Hovels deep sunk in the ground, moss-grown thatched roofs, here and
there an old lime-tree or a tall pear-tree with crabbed branches
standing out black and bare against the wintry sky, slimy puddles, a
pond full to the brim in which three forlorn-looking geese are sadly
paddling, a swampy road along which a procession of ploughs are
splashing their way at the heels of the muddy, unkempt teams--in short,
a Bohemian village, with a shabby manor-house beyond. Over the
tumble-down gate-way, with a pigsty on one side and a dog-kennel
on the other, hangs a coat of arms. The mansion--a square house
with a steep shingle roof--stands, according to the unromantic custom
of the country, with one side looking on to the farm-yard; and the
drawing-room windows open exactly over an enormous dung heap which a
party of women are in the very act of turning with pitch-forks,
under the superintendence of a short stout man in a weather-beaten
hunting-hat and shooting-coat with padded silk sleeves out of which the
wadding is peeping at a hundred holes. He is smoking a pipe with a
china bowl decorated with a mincing odalisque. His face is broad and
red, his ears purple, and his aspect is anything rather than
aristocratic as he stands giggling and jesting with the damsels of the
steaming midden.
This is Baron Wolnitzky, a man who, like a good many others, got
himself a good deal talked about in 1848 and then vanished from the
scene without leaving a trace behind.
Often when we see some dry and barren tree shedding its sere and mouldy
leaves in the autumn we find it hard to believe that it bore blossoms
in the spring; and the baron was like such a tree. In the spring-tide
of 1848--an over-teeming spring throughout Europe--his soul too had
blossomed. He had had patriotic visions and had uttered them in rhyme,
and his country had hailed him as a prophet--perhaps because it needed
an idol, or perhaps because in those agitated times it could not tell
black from white. In those days he had displayed himself in a
magnificent national costume with sleeves of the most elaborate cut,
had married a patriotic wife who always dressed in the Slav colors:
blue, white, and red, and who got two young men, also dressed in Slav
costume, to mount guard at the door of her house. He was descended from
a Polish family that had immigrated many generations since and his
connections were as far as possible from being aristocratic, while he
owed his little fortune entirely to his father who had put no 'baron'
before his name, and who had earned it honestly as a master baker. In
feudal times it would hardly have occurred to him to furbish up this
very doubtful patent of nobility; but in the era of liberty it might
pass muster and prove useful. A very shy pedigree serves to shed glory
on a democratic martyr.
During the insurrection of June he fled with his wife in picturesque
disguise; at first to Dresden, and then to Switzerland where he lived
for some time in a boarding-house at Geneva, receiving homage as a
political refugee, and horrifying the mistress by his enormous
appetite. At length he returned to Bohemia where the events of
forty-eight and its picturesquely aparelled leaders had fallen
into oblivion. He retired to his little estate and turned
philosopher--philosophy, ever since the days of Diogenes, has been the
acknowledged refuge of shipwrecked hopes and pretensions.
There he went out walking in his shirt sleeves, played cards with the
peasants and grew more vulgar, fatter, and hungrier every day; and if
he ever had an idea it was unintentionally, in a bad dream after eating
too much of some national delicacy.
His wife, a robust and worthy soul, though full of absurdities, bore a
strong resemblance to the mother of the Regent Orleans in as much as
she had a sound understanding combined with a very sentimental nature,
was utterly devoid of tact, bitter to the verge of cynicism, thoroughly
indiscreet and a great chatterbox.
She resigned herself without demur to the new order of things and
brought a new tribe of children into the world, most of whom died
young. Three survived; two sons, who so far broke through the
traditions of the family as to become infantry officers, and one
daughter, in whom patriotic romance once more flickered into
fanaticism. This girl had been christened Bohuslawa, a name which was
commonly shortened into Slawa, which in the more important dialects of
the Slav tongue means Fame. She, like her mother, was of stalwart
build, but her features were regular though statuesque and heavy--she
was said to be like the Apollo Belvedere. She had already had four
suitors but neither of them had met her views and now at twenty--having
been born in forty-eight--she was spending the winter, unmarried and
sorely discontented, in the country, where she occupied herself with
serious studies and accepted the attentions of a needy young Pole who
was devoted to her and in whom she condescended to take some slight
interest.
But Baron Wolnitzky is still standing by the midden; the great black
dog, which till this moment has never ceased barking at the door of his
kennel, now, to introduce some variety into the programme, jumps on to
its roof, from which advantageous standpoint he still barks without
pause. Everything is dripping from the recently-thawed snow, and the
air is full of the splash and gurgle of dropping and trickling water;
the grey February twilight sinks upon the world and everything looks
dingy and soaked.
A sound of creaking wheels is heard approaching, and a dung-cart
appears in the gate-way.
"Well, what is going on in the town?" says the baron to the man who
comes up to him, wrapped in an evil-smelling sheepskin and with the
ears of his fur cap tied under his chin, to kiss his master's elbow.
"Have you brought the newspapers?"
"Yes, your Grace, my Lord Baron," says the man, "and a letter too." And
he draws a packet tied up in a red and white handkerchief out of a
pocket in his sheepskin. The baron looks at the documents. "Another
letter from Rome already," he mutters, grinning; "I must take it in at
once that the women may have something to talk about."
The women, that is to say his wife and daughter, were sitting in the
dining-room at a long table covered with a flowered cloth, on which
stood the tea things, a paraffine lamp, and a breadbasket of dull
silver filagree work. The lamp was smoking and the table looked as
uncomfortable and dingy as the village outside, half-buried in manure.
The baroness, in a tan-colored loose gown, in which she looked squarer
than ever, without a cap, her thin grey hair cut short, was hunting for
the tenth time to-day, on and under every article of furniture, for the
key of the storeroom. Bohuslawa, meanwhile sat still, with a volume of
Mickiewicz in her hand, out of which she was reading aloud in rather
stumbling Polish, with a harsh voice. A young man with a sharp-cut
sallow face and long black hair, in a Polish braided coat, wide collar
and olive-coloured satin cravat, corrected her pronunciation now and
then. He was her Polish adorer. He was one of that familiar species,
the teacher of languages with a romance in the background; he lived in
the neighouring town and came every Saturday to the village, four
railway stations off, to instruct Bohuslawa in Polish and spend Sunday
with the family.
When the union of these two patriots--which had already been secretly
discussed--was to take place, depended on a mysterious law-suit that
the young Pole was carrying on against the Russian government. His name
was Vladimir de Matuschowsky, his grandmother had been a Potocka, and
when he was not giving lessons, he was meditating conspiracies.
"Is there nothing else for tea?" asked the baron, casting a doubtful
eye on the stale-looking rolls in the bread-basket.
"No, the dogs have eaten up the cakes," replied the baroness coolly.
She was at the moment on all-fours under the piano, hunting for the key
behind the pedal.
"You will get an apoplexy," said Bohuslawa crossly but without anxiety,
and without making the smallest attempt to assist the old lady. But at
this instant a housemaid came in with the sought-for key on a bent and
copper-colored britannia-metal waiter.
"Oh, thank Heaven!" cried the baroness, "where was the wretched thing?"
"In the dog kennel,--your grace, my lady baroness, the puppy had
dragged it there."
In her love for dogs again the baroness resembled the Duchess of
Orleans; she always had a litter of half a dozen puppies to bring up,
and the kennel was a well-known hiding place for everything that could
not be found in its right place.
"The little rascals!" she exclaimed, with an admiring laugh at the
ingenious perversity of her mischievous pets. "Bring the sugar then,
Clara."
"I have a surprise for you," growled her husband, "a letter from Rome,"
and he produced the document, with its mixed odors of patchouli and
damp sheepskin, and pushed it across to his wife, while he took up the
rum bottle to flavor his tea.
"From Rome!" exclaimed the baroness, "that is delightful. Where, oh
where are my spectacles?" And she felt and patted herself all over till
the superfluous substance shook like a jelly.
"Ah, here they are--I am sitting on them--now then, children," and she
began to read the letter aloud.
"Dear Lotti, you must not take it ill that I so seldom write to
you"--the baroness looked up over her spectacles--"so seldom!... she
never in her life wrote to me so often as from Rome"--"but you cannot
imagine the turmoil in which we live. A dinner-party every day, two
evening parties and a ball. We are spending the carnival with the
_creme de la creme_ of Roman society. To-morrow we dine with Princess
Vulpini--she was a Truyn and is the sister of Truyn of R. The next day
we have theatricals, etc., etc. Zinka is an immense success. Nicki
Sempaly among others--the brother of Prince Sempaly, the great landed
proprietor--is very attentive to her...."
Here she was interrupted by her husband. "Well, I never thought the old
goose was quite such a simpleton!" he exclaimed, drumming his fingers
angrily on the red and white flowered cloth.
"I cannot imagine how Clotilde allows it!" cried the baroness--"and
still less do I understand Cecil."
"Take my advice, Lotti, go to Rome," observed the baron ironically; "go
and set their heads straight on their shoulders."
"With the greatest pleasure," replied his wife, taking his irony quite
seriously, "but unfortunately we have not the money."
Then she read the letter to the end; like all Clotilde's epistles it
ended with the words; "What a pity it is that you should not be here
too; it would give us the greatest pleasure to have you with us."
Tea was done; the maid servant cleared the table with a great clatter
of cups and spoons, the baron retired to play _Bulka_ with his
neighbors in the village inn-parlor; the three who were left sat in
meditative mood.
"I must confess that I should like to go to Rome," said the baroness,
as she swept the crumbs off her lap on to the floor, "and it would be
pleasant, too, to have relations there--for their grand acquaintance I
own I do not care a straw."
"I do not see why we should avoid all society if we were there,"
exclaimed Slawa hotly.
"Well, you could do as you liked about it, of course," said the
baroness, who held her daughter in the deepest respect, "I could stay
at home; you see, my dear Vladimir," she added almost condescendingly
to her son-in-law _in spe_, "I am uncomfortable in any company where I
cannot get into my slippers in the evening...."
"Mamma!" cried her daughter beside herself, "you really are!..."
The baroness sat abashed and silent--no one spoke. There was not a
sound in the room but the crackling of the fire in the huge tiled stove
and the snoring of the big hunting-dog that lay sleeping on the tail of
his mistress's skirt.
"If we only could sell the Bernini!" murmured the baroness presently,
resuming the thread of their conversation.
The Bernini was a bust of Apollo that the baroness had inherited from
her mother's family--said to be an adaptation by Bernini from the head
of the Apollo Belvedere. Whenever the Wolnitzkys were in any financial
straits the Bernini was packed off to some dealer in objects of
_vertu_, from which excursions it invariably returned unsold. Not many
days previously the travelled Apollo--he had seen New York, London, and
St. Petersburg--had come home from a visit to Meyer of Berlin.
"By the bye, Vladimir, you have not seen it yet," said Slawa, "I must
show you the bust."
"Is it the head that is said to be so strikingly like you?--that will
interest me greatly," said the young Pole, casting an adoring eye on
Slawa.
"Bring the lamp, the bust is in the drawing-room."
Vladimir, carrying the lamp, led the way into the drawing-room, a
large, scantily-furnished room which was never dusted more than once a
month. There, on a marble plinth in a corner, stood the radiant god--a
copy from the Belvedere Apollo no doubt--but by Bernini...?
"The likeness is extraordinary!" cried Vladimir ecstatically, and
gazing alternately at the bust and at Slawa. "Oh, it is a gem, a
masterpiece! you ought never to part with it."
"Well, but I must say I should very much like to go to Rome," sighed
the baroness; but Slawa only bit her lips.