Karlsbad, and the empty 
 house at Krasno was not to his taste. He was 
 here again to-day, and was even making himself 
 useful, for all hands were busy in the rose-walk. 
 We were in the very flush of the rose season then, 
 and the long, straight walk which I had first seen 
 bristling with hips was now turned into a perfect 
 dream of beauty. Like two long untidy garlands 
 the low-growing roses ran down each side of the 
 path, spilling their vividly crimson petals profusely 
 on the ground, intoxicating the eye with their 
 colour, the brain with their scent. Every morning 
 when I walked there, there were fresh ones newly 
 opened, while over-blown ones had been torn to 
 tatters by the night breeze. To-day Anulka and 
 I, basket in hand, were diligently collecting the
 
 160 O N E Y E A R 
 
 flowers, while Jadwiga and Wladimir, installed in 
 one of the old summerhouses, and surrounded 
 with more heaped baskets of the crimson petals, 
 were supposed to be clipping off the hard under- 
 part of each petal, useless for culinary purposes, for 
 these were the roses from which was fabricated the 
 delicious jam I had tasted so often. From the direc- 
 tion of the house the clink of sugar being vigor- 
 ously pounded rang toward us like a monotonous 
 chorus, and, from time to time, Roza, the kitchen 
 maid, appeared to fetch a new supply of rose 
 leaves, and each time regularly Wladimir offered to 
 carry them for her, and then allowed himself to be 
 persuaded to stay where he was. 
 
 What a different place the Ludniki park appeared 
 to me to-day from what it had done at first sight ! 
 I remember reflecting on it as I skirted the rose 
 hedge, scissors in hand. Then I had been shocked 
 by the untidiness, now I was chiefly charmed by 
 the beauty. Was it a deterioration in me ? Per- 
 haps. Evidently the atmosphere of comfortable 
 neglect in which I lived was having its effect upon 
 me. What a lot of time, to be sure, we waste in 
 tidying up and putting things straight generally ! 
 Is it really a gain to cultivate our sense of sym- 
 metry to the point of being disturbed by a stray 
 paper or a chipped plate, or to get so sensitive by 
 habit as not to be able to stand an empty bottle 
 with equanimity ? Upon my word, I believe they
 
 ^ ONE YEAR 161 
 
 are right. By their principle of Nie nie skadzie 
 they escape quite a lot of bothers, even if they oc- 
 casionally risk not finding a footstool when they 
 want it, or only finding one with a broken leg. In 
 such and such like reflections I had caught myself 
 indulging lately. 
 
 " I think I hear Jan's horse," said Jadwiga to 
 me as I brought her another basketful. " Do send 
 Anulka for the post-bag." 
 
 It was Jan, who, according to established cus- 
 tom, had ridden in to fetch the post from Zloczek. 
 
 " Oh, aren't you curious ? " screamed Anulka as 
 she ran off, " but I hope you'll choose brocade, not 
 satin. Satin is so every-day, you know." 
 
 " I shall choose whatever Wladimir likes best," 
 said Jadwiga simply, and their eyes met for a mo- 
 ment, and Wladimir blew aside his cigarette smoke 
 in order to be able to see her face better, for it is 
 almost superfluous to say that he was smoking cig- 
 arettes. In Galicia cigarette smoking is the ac- 
 companiment of everything, from card-playing to 
 love-making. 
 
 Presently Anulka was to be seen coming toward 
 us with the post-bag dangling from her arm. 
 
 " Jan says the patterns are there," she shouted 
 to us from afar. 
 
 The brass setting of the worn and weather-beaten 
 old post-bag glimmered faintly in the sunshine. Its 
 familiar countenance bore its usual expression of
 
 i6i O N E YE A R 
 
 stolid indifference ; there was nothing to show that 
 it carried a thunderbolt within it. 
 
 Jadwiga took her hands out of the rose leaves to 
 open the bag. She had a rose in her hair, and one 
 in her belt, and she had stuck the most perfect rose 
 she could find into Wladimir's buttonhole. In her 
 light summer dress she looked like a queen of the 
 roses indeed. 
 
 "Yes, the patterns are here, and, let me see, 
 what else ? A letter from Madame Clarisse " 
 that was the milliner at Limberg " and another 
 big letter for me ? " 
 
 She looked at the address on the long, thick, 
 blue envelope, and her face grew suddenly grave. 
 
 " How strange ! " she said in a subdued tone. 
 " It is addressed to Papa. It must be somebody 
 who does not know who thinks he is still alive ; 
 but I cannot imagine who. Wladimir, are these 
 not French postage stamps ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Wladimir, examining them ; " and 
 the postmark is Paris." 
 
 " Perhaps somebody who knew him long ago, 
 but what can he have to write to him now ? I 
 suppose I had better take the letter to Mamma." 
 
 " Oh, won't you look at the patterns first ? " 
 asked Anulka in an agony of impatience. 
 
 " No, I must go to Mamma," said Jadwiga, ob- 
 viously agitated, as she always was when anything 
 reminded her of her father, and, with the blue letter
 
 O N E Y E A R 163 
 
 in her hand, she rose hastily, overturning a basket 
 as she did so, and littering the ground with petals. 
 
 " Can I not take it for you ? " asked Wladimir ; 
 but she gently shook her head. 
 
 " You can unpack the patterns meanwhile," she 
 said. " I daresay I shall be back in a few minutes. 
 Very likely this is only some old account which 
 has been overlooked." 
 
 But she did not come back in a few minutes. 
 We sat on working among the rose leaves for 
 nearly half an hour longer, and still our helper did 
 not rejoin us. Wladimir rolled innumerable cigar- 
 ettes between his dexterous fingers and threw ques- 
 tioning glances along the rose-walk, but its length 
 remained deserted. The patterns of brocade and 
 satin, having been sufficiently gloated over by 
 Anulka, lay unheeded on the table. By degrees a 
 vague sort of anxiety grew up within me. The 
 letter was from Paris Jadwiga's father had been 
 in Paris the dead monk was a Frenchman these 
 thoughts moved confusedly in my brain, and out of 
 these materials my fears constructed some unde- 
 fined danger to Jadwiga's happiness. 
 
 " I think I shall go and see if there is no bad 
 news," I said at last, as carelessly as I could. 
 
 " That would be good of you," said Wladimir, 
 who, poor boy, was looking more disappointed than 
 anxious. He had not counted upon seeing his 
 afternoon thus curtailed of its rightful measure.
 
 164 O N E Y E A R 
 
 In the house I was met by the smell of hot rose 
 jam which penetrated all the passages. I had gone 
 only a few steps when I almost ran against Jadwiga. 
 
 " I was just coming to look for you," she said 
 with a white, startled face, catching her breath 
 strangely between her words. " Mamma is very 
 ill." 
 
 " Because of that letter ? " I asked instinctively. 
 
 " Yes I suppose so but I don't know exactly. 
 There were several letters inside the packet, not 
 only one. I stopped to see her read them because 
 I really was curious, but she had only read one 
 when her eyes opened wide oh, so terribly wide ! 
 and she fell back quite stiff in her chair. Marya 
 thinks she is coming round now, but I have sent 
 for Doctor Kouski. I was just coming to ask for 
 your smelling-salts." 
 
 I fetched the smelling-salts, but was met at the 
 door of Madame Bielinska's room by Marya in one 
 of her most determined moods. I was not to come 
 in, nobody was to come in until the doctor arrived, 
 she categorically declared, not even the young lady. 
 Madame Bielinska had opened her eyes, but she 
 seemed in a sort of stupor ; it was best not to dis- 
 turb her further just yet. And here were the letters 
 which had arrived by the post, Pani Jadwiga had 
 better take care of them meanwhile, and she thrust 
 into Jadwiga's hands the whole packet, and shut 
 the door in our faces.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 JADWIGA and I, left alone in the passage, looked 
 at each other for a moment in silence. Then she 
 said in an excited whisper : 
 
 " Come to my room. I want you to help me 
 to read these. I have tried to, but I don't under- 
 stand anything ; the words seem to jump up and 
 down before my eyes, and they talk of such strange 
 things there seems to be no sense in it." 
 
 " But ought I to read them ? " I asked, doubt- 
 fully. "If these are family affairs " 
 
 " You must, you must ! " she repeated excitedly. 
 u 1 cannot read them alone I am too frightened 
 of I don't know what. And they have to be 
 read something may have to be done, and if 
 Mamma is ill there's only me. Oh, don't make 
 me read them alone ! " 
 
 I don't know whether I was right to yield but I 
 did, suffering myself to be led along to Jadwiga's 
 room, where the first thing she did was to lock the 
 door. 
 
 " Why do you do that ? " I inquired, startled by 
 so unusual a precaution on her part. 
 
 " I don't know. I don't want any one to see the 
 letters yet until I know what is in them. Here 
 they are ! But don't read them too loud, please." 
 165
 
 166 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " I would rather read them to myself first," I 
 said, infected by her excitement, " if I am to read 
 them at all. Let me just throw a glance over 
 them." 
 
 " Yes, yes, only be quick," said Jadwiga fever- 
 ishly, and while I sat down at the table she took 
 some paces about the room, aimlessly and uneasily, 
 and finally sat down on her bed and watched me 
 as I read. I could feel her eyes upon my face and 
 could hear her deep, unsteady breaths. Through 
 the open window the hot smell of the rose-jam 
 still floated in, coming from culinary regions, and 
 somewhere in the distance somebody was still 
 pounding sugar. 
 
 I don't know what I expected as I took the 
 papers into my hands ; all sorts of wild surmises 
 were in my head, but none of them were quite the 
 truth. 
 
 Inside the big, blue envelope there had been a 
 smaller one, originally white, but a good deal yel- 
 lowed by age, and fastened with seals on which, 
 although they had been broken within the last 
 half-hour, an elaborate coat of arms was still trace- 
 able. Besides this there were several letters, 
 whose limpness showed them to be of the same 
 date as the envelope, and having evidently come 
 out of it. One only, written on crisp, business 
 paper, bore a date of only a few days back. This 
 is the one I first took up. It came from the office
 
 ONE YEAR 167 
 
 of a Paris solicitor, and, to the best of my recol- 
 lection, it ran as follows : 
 
 " SIR, During the revision of the business ef- 
 fects of my predecessor in this office, M. Nicolas 
 Grimond, defunct on the loth of last month, I 
 have come across various parcels of letters pre- 
 sumably deposited here years ago by the Vicomte 
 d'Urvain, and in accordance with the directions on 
 the wrappers, have the honour to return to you, or 
 to your heirs, those that bear your address. I will 
 here remark that Monsieur Grimond had for years 
 past been charged with the affairs of the family of 
 d'Urvain. 
 
 " A notice of the safe reception will oblige 
 " Your devoted servant, 
 
 " JOSEPH CHARDON." 
 
 or some name of that sort. 
 
 I looked more carefully at the inner envelope. 
 There, upon the surface, I found the somewhat 
 faded inscription : 
 
 "In case of Monsieur Grimond's death to be re- 
 turned unopened to 
 
 "MONSIEUR HAZ.IMIR BIELINSKI, 
 " Ludniki, 
 
 " Post Zloczek, 
 " Galicia, 
 
 " Austria." 
 and below the signature : 
 
 "ACHILLE D'URVAIN." 
 
 In complete darkness I turned to the letters
 
 168 ONE YEAR 
 
 which had evidently been contained in the sealed 
 envelope. There were three of them, written in a 
 flowing, legible hand, that was more like that of a 
 woman than a man, and they were all signed 
 " Hazimir Bielinski." The envelopes they had 
 been in were addressed the one to " Monsieur le 
 Vicomte d'Urvain, Capitaine dans le 2me Regiment 
 de Lanciers Tunis Afrique " the others to the 
 same name, but bearing the designations of more 
 obscure African places that I have forgotten. The 
 first was dated from Paris, and here are its con- 
 tents. I have altered a word here and there, but 
 certainly nothing essential ; there was a time when 
 I knew those letters better by heart than any les- 
 son I ever learnt : 
 
 " PARIS, 
 
 " Hotel d'Angleterre, 
 
 "May nth, 185 . 
 
 " MY DEAR VICOMTE, I have not done it yet, 
 but I mean to do it. God knows that I shall have 
 no peace until it is done. I would have written to 
 you even if your lines, penned at Marseilles, had 
 not arrived, for in our hurried interview on last 
 Wednesday morning I could not even attempt to 
 justify myself in your eyes no, not to justify, but 
 only partially to excuse. You have probably 
 never been desperate, or you would know that a 
 desperate man is not to be judged as one that is 
 master of all his powers. After the many pleas- 
 ant hours spent in your society I should be loth to 
 lose your esteem entirely, and therefore I will here
 
 O N E Y E A R 169 
 
 attempt to tell you briefly the history of my great 
 fault, or of my crime, if you will so call it. 
 
 " You will remember that for a week past I had 
 been losing heavily ; the run of bad luck was be- 
 ginning to get on my nerves, I believe, for both 
 my sleep and appetite went, and I lived in a state 
 of chronic irritation, very hard to keep within 
 bounds. Then came that dreadful Monday when 
 all the powers of hell seemed to have conspired 
 against me. When I rose from the table that 
 night no, it was morning already I could see 
 my ruin quite close to me you all could see it, I 
 think, for every one agreed that a revanche was due 
 to me, and he I cannot bring myself to write the 
 name of the man I have wronged was the first to 
 offer it me for the following night. I knew it was 
 my last chance ; I knew that one more such night 
 must leave me a beggar. Everything, my whole 
 future, depended upon how the cards fell. 
 
 " I swear to you by the memory of my mother 
 that when I sat down at the table I had no more 
 thought of doing a dishonest act than of murdering 
 any of my companions. I was content to trust to 
 my luck, hoping fiercely that it would be on the 
 turn. It was only when I gradually comprehended 
 that the luck had not turned, that this night was to 
 be but a continuation of the last, that I began to 
 get mad. And then the opportunity came. 
 
 " Oh, that mirror, that fatal mirror ! If it had 
 not been for the chance of the place I sat in I 
 could never have had the means, even if I had had 
 the will, to do harm. How was I to know how to 
 set about playing false ? I had heard indeed of 
 marked cards, but I never would have had the
 
 i 7 o ONE YEAR 
 
 nerve for such a manipulation, and would most 
 certainly have betrayed myself at the first attempt 
 but the mirror showed me the way. I was hold- 
 ing the Bank, as you remember. From the mo- 
 ment I perceived that, by slightly tilting up the 
 card I was dealing, I could catch a glimpse of its 
 underside, the temptation to guide my play by this 
 discovery became irresistible. At first I did it only 
 by way of experiment, as it were. It did not seem 
 to me possible that the players should not perceive 
 my manoeuvre, but when it became clear to me 
 that they did not, then my will seemed to go from 
 me. Remember, on one side there was Ruin stand- 
 ing real Ruin this time, and not merely its shadow 
 on the other this ridiculously easy, childishly 
 simple means of retrieving my fortunes. It was 
 like a new sort of game within the game, and I 
 think that it was a little the mere interest of the 
 thing that drew me on until, gaining confidence, I 
 grew bolder and began to stake higher. Nothing 
 ever was so successful. The bystanders and the 
 excitement of the play had drawn many to the 
 table laughingly declared that I was having more 
 than my revanche. Once only, when glancing up- 
 ward, I met among the lookers-on a pair of eyes 
 fixed with suspicious attention upon me. They 
 were your eyes, Vicomte, but by that time I was 
 too flushed with success to heed the warning in 
 them. It was only when, after that long night, I 
 found you waiting for me at the door of my hotel 
 that I understood that I was detected. You will 
 do me the justice to admit that I attempted no 
 denial ; it had been but a brief madness, and it was 
 over. I don't think I ever seriously thought of
 
 O NE YE A R 171 
 
 profiting by the act into which I had been betrayed. 
 To give you the promise which you demanded of 
 me was, therefore, only to meet my own conscience 
 half-way. Do not regret, as you do in your letter, 
 that you were unable, to stand by until I had re- 
 deemed my word. Both your duty and mine is 
 clear. You are called to defend your country's 
 interests on a distant field of battle ; I am bound 
 to make good the loss which my opponent of the 
 other day has apparently obtained at my hands. 
 Your warning was not required, but I accept it as 
 part of my punishment. You are my judge and I 
 am the sinner, and the sentence you have pro- 
 nounced upon me shall be fulfilled to the letter. 
 Only have a little patience. This affair must be 
 treated between me and him, and I cannot make 
 up my mind to do so verbally. So long as we 
 are in Paris we meet daily. I shall wait until we 
 are separated, and then I shall write to him. Do 
 not blame the delay. If he were in any way un- 
 harassed by his losses of last week I would speak 
 at once, but his pockets are still full neither he 
 nor anybody else suspects that those losses were 
 anything but a trick of fortune. You and I are 
 the only mortals who know the secret. He will 
 be leaving Paris next week; be merciful and grant 
 me these few days more in which to say good-bye 
 to my like of hitherto perhaps even to the world, 
 for what possible future remains open to me I can- 
 not see. 
 
 " As for the calculation you make, it is, I fear, 
 correct. Yes, it cannot have been less than a 
 hundred and twenty thousand francs that passed 
 between us on Tuesday night.
 
 i 7 2 ONE YEAR 
 
 " Farewell. Think of me as little badly as you 
 can, as of one who fell by weakness and not by 
 wickedness, and who quickly threw from him his 
 wrongful gains. 
 
 " HAZIMIR BIELINSKI." 
 
 The second letter was shorter, and written from 
 Ludniki a few months later. 
 
 " DEAR VICOMTE, You are cruel because you 
 have never been unfortunate. Have I not told 
 you that restitution shall be made ; and can you 
 not let me choose my own time? Surely you for- 
 get that what you ask of me is nothing less than 
 beggaring myself? If I am to do your will en- 
 tirely there will be no help but to sell Ludniki ; 
 according to your merciless view of the case not a 
 stone of it belongs to me now. But are you quite 
 sure that your view is the correct one ? At the 
 first moment I was so overwhelmed by the mere 
 thought of what I had attempted to do that I un- 
 hesitatingly accepted your verdict; but reflection 
 has put another light on the matter. It is true that 
 I took the mirror to aid, but is it certain that with- 
 out the mirror I should not have made a few lucky 
 guesses ? Besides, as I told you, it was no more 
 than a glimpse of the underside that I caught, so 
 that, even with that aid, I was scarcely doing more 
 than guessing ; if I remember right there were even 
 times when, in a fit of momentary terror, I did net 
 consult the mirror at all ; and some of my win- 
 nings may have proceeded from exactly those times. 
 How then do you want to decide which part of the 
 sum gained that night is my lawful property and 
 which not ? The matter is not nearly so simple as
 
 ONE YEAR 173 
 
 to you, with your high-minded but surely some- 
 what impulsive chivalry, it appeared in the first 
 moment. Let me implore you to submit the mat- 
 ter to a calmer consideration. I think you will 
 find that I am not obliged to despoil myself en- 
 tirely. Do not use the power which chance or 
 rather which I myself have given you over me too 
 harshly for without my own confession what 
 proof would you have against me ? Remember 
 that he is still rich, while I am threatened with 
 poverty, that that which he does not even miss 
 means for me the common sustenance of life. Of 
 course he shall have his due, but I must first be 
 clear in my mind as to what exactly is his due. 
 
 " I shall await your answer before doing any- 
 thing further. I do not know where my letter will 
 find you ; according to the papers the French 
 troops are moving continually, but in time these 
 lines will reach your hands. 
 
 " I do not know whether I may yet venture to 
 sign myself, Your friend, 
 
 " HAZIMIR BIELINSKI." 
 
 I took up the last remaining letter and read : 
 
 "LUDNIKI, November iyth, 185 . 
 
 " MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE, Your last letter was 
 to me a painful surprise. Had I not told you that I 
 was ready to abide by your decision, and was only 
 in doubt as to the exact amount of restitution due ? 
 Since you insist upon a complete sacrifice, it shall, 
 of course, be made, but, at least, you will allow 
 me to make it in my own fashion. During these 
 months, while waiting for your letter, it has oc-
 
 174 O N E Y E A R 
 
 curred to me that restitution does not necessarily 
 entail confession. I have only to repeat the un- 
 happy experiment which Fate forced upon me, 
 using it this time against myself; ht shall win back 
 from me all that he lost on that fatal night ; he 
 will have his money again without finding it neces- 
 sary to despise me. 1 feel a little lighter in heart 
 since thinking of this, for I do not know how I 
 could have borne the shame even before only one 
 man more. The beggary still remains, and this, 
 too, is hard enough to bear. Beside your words 
 of stern condemnation might you not find some 
 of sympathy for a very unhappy man ? The ex- 
 posure you threaten me with is a superfluous 
 cruelty, since you know that I have no choice. 
 " HAZIMIR BIELINSKI." 
 
 As I laid the third letter on the table I raised 
 my eyes and met those of Jadwiga fixed with a 
 devouring glance upon my face. She was still sit- 
 ting on the bed, as though she had found that the 
 best place from which to follow my expression as 
 I read. Whether there was anything to see there 
 I don't know, for I had read very fast, the writing 
 being clear despite the faded ink, and had scarcely 
 taken time to think as I hurried on, for I too was 
 devoured by a painful curiosity. 
 
 "Well?" asked Jadwiga, impatiently. "Do 
 you understand anything ? Is there any sense in 
 it at all ? " 
 
 I could not answer immediately, for the simple 
 reason that as yet I had nothing to say. Leaning
 
 ONE YEAR 175 
 
 my cheek on my hand I sat for a few moments 
 quite still, with closed eyes, allowing the phrases 
 just read to pass once more slowly through my 
 mind, and gradually to group themselves to a 
 whole. 
 
 " Yes," I said slowly, after that minute. " I 
 am afraid I understand. But tell me first, are you 
 quite sure these letters are written by your father ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I am sure of that. There was no other 
 Hazimir Bielinski ; and, beside, it is the same 
 writing that Mamma has in her prayer-book." 
 
 "Then but are you sure that you want to 
 know everything ? These letters were not meant 
 to be read by you or by me either." 
 
 "Perhaps not, but I must know everything 
 now," said Jadwiga, with sudden fierceness. 
 " You have no right to keep anything from me." 
 
 She sprang from the bed and came toward the 
 table, but I gently laid my hands upon the papers 
 that lay scattered there. 
 
 " My poor child, then let me tell you it would 
 be worse to read the words. I can only say what 
 seems to be the truth. The person who wrote 
 these letters confesses to having used an unfair ad- 
 vantage while playing at cards, and having thus 
 wronged another." 
 
 Jadwiga looked at me wildly across the table on 
 which, with convulsively clenched hands, she was 
 leaning.
 
 176 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " But I have just told you that the person who 
 wrote these letters was my father," she said, al- 
 most coldly. 
 
 I looked down in silence, unable to bear her 
 gaze. 
 
 "An unfair advantage," she continued, abstract- 
 edly, " but that would be the same as cheating, 
 would it not r Tell me quick, Miss Middleton, is 
 that what you mean ? " 
 
 " That is what these letters seem to mean," I 
 answered, helplessly. 
 
 " But it is a lie ! " she cried, giving the frail 
 table so vehement a push that it groaned in all its 
 somewhat decrepit members. " It is a vile lie, or 
 else a mistake don't you think it is a mistake Miss 
 Middleton ? Surely a card cheater is the basest, 
 most contemptible thing in the world therefore it 
 cannot be true. You don't think it is true, do 
 you ? " And her eyes seemed to be imploring me 
 to unsay the words just spoken. 
 
 I had taken up the letters again, and was once 
 more running my eye over them, perhaps in some 
 desperate hope of extracting another meaning, 
 although in my heart of hearts I was already con- 
 vinced. 
 
 u How can I say what is true and what is not ? " 
 I answered, with painful hesitation. " If it is a 
 lie then it is your father himself who has spoken 
 it, and why should he "
 
 ONE YEAR 177 
 
 My words were cut short by a lively movement 
 of the door-handle knocking was not customary 
 at Ludniki. 
 
 Jadwiga flew to the door and turned the key. 
 
 " Is Mamma worse ? " she asked of Marya, 
 who stood without, flurried, but also indignant. 
 
 "Much worse, I consider," she replied, with a 
 certain air of injured consequence she was apt to 
 assume whenever her prescriptions were not fol- 
 lowed to the letter. " But she has taken it into 
 her head that she is better, and nothing will suit 
 her but that the young lady should come at once 
 and bring the letters with her. I've never seen 
 her anything like this. It's no use telling her that 
 quiet is what she needs. I shouldn't be surprised 
 if she refused to see Dr. Kouski when he comes." 
 
 Jadwiga snatched up the scattered papers from 
 the table and seized me by the hand. 
 
 " You will come with me ? " she said with ir- 
 resistible entreaty in her eyes ; " she might be 
 taken ill again." 
 
 " I will follow you in a minute," I said, for I 
 had suddenly remembered that Wladimir was still 
 waiting in the garden, in complete ignorance and 
 probably keen anxiety, and I thought that I might 
 as well take upon myself to send him home. His 
 presence, until the situation was somewhat cleared 
 and the most violent emotions calmed, struck me 
 only as a fresh complication.
 
 178 O N E Y E A R 
 
 41 Madame Bielinska has had a fainting fit," I 
 explained to the distressed youth, " and Jadwiga is 
 too busy with her mother to come out again." 
 
 " But she is not ill herself? " he anxiously in- 
 quired. " Was there any bad news in that letter ? " 
 
 " There was some rather startling news, but I 
 cannot stop to talk about that now. Jadwiga is 
 quite well ; you need have no fear on her account." 
 
 " But is there nothing I can do ? Can't I fetch 
 a doctor, or go a message, or something ? " he in- 
 quired desperately. 
 
 u No, there is nothing except to leave Jadwiga 
 undisturbed beside her mother," I replied. 
 
 " But I suppose I may come again to-morrow to 
 inquire ? " 
 
 " Of course you may," I replied, in a fever to 
 be quit of him and back again beside Jadwiga.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 WHEN I reached Madame Bielinska's room a 
 great surprise awaited me. She was not lying on 
 the bed as I expected, but sitting upright in the 
 deep armchair, in which I had never seen her 
 otherwise than sunk into a broken and insignificant 
 heap. Her spare figure had been wonderfully 
 straightened and, as it were, enlarged by some 
 acute tension of the nerves; on her usually so 
 bloodless cheeks there burned two bright spots, 
 while the cavernous eyes no longer looked empty 
 of everything but the reflection of terror, but 
 showed something like a new life in their depth. 
 
 " The letters ! " she was saying as I entered. 
 " The letters ! Where are they ? I must read 
 them again." 
 
 Jadwiga, on her knees beside her mother, was 
 holding them half hidden against her dress. 
 
 " Little mother," she entreated, " do not read 
 them. They will make you ill again. It is all a 
 mistake I do not believe it." 
 
 " I do," said the mother, in so strangely incisive 
 a tone that Jadwiga looked at her^speechless, at the 
 same time mechanically abandoning the papers she 
 held. 
 
 179
 
 i8o ONE YEAR 
 
 Madame Bielinska took them eagerly, with a 
 gesture I had never seen in her, or supposed her 
 capable of, and for a few minutes all was silent 
 while she closely read the letters, nodding her 
 head slowly the while, and sometimes uttering a 
 queer little sound in her throat as though of 
 assent or corroboration. What struck me as the 
 strangest part of the matter was that neither 
 grief, despair, nor shame had any part in her ex- 
 pression. These were the things I expected to 
 find there was she not reading the confession 
 of her husband's disgrace ? while what I saw 
 instead was excitement undoubtedly, but mingled 
 with something that almost resembled satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 When she had done reading she seemed for the 
 first time to notice my presence. 
 
 " Don't send Eleanor away," said Jadwiga 
 quickly, catching her mother's glance toward me. 
 " She knows all there is to know she has read the 
 letters I made her read them she is our friend, 
 Mamma." 
 
 At the same time her eyes were asking me 
 plainly not to go. It was evident that she was 
 afraid of being left alone with this so curiously un- 
 familiar mother. 
 
 " So be it," said Madame Bielinska readily. 
 " Why should she not know ? Everybody will 
 soon know, and she may help us with her advice j
 
 O N E Y E A R 181 
 
 we will require much reflection and good counsel. 
 Jadwiga, my love, will you go to the press between 
 the windows ? " 
 
 She was fumbling at her neck as she spoke, and 
 now pulled out a narrow black ribbon on which 
 hung a small key. 
 
 " There at the bottom, on the lowest shelf, you 
 will find a leather box, the one with the monogram 
 on the top ; bring it to me, please, at once ; there 
 is something in it." 
 
 In wordless astonishment Jadwiga obeyed, and 
 I looked on, unable even to conjecture on what her 
 mind was running, and wondering whether her 
 senses were not, after all, deranged. 
 
 Madame Bielinska grasped at the box that 
 Jadwiga brought her as though at a prize. With 
 steady hands she unlocked it, and searched for a 
 few moments within. It seemed principally to 
 contain old letters. At last she found what she 
 wanted. 
 
 " There ! " she said, with a sigh of relief, and, 
 unfolding a limp sheet of paper, she handed it 
 without further word to her daughter Jadwiga, 
 whose eyes were not accustomed to the dim light 
 of the apartment, took it to the window. As she 
 read, the perplexity on her face deepened; then, 
 still in silence, she passed it on to me. 
 
 The letter was not written on letter paper, but 
 on a sheet that might have been torn out of a large
 
 182 O N E Y E A R 
 
 note-book, and was dated from a military lazaretto 
 in a West African camp. 
 
 "June i6th, 185 . 
 
 " MONSIEUR BIELINSK.I, Your letter has found 
 me here only just in time. I am not able to 
 answer it myself, for the sabre cut on my right 
 arm forbids me holding a pen. Even these few 
 words have to be dictated to Soeur Marie Cecile, 
 the good angel who nurses me and who has saved 
 my soul, as I trust to God, although she has not 
 been able to save my body. I am forced to use 
 her hand as the instrument wherewith to convey to 
 you my last warning the warning of a dying 
 man. But you need not fear betrayal ; I will use 
 words which you alone can understand. Your let- 
 ter tells me that you see your duty plainly at last ; 
 fulfil it in your own fashion, but do not delay. In 
 my opinion only a full confession could bring a 
 full atonement, but so long as the thing is done I 
 will not insist on the way it is done. But do not 
 grow weak. I speak to you as one whose foot is 
 in the grave. By the time you read these lines the 
 lips that dictated them will be cold. When I 
 spoke to you before, I spoke as the indignant man 
 of the world, for whom only the world's code of 
 honour exists ; now I speak as the sinner whose 
 eyes have been opened at the last moment to the 
 follies of his youth, to the time he has wasted in 
 the world, and it is God's commandments and not 
 man's that I call upon you to respect. But I be- 
 lieve even these words are not wanted. You will 
 have redeemed your word ere this, and made the 
 great sacrifice. May God reward it you, and may 
 you not forget to pray for my soul. U."
 
 ONE YEAR 183 
 
 These lines were penned in a delicate woman's 
 hand, and only the U at the foot had been pain- 
 fully scrambled by another, evidently the dictator 
 of the letter. When I had read it I looked at 
 Jadwiga, and Jadwiga looked at me, then -at her 
 mother, who was carefully watching us both. A 
 minute passed before any one spoke. I was trying 
 to piece together the different pieces of evidence 
 my ideas were not clearly ranged just yet. 
 
 " I don't understand," said Jadwiga, at last slowly. 
 
 " Don't you ? Surely it is clear enough. The 
 writer of the letter is the same man to whom these 
 three are addressed," and Madame Bielinska indi- 
 cated the papers in her lap. 
 
 " But where does this one come from ? " 
 
 " That I am going to tell you. After your 
 father's death I found it. When I had recovered 
 my senses and a little of my strength, the first thing 
 I did was to search all his papers. Every one told 
 me that he had been mad, and I pretended to 
 believe them, but I did not do so really for a 
 moment. Somewhere, so I felt certain, there must 
 exist some other explanation, and I had no peace 
 until I had read every line he left behind him, 
 hoping that one might give me a clue. And at last 
 I found this ; and even this was not among his 
 papers, but lying between the leaves of a book 
 which had been packed away at the back of a 
 shelf. I suppose that was the only reason of its
 
 184 O N E YE A R 
 
 not having been destroyed, as every other one 
 coming from the same quarter has evidently been 
 destroyed. He had mislaid it, and the merest 
 chance put the book into my hands a few months 
 after his death. I had grown so used to scan every 
 paper which my eye fell upon that I at once read 
 this one, and I immediately understood that. here 
 lay the secret of his death. But it was scarcely to 
 be called a clue nothing that I could follow up, 
 and it told me nothing except that there had been 
 some disgrace in his youth, and what this disgrace 
 might be I have been trying to guess ever since, 
 and I see now that I have not been far from the 
 truth for I have often thought of cards. Oh, I 
 am not so stupid as people take me to be ! " 
 
 There was a convulsive movement about her lips 
 which may have been meant for a smile. 
 
 Jadwiga had sat down opposite to her mother, 
 and was earnestly looking at her. 
 
 " The secret of his death ? " she repeated. 
 " How does this explain the secret of his death ? " 
 
 Madame Bielinska made a movement of impa- 
 tience. 
 
 " How slow you are, Jadwiga ! " she said, in 
 a tone of querulous irritation. " It is all as 
 plain as day. Ever since I found this French let- 
 ter I have suspected that the monk who fell by 
 HazirmYs hand was the writer; now I am sure 
 of it."
 
 ONE YEAR 185 
 
 " But the man who wrote this letter was dead 
 long before he wrote it on his death-bed." 
 
 " He thought he was on his death-bed, but he 
 did not die. This Sister Marie Cecile whom he 
 speaks of here, did after all, succeed in saving his 
 body as well as his soul, and evidently succeeded 
 so well with the latter that the first use he made 
 of his returning health was to forswear the world 
 and take the cowl. Read the letter again, and 
 say whether this is not exactly the thing which 
 you would expect of the writer, supposing he 
 recovered." 
 
 She looked at me as though appealing to my 
 judgment, and I silently inclined my head. 
 
 " Whether Hazimir ever had any further com- 
 munication with him," went on Madame Bie- 
 linska, " I do not know, of course. If he had he 
 took care to destroy all traces, or perhaps he got 
 no more. The Vicomte, in this note, seems to 
 have considered the matter settled, and once in 
 the cloister he may have left all worldly concerns 
 outside." 
 
 Jadwiga began to move uneasily in her chair. 
 
 " But, Mamma, even supposing you are right 
 even supposing my father did commit so so great 
 a fault, this surely does not explain the end. 
 Since he had atoned for his weakness so many years 
 before, what further cause of quarrel could there be 
 between him and the Frenchman ? "
 
 186 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " But he had not atoned for it ! " cried Madame 
 Bielinska, in a shrill accent that rang almost like 
 one of triumph, and grasping the two arms of her 
 chair, she bent so far forward that I thought she 
 must fall, staring back unflinchingly into her daugh- 
 ter's wide and horror-stricken eyes. " Don't you 
 understand, yet ? Does he not say in all these 
 letters of his that, in order to make restitution, he 
 will have to beggar himself to sell Ludniki ? 
 And did he beggar himself? Has Ludniki been 
 sold ? And remember during all these years we 
 have fallen heir to no inheritance} no money has 
 come to us from other quarters. What does it 
 mean ? Why simply that the excuses which had 
 served for weeks and for months had ended by 
 serving for years. And when twenty years later 
 the Vicomte turned monk, came to this door 
 whether by pure chance or with some latent intention, 
 who can ever tell now and found that the promise 
 given had not been kept, and that the sinner was 
 still in possession of his wrongful gains, has turned 
 his wrath upon him, possibly threatening him with 
 immediate exposure and then well, surely, now, 
 you cannot believe that your father was mad when 
 he turned the pistol first upon the only other 
 man who knew the truth, and then upon him- 
 self?" 
 
 She stopped, sinking back in her chair, her 
 breath coming fast.
 
 O N E Y E A R 187 
 
 I looked at her, lost in amazement at so much 
 rapidity and clearness of thought in a person whom 
 I had always regarded as anything but intellectual. 
 Yes, those deductions were doubtless correct ; that 
 might very well have been the way in which the 
 thing had played itself out. To be sure this old 
 woman had had eleven years to brood over a subject 
 which to us was new in its essentials, so it was 
 scarcely a wonder if she found her way more 
 rapidly in the puzzle. She had had her theory lying 
 all ready, so to say, with only the missing pieces to 
 fit in. 
 
 Jadwiga sprang to her feet, grasping at her head. 
 
 " But then Ludniki is not ours ! " she cried, in 
 a tone of acute anguish. " It cannot be ours if 
 all this is true. Whose is it, Mamma ? " 
 
 u That is what we still have to find out," said 
 Madame Bielinska, more quietly. " Ludniki be- 
 longs to the man who was cheated that night in 
 Paris. His name is nowhere in the letters, but I 
 shall find it out, ah, yes, I shall certainly find it 
 out, never fear ! The first thing to do is to write 
 to that Paris solicitor and have every inquiry made 
 concerning the Vicomte d'Urvain ; it is just pos- 
 sible that he has left other papers which may give 
 a further clue to the man we need. Besides there 
 must be many men still alive who remember that 
 Paris time. Lewicki was in Paris inthe fifties; 
 possibly he can furnish me with names but I
 
 i88 O N E Y E A R 
 
 shall have to wait until he is back from Karlsbad 
 for that. Oh, I shall find him I shall find him 
 yet ! " 
 
 " And when you have found him ? " I ventured 
 to inquire. 
 
 " He shall be given back every penny that is his 
 own," she said, turning upon me her transfigured 
 face. " How I thank God that the sum is men- 
 tioned in this first letter! It makes the matter 
 simple. A hundred and twenty thousand francs 
 yes, of course, Ludniki will have to go ; we shall 
 be poor, but we shall be free of that terrible 
 shadow which has been choking me for eleven 
 years the stain shall be washed out ; as the resti- 
 tution is tardy so it shall be full." 
 
 She looked toward her daughter as though in ex- 
 pectance of an echo to her words, but Jadwiga, 
 very pale, with eyes darkened by thought, was gaz- 
 ing straight in front of her. 
 
 " It shall be full," she repeated, after her mother, 
 but without the mother's strange enthusiasm, " it 
 shall be full, but the stain no, nothing can ever 
 wash the stain away." 
 
 When Doctor Kouski came he was, as Marya 
 had surmised, not admitted. 
 
 " Tell him that it was only a stupid mistake of 
 Marya's, then give him some tea and send him 
 away," said Madame Bielinska decisively to Jad- 
 wiga. " Miss Middleton will perhaps stay here in
 
 O N E Y E A R 189 
 
 the meantime while I dictate to her the letter for 
 the French solicitor. If it goes back with the 
 doctor to Zloczek, it will still catch the post." 
 
 Within the next half-hour the letter was written, 
 consisting principally of a request for all informa- 
 tion obtainable with regard to the late Vicomte 
 d'Urvain, and in especial as to what was known of 
 his end ; also as to whether any members of the 
 family still survived, with whom it might be possible 
 to enter into communication. 
 
 The letter, although lengthy, was perfectly clear 
 and vigorously expressed. Out of every word that 
 she dictated to me there spoke the relief of a soul 
 that has found its liberty at last that after eleven 
 years of surmises was able at last to take action. 
 I have often since tried to imagine what those 
 eleven years must have been like, but have never 
 been able to grasp it ; unless I may compare it to 
 living shut up with a dangerous animal, whose face 
 one has never seen, and the particulars of which 
 one yet attempts to conjecture. To-day the mon- 
 ster had shown its features and, however loathsome 
 they were, I suppose there was a sort of mild re- 
 lief in knowing the worst. No truth could be 
 more terrible than the incertitude which had been 
 sucking the life-blood from her. This, at last, is 
 the only way in which I can explain to myself the 
 abrupt change in my employer. 
 
 That night on my way to bed I took my candle
 
 igo O N E Y E A R 
 
 into the room which lay beside the walled-up en- 
 trance, and held it up to the portrait which hung 
 there. Since knowing the man's history I felt a 
 need to look in his face. Yes, that was the face 
 of exactly the man who would have written those 
 letters remorseful and penitent in the first over- 
 whelming shame of the discovery, querulous and 
 self-pitying as the shock of emotion passed. No 
 man with that mouth could be very firm of will. 
 With the absence of the warner the tottering re- 
 solve would have tottered still further, and after 
 his supposed death it is quite conceivable that, be- 
 lieving himself free of the sole witness of his 
 crime, the temptation of keeping both his money 
 and the world's esteem had proved too strong to be 
 resisted. No one would ever know the details of 
 that buried history, but with the materials already 
 at hand it was not hard to reconstruct the outline.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 NEXT morning Jadwiga appeared more animated, 
 although the heavy eyelids spoke of tears shed 
 under cover of darkness tears of shame, as I well 
 knew. The first stupor was passed, I could see, 
 and she had caught sight of a saving thought. 
 
 " I hope he will come early," she said to me, as 
 she convulsively pressed my hands. " He is sure 
 to come early in order to inquire after Mamma. 
 I think I shall feel better when I have heard his 
 words of sympathy ; Wladimir always finds the 
 right thing to say." 
 
 " And you mean to tell him everything ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 She looked at me with boundless astonishment. 
 
 " Naturally ; how can I have a secret from him ? 
 Is he not my future husband ? Does not that 
 which touches me touch him ? Is not my grief 
 his grief? " 
 
 " Of course, of course," I said, a little hastily, 
 half ashamed of the thought which had crossed my 
 mind. " It is evident that he must know. But 
 you must expect to see him a good deal shaken 
 by the news." 
 
 " Shaken, of course ; whatever shakes me could 
 191
 
 192 O N E YE A R 
 
 not leave him cold. But I know that I shall find 
 his hand ready to support me. He shall be our 
 staff on the thorny road we are about to tread. 
 His sense of justice is so keen that I know he will 
 feel with us that we have no choice." 
 
 Evidently it was no use to warn her. The pos- 
 sibility of a disappointment had not even crossed 
 her mind. In her eagerness and the natural crav- 
 ing for the sympathy that, of course, was the most 
 precious to her, she could scarcely await the mo- 
 ment in which to announce to her lover that her 
 father had been a scoundrel, and that she herself 
 was portionless. 
 
 I held my peace after that, although tormented 
 by vague presentiments. What right, after all, had 
 I to poison this sublime confidence ? Might not 
 she be right, and I wrong ? How could I say that 
 .his love would not stand the test it was about to 
 be put to ? 
 
 Jadwiga had not very long to wait ; soon after 
 ten o'clock Wladimir was at the door. He began 
 by sending in a discreet inquiry regarding Madame 
 Bielinska's health, and a message to say that he 
 would return in the afternoon at the usual hour; 
 but Jadwiga, unable to bear the delay, had him in- 
 stantly summoned to the drawing-room. I ac- 
 companied her only to the door and there some- 
 thing made me take her into my arms and kiss her; 
 after that I fled out into the park in terror of over-
 
 O N E YE A R 193 
 
 hearing any word of the painful explanation about 
 to take place. My steps turned instinctively to- 
 ward the rose-walk, but in my present mood I 
 could see no beauty in it ; to my eyes there seemed 
 to be more thorns than roses to-day, and so busy 
 was my mind with the tragedy of the past that the 
 petals spilled over-night upon the moist earth ap- 
 peared to me as pools of recently shed blood. In 
 the old rickety summerhouse the basket which 
 Jadwiga had overturned yesterday still lay on its 
 side, its contents strewn broadcast over the moss- 
 grown floor. On the table the patterns of satin 
 and brocade lay unheeded ; one or two had been 
 carried away by the wind. I mechanically picked 
 them out of the dewy grass. 
 
 Presently Anulka joined me. For some minutes 
 she walked in silence beside me ; then, having al- 
 most forgotten her presence, I heard her piping 
 voice beside me. 
 
 " What does cheating at cards mean exactly ? " 
 
 I turned with a start to find her bead-like eyes 
 fixed watchfully upon my face. 
 
 " What makes you ask me that now ? " I in- 
 quired, with a dawning feeling of repulsion upon 
 me. 
 
 "Something that I heard yesterday when you 
 were talking with Jadwiga in her room." 
 
 " But you were not there," I objected, " and the 
 door was shut."
 
 I 9 4 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " But the window was open," said Anulka, 
 simply. 
 
 This was not the first time that I had caught my 
 pupil eavesdropping. She was the sort of child 
 whose eyes and ears were always wide open, eager 
 for excitement in any shape, and whose nervous 
 vivacity kept her continually on the move. She 
 would slip about as noiselessly and as deftly as a 
 weasel, appearing at the most unexpected places 
 and picking up scraps of information, of which for- 
 tunately she could not digest the greater part. 
 
 Having administered a suitable admonition, I 
 added severely : 
 
 " Whatever you have heard you must not speak 
 of it again, Anulka. It is a sad story which you 
 cannot understand." 
 
 "That is what Marya says," replied Anulka. 
 " She thinks I must have heard wrong, but I 
 am sure I did not. Jadwiga said quite plainly, 
 4 But that would be the same as cheating at 
 cards.' " 
 
 "Then you have spoken to Marya, too?" I 
 asked with a feeling of desperation, foreseeing that 
 the flood of tongues was loosened already. 
 
 " Of course, since I had nobody else to talk to 
 last night ; you could not expect me to keep it to 
 myself, could you ? But, dear Miss Middleton,do 
 tell me how he did it. It can't be easy to cheat at 
 cards."
 
 O N E Y E A R 195 
 
 " Hush, not so loud ! " I said nervously, as I 
 looked about me. 
 
 " But how did he do it ? " she persisted. " I 
 want so much to know." 
 
 I resisted a little longer, but in the end there was 
 nothing for it but to tell her of the looking-glass 
 and of the temptation to which her unhappy father 
 had yielded. She listened with keen attention, and 
 at the end, to my horror, she clapped her hands. 
 
 " Oh, w bat a good idea ! " she gleefully ex- 
 claimed. " I wonder how nobody thought of that 
 before. It just shows how clever he was." 
 
 " Anulka," I cried in consternation, " what are 
 you thinking of? It was so wrong a thing to do 
 that your father suffered remorse for it all his life." 
 
 " But it was only a game," said Anulka, with 
 perfect equanimity, "so what could it matter?" 
 
 I attempted an explanation, but not with much 
 effect. She was evidently quite honest in her ina- 
 bility to see the criminal side of the matter. 
 
 " In a game surely every one tries to get the best 
 of it," she objected to my strictures, "and if he 
 found a better way of doing so than the others, 
 then why should he not use it ? If people don't 
 want to lose money, then they should not play 
 cards. But it was stupid of him to let himself be 
 caught," she added in a tone of disapproval. 
 
 I gave up any further attempt, knowing by ex- 
 perience that the strange want of proportion in this
 
 196 O N E Y E A R 
 
 curious child's ideas of morality was not amenable 
 to argument as well discuss a difference of tints 
 with a colour-blind person. It was not that she 
 loved evil for its own sake, but that she was in- 
 capable of recognising it under many of its forms. 
 I have never held her quite responsible for a mental 
 twist, which, together with her corporal defects, she 
 probably owed to the circumstances of her birth. 
 
 When at last I regained the house I found the 
 big drawing-room empty, and presently came upon 
 Jadwiga sitting alone on the verandah, with a book 
 on her lap which she was pretending to read. One 
 glance at her face showed me that the interview 
 had not turned out exactly as she had expected. I 
 did not say " Well ? " but I suppose my eyes said it 
 for me, for she at once began to speak rather hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 " You were right," she said with a nervous 
 smile ; " he was very much shaken ; I think almost 
 more than I thought he would be. But that is 
 natural ; it came upon him with such a surprise, 
 just as it came upon me. By this afternoon he 
 will have had time to recover from the first 
 shock." 
 
 " He is gone ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Yes, of course ; he only came in now to in- 
 quire after Mamma; he was on his way to one of 
 the farms he has to replace his father now, you 
 know, but he is coming back as usual."
 
 ONE YEAR 197 
 
 I put a few more questions tentatively, and, al- 
 though Jadwiga's answers were unusually reserved, 
 I yet managed to get a pretty clear picture of the 
 interview just passed. Evidently Wladimir had 
 been more than shaken, he had been simply over- 
 whelmed by the revelation made to him, and, there- 
 fore, not in a fit state to offer any support to Jad- 
 wiga's own distress. He had obviously been too 
 horror-stricken to make any direct response to her 
 wild appeal, and in the first moment unable to do 
 anything, poor boy, but protest his unchanged af- 
 fection. All this was natural enough considering 
 his youth and the terrible nature of the disclosure 
 made ; but what disturbed me was Jadwiga's evi- 
 dent anxiety to excuse him, and the look of per- 
 plexed astonishment which had remained upon her 
 face since her parting with him. 
 
 " I think I must have told him too abruptly," 
 she said. " I am always so impatient. Wladimir 
 is so entirely the soul of honour that, of course, 
 this frightful disgrace makes him lose his head just 
 at first," and all the time she was watching my 
 face, as though for corroboration of her own sen- 
 timents. 
 
 As the hour approached at which Wladimir's 
 appearance was to be expected I could see that a 
 creeping uneasiness began to take hold of Jadwiga, 
 an uneasiness which she was anxious to hide even 
 from me, to whom her heart had yet been so com-
 
 198 O N E Y E A R 
 
 pletely open lately. But she was not made for 
 concealment ; at every moment I could see her 
 furtively consulting the jewelled toy of a watch that 
 hung at her belt, while the transparency of the pre- 
 texts she found for visiting the verandah, from 
 where a view of the gate was to be commanded, 
 was not calculated to deceive even a child. Wlad- 
 imir had never been late before, and it was curious 
 certainly that to-day of all days he should tarry 
 behind the hour. To me it was evident that Jad- 
 wiga was suffering acutely, but it was clear also 
 that nothing would yet induce her to put her fears 
 into words doubtless the thought of doing so must 
 have appeared to her as a treachery toward the man 
 in whose loyalty she still believed with all the ar- 
 dour of her young and romantically generous 
 heart. The mere conception of his failing her in 
 her need lay too far away from her own attitude of 
 mind to be grasped in so short a time. 
 
 " He has been prevented by some accident," she 
 said to me once when our eyes met. " I fear he 
 may have fallen from his horse ; that is what makes 
 me so uneasy." And she looked at me as though 
 daring me to throw doubt upon this assertion. 
 
 I spent the afternoon between the garden and 
 the house. Madame Bielinska had a little collapsed 
 after the unusual strain of yesterday, but, although 
 she remained in her room, it was not in her usual 
 state of inaction. Every time I presented myself
 
 O N E Y E A R 199 
 
 there to see whether she required anything I found 
 her busy sorting papers and going over accounts. 
 It was evident that she, too, was looking out for 
 Wladimir's arrival. 
 
 " Is he not there yet ? " she asked me each time 
 I entered. " Be sure to send him in immediately. 
 I want to ask him about his father's plans and 
 about when he is expected back. It is he who will 
 be most likely to give me a clue. Is that not 
 Wladimir ? " and she lent an ear to a sound in the 
 passage. " No, only Andrej's step. By the way, 
 Miss Middleton, I have promised Andrej to send 
 some mustard plasters to his wife she has a pain 
 in her chest, it seems. If you want a walk per- 
 haps you would be so good as to take them to her, 
 and also show her how to put them on ? " 
 
 The grey-haired footman was a married man, 
 whose domestic hearth, whither he returned every 
 day at night-fall, was situated at the far end of the 
 village. The fact of Madame Bielinska charging 
 me with an errand of the sort was to me an addi- 
 tional proof of the revolution produced by yester- 
 day's events. Her interest, even in the details of 
 life, seemed to have abruptly revived and to think 
 that it was the discovery of her husband's disgrace 
 which had given back to her her power of living ! 
 Surely the human heart can never be quite ex- 
 plained. 
 
 It was drawing toward evening by this time,
 
 200 O N E Y E A R 
 
 and the chances of seeing Wladimir again that day 
 were fast fading. I went in search of Jadwiga, 
 assured that the walk would do her good, but at the 
 mere suggestion she shrank back. 
 
 " Outside the gate ? Oh, no, I could not go 
 outside the gate," she said. " I should feel as 
 though every one knew the story already." 
 
 I next looked out for Anulka, whom I had not 
 seen for some time. It was in the big drawing- 
 room that I found her, installed in front of a green 
 table, and going through some strange manipula- 
 tions with a pack of playing-cards. So engrossed 
 was she in her game that she did not notice my ap- 
 proach, and it was only when I stood close beside 
 her that I understood what she was doing, for 
 straight opposite hung the long rococo mirror, in 
 which she was amusing herself by reflecting the 
 undersides of the cards in her hand, naming them 
 aloud as she did so, and then turning them over to 
 see if she was right. 
 
 "Ten of clubs knave of diamonds," she kept 
 on saying like a lesson ; and then burst into a little 
 squeal of delight whenever she saw that it tallied. 
 
 " Leave that, Anulka ! " I said indignantly, 
 snatching the cards from her hands, but she only 
 grinned up delightedly into my face. 
 
 " It is quite easy," she assured me eagerly. " I 
 believe I could do it, too. Look ! You have 
 only to hold them like this."
 
 ONE YEAR 201 
 
 I wanted to insist on her coming out with me, 
 but, perhaps because of my nerves being off their 
 balance, my authority failed, and when a few min- 
 utes later I passed by the open window I could 
 still hear the voice of the uncanny child de- 
 claiming, " Seven of hearts six of clubs queen 
 of " 
 
 Andrej's hut lay near the big fish pond and down 
 a narrow lane confined between high palings of 
 wattled willows. The willows, which had orig- 
 inally served as stakes, had, for the most part, taken 
 root too, and grown up into considerable trees of 
 the pollard order, whose headi almost met across 
 the lane, which, consequently, was not very light, 
 even at noonday. Just now, when it was dusk in 
 the chief village street, it was almost dark here, 
 and, seen through the descending shadows, the ir- 
 regularly grown willows, with their round tops and 
 queerly contorted branches, had something weirdly 
 human about them. 
 
 I had discharged my errand and was returning 
 along this gloomy and tortuous passage when, on 
 coming round a corner of the paling, I was startled 
 to see what seemed to be one of the willow trees 
 step out of its place and stand still in the middle 
 of the road, as though to bar the passage. I stood 
 still instinctively, but at that moment the willow 
 spoke in a well-known voice. 
 
 " It is I, Miss Middleton, do not be angry, but I
 
 202 ONE YEAR 
 
 saw you passing, and followed you here, because I 
 must speak to you." 
 
 The tone was so deeply moved that it somewhat 
 modified the displeasure with which I answered, 
 
 " You, Pan Lewicki ? Why here, and not at 
 the house ? We have been expecting you all the 
 afternoon." 
 
 " I know, I know ! " he said, wildly grasping at 
 his temples as he spoke. " I have been close at 
 hand for hours, but how could I present myself 
 before I had got absolute clearness in this terrible 
 affair? I kept hoping for some chance; I wanted 
 to speak to you before I spoke to her, and now 
 that fortune has favoured me you will not refuse 
 to tell me all you know. I am mad ! I tell you, 
 mad with perplexity, and only the fullest light can 
 help me." 
 
 "But you have had the fullest light," I an- 
 swered sadly. " Jadwiga says that she told you 
 all." 
 
 " Then it is true, actually true ? " he questioned 
 distractedly. " I thought that perhaps her imagi- 
 nation had run wild. She spoke of letters, but I 
 did not see them have you seen them ? Tell me 
 what is written there every word you can re- 
 member. After all I have a right to know." 
 
 There was no denying this, he had the right to 
 know. In a few words I gave him my version of 
 the case, as well as the conclusions drawn by
 
 O N E Y E A R 203 
 
 Madame Bielinska. He listened breathlessly, often 
 interrupting me with exclamations of distress and 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Then there is no doubt at all in your mind ? " 
 he asked in a tone of acute anxiety. " Her father 
 was no, I cannot say it here, not even in a strange 
 tongue, for fear of listening ears." 
 
 " You need not be so careful ! " I replied, " it 
 would be wasted pains. Soon if I am not mis- 
 taken, what I have told you to-day will be pro- 
 claimed upon the House-tops, they themselves will 
 proclaim it." 
 
 He looked at me aghast; even in the thick dusk 
 I could see his brown eyes open wide. 
 
 " They themselves ? You do not mean to say 
 that they will tell the world the story ? " 
 
 u The mother certainly will ; indeed she must if 
 she wants to make restitution, and that is her one 
 idea at present." 
 
 " Restitution, yes, but need it be public ? Why 
 brand oneself with one's own hands ? Surely no 
 one need know but the wronged man alone ? " 
 
 " But the wronged man has to be searched for 
 first, and that scarcely can be done in secret. And, 
 beside, how would you explain to the world this 
 sudden change of fortune ? No, I fear that ex- 
 posure is inevitable." 
 
 I could see how at the word " exposure " he 
 shrank back, as though at some unpleasant touch.
 
 204 O N E Y E A R 
 
 Then, suddenly, a paroxysm of despair seemed to 
 seize him. We had been slowly walking on dur- 
 ing those last minutes. Now Wladimir stood still 
 abruptly. Close beside him there was a big stone, 
 one of those used as stiles in crossing the pailing, 
 for there were no openings all along the lane. 
 Wladimir sat down upon this, and there before my 
 eyes he burst into tears. 
 
 " Oh Jadwiga ! my poor, poor Jadwiga ! " he 
 sobbed, evidently from the bottom of his heart. 
 " How will you bear it ? " 
 
 " She bears it bravely," I said, looking down at 
 him curiously, " and the support of your love will 
 help her to bear it better still." 
 
 I don't know with what intention I said this, 
 but I believe it was by way of experiment. 
 
 He buried his face a little deeper in his hands. 
 
 " Be still ! " he said, in a tone of real suffering. 
 " You don't know how you hurt me, oh pray be 
 still!" 
 
 " But do you love her ? " I asked, a little merci- 
 lessly perhaps. 
 
 "With all my heart," he readily replied. Then, 
 rising to his feet, " You tell her that, will you 
 not ? " and in his eagerness he laid his hand on my 
 arm. " You tell her I love her as deeply as ever ? " 
 
 " Why do you not tell her so yourself?" I 
 asked. " Come with me now and you will need 
 no messenger."
 
 O N E Y E A R 205 
 
 " Not to-day," he said quickly. " I am not yet 
 enough master of myself to-day. How do I know 
 that in my trouble of mind I may not use some 
 word that would wound her ? No, it is better not 
 to-day." 
 
 And, as though afraid of further argument, he 
 turned and walked away hastily, quickly disappear- 
 ing in the gloom of the narrow lane, in which I 
 was left standing alone, but very busy with my 
 thoughts.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 I DID not give Jadwiga Wladimir's message, 
 nor did I even mention to her my meeting with 
 him in the village. To do so would only have 
 been to augment the suspense she was evidently 
 undergoing. If my suspicions were correct, then 
 she would soon know more than I could tell her. 
 But the end was nearer than I imagined. 
 
 On the following forenoon I was busy with 
 Anulka in the schoolroom, when the door was 
 flung open, and Jadwiga entered, holding an open 
 letter in her hand. I had seen her in various 
 moods, but never in anything resembling this. 
 Her black eyes flamed in a face of an almost 
 corpse-like whiteness, her dilated nostrils worked, 
 and she was evidently breathing with difficulty. I 
 rose in alarm, interrogating her with my eyes, and 
 fully prepared for a calamity. 
 
 She could not speak immediately, but with a 
 silent and imperative gesture she indicated her 
 sister, and I understood and ordered Anulka from 
 the room, taking the precaution this time of shut- 
 ting the window as well as the door. 
 
 " Here ! " said Jadwiga, at last, in a voice that 
 she was evidently struggling to keep low, but 
 206
 
 O N E Y E A R 207 
 
 which vibrated in every tone. " It has come; read 
 this ! " 
 
 " But this is written in Polish ! " I said, glancing 
 at the sheet she held toward me. 
 
 " To be sure, I forgot ; I think I must be a little 
 mad. Well, an outline will do ; it isn't difficult 
 to understand. He loves me as much as ever so 
 it is written here he never can be happy again in 
 his life do you want to know why ? Because his 
 duty as a son calls upon him to keep himself clear 
 of the stain which has revealed itself on our family 
 shield. His father would never survive the shame 
 of being brought into connection with anything that 
 smells of dishonour he doesn't say it like that, 
 you know, it is much more beautifully expressed, 
 but that is what it means and his conscience, 
 with which he has been struggling since yesterday, 
 forbids him to bring those white hairs to the grave. 
 There is a great deal more about the agony of 
 tearing out one's own heart with one's own hands, 
 and there is also a gleam of hope held out. If the 
 matter could be kept dark, if the restitution could 
 be made in secret, might it not be possible to escape 
 the shame, both for ourselves and for him ? He 
 implores me to think over the matter once more, 
 to induce my mother to think it over; it is the 
 only chance of happiness he can see, for if there 
 was no exposure then there would be no shame in 
 the eyes of the world ; and he loves me so much
 
 208 O N E Y E A R 
 
 that he is ready to bear the secret knowledge of my 
 father's guilt but only so long as it remains 
 secret, you understand. In other words he wants 
 to bargain with me with me, Eleanor ! He makes 
 his conditions, he calculates his sacrifices : he will 
 go thus far and no farther : my love is worth this to 
 him, and not that. Great God, why is the shame 
 not his instead of mine ? Why was not his father 
 a thief or a forger, that he should see, and the 
 world should see that love, the real love, is able to 
 laugh at everything outside itself? But this love 
 this ! " and she flung the paper contemptuously 
 on the table " this has the worth of the paper and 
 ink it is written with, no more ! Oh, Eleanor, 
 are all men like that ? " 
 
 She had spoken in short sentences, fetching her 
 breath audibly at each pause : by degrees only her 
 broken voice rose to a shriller key, and the passion- 
 ate sentences grew more fluent. In the last words 
 there was a ring of such heart-rending despair that 
 I felt tears of acute pity starting to my eyes. 
 
 " Not all," I said gently, and as I said it I 
 thought of two men one was Henry, dead to me 
 now, but of whom I instinctively knew that, sup- 
 posing he had gained me, nothing short of death 
 would have induced him to give me up again; the 
 other was Krysztof Malewicz. This one, too, I 
 had not even put to the test, but felt calmly certain 
 of the result.
 
 O N E Y E A R 209 
 
 "I am dismissed," went on Jadwiga, fixing her 
 dangerously brilliant eyes upon me "you under- 
 stand ; I am told that I am not worth the loss of 
 the world's esteem, and the man who tells me so 
 is the same whom I believed was ready to die at 
 my slightest word he has told me so a hundred 
 times. What have I done to be punished for my 
 father's sin ? Am I different from what I was be- 
 fore those letters came ? Have I different eyes than 
 then, a different mouth, a different mind ? Am I 
 less desirable ? His duty to his father ! Oh, it 
 enrages me to hear him talk of it ; what is his duty 
 to his father compared to his duty toward me, who 
 was to have been his wife ? Oh, how badly we 
 have understood each other all the time ! Wladi- 
 mir, Wladimir, what would I not have done for 
 you no, not for you^ but for the man I believed 
 you were ! " 
 
 And, with features convulsed with pain, she let 
 herself drop on to the chair which Anulka had 
 quitted, and, laying her face on the table, sobbed 
 convulsively yet without tears. 
 
 Presently she looked up. "Tell me, Eleanor," 
 she asked in a voice exhausted by emotion, " did 
 you know it would come like this ? Why do you 
 look so little surprised ? " 
 
 " I could not know it would come like this, but 
 I am not very much surprised. It seems to me the 
 only thing that Wladimir could do wait a mo-
 
 210 ONE YEAR 
 
 ment," I added, seeing her look of surprised indig- 
 nation " I don't mean what he could do, being a 
 man, but being Wladimir." 
 
 " Then his love for me has been a farce ? " 
 
 " No, not a farce ; although it is not enough for 
 you, it has been the best he can give. What he 
 writes here isn't a lie, he loves you, but it is simply 
 that he has not got the mental vigour necessary to 
 do without the world's esteem, not that sort of 
 grim sturdiness which makes it possible to defy 
 public opinion. He is not a monster of any sort, 
 and, Jadwiga, my poor child, believe me, he never 
 was worthy of you." 
 
 "Why do you call me poor?" she retorted in 
 an instant. " I am not to be pitied, it seems to 
 Aie I am to be envied, since I have discovered in 
 time to what a weakling I was about to sacrifice 
 myself. I might have been bound to him for life 
 before the discovery came. But it hurts here, it 
 hurts here all the same," and she laid her clenched 
 hand on her heart. " It is like seeing a friend die ; 
 my Wladimir is dead to-day, and nothing can ever 
 make him alive again." 
 
 After that, for some moments, she sank into 
 silence, brooding, with her eyes on the table. 
 Suddenly, a hard smile flickered across her face, 
 worse to see than the look of pain of a minute 
 ago. 
 
 " And this Wladimir thinks I shall grasp at the
 
 ONE YEAR 211 
 
 hope he holds out ! Secrecy dead secrecy on 
 that condition he may yet consent to make me 
 happy, and he does not yet know that I want none 
 of that happiness. Quick, Eleanor, quick paper 
 and pen ! The messenger is still outside ; he must 
 not be left in his false belief for one minute longer 
 than can be helped. Oh, give me any paper 
 quickly ! " 
 
 The colour was flowing over her face now, as, 
 with fingers which more than trembled, which 
 visibly jerked with excitement, she dipped the pen 
 into the ink and began writing hastily on the sheet 
 I pushed toward her. What she exactly said in 
 the few lines which formed all the answer to 
 Wladimir's lengthy epistle, I do not know, but as 
 I watched her quivering lips and the light that 
 escaped like sparks of fire from under her black 
 eyelashes, I know that, despite the contemptuous 
 indignation in my heart, I felt sorry for the man 
 who was to read those lines, and who, after all, 
 loved her as well as he understood how to love. 
 
 " There actually is something to be said in his 
 excuse," I find myself writing at this juncture to 
 Agnes, to whom I had already given a brief out- 
 line of the situation, " for the test he was put to 
 was no light one, and how make him responsible 
 for the limitations of his nature ? I had taken his 
 measure long ago, and I now see that I had taken 
 it correctly. When a man is so distinctly, I should
 
 212 O N E YE A R 
 
 like to say, so ostentatiously, ornamental, it awakes 
 the idea, does it not, that he must almost necessarily 
 be rather useless ? Ask this sort of man to turn 
 music and to hand cups oh, yes, by all means 
 but not to stand firm in a moral earthquake. He 
 seems to me to want an audience for everything he 
 does an admiring one, of course. He lives 
 chronically on a platform, and requires to be ap- 
 plauded. This it is that makes him so intensely 
 dependent on other people's opinion, and this it is 
 also that makes him spare no pains in order to win 
 sympathy. I understand perfectly now how he 
 could spend an hour with me on that tree trunk in 
 autumn, and what made him wade into the muddy 
 water to fetch out Anulka. He loved Jadwiga 
 then already, but it was not only because he loved 
 her that he sacrificed his boots, it was also to tri- 
 umphantly refute the accusation of effeminacy 
 which I had just been pronouncing against his 
 nation. He is so hungry of approval that he will 
 jump up to take Kasia's basket for her, since even 
 a kitchen-maid's sympathy is precious to him. All 
 this sort of thing gives him the appearance of al- 
 ways thinking of others, so much so that most 
 people never find out that he is only a more refined, 
 I should like to say, a more artistic, egoist from the 
 usual kind. He would not harm anybody for the 
 world, I am sure of that ; he is ready to sacrifice 
 even his comforts to his fellow-creatures so long as
 
 ONE YEAR 213 
 
 he is rewarded by their love and esteem. I ab- 
 solve him from any mercenary motives in his pres- 
 ent conduct. I never suspected him of wanting 
 Jadwiga's money, and I do not accuse him of 
 abandoning her because he finds out that the money 
 is not hers ; mere money and mere physical com- 
 fort have no intense value for him. It is not these 
 things, but popularity, which is his passion. How 
 could you expect such a man to take upon himself 
 the disgrace which will for ever attach to the name 
 of Bielinski ? And how should he ever live up to 
 Jadwiga's exalted ideals, or satisfy the really ex- 
 travagant demands she makes upon a man's devo- 
 tion ? I believe she's right, and that she is to be 
 congratulated instead of condoled with on having 
 found out her mistake in time." 
 
 I have only a few more words to say of 
 Wladimir before he disappears from the scene of 
 the drama which I am attempting to present. 
 After our meeting in the village I only saw him 
 once more, and, to the best of my knowledge, 
 this was also the last time that Jadwiga set eyes 
 upon him. 
 
 I never imagined that, after the exchange of let- 
 ters, he would have the courage to show his face at 
 Ludniki, but I was mistaken. Those few lines of 
 which I had watched the writing had evidently 
 acted like the sting of a whip-cord, for, on the 
 evening of that same day, Jadwiga and I, coming
 
 214 O N E Y E A R 
 
 back slowly along the rose-walk, where I had in- 
 duced her to take an evening stroll, saw a well- 
 known figure advancing toward us. Jadwiga 
 checked her steps for just a perceptible interval, 
 and I saw the colour leaving her face. Then she 
 walked on as before, only tightening her hold upon 
 my arm, within which her hand lay. 
 
 " Shall I tell him that you cartnot receive him ? " 
 I whispered, for there still was time for her to turn 
 off by a side walk. 
 
 " For what good ? " she replied in a voice that 
 sounded only a little more metallic than usual. 
 " I am not afraid of meeting him ; it is better so." 
 
 Although she was not afraid, it was evident that 
 he was. As he drew near, the perturbation on his 
 features was easy to read, but greater than the per- 
 turbation was a sort of acute anxiety which seemed 
 to dominate every other emotion. 
 
 When she was within half-a-dozen paces of him 
 Jadwiga stood still, and, with a coolness so icy that 
 it actually sent a shiver of compassion down my 
 back compassion for the man to whom it was ad- 
 dressed put some questions in Polish. I under- 
 stood enough of the language by this time to guess 
 that she was asking whether he had not received 
 her letter. 
 
 When he at length succeeded in speaking he did 
 so with almost incoherent eagerness. He explained 
 chat it was just because he had got the letter that
 
 O N E YE A R 215 
 
 he was here that he could not believe that she was 
 serious in what she had written ; then a few more 
 words in an imploring tone before I caught the 
 word " father." 
 
 "Will you believe it, if you hear me speak it? " 
 asked Jadwiga. " No, you shall stay there," she 
 said turning almost fiercely upon me, for, painfully 
 conscious of the superfluity of my presence, I had 
 been meanwhile gently trying to disengage my arm, 
 but Jadwiga's delicate fingers held me as though 
 they had been steel claws. " I have no secrets to 
 talk about to Mr. Lewicki," she continued, talking 
 now in French. " I am glad to have a witness to 
 what I have to say, and it is this : that hencefor- 
 ward this gentleman is of no more account to me 
 than the least of the peasants who bend their heads 
 before me on the road oh, of much less for 
 many of them are brave and honourable men, 
 while you," and she fixed her flaming eyes full on 
 his face " I do not care who hears me you are 
 a coward a traitor and a coward and, although I 
 should live to be a hundred years, I shall never for- 
 give myself for having loved you. J> 
 
 At this his perturbation seemed to vanish for a 
 time, forced back by the insult to his pride. His 
 fair face flushed dark red up to his golden hair 
 roots, and I saw his fingers closing against his 
 palms. In that moment he looked anything but 
 despicable.
 
 216 ONE YEAR 
 
 " If a man were to say that to me " he began 
 with difficulty, but she interrupted him. 
 
 "You would invite him to cross swords with 
 you, and would imagine that that washed you clean 
 of the name of coward. Bah ! it is not of that sort 
 of courage I am talking ; that is the common, the 
 vulgar sort ; every man who is not a Jew and not a 
 cripple has plenty of that, I make no doubt. I 
 speak of the rarer, nobler courage, the courage of 
 the heart; and you cannot give me the lie with 
 your sword in your hand because I am not a 
 man, only a woman, whom one does not fight, but 
 whom one can betray and abandon, and leave 
 standing alone in the moment when she most needs 
 support." 
 
 There was a slight vibration in her voice, and 
 before this momentary evidence of emotion Wladi- 
 mir's indignant attitude instantly succumbed. 
 
 "Jadwiga, Jadwiga ! " he cried, taking his 
 head between his hands. " Do not judge me so 
 harshly ; do not be so absolutely merciless ! 
 Could you expect me to kill my father by this 
 sorrow ? " 
 
 " I expect everything of the man who loves me," 
 she replied with as magnificent a disdain as though 
 she did not know herself to be almost a beggar, 
 with a knave for a father. 
 
 "Jadwiga, be merciful!" cried the unhappy 
 man again distractedly. There were tears in his
 
 ONE YEAR 217 
 
 eyes, but there were none in hers ; and yet there 
 was a little pain on her face, too, as she gazed at 
 him across the few paces of ground that divided 
 them. No doubt she was taking her last look at 
 her Wladimir, who, after all, bore the same face 
 and form as the one that stood before her. 
 
 " If it were only myself I had to think of " 
 he began again. 
 
 " I know I know, you told me all that in your 
 letter," said Jadwiga. " It seems to me that the 
 subject is exhausted," and she began to move on 
 again, taking me with her. But this seemed to 
 make Wladimir wild. 
 
 " Stop ! stop ! " he implored her, standing so as 
 to bar our passage. " Say at least that you believe 
 in my love you must see that I am suffering. 
 Circumstances are too strong for me, but this I 
 know, that I shall never love another woman as I 
 have loved you." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I will say that I believe in your 
 love," answered Jadwiga readily and indifferently, 
 " if that is any satisfaction to you ; only it is not 
 the same sort of thing that goes by that name with 
 me. Our opinions on that subject evidently lie too 
 far apart to make a discussion of any use." 
 
 " And that you do not despise me that you can 
 understand my motives, even if you do not sub- 
 scribe to them. I could not bear to live with the 
 thought of your contempt ! "
 
 2i8 O N E Y E A R 
 
 This, then, was the real kernel of the matter. 
 To lose the esteem of the person he certainly held 
 highest in the world, what agony this thought must 
 have brought to the Wladimir whom I had just 
 been describing to Agnes. This it was which had 
 given him the courage to brave Jadwiga's anger by 
 presenting himself once more. He had come here 
 not to beg to be taken back into favour, but to 
 wring from her some faint and far-off admission 
 of esteem a word, not of forgiveness, but of 
 justification. But he might have known Jadwiga 
 better. 
 
 Without replying she again moved a step for- 
 ward, and this time, in terror of seeing her escape 
 before the saving word was spoken, Wladimir for- 
 got himself so far as to lay his hand upon her sleeve, 
 as within the last weeks he had done so often with 
 impunity. 
 
 " No, no ! " he cried, " you shall not go until 
 you have said that you understand." 
 
 I felt a more convulsive movement of the hand 
 on my arm, as Jadwiga, standing still again, slowly 
 looked her lover all over. 
 
 44 Shall not go ? " she repeated, and the disdain 
 in voice and eyes was such that I wondered 
 the man could bear it. " Do you not forget that 
 I am in my home, and that there are servants 
 enough in the house ? aye, and with strong amis, 
 too ! "
 
 O N E YE A R 219 
 
 Then, as he fell back, as though before a blow, 
 she walked past him without either another word 
 or another glance, without even hastening her pace, 
 as she leisurely pursued her way down the walk. 
 Nothing but her set features and the strain of her 
 fingers upon my arm betrayed the excitement which 
 must have been raging within her. To look at us 
 both I am sure that I must have appeared the more 
 disturbed of the two, for I was trembling a little 
 with the emotion of what was just passed, and 
 threw stolen and apprehensive glances into the 
 beautiful face beside me. The upper lip was 
 slightly lifted, disclosing the small teeth beneath, 
 which in this moment looked almost menacingly 
 white. 
 
 We had not yet reached the end of the walk 
 when she said with a deep breath : 
 
 "I am glad that it came that way." 
 
 In my heart of hearts I was sorry for'Wladimir, 
 but in that moment I simply had not the courage 
 to say it.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IT has been said that in the afflictions of our 
 best friends we find something not displeasing to 
 ourselves ; but surely, if this be so, there must be 
 something wrong, either with ourselves or our 
 friends. At any rate, in the days I am writing I 
 experienced the exact reverse. So completely had 
 I got used to looking for my sunshine from one 
 quarter, that now it failed me my life seemed to 
 grow suddenly dark. In Jadwiga's happiness I 
 had sought to find a reflection of that which I had 
 never possessed, and, for want of all other causes 
 of joy, I had succeeded so well in identifying my- 
 self with her, that the blow fell on me only with 
 less force than on her. It almost seemed to me 
 that I had lost Henry over again. All those 
 gentle memories that had been lulled to sleep with 
 my songs of rejoicing over Jadwiga's bliss, stirred 
 in their graves and threatened to climb out again, 
 now that my voice was suddenly silenced. Every 
 hour I had spent with Henry in long-past childish 
 days, each ramble we had taken, each rabbit we 
 had reared, each scrape we had got into in com- 
 mon, began to come back to my mind with annoy- 
 ing persistency. To reflect on the falseness of 
 22O
 
 ONE YEAR 221 
 
 Jadwiga's lover was to bring the worth of a true 
 lover home to me as it had never before been 
 brought home, and uneasily I asked myself, in- 
 fected perhaps by her idealism, whether I had after 
 all been right in separating myself thus decisively 
 from the man of whom I could not help thinking 
 that he loved me still. It was startling to find the 
 wound so fresh, after nine months of separation. 
 Would it ever heal ? And did his heart ever ache 
 as mine was now aching ? 
 
 And all this because Jadwiga had lost Wladimir ! 
 
 By Jadwiga's wish it was I who announced the 
 truth to Madame Bielinska. 
 
 41 1 do not want to speak of him even to my 
 mother," she said to me on the evening of the 
 meeting in the park. " Go in and tell her that I 
 have dismissed him and that I never want to hear 
 his name again." 
 
 I found Madame Bielinska in her room, busily 
 occupied with the papers among which she now 
 spent her days. She looked up as I entered. 
 
 " I have been making a calculation," she said, 
 without giving me time to speak, " and I think I 
 have got it almost right. You know it is not only 
 the capital we owe, by this time, there is the in- 
 terest as well, and since the sum is owing now for 
 more than thirty years, the interest calculated at 
 five per cent, comes to more than the original 
 capital, which means that instead of sixty thousand
 
 222 O N E Y E A R 
 
 we owe a hundred and fifty thousand florins." And 
 she looked at me with the air of a person who has 
 made an entirely satisfactory discovery. " Would 
 you mind looking it over just to see if I am right ? " 
 
 " Presently," I said, "but just now I have some- 
 thing else to tell you." And I gave her the sum 
 of Jadwiga's message. She listened at first without 
 much interest, but gradually more closely. 
 
 " You mean that the engagement is broken off? " 
 she asked at last. 
 
 " Yes," I said. 
 
 A cloud came over her face : she leant back in 
 her chair with an air of discouragement. 
 
 " That is bad," she murmured j " that is very 
 bad, I had hoped so much from Bazyli Lewicki." 
 
 "From Wladimir," I corrected; "I too had 
 hoped better things from him." 
 
 " No, I do not mean Wladimir," she said sharply. 
 " I am speaking of Bazyli ; it is he alone who 
 could give me a clue ; and now, if there has been 
 a break, how do I know that he will be willing to 
 help me ? " 
 
 " But Jadwiga ! " I said, aghast at this attitude 
 which I took for callousness, but which was only 
 the unavoidable result of complete absorption in 
 one idea. " Have you no word for her and for 
 what she is suffering?" 
 
 She looked at me with her great cavernous eyes 
 which were almost as much socket as eyeball ; she
 
 O N E Y E A R 223 
 
 seemed to be laboriously forcing herself to my 
 view of the case. 
 
 " Yes Jadwiga," she said abstractedly, " I am 
 sorry for her, poor child. No," she went on sud- 
 denly in another and more decisive tone, " I am 
 not sorry for her ; she has escaped much if she has 
 escaped from the hands of a man who is capable 
 of baseness. What think you : would she bear be- 
 ing tied to a master whom she cannot honour ? " 
 
 By the ring in the tone of her strained voice, 
 and by the twitch at the corners of her bloodless 
 lips I knew that she was thinking of the man whose 
 portrait hung in that uninhabited room. 
 
 It was only for a minute that Madame Bielinska 
 had been torn out of her dominant train of thought. 
 
 " After all," she began again, " even if the young 
 people have separated that is no reason for the old 
 people not to put their heads together. I shall 
 send for Bazyli the moment he is back; he cannot 
 well refuse to answer a simple question. Yes, I 
 think I need have no fear," and her countenance 
 cleared. "And now, Miss Middleton, would you 
 just run your eye over this paper; I was never very 
 strong in figures." 
 
 This was only the first of many calculations I 
 was asked to make during these days, while we 
 were sitting still, so to say, waiting for the answer 
 from the Parisian attorney, which was to bring us 
 the certainty of the Vicomte's identity with the
 
 224 O N E Y E A R 
 
 murdered monk. In default of any more active 
 step, which it would have been possible to take at 
 present, Madame Bielinska lived almost entirely 
 in figures. Now and then she would appear at 
 meal-times, and sometimes even get as far as the 
 garden, and to see her in the full sunlight seemed 
 like the resurrection of a dead body. To me she 
 had become almost talkative, but always only on 
 one subject. 
 
 " Do you think it quite impossible that the resti- 
 tution should, after all, have been already made ? " 
 I asked her once. " Might he not have carried 
 out his plan of letting his adversary win back the 
 sum ? and might not the loss have been subse- 
 quently covered by other rightful gains ? " 
 
 She shook her head decisively. 
 
 " It is well known that Hazimir never touched 
 cards again after that journey to Paris, it was his 
 last. There were many jokes made at the time 
 on the subject of his conversion ; that is proof 
 enough that he did not carry out his plan." 
 
 I was silenced, of course ; indeed the moral evi- 
 dence was too strong to be withstood. It was a 
 dawning circumstance, certainly, that the person 
 who had known him best should be the one to 
 believe most readily in his guilt. 
 
 In all these discussions Jadwiga took no part. 
 She was scarcely the same Jadwiga she had been 
 before the reception of that letter which she had
 
 O N E Y E A R 225 
 
 brought into the schoolroom. That flash of out- 
 raged pride seemed to have been as the death-cry 
 of something stricken. After that supreme effort 
 her forces broke. Never could I have believed 
 that that haughty head could droop as I saw it 
 droop. Seeing her so still and so white the mother 
 made the mistake of believing that she was pining 
 after her lover, but the first attempted word of 
 sympathy brought her an answer which could not 
 be understood. 
 
 " / sigh after him ? " she replied, turning indig- 
 nantly upon her mother, and the fire coming back 
 to her eyes for one moment. " Am I your own 
 child, and do you know me as little as this ? 
 What is he to me ? Nothing nothing at all. I 
 swear to you that not even in the night when no 
 one sees me have I shed one tear for him ! no, 
 not so much as a sigh have I spent he is not 
 worth as much as that. Oh, it is not that it is 
 not that at all ! " 
 
 And really it was not that. 
 
 It was no love-sick yearnings under which she 
 was sinking, not her lover's abandonment which 
 was crushing her, but only the weight of the shame 
 which that abandonment seemed to have finally 
 brought home to her. To see him shrink was 
 unavoidably to magnify in her eyes the thing be- 
 fore which he shrank. By nature, by the whole 
 constitution of her mind, Jadwiga was far less
 
 226 O N E Y E A R 
 
 armed against a shock of this particular kind than 
 was her mother. To her almost fantastically ideal 
 conception of right and wrong, to her romantic 
 admiration of nobleness and purity in any shape, 
 the revelation of her father's baseness could not be 
 otherwise than overwhelming, and she had not her 
 mother's strange enthusiasm to support her. Love 
 alone could have helped her in this crisis, and love 
 had failed her. 
 
 "The thing is really not so bad for you as for 
 me," Madame Bielinska once remarked dispassion- 
 ately. "You could not choose your father for 
 yourself, while I did choose my husband." 
 
 But Jadwiga made no response. She had 
 never been really intimate with her mother, and 
 even to me she avoided putting into words the 
 true cause of her sufferings. In her grief she 
 proved far more reticent than she had been in 
 her joy. 
 
 Meanwhile it was clear to me that reports were 
 beginning to spread. The servants looked at me 
 doubtfully, as though longing to put questions and 
 not quite daring, and Marya once ventured to ask : 
 " It is not true, is it, that the place is to be sold ? " 
 and immediately afterward, " Why does the young 
 gentleman never visit the young lady now ? " 
 which showed one clearly that the two circum- 
 stances were instinctively connected, even by the 
 outside mind.
 
 O N E Y E A R 227 
 
 " Anulka has been chattering," I said indignantly 
 to Madame Bielinska. " Is there no way of keep- 
 ing that child's tongue tied ? " 
 
 She only looked at me wonderingly. "What 
 for ? " she asked. " If I thought that Marya could 
 give me any clue I would speak to her about it 
 myself." 
 
 I have sometimes wondered whether Madame 
 Bielinska was quite in her right mind at that time. 
 But for this explanation there would have been 
 something almost indecent in her frankness. It 
 was at the time of Madame Malewicz's visit that 
 this propensity showed itself most crudely. 
 
 I half suspect the old lady was sent by her son. 
 What reports had reached his ears I do not know, 
 but he cannot have been aware of Wladimir's de- 
 parture, for immediately after his last appearance 
 at Ludniki, Wladimir had rejoined his father at 
 Karlsbad. There was food enough for surmise in 
 this circumstance alone. 
 
 When the carriage drove up to the door we 
 were sitting with Madame Bielinska in her own 
 room. At the mere sound of the wheels Jadwiga 
 had started to her feet. 
 
 " Visitors ! " she said in an accent almost of 
 terror. " Surely you are not going to receive 
 them, Mamma ? " 
 
 " It depends on who it is," replied Madame 
 Bielinska composedly.
 
 228 O N E Y E A R 
 
 Meanwhile I had recognised the occupant of the 
 carriage. 
 
 " Malwina Malewicz ? " said my employer 
 brightening. " Oh, bring her in, by all means ; 
 she has always taken an interest in everything con- 
 cerning us." 
 
 Jadwiga had already disappeared from the room, 
 so it fell to me to receive the visitor. 
 
 When I reached the entrance Madame Malewicz 
 was still laboriously descending from the carriage. 
 There was only one servant to help her out, you 
 see, and, to judge from the helplessness with which 
 she groped about for her belongings, and attempted 
 to guard her skirt from the wheel, and anxiously 
 looked out for the proper spot on which to place 
 her exquisite little foot, she would have required at 
 least half-a-dozen. 
 
 " I am so stupid," she said radiantly, catching 
 sight of me. " I go out driving so little now that 
 I quite forget the way. There I think I have 
 got everything now except my fan ; where can 
 that be, I wonder ? If Krysztof were here he 
 would find it immediately he always finds my 
 things. Oh, dear ; oh, dear ! What a bother it 
 is to grow old, to be sure." 
 
 At last I got her safely landed in the dressing- 
 room, where she required a glass of raspberry juice 
 and water to refresh her after her recent efforts, as 
 well as a few minutes to put her hair into order.
 
 O N E Y E A R 229 
 
 Although she was only going to see another old 
 woman like herself, she yet arranged her delicate 
 silver curls, as coquettishly before the glass as 
 though she had been eighteen. All this time she 
 scarcely stopped talking about the roads and the 
 weather chiefly but I could see by her face that 
 something else was coming. It came as she sipped 
 her raspberry juice, preparatory to penetrating into 
 Madame Bielinska's apartment. 
 
 " Tell me," she said, growing suddenly grave, 
 " is it true what people say ? " 
 
 " I don't know what they say," I answered. 
 
 " All sorts of things but I mean now about the 
 marriage. Is it actually off? " 
 
 "That certainly is true." 
 
 " Quite off? " she urged, with deepening inter- 
 est. " Not merely a lovers' quarrel ? " 
 
 " So entirely off," I assured her, " that I know 
 of no power on earth that could ever bring it on 
 again." 
 
 " Dear, dear ! " she said, rocking her head gently 
 from side to side, " this is sudden, certainly, and 
 very sad." But she did not look sad exactly as 
 she said it, and by a little spark in the corners of 
 her lively black eyes I knew that she was thinking 
 of Krysztof, of whose attachment she must have 
 been aware. " And the reason," she added tenta- 
 tively. " I suppose it would be indiscreet to in- 
 quire the reason ? "
 
 230 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " It certainly would be indiscreet of me to give 
 it you," I replied, " but I don't think you will be 
 kept in ignorance for long." And at that moment 
 Marya came to say that Madame Bielinska was 
 ready to receive the gracious lady. 
 
 I did not see Madame Malewicz again that day, 
 and so was not able to judge of the effect of the 
 disclosures which, according to my surmises, my 
 employer had made to her. 
 
 " You see, she is an old friend of the family," 
 Madame Bielinska explained to me half apologetic- 
 ally, u and her husband knew many of the French 
 set in which Hazimir lost his money. It seemed 
 to me not impossible that she should remember 
 something which could give us a clue. We can- 
 not afford to leave a stone unturned." 
 
 " And did she remember anything ? " I asked. 
 
 "Nothing," said Madame Bielinska sadly. 
 " Malwina has an excellent heart, but her head is 
 the head of a child." 
 
 It happened that next day I was again in the vil- 
 lage and again alone. More than once lately I had 
 been back at Andrej's hut, for his wife was still on 
 the sick list, and very grateful for whatever small 
 advice I could give her. I knew the dark little 
 basket-work lane by heart already, and each crip- 
 pled willow by sight, and, before plunging into its 
 shadows, never failed to enjoy the glimpse over the 
 plain, with the shimmer of the fish pond in the
 
 ONE YEAR 231 
 
 foreground, the blue summer haze in the distance, 
 and the yellow sea of corn between the two. 
 Since my meeting with Wladimir I had never en- 
 countered anything here beyond a stray pig wallow- 
 ing in the mud, but to-day almost at the same spot 
 a man was standing in my path. My first impres- 
 sion was that this was Wladimir again, waylaying 
 me in the hope attempting some last desperate ap- 
 peal, and, accordingly, without glancing toward 
 him, I prepared to pass quickly by, but, to my as- 
 tonishment, he did not move, and looking up per- 
 force, for the way was narrow, I saw that it was 
 Malewicz. At the moment that I recognised him 
 I also understood why he was here. It seemed to 
 me even that I had expected something of the sort. 
 He himself met the thought half-way. 
 
 "You know what I want ? " he asked in a more 
 peremptory than inquiring tone. " My mother was 
 at Ludniki yesterday." 
 
 "If you know all that your mother knows " I 
 began, but he broke in : 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but my mother is not quite the re- 
 porter I should wish. She has too much imagina- 
 tion, and perhaps, also, too much heart. I should 
 like to hear your account." 
 
 " About the letters that came from Paris ? " 
 
 " No, no," he said impatiently, " not about them, 
 but about Wladimir. Is it true that he has aban- 
 doned her?"
 
 232 O N E Y E A R 
 
 I told him that it was true. 
 
 He stood intent for a moment or two, evidently 
 struggling with his emotion. 
 
 " The hound ! " he said at last, bringing out 
 even these words with a painful effort. Then only 
 his tongue seemed to be loosened. " Oh," he cried 
 in a voice which shook its depth, " you know what 
 it meant to me to lose her, you know what my 
 hopes were, but I swear to you that if I could put 
 a soul into that boy in order to give him back to 
 her as she requires him, I would do so, so much 
 does it hurt me to think of her grief. How does 
 she bear it ? " The last question was put with the 
 abruptness of a keen anxiety. 
 
 " Her lover's loss ? " I asked. 
 
 "Yes, her lover's loss." 
 
 " Then I can only answer that there is nothing 
 to bear. She has no lover; from the moment that 
 she knew him as he is he became blotted out of 
 her life as though he had never been, and, even 
 though you could perform the miracle of making of 
 him a hero, I can swear to you that she would not 
 take him back." 
 
 " Oh, you say so ? " said Malewicz with eyes 
 alight. " She is so strong as that ? God be 
 thanked for it ! Her love is dead, you say ? " 
 
 " As dead as though it had never lived." 
 
 He took a turn across the lane, and came back 
 to my side.
 
 O N E Y E A R 233 
 
 " But her heart is not dead, is it ? " he asked more 
 gently. "Could it not live again for another?" 
 
 We looked each other full in the eyes for a few 
 seconds, and then I spoke. 
 
 " I understand you, Pan Malewicz it is best to 
 be plain. You are asking me whether, now that 
 the road is clear, there is any hope for yourself? " 
 
 u That is it exactly. What do you say ? " 
 
 " Only that time alone can answer that question ; 
 at the present moment it is not to be thought of. 
 Any attempt on your part would certainly fail now. 
 But she is young if you give her time " 
 
 " But I cannot give her time," he said with a 
 vehemence that startled me. I thought I had 
 gauged the depth of his passion for Jadwiga, but 
 this tone was to me a revelation. " It must be 
 done at once if it is to be done at all. Will you be 
 my ally ? That is what I chiefly wanted to ask 
 you. You think me too precipitate, I know, but 
 there is no help for it. Believe me, this is the 
 right time ; after all, a heart is often caught at the 
 rebound, is it not ? " and he smiled a little nerv- 
 ously. " Will you help me or not ? I am not ask- 
 ing you for your own sake, but for the sake of her 
 whom we both love. I will do it without your as- 
 sistance if needs be, but it would be easier if you 
 were on my side." 
 
 I answered, deeply moved, " I have always been 
 on your side ; but how I am to help you now I do
 
 234 O N E Y E A R 
 
 not see. Jadwiga has grown so shy of the outer 
 world that she hides from all but the most familiar 
 faces. Do you know that since the arrival of those 
 letters she has not been outside the gates ? If you 
 come to Ludniki you may possibly see the mother, 
 but certainly not the daughter." 
 
 "Then I shall begin with the mother. You 
 think she will admit me ? " 
 
 " It is not impossible. Just as Jadwiga shrinks 
 from the light she seems to seek it. If by any 
 chance you could bring her some news of Pan 
 Lewicki's return, then your admission would be 
 certain, for she grasps at even the palest shadow of 
 a clue." 
 
 " Oh ? " he said with increased attention. 
 
 I went on to give him in general words an idea 
 of Madame Bielinska's state of mind. It seemed to 
 me that he required some preparation. He listened 
 intently, with eyebrows drawn deep over his eyes. 
 
 " Good," he said when I ceased. " I think I 
 understand. You have helped me already. Oh, I 
 shall find a way, never fear." 
 
 Upon this we parted as allies, for it had not 
 been possible to resist his urgency. I had not so 
 much as asked him whether he had well considered 
 the situation, or reminded him that Jadwiga would 
 now be almost as poor as himself. Merely to sug- 
 gest this idea would have seemed to me an insult 
 to a love such as his.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE day that followed was oppressively hot, so 
 hot that I let Anulka off at least a quarter of her 
 lessons, and took refuge on the pillared verandah 
 before the house, which, lying toward the East, was 
 in deep shadow at this hour. Jadwiga was there, 
 too. She had caused a hammock to be slung be- 
 tween two pillars, and was lying in it now so still 
 that I took her to be asleep. My hands, too, lay 
 idle in my lap. The oppressive atmosphere made 
 even the lightest occupation an effort. There was 
 a subdued hum of insects in the air, the leaves of 
 the creepers that grew around the white pillars be- 
 ing motionless. 
 
 Presently a very slight crunching of the gravel 
 made me discover that I had almost fallen asleep. 
 I drowsily turned my head and instantly became 
 wide-awake, for Malewicz, walking cautiously, 
 was only at a dozen paces from the verandah. 
 He must have left his horses in the village in order 
 to approach the house unperceived. In my as- 
 tonishment at his audacity I began by simply star- 
 ing ; then quickly I turned toward the unconscious 
 Jadwiga, who, with the edge of the hammock 
 drawn half over her face, had evidently perceived 
 235
 
 236 O N E Y E A R 
 
 nothing. A peremptory gesture of the visitor 
 checked the warning I had almost uttered, and in 
 the same flash of thought I was already wondering 
 at myself for having wanted to utter it. Was I 
 not his ally ? 
 
 It was not until his foot was on the stone step 
 that something stirred in the hammock, and 
 Jadwiga's eyes looked out inquiringly. A deep 
 red flush dyed her face on the instant. For a 
 moment she seemed to be meditating an escape 
 even then, for her eyes strayed desperately toward 
 the door, but, quickly recognising the impossibility, 
 she contented herself with sitting up in the ham- 
 mock, pushing back her hair from her forehead, 
 and looking with cold inquiry toward the visitor. 
 I think she had nearly spoken, but he was too wise 
 to give her time. With a profound bow in her 
 direction he had turned straight to me. 
 
 "Will you kindly ask Madame Bielinska 
 whether she will receive me ? " he said quickly. 
 " I have a message for her from my mother an 
 important message," he added with emphasis. 
 
 I rose in some slight flurry, wondering how 
 Jadwiga would bear being left alone with him, but 
 she was spared this ordeal, for, without another 
 glance toward her he followed me into the house. 
 
 "This is almost too bold," I said, as we crossed 
 through the lobby. 
 
 "Success belongs to the bold," he replied.
 
 O N E Y E A R 237 
 
 " But am I not also discreet ? " And I was forced 
 to acknowledge that it was so. 
 
 When I came back to the verandah alone the 
 hammock was empty, and I spent a solitary half- 
 hour trying to imagine what the message could be 
 that Madame Malewicz was sending by her son. 
 At the end of that time Marya came to say that 
 the gracious lady wished to see me in her room. 
 
 My first glance showed me that the message 
 had been a welcome one. Madame Bielinska was 
 sitting upright in her chair and greeted me eagerly. 
 
 " Heaven is with us ! " she began, in a lively 
 tone. " Krysztof has offered his help. He has 
 old letters of his father's many dated from Paris. 
 He hopes to find in them the names of the Paris 
 companions among whom we must seek our 
 creditor. Is this not so, Krysztof? " 
 
 " It is so," said Malewicz, who was seated at 
 only two paces from his hostess. " My mother 
 has remembered these letters. The names men- 
 tioned in them belong mostly to families that are 
 still extant in France. Since we have dates to go 
 by I do not think it impossible that we should in 
 this way find the man we require." 
 
 It was rather soon to say " we," but he said it, 
 and looked at me straight as he spoke, and I 
 looked back at him scrutinisingly. Not that I dis- 
 trusted what he said, but merely that I was struck 
 with wonder almost with alarm at his ingenuity.
 
 238 O N E Y E A R 
 
 u Have you those letters here ? " I asked. 
 
 " No, they have to be hunted for first, as is 
 usual with my mother's possessions, but they are 
 certainly safe. To-morrow I hope to bring them." 
 
 "What a diplomat! " I inwardly ejaculated. 
 
 It was not until some time after he had gone 
 that Jadwiga came in. By the cloud on her face 
 as she listened to her mother's account of the visit 
 I could see that something displeased her intensely. 
 Yet all she said was, in a tone of unusual re- 
 serve : 
 
 " And you have accepted his services ? " 
 
 " Naturally I have," was Madame Bielinska's 
 reply. " In this cause I refuse no services." 
 
 "I wish it had been any one else," said Jad- 
 wiga, with painfully puckered eyebrows, and by 
 the strong reluctance in her face I knew of what 
 she was thinking. That just this man toward 
 whom she could not feel quite guiltless, on whom 
 she had reeked her disdain and her mockery, that 
 just he of all others should be the one to offer his 
 help must have been to Jadwiga's spirit a very 
 keen sort of torture. To know him in full pos- 
 session of the disgraceful secret of the past, a wit- 
 ness to her present humiliation, was bad enough, 
 but to have to owe him gratitude for a service was 
 worse infinitely. Jadwiga did not tell me these 
 things then, but I had got to read her face and her 
 bearing like an open book.
 
 O N E Y E A R 239 
 
 When Malewicz came back next day with the 
 letters she kept carefully out of his way, but the 
 nature of the search now entered on made frequent 
 visits necessary, or, at least, seemed to explain 
 them, and she could not keep out of his way for 
 ever. 
 
 " We have found three French names already," 
 Madame Bielinska informed me delightedly. " I 
 wanted to write at once to Monsieur Grimond to 
 get him to make inquiries about the families, but 
 Krysztof has offered to manage the correspond- 
 ence himself. He says it will take less time, and 
 he promises to bring me every scrap of news he 
 gets." 
 
 Needless to say that he did more than keep his 
 promise, for he came very often when he had no 
 news to give, but merely an idea to suggest or an 
 inquiry to make. Within a week, and without 
 visible effort, he had glided into the position of 
 something between a secretary and a family adviser, 
 and looked as much at home in Madame Bielinska's 
 sanctuary as did Madame Bielinska herself. She 
 had got so used to his presence that the days which 
 did not bring him left her restless and dissatisfied. 
 In him she had found exactly what she wanted ; a 
 listener as well as an adviser. 
 
 " Where did you pick up your secret of 
 manoeuvring ? " I asked him once, laughingly, 
 but he answered, without laughing : " Don't you
 
 240 O N E Y E A R 
 
 know that I am half an Armenian, and that cun- 
 ning is an Armenian quality ? " 
 
 The bitterness of the tone reminded me that he 
 had indeed some Armenian blood in his veins, and 
 that in the days of his hopeless courtship Jadwiga 
 had often contemptuously referred to him as "The 
 Armenian." 
 
 During that first week Jadwiga and Krysztof 
 had not met again, and I was beginning to wonder 
 whether he would not soon grow tired of these 
 fruitless tactics, when one afternoon his opportunity 
 came. 
 
 We were again on the verandah, Jadwiga list- 
 lessly reading, I writing to Agnes. I knew that 
 about an hour ago Malewicz had come and been 
 taken straight to Madame Bielinska's room ; but 
 by Jadwiga's unconsciousness, by the mere fact of 
 her being here, I saw that she was not aware of his 
 presence in the house, and I resolved to leave her 
 in ignorance. In order to leave the house he would 
 have to pass here well, so much the better ; it was 
 time to clear the situation one way or the other, 
 and it was more than time to rouse Jadwiga from 
 the apathy that had so transformed her. 
 
 At last I heard his step, and Jadwiga heard it 
 too, and raised her head to listen, but he was already 
 in the doorway. With a glance he had taken in 
 the situation. 
 
 " Pani Jadwiga," he said quickly, to the young
 
 O N E Y E A R 241 
 
 girl who had already risen from her seat with the 
 obvious intention of retiring, " it is fortunate that I 
 find you ; I have a word to say to you from my 
 mother." 
 
 It was wonderful how useful he contrived to 
 make his mother. 
 
 Jadwiga hesitated for a moment and then sat 
 down again. 
 
 " What can your mother have to say to me ? " 
 she asked, in a tone of constraint. 
 
 " She would beg you to take pity on her loneli- 
 ness ; the harvest is approaching, I shall be tied to 
 the fields, and she will spend her days alone would 
 it be asking too much that you should keep her 
 company only for a few days ? always supposing 
 that you can be spared here." 
 
 All the blood rushed to Jadwiga's face as she 
 replied hastily : 
 
 " Oh, no, I cannot it is impossible ; I cannot 
 go away from here, and besides " she broke off 
 abruptly. 
 
 " Besides what ? " asked Malewicz, gently. 
 
 " Your mother would gain nothing by such a 
 companion as I am now. She had better look for 
 somebody in a gayer mood, and who^who would 
 do her house more honour." 
 
 The last words were spoken with averted face, 
 vehemently and bitterly, pressed out, as it were, 
 against her own will.
 
 242 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " Neither my mother nor I know of anybody 
 who could do that," said Malewicz, very de- 
 liberately. " Will you not reconsider your reso- 
 lution?" 
 
 She did not turn her face at once, but the hands 
 that lay in her lap were twisted tightly together. 
 
 " I cannot come," she said, in a choked voice. 
 
 u Then this is all I am to say to my mother ? " 
 
 There was a moment's pause before she showed 
 him her deeply moved face. 
 
 " No, that is not all ; you are to tell her also that 
 she is very good and that I thank her deeply. Will 
 you tell her that ? " and with an effort she held out 
 her hand, but avoided looking at him. He took it 
 in silence and raised it to his lips, then turned im- 
 mediately and left us alone. 
 
 Jadwiga looked after him with her eyes full of 
 perplexity. 
 
 " But I don't understand," she said, confusedly. 
 " I thought he knew everything." 
 
 " So he does." 
 
 " And his mother, too ? And yet she asks me 
 to visit her ? But it is he who made her do that," 
 she added at once. I could see that she was in- 
 tensely touched. Whether or not Malewicz had 
 expected his proposition to be accepted it had cer- 
 tainly not failed in its object. 
 
 " I don't understand him at all," she said, 
 musingly.
 
 O N E Y E A R 243 
 
 " Don't you ? " said I, watching her carefully. 
 
 " There is nothing here, at any rate, that should 
 be astonishing to you. Was it not you who asked, 
 What can poverty, or grief, or shame do to a love 
 that is real ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't ; you hurt me ! " she said, sharply, 
 and I saw that I had said enough for once. 
 
 But from that moment she did not hide from 
 Malewicz as she had hidden hitherto. It was easy 
 to see that, in the respectfulness, almost the rever- 
 ence of his bearing toward her, her cruelly wounded 
 pride had found its first balm. To know that he 
 knew everything was to give an especial value to 
 his smallest act of courtesy, and weight to his every 
 word. And in this crisis the man showed qualities 
 for which I had never credited him. The un- 
 gracious harshness of former days had completely 
 disappeared, giving way to a considerateness, almost 
 a gentleness, which was better proof than anything 
 of his sentiments. It was clear that for her he 
 could commit the prodigy of acting against his 
 natural propensities. In an Englishman such a 
 transformation would be almost impossible, but 
 these slow natures even the most stubborn of 
 them have a suppleness of which we do not 
 dream. In a thousand delicate ways he brought 
 home to Jadwiga the convictions that the stain 
 which rested on her father could not touch her, 
 that to him, at least, she was the same woman, the
 
 244 O N E Y E A R 
 
 same supreme queen that she had been before the fatal 
 discovery ; and it was wonderful to watch how little 
 by little the teaching took effect, how her stricken 
 self-esteem raised itself up once more, how her 
 smarting spirit was slowly soothed. Surely it would 
 have been wonderful if the idea had not obtruded 
 itself that the man who did this would also have 
 been capable of bearing the burden with her. 
 There had always been something a little artificial 
 in Jadwiga's dislike to Malewicz, just as there had 
 been something artificial in that love, fed by 
 poetry and inflamed by music, which she had felt 
 for Wladimir, and both sentiments had now come 
 to the ground. 
 
 But in all this I am anticipating. It was not in 
 a day nor a week that this happened, and other 
 things also happened during the time I am telling 
 of. The first event of note was the arrival of 
 Monsieur Grimond's long looked for reply, whose 
 dry business-like phrases, by informing us that the 
 Vicomte Achille d'Urvain the last of his name 
 had entered a monastery of the order of St. Francis 
 more than a quarter of a century ago, beyond 
 which point it became difficult to trace him, owing 
 the monastic change of name, brought us the 
 corroboration of our surmises. 
 
 The certitude scarcely caused any great emo- 
 tion, even to Madame Bielinska ; she had been sure 
 already, without this proof.
 
 O N E Y E A R 245 
 
 " I am afraid there is not much more to be 
 hoped for from that quarter," she remarked. "It 
 is fortunate that Krysztof has got hold of other 
 threads." 
 
 And really it was fortunate. Without the cor- 
 respondence with Paris which Malewicz was as- 
 siduously cultivating, I scarcely know how poor 
 Madame Bielinska would have got through those 
 weary weeks of waiting, for Pan Lewicki had not 
 yet come home. It was understood that he had 
 left Karlsbad and that father and son were making 
 a tour in the Austrian Alps, perhaps with the 
 object of letting a little grass grow over the broken 
 engagement. Once or twice Madame Bielinska 
 suggested that the overseer at Krasno must surely 
 be able to forward a letter, but by the advice of 
 Malewicz, who proved how difficult it would be to 
 treat the subject by writing, she always desisted 
 from her purpose.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ABOUT the beginning of August, I observed a 
 change in Malewicz's demeanour. Knowing 
 something of the ardour that devoured him I had 
 marvelled at his patience ; now, all at once, it 
 seemed to give way finally. 
 
 The first time that this fact obtruded itself on 
 my notice was one afternoon when he joined Jad- 
 wiga and me in the garden. He seemed to me at 
 once more preoccupied than usual, and I noticed 
 that his eyes rested on Jadwiga in a way they 
 had never dared to do before. The conversation 
 to-day would not become consecutive ; there were 
 frequent pauses, and every time we began to speak 
 it was on another subject. I especially remember 
 one remark of Malewicz's. 
 
 "Those flowers are lilies, are they not ? " he be- 
 gan abruptly, after a pause that had been especially 
 long, and looking toward an oval bed which lay op- 
 posite to the bench we were sitting on. 
 
 "Of course they are lilies," answered Jadwiga 
 in some surprise. 
 
 " And how are lilies cultivated ? What do 
 they require to make them grow so tall and 
 straight ? " 
 
 246
 
 O N E Y E A R 247 
 
 " A great deal of water," said Jadwiga, thinking 
 probably that he had snatched at the first available 
 subject of conversation. 
 
 "And of manure, I think I have heard," said 
 Malewicz. 
 
 " Yes, manure does them good, certainly, as to 
 almost all flowers." 
 
 " Is it not strange," said Malewicz, musingly, 
 " that so fair a flower as a lily should grow out of 
 so vile a thing as dung ? Have you ever thought 
 about that ? Is that lily less spotless, or less 
 precious because it owes so many elements of its 
 being to the dunghill ? Would any one hesitate 
 to gather it because of that thought ? Not I for 
 one ! What care I where it comes from or what 
 was before it ? A lily is to me a lily, and my 
 hand would stretch instantly toward it, if only the 
 precious flower would consent to be gathered by 
 my fingers." 
 
 He looked from the flower-bed toward Jadwiga 
 as he spoke, and his glance was yet plainer than his 
 words. But she was gazing straight away in front 
 of her, and her colour neither rose nor fell ; it was 
 almost as though she had not heard. 
 
 When he was gone she turned toward me. 
 
 " I know what he meant," she said, looking at 
 me steadily. " It was a strange way of putting it, 
 but I understand quite well." 
 
 " And is it impossible that the lily should ever
 
 248 O N E Y E A R 
 
 allow itself to be gathered by that hand ? " I asked, 
 with some trepidation, for I had as yet no clue to 
 her present attitude of mind. 
 
 She slowly shook her head. 
 
 " Neither by that nor by any other hand. I know 
 what you have been imagining all this time. You 
 think that because I tolerate his presence I may 
 get to feel for him what I know he feels for me. 
 I am only trying to pay off a little of the debt I 
 owe him, for I am very guilty toward him. I 
 have misjudged him cruelly, and treated him 
 cruelly too, and I am deeply ashamed of having 
 done so, and would show him that he has all my 
 esteem, but love ? I have no more love to give, 
 not the love that men want ; men themselves 
 have killed it, in the person of that one man on 
 whom I set my faith and who failed me." 
 
 The frank acknowledgment was exactly what I 
 should have expected from her intrinsically gener- 
 ous nature, but the hopelessness of her tone cut me 
 to the quick. 
 
 " But if your love was still to be given," I 
 urged, " can you doubt that this would be the right 
 man to give it to ? " 
 
 There was a slight disturbance in her eyes as 
 she looked at me, and faint though it was I noted 
 it with hope. 
 
 " No," she said slowly. " He might have been 
 worthy, I believe he is worthy." It was strange
 
 O N E Y E A R 249 
 
 to note how even in her humiliation her woman's 
 pride still valued the gift within her power to be- 
 stow. 
 
 She was silent for a minute now, plunged in such 
 deep thought that I shrank from disturbing her. 
 Then, without changing her attitude, she spoke 
 again. 
 
 " I feel I will tell you what I feel about it, I 
 feel as if I had had the chance of loving him and 
 had missed it. Do you remember that day last 
 year it was soon after you came when I con- 
 sulted you not quite seriously I think about the 
 choice of a lover ? If I had taken your advice 
 then all probably would have been different ; and I 
 could have taken it, for to the best of my belief I 
 loved neither of them at that moment, but I could 
 have loved either of them, for my heart was full of 
 tenderness which had to be spent. It was like 
 standing at a cross-road without knowing what was 
 at the end of either way, well, and I took the 
 wrong turn, that is all." 
 
 " But your steps can be retraced," I said, "you 
 have begun to retrace them already." 
 
 But Jadwiga only shook her head and said : 
 " Not now ; it could have been then, but not 
 now." 
 
 Next time Malewicz came to the house I man- 
 aged to waylay him. 
 
 " You must not be imprudent," I said. " She
 
 250 ONE YEAR 
 
 is not ready to listen to you. You must give her 
 time." 
 
 In reply he burst out impatiently : 
 
 "Time ! time ! Always that talk of time when 
 every day is precious ! Have I not given her time 
 enough already ? She is used to my presence now ; 
 I cannot go on playing the family friend for ever." 
 
 I was too surprised to make much answer, and 
 very soon it was forced upon me that my warning 
 had been absolutely wasted. The strong guard 
 which until now Malewicz had put both upon his 
 eyes and upon his speech was abruptly removed. 
 Within a few days he had thrown off the disguise 
 under which he had hitherto figured, and appeared 
 as what he was, an urgent and impatient lover. 
 Jadwiga could no longer doubt that he was paying 
 her his addresses ; and yet, although she never by 
 word or glance encouraged his hopes, it was much 
 already that she did not avoid him entirely. No 
 doubt her heart was too sick to allow of her using 
 toward him those means of discouragement which 
 she had used once before ; and, more likely still, 
 the balm of his friendship was too welcome to be 
 foregone. 
 
 In surprise, almost in consternation, I looked on 
 at Malewicz's headlong tactics. His urgency 
 seemed to me not only unwise in the extreme, but 
 also indelicate. Repeatedly I warned him, but he 
 only laughed in my face.
 
 O N E YE A R 251 
 
 " Patience ? " he would say. " Don't talk to 
 me of that ! Have you any notion of the amount 
 of patience it has taken me to get to this point ? 
 But the time for patience is past now ; if she is to 
 be gained at all it can only be by storm, believe me." 
 
 And again my words were cast to the winds, and 
 his efforts redoubled instead of relaxing. 
 
 Madame Bielinska did not seem to notice any- 
 thing especial. To her Krysztof was still only a 
 secretary and adviser, but I confess I felt curious 
 regarding the attitude of the other mother 
 KrysztoPs mother in the matter. This curiosity 
 was to be speedily satisfied. 
 
 " Tell me, Miss Middleton," Madame Malewicz 
 said to me one day when she had accompanied her 
 son to Ludniki, and at a moment when we found 
 ourselves alone, " do you think Krysztof has a 
 chance ? " 
 
 " Would you be glad if I said l yes ' ? " I in- 
 quired, looking at her curiously. 
 
 " Glad ? Why, of course I should. Is he not 
 my only boy ? " 
 
 " And you have no objection to seeing your only 
 boy married to the daughter of a cheater at cards, 
 who, besides, would bring him no portion ? " 
 
 " Why, you see it is this way," said the old lady 
 in some slight embarrassment, " it is not she who 
 cheated at cards, but her father, and how do any 
 of us know what was the exact moral worth of
 
 252 O N E YE A R 
 
 our ancestors, or whether they might not have suc- 
 cumbed under such a temptation ? Even granted 
 they would not, she^ at any rate, is innocent, so 
 why should she be punished ? 
 
 "And as for the money," went on Madame 
 Malewicz, " Krysztof assures me that there will 
 be enough remaining to live in a quiet way. I 
 never understand about money matters, but he has 
 such an excellent head, and if they don't mind liv- 
 ing in a small way, why should I ? I have so few 
 wants, you know, and am so easily satisfied (this 
 was an idee fixe of the dear old creature). And, 
 besides, Krysztof thinks it will be better to sell the 
 estate and go to live in some place where nobody 
 knows the story. He talks of Abbazzia or Como, 
 and I have always longed to see the south ! " 
 
 Her black eyes sparkled as she said it like the eyes 
 of the veriest girl, and her small, but alas ! bright 
 yellow teeth were displayed in a delighted smile. 
 
 Oh, blessed irresponsibility ! If it was foolish, 
 I had only to think of how others had acted in or- 
 der to find it a noble sort of foolishness. From 
 that side clearly there was no opposition to be feared 
 
 Thinking back of that time I cannot exactly dis- 
 entangle the sequence of incidents ; possibly I may 
 not have given them quite in their right places, but 
 of the general outline of these' weeks I am certain. 
 Single pictures rise in my memory, standing out 
 sharply from the haze of forgotten hours. The
 
 O N E Y E A R 253 
 
 background of these pictures was always either the 
 white pillars of the verandah or the leafy depths of 
 the park, for it was a life almost of imprisonment 
 that we led, since nothing could induce Jadwiga to 
 leave the precincts of her home. The only glimpses 
 which she now had of the outer world were from 
 the top of an old summerhouse which had an up- 
 per story, and from which, between the crowns of 
 the trees, the horison was visible. From up there 
 among the overblown honeysuckle which held the 
 rotting pillars tightly clasped in its saving embrace, 
 she could watch the wide plain turn from pale gold 
 to dark gold for all that was visible of the country 
 from here was one vast cornfield a sea of one 
 uniform tint, sometimes ruffled like the sea into 
 ripples that went to break on some unseen shore, 
 sometimes motionless beneath a deep blue sky, be- 
 calmed as the sea itself can be in perfect autumn 
 days. 
 
 Among the pictures aforenamed there rises up 
 one which I see more clearly than the rest. The 
 harvest had been going on for some time now. 
 One day, from the top of our watch tower, we 
 saw that the plain was no longer golden, but of a 
 dead, greyish-green tint, and at the same time we 
 heard the sound of singing approaching from the 
 village street. 
 
 " The harvest wreath ! the harvest wreath ! " 
 cried Anulka, clapping her hands with joy. "They
 
 254 O N E Y E A R 
 
 are bringing the harvest wreath ! Oh, come, Jad- 
 wiga, we must be there ! " 
 
 " I am not coming," said Jadwiga indifferently. 
 
 I knew it was customary in Poland for the field 
 workers on the last day of the harvest, to come in 
 procession to the summerhouse, one of the girls 
 being crowned with a wreath of corn ears, to be 
 laid at the feet of the lord or lady of the house. 
 Curious to see this picturesque ceremony I followed 
 Anulka as she careered back toward the house. A 
 strong scent of garlic was the first thing that ap- 
 prised me of the vicinity of the singers, who were 
 grouped on the verandah; the women's coloured 
 head cloths making bright blotches of red and yel- 
 low against the white pillars, their flashing teeth 
 displayed, as they shouted out the harvest song. 
 There was the bristling, monstrous wreath on the 
 head of a handsome sun- burnt girl and there, too, 
 was Madame Bielinska, standing in the full light 
 of the day, and smiling graciously at her subordi- 
 nates, who stared back at her as though at one 
 arisen from the dead ; and well they might, seeing 
 that they had not seen her for eleven years. I have 
 had the song translated to me since and noted 'down 
 the queer and so oddly inappropriate verses : 
 
 " We have a proud mistress, 
 She comes to the door, 
 Her keys ring in her hand, 
 She thanks God the corn is gathered.
 
 O N E Y E A R 255 
 
 " Our master comes not. 
 He is gone to Swow, 
 He takes corn with him, 
 He brings back money. 
 
 " Master, sell thy grey cow, 
 Master sell thy brown cow, 
 Master sell thy black cow, 
 And buy us -wodki. 
 
 " White feathers has our cock, 
 But black are the master's eyes. 
 He lives among the corn, 
 And the corn looks toward him. 
 
 " The corn bows before him, 
 The corn lies at his feet, 
 He puts out his hand 
 And the corn comes to him. 
 
 " Our master has a golden house 
 With a golden door 
 And a golden window. 
 His labourers stand around him. 
 
 " Little grey quail, 
 Wilt thou still hide ? 
 We have cut away the corn, 
 Thou canst not lie under it. 
 
 " The moon is on our path, 
 Our wreath is on our head, 
 We shall not go astray 
 Nor lose our wreath. 
 
 " The meadow has spoken 
 And it has told us 
 That the master has wodki 
 And many glasses in a row.
 
 256 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " We bring you the corn 
 Of all your fields. 
 May you sow again, 
 And may you reap." 
 
 When my ears began to ache I withdrew noise- 
 lessly, and at the same time Malewicz detached 
 himself from the group of spectators. He spoke 
 very little as he walked by my side. Presently 
 Anulka came running after us ; the wreath of corn- 
 ears which I had just seen on the head of the vil- 
 lage girl now hung round her neck like a necklace. 
 She ran past us to where Jadwiga sat alone, and, 
 wriggling her thin neck out of the wreath, put it 
 quickly on to her sister's head. 
 
 " Oh, you look so lovely in it ! " she cried, 
 " much prettier than Hania Wasylko looked ! " 
 
 Jadwiga put up her hand impatiently and pulled 
 it off. 
 
 " It is the last harvest wreath they will bring 
 us," she said, contemplating it as it lay in her lap. 
 " They indeed will reap again, but we shall not 
 sow. Poor wretches ! They do not know that 
 by this time next year we shall have sold not 
 only our grey and brown cows but also our 
 house ! " 
 
 Then she looked up suddenly into Malewicz's 
 face. 
 
 " Tell me," she said almost sharply, " is this 
 correspondence of yours ever going to bring any
 
 O N E Y E A R 257 
 
 result ? Is seems to me that you are always writing 
 letters and never getting answers or, at any rate, 
 no answers that bring us a step further." 
 
 To my knowledge this was the first time that 
 Jadwiga had referred to the subject thus directly 
 to Malewicz. He looked surprised, but answered 
 immediately : 
 
 " On the contrary ; we have got several steps 
 further already. The last letter from Paris brought 
 us two new names, in the bearer of one of which 
 I hope to discover the person we need." 
 
 Jadwiga sighed and said nothing more, and Male- 
 wicz took the first opportunity of changing the 
 subject. 
 
 As it so happened it was I who, against my own 
 will, pushed Malewicz prematurely to put his fate 
 to the touch. 
 
 I was talking one afternoon to the old postman 
 Andrej, discussing the health of his wife. Since I 
 had begun to visit her Andrej exhausted himself in 
 all sorts of little cares for me, meant to prove his 
 gratitude. He would pursue me with glasses of 
 wine of which I had no need whatever, and did 
 all that lay in his power to make me take to the 
 national w'odki fortunately without effect. To- 
 day he had surreptitiously brought me a slice of 
 cake he seemed to labour under the delusion that 
 I was chronically starving and while I was eating 
 a little of it to please him, we carried on as much
 
 258 O N E Y E A R 
 
 conversation as our mutual broken German al- 
 lowed of. 
 
 " It is not Zosia alone " (Zosia was his wife) 
 " who looks white," said the good soul, after sev- 
 eral preliminary sighs. " Just look at our young 
 lady ! It is a pity she does not drink wbdki" 
 
 " I doubt whether wbdki would do her any good," 
 I replied, trying not to smile. 
 
 " I know what would," said Andrej quickly, and 
 then, with the privilege of an old servant, he added : 
 41 If the Krasno carriage would stand at our door 
 that would do her good." 
 
 "Nonsense, Andrej," I said provoked. "You 
 must not speak like that. Our young lady and 
 that young gentleman have found out in time that 
 they do not suit each other, and she is not think- 
 ing of him at all now believe me ! And, besides 
 that, he is far away now." 
 
 " Not further away than Krasno," said Andrej 
 obstinately. 
 
 " He is not at Krasno ; he is in the Alps." 
 
 " Then either Jan is deaf or Michal is blind," 
 replied Andrej. 
 
 " Who is Michal ? " 
 
 "The Krasno coachman. It is close upon a 
 week ago that you spoke to him in the market- 
 place at Zloczek. He was standing there waiting 
 with the four grey horses in the britzska the 
 one that is only brought out when the master him-
 
 O N E Y E A R 259 
 
 self is there and he told Jan that the family 
 had been home for two days already, and that Pan 
 Lewicki's rheumatism had been washed away by 
 the waters." 
 
 u Are you sure of this ? " I asked. 
 
 " I am sure of what Jan told me," said Andrej 
 a little sulkily, " but you can ask him yourself if 
 you think I'm maundering." 
 
 I left the rest of my cake on the plate and went 
 straight to Madame Bielinska. Malewicz was in 
 the room, but I did not think of looking toward 
 him as I rapidly began to speak. 
 
 " Just fancy what I have heard. Pan Lewicki 
 is back ; he has been back for more than a week, it 
 seems." And I repeated what I had heard from 
 Andrej. 
 
 Madame Bielinska's pale face grew red all over 
 as she listened. Without immediately speaking she 
 turned her sunken eyes reproachfully upon Male- 
 wicz. 
 
 " A week ! " she repeated after a moment. " A 
 whole week ! And you promised so faithfully to 
 keep watch ! " 
 
 For the first time in my experience of Malewicz 
 I saw him out of countenance. 
 
 " It cannot be so long as that," he said quickly. 
 " I should surely have heard of it ; he may be here 
 since yesterday or the day before " 
 
 " It was last week that Jan saw the carriage at
 
 2 6o O N E Y E A R 
 
 Zloczek," I said looking at him, and astonished to 
 meet so disturbed a gaze. 
 
 He gave an embarrassed laugh. 
 
 " Well, that only shows what a bad detective I 
 am ; but I did my best, believe me, I did my best." 
 
 He sighed so heavily with the last words that 
 Madame Bielinska's anger melted. 
 
 " Well, I forgive you, but there must not be an- 
 other moment lost. It is too late for to-day. To- 
 morrow before breakfast a messenger shall be at 
 Krasno, and shall ask Bazyli to visit me immedi- 
 ately." 
 
 Malewicz bent his head, as though in acquies- 
 cence, but without speaking. When, a few 
 minutes later, I left the room he followed me into 
 the passage. 
 
 " Where is Pani Jadwiga ? " he asked in an agi- 
 tated whisper. " Not in her room, I hope ? " 
 
 There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, 
 succeeded by a faint drizzle of rain which kept us 
 indoors. 
 
 u She is in the drawing-room, I believe," I said. 
 " She had an idea of practising, although I do not 
 hear the piano." 
 
 Seeing him now at close quarters I perceived a 
 strained look about his mouth, which I had got to 
 associate with his moments of strong emotion. , 
 
 " Very well. Be so kind as not to follow me 
 there," he said briefly.
 
 ONE YEAR 261 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " I asked. 
 " Surely not to " 
 
 " I am not bound to answer that question," he 
 said in the same tone of extreme irritation. " I 
 only ask you not to disturb me." 
 
 " Is it Wladimir's return that is exciting you 
 so ? " I persisted. " If so, believe me, you have 
 nothing to fear ; she does not think of him at all." 
 
 He looked as though he were laughing, although 
 no sound came. 
 
 " Wladimir ! " he said, in an accent of inimi- 
 table contempt. " What do I care for the boy ! " 
 And, brushing past me, he went toward the draw- 
 ing-room. 
 
 I did not see him again that day, and it was only 
 late at night that I saw Jadwiga alone ; but the first 
 glance I had of her face told me how matters stood. 
 
 While I was brushing out my hair before the 
 glass the door softly opened, and a white-robed 
 form stole in and sat down in silence on my bed. 
 It was many months now since she had come in 
 thus, for since the shock of the catastrophe she 
 had been chary of her confidences. My heart 
 swelled as I thought of happier days, so recent and 
 yet so irrevocably lost, when she had sat exactly 
 as she sat now, only with something so different in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Do you know what I have done to-day ? " she 
 asked after a moment.
 
 ONE YEAR 
 
 " You have refused Malewi.cz ? " I said, looking 
 at what I could see of her profile in the glass. 
 
 " Do you think it very foolish of me ? " she 
 humbly inquired. 
 
 " I think it much more foolish of him to press 
 you for your decision now ; in six months' time 
 your answer might perhaps have been different." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " she asked, looking at me 
 earnestly, but refraining from direct contradiction, 
 a symptom which I at once put down as favour- 
 able. " Then I wish he had waited. It hurts me 
 to hurt him, but how can I say ' Yes ' to him when 
 I am not sure whether what I feel is not only grat- 
 itude for his devotion ? " 
 
 " At any rate she is not sure that she does not 
 care for him," I commented in my own mind. 
 
 u You acknowledge his devotion ? " I said aloud. 
 
 " I not only acknowledge it, I suffer under it. 
 It is dreadful to owe so much to a person, and not 
 to be able to pay him back." 
 
 She mused for a moment with her eyes on the 
 ground. 
 
 " If I had known him last year as I know him 
 now " 
 
 I rose from my place before the mirror, and, 
 going up to where she sat, took her two hands be- 
 tween my own. 
 
 " Stop thinking of last year, Jadwiga," I said, 
 stooping down so as to look into her eyes.
 
 O N E Y E A R 263 
 
 " Think of this moment only of this moment 
 and of the future. You made a mistake then, but, 
 believe me, it is not too late yet. You have time 
 enough to learn to love him, and you will have to 
 love somebody you are not made to live alone. 
 Why not choose this man who has proved his 
 faithfulness so brilliantly ? " 
 
 Jadwiga looked at me in astonishment, a sort of 
 far-off hope dawning in the depth of her dark 
 eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said, hesitatingly, " you may be 
 right I don't know, but it is so quick, so terribly 
 quick. How good you are, Eleanor ! Even 
 though I may not know what I feel for him, I am 
 quite sure that I love you ! " 
 
 She kissed me with one of her haunting smiles, 
 and disappeared again through the door.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 LOOKING out of the window on the following 
 afternoon I saw a britzska with four grey horses 
 sweeping up to the door. This meant that, despite 
 the rupture, Pan Lewicki had immediately answered 
 Madame Bielinska's summons. No less was to be 
 expected from Polish courtesy. He came alone, 
 of course ; indeed, as I afterward ascertained, An- 
 drej's information was so far incorrect that Wladi- 
 mir had not come home with his father, but had 
 started to travel in the East. I watched the pictur- 
 esque giant alighting without any especial emotion. 
 From the first the hope which my employer had 
 set upon the revelations he might be expected to 
 make had appeared to me extravagant. It is true 
 that he was the one surviving member of the gam- 
 bling trio which had tried to ruin itself in Paris 
 thirty years ago, but it did not seem to me likely 
 that he would be able to do more than add a few 
 names to the list of those French acquaintances 
 with whom their gay days had been spent. Never 
 in my life was I so mistaken. 
 
 The interview was lengthy. More than an hour 
 passed before I saw Pan Lewicki again taking his 
 seat in his britzska and covering his handsome, 
 iron-grey head with the square Polish tartatka. 
 264
 
 O N E Y E A R 265 
 
 I was watching him out of sight when the door 
 behind me opened, and, turning round, I beheld 
 to my astonishment Madame Bielinska entering. 
 Since I dwelt under her roof this was the first time 
 that I had seen her here. Her face was flushed 
 and shining with excitement. 
 
 " Where is Jadwiga ? " she said, stuttering a lit- 
 tle in her haste. " Call her quickly, I beg of you ! 
 Oh, Miss Middleton, we have found him we 
 have found him at last ! " And, to my consterna- 
 tion, she half fell into my arms, clinging convul- 
 sively round my neck, and doing something which 
 was neither laughing nor crying, or which, per- 
 haps, was a mixture of both. 
 
 " Pan Lewicki has found him for you ? " I 
 asked, guiding her carefully to a chair. " Is that 
 what you mean ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes, that is it j and can you imagine who 
 it is ? Guess ! " 
 
 "How can I possibly do that ? " I objected. "I 
 have got all those French names completely mixed 
 up." 
 
 " But it is not a French name at all ; it is a 
 Polish name," she said, shaking my arm as she held 
 it. " I don't know why we took for granted from 
 the first that it was a Frenchman whom Hazimir 
 had cheated ; it was not a Frenchman, it was his 
 own compatriot, his friend. Oh, can't you guess 
 now ? "
 
 266 O N E Y E A R 
 
 "Not Pan Lewicki himself? " I asked, in grow- 
 ing bewilderment. 
 
 " No the other one, Krysztof, nobody else but 
 our good friend Krysztof ! " she almost screamed, 
 and this time she gripped my arm with painful 
 force. 
 
 The want of government in her demeanour from 
 the moment she had entered the room had made 
 me fear that her mind was slightly unhinged, now 
 I thought I was sure of it ; I therefore answered as 
 gently as possible : 
 
 "Surely there must be a mistake here, dear Ma- 
 dame; you forget that Krysztof was barely born 
 when these things happened." 
 
 " Not he but his father ; don't you understand ? 
 It can be no other. Bazyli remembers those two 
 evenings quite well, the one on which Malewicz 
 Stepan Malewicz won so greatly from Hazimir, 
 and the following evening on which he lost much 
 more heavily. The duel at cards between them 
 was one of the events of the club season. Bazyli 
 was among the spectators who stood round watch- 
 ing; he remembers the Vicomte perfectly and his 
 departure for Africa he thinks he can even re- 
 member the mirror on the wall, for that old man's 
 memory is as keen as a knife and as clear as glass. 
 He always had a good head and gambled as me- 
 thodically as he did everything else. The dates in 
 the letter tally exactly with those in his memory
 
 ONE YEAR 267 
 
 everything tallies there can be no doubt Stepan 
 Malewicz is the man who was wronged by Hazi- 
 mir, and Krysztof is his only son therefore it is to 
 him that we owe restitution it is he who is the 
 real master of Ludniki." 
 
 In that moment I perceived Jadwiga standing in 
 the doorway, with her garden-hat in her hand. 
 Her figure was stiff, almost to immobility, only her 
 eyes moved slowly from her mother to me. 
 
 " Jadwiga, my child, we have found him ! " said 
 Madame Bielinska, stretching her arms toward her 
 daughter. " Bazyli says " 
 
 " I have heard what he says," said Jadwiga, 
 speaking with some difficulty, " but may he not be 
 mistaken ? " 
 
 " It seems to me," I put in, " that these are sur- 
 mises, very plausible surmises certainly, but yet not 
 proofs." 
 
 "To me it is proved already," said Madame 
 Bielinska hastily, afraid evidently of having her dis- 
 covery wrenched from her. 
 
 u But the Malewiczs are poor," I objected, 
 " and in your husband's letter it is expressly stated 
 that his opponent is rich, and can spare the 
 money." 
 
 " So he could at the time ; it was in the golden 
 days of the family. Hazimir stopped gambling 
 after that visit to Paris, but Stepan Malewicz did 
 not, although he had a wife and a child already ;
 
 268 O N E Y E A R 
 
 that evening at the club was only one in a series 
 of disastrous evenings for him. And Hazimir 
 could look on at the ruin consummating itself, and 
 could keep to himself the money which would at 
 least have averted the worst ! " There was inex- 
 pressible contempt on her emaciated face as she 
 said it, and her thin, long-fingered hands closed 
 slowly upon her knee. Then a faint smile flick- 
 ered over her features. 
 
 "Poor Krysztof! What a surprise for him to 
 find that he is after all not quite a beggar ! And 
 to think that he was looking for himself all the 
 time ! " 
 
 She gave a broken laugh and looked toward her 
 daughter, as though for sympathy in what evidently 
 struck her as an excellent joke; but neither on 
 Jadwiga's white face nor in her wide, perplexed 
 eyes was there any response. 
 
 u I suppose he will be coming to-day," said Ma- 
 dame Bielinska, as she rose. 
 
 But Malewicz did not come that day, as, indeed, 
 after yesterday's events was not to be expected. 
 Madame Bielinska waited in a fever until late at 
 night, and next morning early the same messenger 
 who had been sent to Krasno was despatched to 
 Roma Wielka. 
 
 That next day was the first of September, a date 
 which, for various reasons, I am not likely to for- 
 get. That it should prove a turning-point in Jad-
 
 O N E Y E A R 269 
 
 wiga's life was to be foreseen, but nothing warned 
 me that to me, too, it was to bring a crisis. 
 
 Jaclwiga and I were both sitting with Madame 
 Bielinska when toward midday Malewicz was an- 
 nounced. I expected to see Jadwiga take instantly 
 to flight, but to my surprise she kept her place, 
 only stiffening a little in her chair and drawing in 
 her under-lip between her teeth, a trick she had 
 when her nerves were off their balance. As the 
 door opened I could see a thrill pass through her 
 from head to foot, then my eyes turned irresistibly 
 toward the newcomer, and immediately something 
 in his face gave me a fresh shock of astonishment. 
 Almost in the same moment, and before any one 
 had spoken, Jadwiga sprang to her feet. 
 
 " You know it ! " she cried shrilly, " you know 
 it ! It is true then, since you know it ! " 
 
 My thoughts had not yet been able to follow 
 hers, and already I vaguely felt that she was right. 
 Whether Malewicz had come here with the inten- 
 tion of acting complete ignorance I do not know, 
 but, be that as it may, the sudden attack, coming 
 from so unexpected a quarter, had thrown him mo- 
 mentarily off his guard. His face, during that one 
 minute of silence, in which he was evidently try- 
 ing to speak, was a plain avowal. Madame Bie- 
 l inska, who, as little as I, had suspected the truth, 
 which Jadwiga's instinct had somehow leapt at, 
 looked inquiringly at all our faces in turn.
 
 270 ONE Y P: A R 
 
 The silence had not lasted more than a few mo- 
 ments when Jadwiga, without saying a further 
 word, flung out of the second door. 
 
 I was preparing to follow when Madame Bie- 
 linska said quickly and with a loftiness which as- 
 tonished me 
 
 " Miss Middleton, you will oblige me by staying. 
 There is something here which perhaps you can 
 help me to understand. Tell me " and she turned 
 to Malewicz " is it as she says ? You are not 
 only the person I have been looking for all summer, 
 but you know it ? " 
 
 Malewicz seemed to be hesitating, then a cloud 
 of sullenness settled on his features. 
 
 " Be it so," he said. " I am that person and I 
 know it. The comedy need be carried no further, 
 since it has lost its point." 
 
 Madame Bielinska's skin-and-bone hands tight- 
 ened on the two carved knobs of her chair, as she 
 measured him with a glance that was almost a glare. 
 
 "You knew it," she said with badly suppressed 
 rage, " you knew it, and you have pretended to be 
 my friend and my helper ! False man ! Praise 
 man ! Go from my house never to return ! It 
 will be your house soon as you know well, but as 
 long as I am here you shall not cross its threshold." 
 Her long finger shook as it pointed at the door, 
 and in her staring eyes there was a look that bor- 
 dered on hatred.
 
 ONE YEAR 271 
 
 " Why do you not go ? " she asked, as he did 
 not move. " Have you anything to say in your 
 excuse ? You shall have your money, every penny 
 of it, but you are no longer my friend." 
 
 Malewicz walked to the door without speaking, 
 then turned, as though on some sudden resolution. 
 
 " I have only one thing to say in my defence," he 
 said hurriedly " I love your daughter, I have loved 
 her for long. Give me the money if you will, 
 but give me her with it, and neither she nor you 
 need descend by one step from your present estate." 
 He looked at her with passionate entreaty, the 
 look of a man who is making his last desperate 
 move. 
 
 Madame Bielinska sat rigid for a moment longer, 
 then slowly sank back in her chair. 
 
 " It is a plot, then," she murmured between her 
 working lips ; " you would be the generous creditor 
 who would sacrifice himself in order to preserve 
 to us our bread and butter you would crush us 
 with your magnanimity. No, no, Pan Malewicz, 
 you need not hope to get either my consent or my 
 daughter's to so obvious a financial arrangement ; 
 we may be poor but we are not base." 
 
 Malewicz turned to me. " Ask this lady," he 
 said with flaming eyes, "ask Miss Middleton if I 
 am sacrificing myself, or if I am pleading for the 
 fulfilment of what has been my one thought for 
 years if I look on myself as the giver or the re-
 
 272 O N E Y E A R 
 
 ceiver; she knows a little of what there is in my 
 heart." 
 
 Madame Bielinska considered him for a moment, 
 her attention arrested in spite of herself, then she 
 obstinately shook her head. 
 
 " No, no it may be that you love her, but she 
 cannot love you, she has loved another, too, lately. 
 And then you are false, you have deceived me I 
 would not have such a son. Go, I tell you, go, 
 and do not return ! " 
 
 He went then without another word, and with 
 only one long, questioning look in my direction. 
 
 I did not wait for Madame Bielinska to speak. 
 
 " You will call him back again," I said reproach- 
 fully, "if not to-day then to-morrow." 
 
 " Never ! " she answered vehemently, " he has 
 cheated me ! " 
 
 " But if Jadwiga were to love him ? If she 
 were to come to love him ? " 
 
 She moved uneasily in her chair. 
 
 u That will not be, and if it were to be it would 
 not do. That would be too easy a way, don't you 
 see. We need not descend from our social estate, 
 he said but I want to descend, I want to suffer 
 materially instead of mentally, else there would be no 
 penance, nothing to make me feel that I had indeed 
 paid the price of that sin it would not hurt enough, 
 don't you see ? " And she raised her haggard eyes 
 to my face, struggling to express her meaning.
 
 O N E Y E A R 273 
 
 I understood, and left her with a sigh, foreseeing 
 a new inimical influence to the union which I still 
 hoped to bring about. It was clear that she could 
 not forgive the man who could have quenched her 
 thirst for penance two months ago and had not 
 done so. 
 
 I had an idea that Jadwiga ought not to be left 
 alone, but she had locked herself into her room, 
 and not being able to reach mine except through 
 hers I was forced to look for another refuge. This 
 I found in the store-room, where Marya, assisted 
 by Anulka, who had offered herself in the hopes of 
 there being stray spoons to lick, was engaged in 
 arranging long rows of preserves. Too restless 
 for solitude I likewise commenced handing up jam- 
 pots. 
 
 Presently, while we three were thus busy, a 
 shadow fell in the doorway. Turning round I al- 
 most started to see Malewicz looking at me with a 
 distinct request in his eyes. 
 
 " I thought you were gone," I said, as, putting 
 down the pot I held, I joined him in the passage. 
 
 " I am going presently, do not fear, but I should 
 like to speak to you for a few minutes alone. Is 
 there no place where we will not be seen ? I am 
 a proscribed criminal, you know, and I should not 
 like to be turned out of the house door." 
 
 Just then we came to a door standing ajar, and 
 which led to a square space at the head of the
 
 274 O N E Y E A R 
 
 cellar staircase, a sort of ante-chamber to the 
 cellar, so to say, where empty wine casks and cork- 
 less bottles stood about in a dim half light, plenti- 
 fully draped with cobwebs. 
 
 " No one will find us here," I said, sitting down 
 on an overturned packing case. 
 
 There were plenty more seats of the sort avail- 
 able, and Malewicz, having taken another, and 
 disposed of his long legs as best he could among 
 the bottles, began speaking at once, though in a 
 guarded voice. 
 
 " This is probably the last time I shall be in 
 this house, and I should like one person at least to 
 know exactly how matters stand." 
 
 "You have known the truth all along?" I 
 asked, trying to read his face in the half light. 
 
 " Not quite all along." 
 
 " Since when, then ? " 
 
 " Since two days before Hazimir Bielinski's 
 death. On that day, as I once told you, the 
 strange monk came to Roma Wielka. I received 
 him as a matter of course, just as Bielinski received 
 him next day. I was only twenty at the time, but 
 already my own master, my father having died 
 some years previously. When he heard my name 
 the stranger he knew no word of Polish seemed 
 struck ; he had evidently come to the house with- 
 out inquiring who the owner was. He sat still for 
 some moments as though plunged in deep thought,
 
 O N E Y E A R 275 
 
 from which he awoke to throw a piercing glance 
 round the room. * But I thought your family was 
 rich,' he said with a somewhat brutal directness. 
 4 1 am certain I have heard it was rich.' I was 
 young enough to be annoyed at the remark, and 
 answered stiffly that he had heard aright, but that 
 riches are not necessarily permanent. The French 
 monk shook his head. 4 Oh, the cards,' he 
 groaned, c the cards ! I knew they would be his 
 perdition. Your father had a great loss in Paris in 
 185 , had he not ? ' I replied that he had sus- 
 tained various losses, wondering the while at my 
 visitor's information and at his tenacity. 4 But,' 
 he went on with evidently growing interest, ' that 
 loss was retrieved. Do you not remember having 
 heard of any great gain he made since that time ? 
 of any what shall I call it ? good turn that 
 came to your fortunes after the year 185 ? But, 
 to be sure, you were a child then.' To this I an- 
 swered that from what my mother had told me 
 she was recovering from a severe illness at the 
 time, and, therefore, not present I was almost 
 certain that since the year he spoke of my father 
 had done nothing but steadily lose. I could see 
 by the monk's face that this perplexed him ex- 
 tremely. 4 Is there not a house in the neighbour- 
 hood called Ludniki ? ' he asked after a minute's 
 silence, and when I answered in the affirmative, he 
 went on : * And whom does it belong to now ? '
 
 276 O N E Y E A R 
 
 'To Hazimir Bielinski,' I replied. 'That cannot 
 be,' he said quickly, * it must have been sold long 
 ago.' c For what reason?' I objected. 'The 
 family is perfectly well off,' and I think I added, 
 4 The cards were less fatal to them than to us.' 
 
 " My strange visitor seemed able to contain 
 himself no longer. He left his seat and began 
 pacing the room with wide steps, his brown frock 
 beating against his bare, sandalled feet, his rosary 
 clanking by his side like a sword. His movements 
 alone would have betrayed him for a Frenchman. 
 ' Perfectly well off,' he repeated, 4 are you sure of 
 what you say ? Are you sure that there has been 
 no fall in the fortunes of Hazimir Bielinski within 
 the last twenty years ? Think well before you 
 speak.' I could only repeat my former statement. 
 He took two more turns in the room, his hand 
 working the while in his black, scarcely grizzled 
 beard, and then he burst out with a vehemence that 
 shook me, ' Ah, le lache ! then he has lied to me 
 and to God ! He has flourished upon his wrong- 
 ful gains may the devil take his soul ! ' But he 
 had scarcely said it when he crossed himself 
 quickly. l God forgive the sinful words that came 
 to my lips,' he said. l It is not the devil who can 
 help here ; it is God alone, and I as His instru- 
 ment. Young man, I have come to you in a good 
 hour. Your home is poor it needs not eyes as 
 sharp as mine to see it but I can make it rich
 
 O N E Y E A R 277 
 
 again, or, if not rich, I can at least give you back 
 comfort comfort which is yours by all the laws 
 of heaven and earth. You have been robbed, my 
 son, you have been robbed, and you know it not ! ' 
 
 "And then, while I listened in amazement, 
 more than half persuaded that I was harbouring a 
 lunatic, he told me the story of those two even- 
 ings at Paris, exactly as it is told in the letters 
 which we both know, only judged from a different 
 point of view. He spoke of the correspondence 
 which had passed between him and Bielinski, of 
 his own conversion on what he had believed to be 
 his death-bed. He reproached himself in bitter 
 words with not having kept his eye on Bielinski 
 through the cloister gates, so to say. c I was too 
 much absorbed by my own soul,' he said, c my soul 
 which I had only newly discovered, to have any 
 thoughts ever for the souls of others. And, be- 
 sides God be my witness ! I believed him. Oh, 
 le lache ! But I will go to him to-morrow. It is 
 God who has led my steps this way. I shall save 
 his soul in spite of himself, and I shall give you 
 back what is rightfully yours.' 
 
 " Well," continued Malewicz, " he went next 
 day you know with what result. You can well 
 imagine the excitement which the revelation had 
 caused in my twenty-year-old heart. Poverty had 
 never been congenial to me ; it was antipathetic to 
 my mother, even though she herself might not
 
 278 O N E Y E A R 
 
 know it. I went to bed that night in a tumult of 
 perplexity and hope, and dreamed of years of com- 
 fort to come. It became clear to me now why 
 Hazimir Bielinski had so often offered me money, 
 and I felt thankful that I had never taken it. He 
 was not unscrupulous though he might be weak, 
 and no doubt it inconvenienced him to see me in so 
 sorry a plight. 
 
 " I was startled out of my new hopes by the 
 news of the horrible catastrophe. Like almost 
 every one in the neighbourhood I hurried to Lud- 
 niki to assure myself of the truth, for it was not to 
 be believed in hearsay alone. I saw them both 
 lying in their blood, and to me alone of all the hor- 
 ror-stricken spectators the explanation of the dread- 
 ful event was as clear as day ; I alone could read 
 the meaning of that stiff", right hand, which, even 
 in death, seemed to keep its gesture of denuncia- 
 tion. Why did I not speak, you will ask ? Think 
 of the situation ; could I overwhelm the already so 
 deeply stricken family by handing out the disgrace- 
 ful key to the enigma ? I was young, remember, 
 and far too much shaken to think of claiming my 
 rights in the presence of those two corpses. Later 
 on, I said to myself, it will be time enough to re- 
 trieve what is my due ; I must let the unhappy 
 woman find the ground under her feet again. Be- 
 sides, all the proofs I had in my hands were 
 merely moral ones ; the family might choose to ac-
 
 O N E Y E A R 279 
 
 cept them or they might not. More valid proofs 
 might perhaps be procurable. I knew that Bie- 
 linski's letters had not been destroyed, for the 
 Vicomte, turned monk, had told me so himself. 
 They were deposited somewhere in Paris research 
 and inquiry might bring them to light; but I put 
 that all off for later, and meanwhile I held my 
 tongue even toward my mother, for I well knew, 
 that, once shared by her, my secret would be a 
 secret no longer. Thus a year, two years passed, 
 and I still hesitated to act, and then and 
 then " 
 
 Malewicz broke off his narrative and, leaning 
 forward on his primitive seat, stared moodily at 
 the wall opposite. Now that my eyes had got ac- 
 customed to the half light I could read every shade 
 of expression on his dark, keen face, and could 
 even note the threadbare appearance of the black 
 coat which hung so loosely on his gaunt figure. 
 
 "Then I began to understand that I loved her," 
 he said, sinking his voice by another tone. His 
 foot touched an empty bottle as he spoke and made 
 it clink against its neighbour. He looked anxiously 
 toward the door, afraid of having betrayed our 
 presence. Despite my agitation our situation in 
 the midst of these barrels and packing-cases and in 
 the gloom of these dusty corners irresistibly re- 
 minded me of the games of hide and seek I had 
 played with Henry oh, so many years ago. I
 
 280 O N E Y E A R 
 
 had played another game of hide and seek with 
 him since then but enough of that now. 
 
 " She was but a child," went on Malewicz, al- 
 most whispering now, " and already I knew that 
 for me there was going to be no other woman in 
 the world. From the moment that I understood 
 this I also understood that I should have to be 
 silent for ever. I might, perhaps, have been able to 
 put her family to disgrace, but not herself. I will 
 not say that I took my resolution with a light 
 heart. From the moment I decided that I could 
 not speak I scarcely felt able to look my mother in 
 the eyes. It was no good working like two men 
 instead of one in order to procure to her a few of 
 the comforts which she required almost as much as 
 daily bread it was no good going to bed hungry 
 and wearing my clothes so long as they would hang 
 upon me ; although I more than once half-killed 
 myself with sheer work, it was only the bread I 
 could manage to give her very dry bread, for the 
 most part and I could not keep my eyes shut to 
 the fact that I was sacrificing my mother to a 
 woman who would probably never love me. Peo- 
 ple talked of my filial devotion, but in my heart of 
 hearts I knew that I was a bad son a bad son, 
 because too good a lover. Perhaps it was a crime, 
 and perhaps it is for this crime that Heaven is pun- 
 ishing me so heavily now. But for the unfortunate 
 reappearance of those letters, my secret would
 
 ONE YEAR 281 
 
 have been buried with me. From the moment of 
 their arrival Bazyli Lewicki has been my terror, 
 just as he has been Madame Bielinska's hope. 
 The monk had mentioned him as having been 
 present on the critical evening, and I was tor- 
 mented with the idea that a word of his might put 
 her on the right track. You see how true that pre- 
 sentiment was. Do you understand now why 
 Jadwiga had to be won by storm, if she was to be 
 won at all ? " He looked at me piercingly, with 
 anguish in his black eyes. 
 
 "And your correspondence with Paris ? " I asked. 
 
 " A farce," he replied, looking me straight in the 
 face. "I wrote the letters, it is true, but only 
 those of which I felt sure that they could lead to 
 no result. It was as good a way as any other of 
 keeping Madame Bielinska's thoughts steadily 
 turned toward Paris." 
 
 " And you could play this comedy ? " I asked, my 
 senses of rectitude outraged, despite my pity for him. 
 
 He smiled without joy. " I have told you that 
 I am half an Armenian. I have no remorse for 
 my deception : the only thing I repent of is the 
 moment of weakness which betrayed me to her this 
 morning. After that moment denial would have 
 been useless. To know that I have been aware of 
 the family disgrace for so long past will only add 
 to her sense of humiliation ; that at least might 
 have been spared her ; she has enough to bear al-
 
 282 ONE YEAR 
 
 ready ! " He looked at me so earnestly and with 
 so much passionate solicitude in his eyes that I 
 straightway forgave the "Armenian" for the too 
 great diplomacy which a minute before had roused 
 my British blood. 
 
 I was beginning to answer him when outside in 
 the passage Anulka raced past, calling for me and 
 loudly announcing that the soup was on the table. 
 Clearly it was time to evacuate our retreat, and ac- 
 cordingly we parted without any more words. 
 
 And now I come to the most astonishing mo- 
 ment of this eventful day, to the moment which 
 abruptly and rudely tore my thoughts away from 
 Jadwiga and turned them toward myself. 
 
 The same old leather post-bag with the dim 
 brass fastenings never rubbed up by any chance 
 which had brought disgrace to the house of Bie- 
 linski was to bring me the tidings of an unexpected 
 joy, and with the same startling suddenness. 
 
 I was on my way to the dining-room when my 
 eye caught it lying on the lobby table. In the 
 general agitation nobody had thought of examining 
 its contents. Probably I would not have done so 
 either if a somewhat prolonged silence of Agnes' 
 had not made me feel anxious. I emptied the bag 
 on the table, looking out for my friend's hand- 
 writing it was not visible, and yet there was an 
 English stamp, and below it surely my over- 
 strained nerves were playing me a trick ? but
 
 O N E Y E A R 283 
 
 was that not a handwriting which I had once 
 known better than my own, and which I had never 
 thought to see again ? 
 
 I am not writing my own story but Jadwiga's, 
 and so it is not necessary to give the exact con- 
 tents of Henry's letter; let it be sufficient to say. 
 that he briefly announced to me the unexpected 
 death of an aunt, and the equally unexpected 
 legacy for which he figured in her testament a 
 modest enough sum, in truth, yet large enough to 
 make his marriage no longer appear in the light of 
 an absurdity. After which he, somewhat less 
 briefly, asserted that his feelings toward me had un- 
 dergone no change since last we parted, and ended 
 by inquiring after the condition of my own. 
 
 Again I take refuge in the statement made above, 
 and which absolves me of all necessity of entering 
 into the exact sensations produced within me by 
 this astonishing event ; but I will not scruple to as- 
 sert that the surprise was almost too great for me 
 just at first, the light almost too blinding, the 
 shock almost too much like a blow. It was in a 
 state of mental giddiness, still seasoned with in- 
 credulity that I ate my soup almost cold by this 
 time. It is not only misfortune, it is also good 
 fortune which occasionally knocks us on the head 
 so brutally as almost to do for us entirely. 
 
 Was it possible that our game of hide and seek 
 had come to an end for ever ?
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 I DID not at once sit down to answer Henry's 
 letter ; I was not yet mistress of myself to do so. 
 Not that I exactly disbelieved in my good fortune, 
 but that I had lost the habit of personal happiness 
 too completely to be able to recover it at a mo- 
 ment's notice. Something within me was stiff 
 with unuse, congealed with want of warmth, and 
 required a little time to resume its action. I went 
 about my usual occupations with a stupid feeling of 
 unreality about it all, re-reading Henry's letter at 
 intervals, prepared each time to find that I had 
 mistaken his meaning. 
 
 The day was closing in when something hap- 
 pened which seemed in one moment to give 
 me back all my powers of sensation. It was but a 
 small incident in itself, valuable probably to me 
 alone. 
 
 Lately Jadwiga had almost entirely neglected her 
 piano ; therefore it touched me with a sort of pleas- 
 urable astonishment as I was wandering in the 
 garden after sunset, in search of I knew not what 
 myself to hear chords that were broken at first, 
 but which gradually gathered to melody, floating 
 out by the open window. In one moment I felt it 
 284
 
 O N E Y E A R 285 
 
 that was what I wanted music, and, drawn as 
 though by an invisible thread, I entered the house 
 and approached the drawing-room door; but there 
 I stood still, partly for fear of disturbing the player, 
 partly because of the astonishment within me. I 
 thought I knew every shade of Jadwiga's playing ; 
 but this was new to me. The opening, unequal 
 chords had given the impression of hands groping 
 about on the keys almost helplessly ; it was by 
 degrees only that they warmed to their task, but, 
 having warmed to it, they drew sounds from the 
 old piano of which I had never thought it capable. 
 It seemed to be a song of triumph which they were 
 ringing out of the yellow keys, a wild cry of victory, 
 fierce, abrupt, and yet not joyful ; and while I 
 listened, breathless, the exultation had sunk to 
 lament. Every one that is, every one susceptible 
 to music knows the sort of melody that is almost 
 as much pain as pleasure to hear. There is almost 
 always a chord, sometimes a single note, on which 
 the pain and the pleasure seem to culminate, which 
 appears to dominate the whole, and, hearing it, you 
 have the feeling that it is almost unbearable, that 
 if it returns but once more you will have to you 
 don't know exactly what, but that, at any rate, it 
 will be too much for you. It was this sort of 
 music I was listening to now, and each one of 
 those supreme notes seemed to stab straight into 
 my heart like a well-aimed knife. Presently, as I
 
 286 O N E Y E A R 
 
 leant against the door post, listening, I discovered 
 that I was crying, and that, despite my tears, I was 
 happy, and at last believed in my own happiness. 
 All that had been stiff within me had been softened, 
 all that had been cold had been melted by that 
 delivering music. 
 
 It ceased, and I opened the door, meaning to say 
 a word of thanks to my sweet friend, but I had not 
 taken two steps before I stood still, disbelieving my 
 tear-blurred gaze, for the face that looked at me 
 over the piano was not the one I had expected to 
 see. It was not Jadwiga who sat there, it was her 
 mother. To me it was like a ridiculous transfor- 
 mation scene. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," I murmured in groundless 
 confusion, " I fancied I thought " 
 
 She made no reply. I am not sure that she even 
 noticed me. Even through the dusk I could read 
 the dreamy, far-off look on her emaciated face a 
 look of inexpressible satisfaction. It was the first 
 time she had played for eleven years, as I afterward 
 heard ; no doubt to her, too, music had been a 
 saving outlet to emotions which, without it, might 
 have come near to kill her. 
 
 Late that night I sat up answering Henry's 
 letter. I could not sleep until I had done so, I 
 now suddenly felt. It was a strange sort of night, 
 brilliant, and yet wild, with weird effects of illumi- 
 nation, the smallest details of which deeply im-
 
 O N E Y E A R 287 
 
 pressed my excited fancy. Moonlight is generally 
 associated in our minds with stillness ; but to-night, 
 although the moon was at its full, a wind had risen 
 after sunset, which kept closing the clouds over its 
 face, thus making intervals that were almost as 
 clear as day alternate with sudden darkness. The 
 path of light traversing the lawn, which I could see 
 from my window, had been swallowed into black- 
 ness and a dozen times emerged again from the 
 shadows. A dull, banging sound in the distance 
 told me that a window had been left unfastened 
 somewhere in the house ; its regularly recurring 
 beats ran as a sort of accompaniment to the progress 
 of my pen. It was not until I laid it down finally 
 that my nerves began to rebel against the irritation. 
 Would nobody think of fastening it ? I asked my- 
 self. But the house was evidently asleep ; if I 
 wanted that window fastened I should have to do it 
 myself. Accordingly, with carefully shaded candle, 
 I slipped out through Jadwiga's room, and set out 
 on a voyage of discovery. 
 
 Nothing is so deceptive as a loose window on a 
 windy night. When you stand still to listen it 
 regularly stops banging, and when it begins again 
 it is certain to be on the opposite side of the house 
 from where you are. I had looked into several 
 rooms without discovering anything, when, by too 
 abruptly closing a door, I put out my candle. Not 
 that that mattered much, for the intermittent moon-
 
 288 O N E Y E A R 
 
 light would come to my aid. Just then I reached 
 the door of the room which was known as " the 
 Master's room," and opened it as I had opened the 
 others. As I did so I felt a sensation which I had 
 never experienced before that of my hair moving 
 on my head for there, at the far end of the room, 
 with its back turned to me, there stood a white 
 figure immovable, a human figure robed in flowing 
 draperies. It was just then one of the moonlight 
 intervals, which materially added to the ghastliness 
 of the impression. Out of doors, among trees and 
 grass, moonlight is partly awful and partly enchant- 
 ing ; indoors, however, to my mind, it is never 
 anything but awful. The silver flood is meant for 
 leafy glades, or boldly cut rocks, not for tables and 
 chairs, framed by human hands, and unable to bear 
 each wholesale idealisation. Admitted into the 
 dwelling of man, where only the homely lamp 
 should reign, moonbeams are strangers, and bring 
 with them I know not what sense of mournfulness 
 and desolation. I felt something of this as I 
 marked the glare of light on the polished table, the 
 harsh reflection on the leg of some chair, or on the 
 corner of some picture frame on the wall. 
 
 It was in front of one of these pictures that the 
 white figure stood in the middle of a flood of light 
 which gave to its garments an element almost of 
 transparency. As I entered it turned its head, and 
 I found myself looking across the room into Jad-
 
 O N E Y E A R 289 
 
 wiga's deadly pale face. But there was something 
 else in her face which shocked me more than the 
 pallor, a sort of fixity in the painfully wide-open 
 eyes, a look of distress, of despair, of perplexity, 
 I do not know how to define it, but a look I had 
 never before seen on any human face, and pray to 
 God I may never see again. A sudden remorse 
 took possession of me at the sight, for having since 
 mid-day lived entirely on my own thoughts. 
 
 " Jadwiga ! " I exclaimed, " I thought you were 
 in your bed, what can you be doing here ? " 
 
 As I drew nearer I saw that the picture before 
 which she had been standing, apparently in rapt 
 contemplation, was the portrait of her father, 
 Hazimir Bielinski. 
 
 She looked at me for so long and so blankly be- 
 fore answering that I began to ask myself whether 
 she were not walking in her sleep. I had never 
 seen her face so white nor her eyes so black before ; 
 it was only when I stood close to her that I dis- 
 covered the reason of this blackness to be the ex- 
 traordinary dilation of the pupils. I touched her 
 hand and almost shuddered at the contact, so cold 
 was it, but my movement seemed to have aroused 
 her from a sort of stupor. 
 
 " It is nothing," she said hastily, passing her 
 hand across her forehead. " I could not sleep, 
 I had toothache, so I came to look for some 
 drops."
 
 290 O N E Y E A R 
 
 " But the drops are not here, surely ? " I asked. 
 
 " No, I know ; I came in here for something 
 else. I had fancy to look at Papa's picture ; I was 
 passing the door, you know." 
 
 "A strange moment for looking at it surely. 
 Have you not plenty of other opportunities ? But 
 you will come to bed now, Jadwiga, will you not ? " 
 I pleaded, and gently took hold of her hand. 
 
 41 Immediately ! " she said, turning back to the 
 picture ; " I have still one word to say to him." 
 
 Her manner began to alarm me vaguely. " Jad- 
 wiga," I said, feeling principally the need of forcibly 
 removing her thoughts from their present groove, 
 " 1 have something to tell you, something good 
 that has happened to myself," and in a few words 
 I gave her the contents of Henry's letter. I could 
 not be sure that she even heard me, for her eyes 
 remained fixed on the picture while I spoke, but as 
 I paused she said without any especial emotion : 
 
 " So you will marry him, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Of course I will," I replied, foolishly hurt at 
 this indifference. 
 
 " I hope you will be happy," said Jadwiga, turn- 
 ing from the picture and beginning to walk toward 
 the door. But she was scarcely half-way across 
 the room when she turned back again, and, coming 
 to me, took my two hands between her cold ones. 
 
 " Then at least one of us is to be happy," she 
 said, in almost her old voice. " Thank God for
 
 ONE YEAR 291 
 
 that ! " and I felt her lips upon my cheek, they 
 were as burning as the fingers were cold. 
 
 41 One of us ? " I asked, keeping hold of her 
 hands. " Can we not both be happy yet ? " 
 
 At the same moment the moonlight went out, 
 exactly as my candle had done, so that I could not 
 see what there was in her face, but her voice was a 
 different one when she spoke. 
 
 " I forgot," she said with an inexpressible weari- 
 ness in her tone, " you are an accomplice ; you too 
 would make me have a financial arrangement, 
 and I thought you understood ! " 
 
 " Never mind what I am," I said, drawing her 
 toward the door; "we can talk of that to-morrow; 
 come to bed now." 
 
 She submitted without another word ; and, grop- 
 ing my way along the dark passage, I led her to her 
 room, and soon, worn out with emotions, and de- 
 spite the loose window which continued banging in 
 the distance, was fast asleep myself. 
 
 I feel that I must hurry to the end. Gazing 
 back in memory on the day that followed on that 
 night, even though five years lie between them and 
 now, I find that my nerves are not equal to dwell- 
 ing very exhaustively on details. 
 
 I was in the middle of a dream in which Henry 
 and I were engaged in fabricating a rabbit-hutch 
 out of an empty wine-cask, while Anulka built a 
 wall of jam-pots round it, when a sharp, rapping
 
 292 O N E Y E A R 
 
 sound which did and yet did not belong to the 
 dream, seemed to come from the inside of the cask. 
 " Can it be the rabbits ? " I asked myself, even while 
 beginning to come to my senses, " but they 
 are not in yet ; " and as I argued thus the raps 
 grew louder and more hurried, and I awoke with a 
 start to the consciousness that somebody was knock- 
 ing at my window. 
 
 It was a thing that had never happened before, 
 and in sudden terror I sprung to the ground and 
 ran toward the light. The sun was not up yet, 
 and the garden was full of mist, the first autumn 
 mist of the season. At the window rising out of 
 the white vapours, there was a face which I did not 
 immediately recognise old Andrej, with his grey 
 hair all tumbled about his startled eyes, and with 
 his lips moving, though I could not hear him 
 through the close double window. In nervous 
 haste I tore it open. 
 
 " What is it ? What is it ? " I asked, already 
 infected by his excitement. 
 
 He replied by pointing vaguely toward the vil- 
 lage. 
 
 " Over there," he said, breathing hard, for he 
 had evidently been running as fast as his old legs 
 could carry him ; " over there! come quick! Our 
 young lady, oh Mother of God, our young lady ! ' 
 
 I did not stop to ask another question, for the 
 sense of disaster was upon me already. Throwing
 
 O N E Y E A R 293 
 
 on the clothes I found nearest at hand, and pushing 
 my bare feet into slippers, I ran out of the house. 
 As I passed through Jadwiga's room I scarcely even 
 looked toward the bed; I knew already that it 
 would be empty. 
 
 Andrej was at the gate already, and once assured 
 that I was following him, he set off running with- 
 out once looking back. 
 
 The village was barely beginning to awake. 
 Here and there a door was open and a yawning 
 peasant stretched himself on the threshold. The 
 basket work palings and the straw-thatched roofs 
 loomed bulkily out of the morning fog. I noticed 
 it all vaguely as I ran past, and noticed also as a 
 grotesquely comical detail that Andrej, although 
 he had on his green livery coat, had not taken time 
 to put on the trousers to match, his legs being en- 
 cased in staringly white under-garments which 
 moved before me through the mist, almost like the 
 twinkling of two guiding stars. I had not got 
 half-way down the village street when I lost one 
 of my slippers, and ran on with one foot bare; at 
 another time I suppose I could not have borne the 
 pain of the stones, but my nerves were at too high 
 a tension to let me be aware of anything merely 
 physical just now. All this time I had not at- 
 tempted to conjecture what our goal was or what 
 exactly we should find when we got there. I re- 
 member thinking that it was a strange place to look
 
 294 O N E Y E A R 
 
 for Jadwiga in out here in the public road, where 
 she had not put her foot for months, and it seemed 
 to me also, as I kept my eyes fastened on those 
 white legs in advance, that the street, stretching 
 away into the mist and slowly disclosing one feature 
 after another, would never come to an end. Andrej's 
 hut lay in this direction, and I think that, on the 
 whole, I expected most to be taken there ; but we 
 came to the opening of the narrow willow lane I 
 knew so well, and passed it, still at a run, and sud- 
 denly it flashed upon me that we were going to the 
 pond. In that moment I think I knew everything, 
 though I only clutched the shawl huddled round 
 me a little tighter, and stumbled on with set teeth. 
 In another moment figures seemed to grow out of 
 the mist unnaturally tall they looked against the 
 sky, for they were grouped on the top of the sloping 
 bank. When I had climbed the side panting, An- 
 drej was already on his knees beside something 
 which lay on the grass. The silent group parted 
 to let me pass, and then I saw what during the last 
 horrible minutes I had almost been expecting to 
 see Jadwiga in the same white dressing-gown 
 which she had worn last night, only that its drenched 
 folds clung closely to her limbs, and with her wet 
 face turned motionless to the sky. Her hair had 
 come undone and wandered in clammy strains, 
 shiny as water serpents, over her shoulders and 
 bosom, twisting right round one of her arms and
 
 O N E Y E A R 295 
 
 even her neck; her lips were parted and her half- 
 open eyes brimful of water. 
 
 I had almost thrown myself upon her, wildly, 
 despairingly, when it occurred to me that there 
 might still be hope. 
 
 " The doctor ! " I said, angrily shaking the 
 shoulder of the loudly wailing Andrej. " Have 
 you sent for the doctor ? Has anything been 
 done ? She must be taken into shelter at once." 
 
 Nothing had been done as I might have known 
 had I known Ruthenian peasants better. A leader 
 is the first thing they need in anything like an 
 emergency, and this instinct it probably was which 
 had sent the distracted Andrej straight to my win- 
 dow. But although they cannot command they 
 know how to obey. Within five minutes of my 
 appearance on the scene a man on horseback was 
 on his way to Zloczek, and Jadwiga transported to 
 Andrej's hut close by, and lying on his wife's bed, 
 whence the water from her hair and clothes dripped 
 and dripped on to the rude floor. Then began the 
 last forlorn struggle the warming of blankets, the 
 trickling of w'odki between her closed teeth, also 
 the burning of herbs before her face, recommended 
 by one of the village cronies. Each newcomer 
 had a remedy of his own, of which he positively 
 asserted that it must bring revival. 
 
 Let me not 'live through those hours again I 
 scarcely know even now if, indeed, they were hours
 
 296 O N E Y E A R 
 
 or only minutes enough to say that she did not 
 revive, and that when the morning sun, struggling 
 through the vapours, poured in at the little square 
 window I knew, without any doctor to tell me so, 
 that it was time to close those half-lifted lids.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE next thing I remember is walking back 
 again through the village, slowly this time, and 
 with a pair of shoes belonging to Andrej's wife on 
 my feet. In front of us, stretched on a mattress 
 they carried Jadwiga, and from out of every hut 
 we passed some man or woman came to join us. 
 It was an ever-increasing but silent procession that 
 escorted Jadwiga back to the home which she had 
 left all alone before daylight. The catastrophe 
 was such as to impress even the rustic imagina- 
 tion ; solitary sighs were heard from the men, an 
 occasional sob from a woman, a muttering of prayer 
 from both sexes, but no loud note of lamentation 
 disturbed the solemnity of that last escort. Ru- 
 thenian peasants have a sense of fitness which some 
 other nations lack, and I believe that in their 
 humble way they had loved her no one could es- 
 cape loving her and had felt a common pride in 
 " our young lady's " beauty. 
 
 On the verandah, supported by Marya, Madame 
 Bielinska stood, already informed of what we were 
 bringing, her scanty grey hair slipping from under 
 the night-cap she had forgotten to remove, her face 
 strangely yellow and furrowed in the full morning 
 light. She did not speak as the bearers mounted 
 297
 
 298 O N E Y E A R 
 
 the steps, but her arms moved helplessly up and 
 down, forward, and then down again, and these 
 silent gestures said more than any words could 
 have done; but I had no thought for her just then, 
 and no pity either. Anulka was not visible ; I 
 learnt since that, as we approached the house, she 
 had been carried off the verandah in convulsions. 
 
 The next hours are blurred in my memory. 
 Toward evening I find myself again standing in 
 the big drawing-room, transformed already into a 
 sort of mortuary chapel, and beside the couch on 
 which Jadwiga had been laid, dressed in white, as 
 is the custom of the country for young girls, and 
 with a bridal veil flowing over her clasped hands 
 and long, black hair. They had managed to get 
 the hair dry by some means or other, and, instead 
 of water snakes, it now resembled carefully sorted 
 silken strains. The garden had been plundered of 
 its asters and hollyhocks, which filled every recep- 
 tacle that could be made to hold a flower, and tall 
 wax candles burnt on each side of her. 
 
 On the floor at the foot of the bier there cowed 
 something which might have been a small heap of 
 black clothes. I went up and laid my hand upon 
 it mercilessly. 
 
 " Does it hurt enough now ? " I asked, with I 
 know not what feeling of savage satisfaction in the 
 midst of my own pain and I pointed to the form 
 on the couch.
 
 O N E Y E A R 299 
 
 The unhappy mother lifted her face to me, the 
 scared, quivering face of a broken woman. 
 
 " It does," she said, with shaking lips. " Surely 
 it will be paid for now ! " And right through the 
 depth of her suffering there pierced that gleam al- 
 most of fanaticism which I had seen so often 
 within the last few months. I knew then that she 
 would not die of her grief, since she would not be 
 without consolation. Jadwiga would be to her not 
 only a lost child, but also a victim of atonement 
 for the past. 
 
 Two days later I again traversed the village, 
 sitting in a carriage this time beside my deeply 
 veiled employer, whose rigid features were scarcely 
 visible through the density of the black crape. We 
 had done what we could to dissuade her from 
 going, but she was bent on drinking her chalice to 
 its dregs. The little Greek church, all of wood, 
 and with three dark brown minarets cut clear 
 against the wide sky, lay separate from the village, 
 out on the plain, in the midst of its still leafy cem- 
 etery, which, with the high enclosing paling, 
 formed a sort of island in the midst of the flat 
 fields. There it was that the Bielinski family, al- 
 though belonging, like the Poles, to the Roman 
 Catholic Church, had its bury ing-place, and to the 
 Ruthenian village priest it was that the Catholic
 
 300 O N E Y E A R 
 
 cure of Zloczek had transferred his powers for the 
 occasion. 
 
 I had never entered one of those so naively gor- 
 geous village churches without deep emotion, and 
 it will be well believed that on this occasion I was 
 less than ever in a position to criticise the rude yet 
 impressive details of my surroundings. The tat- 
 tered banners, the daubed pictures, the crazy can- 
 dlesticks, the bright but not over-clean altar-cloths, 
 and the strings of glass beads for a village church in 
 East Galicia is as full of miscellaneous objects as a 
 curiosity box of curiosities were to me to-day 
 nothing but the background to Jadwiga's coffin, 
 and all this truly oriental profusion of gilding and 
 of colour, over which the dulness of time had 
 mercifully passed, seemed there only to do her hon- 
 our. As I knelt there, clutching a monstrous can- 
 dle of brown bees-wax which it took both my hands 
 to support, and with the thick scent of incense in 
 my nostrils, I felt as though I were alone with her, 
 as I had been on the day when she had first taken 
 me to this church and explained to me the sym- 
 bolic pictures on the wall. There were some she 
 could not understand, she said and now, where 
 was she ; and was there anything more which she 
 could not understand ? Surely not. 
 
 I think the whole village must have been in the 
 church ; from my place beside the altar and through 
 the gilded gates flung back upon their hinges I
 
 O N E Y E A R 301 
 
 could see the rude, furrowed faces turned motionless 
 toward the priest at the altar, and only the lips 
 moving. All the neighbours were there too, I be- 
 lieve ; in the more civilised group straight opposite 
 I caught a sight of many faces which had grown 
 familiar within the past year, but which I was prob- 
 ably looking on for the last time. 
 
 I did not think that Madame Bielinska would 
 succeed in reaching the grave, but she did. It was 
 not until the priest had departed and the earth had 
 begun to be filled in that she seemed to require the 
 support of Marya's arm, who gently led her back 
 toward the entrance. I did not follow immedi- 
 ately ; I had a fancy to see the last earth-clod laid 
 on. One by one the mourners threaded their way 
 back between the green mounds, for no distinct 
 path led to the enclosed space in the comer of the 
 cemetery, and presently I found myself alone with 
 the sexton. 
 
 Half an hour later I too was threading my way 
 back. The church door still stood open, and I 
 turned that way, instead of toward the gate. A 
 few minutes more alone in that temple of ignorant 
 but real piety might help to lay a little of the tu- 
 mult in my heart. A large porch with benches run- 
 ning round it is an almost invariable feature of 
 these churches ; as I was traversing this one I per- 
 ceived a man sitting on the bench with his elbows 
 on his knees and his face in his hands. At the
 
 302 O N E Y E A R 
 
 sound of my step on the hollow, wooden floor he 
 looked up, and I saw a face that was at the same 
 time both familiar and strange. I had not so much 
 as given a thought to Malewicz since the catas- 
 trophe, and the sight of him now thus startled me 
 out of my own pain, by reminding me that there 
 was a sorrow here even greater than mine no, it 
 was more than a sorrow, it was a despair. When 
 I had seen him three days ago he had still been a 
 young man, despite everything, but the stubby 
 beard which was now sprouting about his chin and 
 cheeks was already the beard of an old man. I 
 stood looking at him, wondering if he would 
 speak ; he did so only after a long minute. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, hesitatingly and unevenly, 
 plunging his eyes into mine as though to reach the 
 truth, " tell me ; why is it ? Is it because she 
 hated me that she did it ? " 
 
 He had not thought of rising. I sat down be- 
 side him and, in the depth of my compassion, laid 
 my hand upon his. 
 
 " No," I answered, " it is not that. If she had 
 hated you her path might have been thorny but it 
 would have been clear. It was not loss of fortune 
 that she was afraid of. If you had been nothing 
 at all to her she would only have needed to hand 
 over to you your money and to retire with her 
 mother into obscurity and you know that she was 
 strong enough for that."
 
 O N E Y E A R 303 
 
 His eyes fiercely asked for more, although his 
 lips did not move. 
 
 " I think, on the contrary, that it was exactly 
 her doubts as to her own feelings which drove her 
 to the step. I am quite certain that she was begin- 
 ning to foresee the possibility of returning your af- 
 fection she almost acknowledged as much to me 
 but just as she had come to foresee it you were 
 unmasked as the man on whose generosity the 
 family had been practically living for the last dozen 
 years. To some spirits such generosity is unbear- 
 able and awakes resentment against the giver rather 
 than gratitude. Jadwiga was of those spirits. 
 Two days before her death she said to me : ' It is 
 dreadful to owe so much to a person and not to be 
 able to pay him back ' and at that moment she 
 did not yet know the whole of her debt. She 
 could not pay you back in the way you wanted to 
 be paid without being sure that she loved you, and 
 she never could be sure now, as that poor half 
 crazy mother of hers will have poured into her 
 ears on that last unhappy day the world, for one, 
 as her mother will have told her, would never be 
 convinced that she had not taken you merely in 
 order not to have to part with the money. On the 
 one side there was the ignominy of the position, on 
 the other the pang of renouncing the hope new- 
 born within her the choice was impossible, or it 
 seemed to her impossible at the first glimpse j she
 
 304 O N E Y E A R 
 
 had not the patience to wait and let her emotions 
 calm she always was inclined to do things ' sud- 
 denly,' as she herself called it, and, therefore, she 
 preferred to cut the knot of perplexity by doing 
 what her father did. Oh, it is not hard to under- 
 stand, I think. You must remember that what she 
 has gone through this summer would be enough to 
 profoundly shake any nervous system." 
 
 "Then it was my love that killed her," said 
 Malewicz, with a smile that frightened me, " and 
 you think I can go on living ? " 
 
 " Hush ! " I said, pressing my hand on his. 
 " Not a word of that. I, too, have been tempted 
 to brand myself a murderess, and to wonder what 
 would have been if I had kept by her side that last 
 day, but it is all empty and useless. We have both 
 loved her and we have both failed to save her. Let 
 it be enough that we are sure of our intentions; 
 let us not look back too intently, for madness 
 might very likely be found to lie in that direction." 
 
 He snatched his hand from mine and rose from 
 the bench. 
 
 11 Oh, the English ! " he said with a bitter laugh, 
 " the English ! What a nation of common sense ! " 
 And, without taking leave of me, he descended the 
 wooden steps and disappeared round the shoulder 
 of the church. That was the last I saw of Krys- 
 ztof Malewicz. 
 
 Not that I left the country immediately. De-
 
 O N E Y E A R 305 
 
 spite Henry's urgent summons it seemed to me that 
 to abandon Madame Bielinska at this moment 
 would scarcely have been Christianlike. Anulka, 
 too, in her desolation clung to me in a way she had 
 never clung before, and I felt as though her little 
 thin fingers were forcibly keeping me back on 
 Polish soil. It was not until all the preliminaries 
 for the handing over of the estate to Malewicz had 
 been completed that I thought of making up my 
 parcels. All his efforts to effect a compromise had 
 been shattered on Madame Bielinska's immovable 
 resolve. Even the loan of the house, which obvi- 
 ously he did not require, she indignantly refused. 
 No doubt she hated the place too intensely by this 
 time to go on living there. 
 
 The eve of my departure from Ludniki was also 
 almost the eve of the Bielinskis' farewell to their 
 ancient home. On that last afternoon I went once 
 more to the cemetery. For want of flowers for 
 by this time autumn was far advanced I had 
 made a wreath of coloured leaves just the sort of 
 wreath Jadwiga had worn on her head when I met 
 her for the first time in the park, scarcely more 
 than a year ago. It was a grey, windy day, and as 
 I stood beside the earth heap, that was marked as 
 yet by no monument, a curious feeling of rebellion 
 grew out of my sadness. I was going home to 
 love and happiness. Fate had treated me kindly 
 indeed, and yet I could not forgive her for her
 
 3 o6 O N E Y E A R 
 
 cruelty to the victim who slept here. Was there 
 not something almost against nature in the thought 
 that I, the elder and plainer woman, should have 
 grasped that crown of life which had been refused 
 to her, that my sun of happiness should be dawning 
 just as hers had gone down forever ? 
 
 While I stood thus a gust came sweeping over 
 the green mounds, bringing with it a shower of 
 leaves. As I watched them chasing each other 
 round the railed-off enclosure, a strain of melody, 
 to which I could not immediately give a name, be- 
 gan to work in my brain. Those mad leaves 
 seemed to be moving to some familiar measure. 
 Presently I had got it : the perplexing finale to 
 Chopin's funeral march. But now, with Jadwiga's 
 own words coming back to my memory, it per- 
 plexed me no longer. Yes, there they were, the 
 yellow and red ones, the speckled and the striped 
 ones, gay as harlequins and lively as imps those 
 that looked as though they had been dipped in 
 blood, and the pale ones with the black spots, 
 which to Henry and me had always appeared like 
 slices of current cake there they were, hopping in 
 and out of the railing, giddily whirling upon the 
 new-made grave. Surely it must have been at such 
 a season and on such a spot that the idea of that 
 last bewildering passage had crept into the Polish 
 master's imagination. 
 
 * * * * * *
 
 O N E Y E A R 307 
 
 That night as I lay awake in bed I heard the 
 outer door open, and through the empty room 
 which had been Jadwiga's there came a pattering 
 of bare feet. In another minute invisible hands 
 were groping about me, and Anulka's voice im- 
 plored : 
 
 " I could not sleep over there, so far from you. 
 Let me in, please, oh, please ! I will lie so still ! " 
 
 With the deftness of a little snake she slipped in 
 under the cover, and I could feel the chill of her 
 little cold feet against mine. 
 
 "There is one thing you must tell me before 
 you go," she whispered as I took her into my 
 arms; "what am I to do to be like Jadwiga? I 
 should like people to be happy when I am there, 
 as they were with her, and unhappy when I die, as 
 they are unhappy about her. After all it is nicer 
 when people like you ; tell me, did they only like 
 her because she was beautiful ? because then I 
 should have no chance." 
 
 I was too astonished to answer immediately ; 
 the question was so unlike the Anulka I had known 
 till now. 
 
 "No," I said at last, "they did not like her only 
 because she was beautiful, but also because her 
 heart was so full of kindness that it overflowed. 
 God forbid that you should be as Jadwiga was in 
 everything, for that would probably mean to suffer 
 as much as she suffered, but if you could get her
 
 3 o8 O N E Y E A R 
 
 kind heart without her impulsive temper you 
 would certainly be loved and perhaps you would 
 even be happy." 
 
 We talked for a little longer in the dark, and 
 when at last she fell asleep in my arms I prayed to 
 God that the shock of the catastrophe might prove 
 to have been the convulsion needed for the awak- 
 ening of the soul. 
 
 Four days later I landed in England, and from 
 the moment that I caught sight of Henry's face 
 among the waiters on the pier I began to live my 
 own life again. 
 
 That was five years ago, and sometimes I am 
 half persuaded that the events of my one year of 
 exile have no more substance than that well-known 
 stuff of which dreams are made, so badly do they 
 fit into my present placid, and let me say it boldly 
 humdrum existence. Have I ever really seen a 
 church with three minarets, or a meadow dotted 
 with storks ? I could almost doubt it, but for the 
 sharp state at my heart when I think of these 
 things. Besides, there is the parcel of letters 
 which Agnes has given back to me, and which can- 
 not be explained away, and occasionally, though at 
 more and more rare intervals, there is a shred of 
 news which reaches me from over there. Madame 
 Bielinska is living in lodgings in Limberg with 
 Anulka, who is being educated for a governess. I 
 wonder what sort of a one she will make, by the
 
 O N E Y E A R 309 
 
 bye ? Malewicz has, after all, gone on living; he 
 is unmarried, but I do not think it impossible that 
 he may marry yet, not to please himself, but his 
 mother, to whom he will always feel that he owes 
 a reparation. As for Wladimir, I have heard that 
 on his return from his Eastern voyage he was dis- 
 covered one day on his knees and in tears on Jad- 
 wiga's grave, sobbing out : " How she must have 
 loved me ! " No doubt he will die persuaded that 
 Jadwiga took her life because she could not live 
 without him. Meanwhile he has found some one 
 to dry his tears for him no other than the elder 
 of the two giggling sisters who had squeezed so 
 many jokes out of the semi-culinary Christmas 
 party, and whose father is one of the notabilities 
 of the neighbourhood. 
 
 I am as happy as the love of husband and child 
 can make me, and yet I have a place in my heart 
 which belongs to neither husband nor child. In 
 some moments such, for instance as when some 
 one asks me why I have called my little girl by 
 such a strange out-landish name as Jadwiga it is 
 to that place I retire alone with my memories. 
 
 THE END
 
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