Wolska, who owned the village and all the land about there, had ordered that the wages of the cutters should be raised five kreuzers a head, besides directing that a glassful of spirits should be served out to each one twice during the day's work; but even this did not avail to dispel the general gloom.
It was with a gloomy brow that old Michael, the overseer, counted over the ricks by cutting notch after notch on a hazel twig, the usual fashion of reckoning in those parts; even young Danelo, the wildest as well as the handsomest lad in the village, subdued by the general melancholy, never approached the girls or attempted a jest; he seemed even to have forgotten how to whistle.
Whence had sprung up this foul spectre, which had turned all their songs to weeping, all their joy to woe? Wise people shook their heads, and doctors talked of marsh effluvia and miasma from the lake, partly dried up from the excess of the heat; but the peasants knew better, and said that the Almighty God had sent it as a punishment to the inhabitants, who had tasted of the fruits of the field before they had been blest in church. Several could attest to having seen the godless young Danelo with his pockets full of green apples long before the Feast of the Assumption, after which day only, as every orthodox Christian knows, it is allowable to taste of apples and pears.
Up there on the verandah of the great house sat Madame Wolska herself, reclining in an easy-chair, with a book in her hand, and her work-basket beside her. She was reading, but occasionally casting a glance at the scene below.
The house, a large and roomy one-storied building, constructed in the style of most Polish country-houses, stood on a slightly rising ground half-way between the village below and the beech forest above.
Despite the stifling heat of the August afternoon, Madame Wolska was attired in heavy robes of some black woollen stuff. She was both young and handsome, her skin of a milky whiteness, her hair of a glossy brown, her eyes blue and placid, the mouth calm and self-reliant, the figure full and round, — these were the charms which four years previously had kindled the passion of Stefan Wolski, a man of no particular family, but who late in life had achieved a gigantic fortune by the opportune discovery of some naphtha-springs. Sophie Bienkowska had been a penniless orphan, and from seventeen to twenty-two she had tolled as a governess, eating the bread of servitude, which to her was sometimes very bitter; so that when the rich Wolski had asked her to share his wealth, she had accepted him unhesitatingly, without caring to ask any superfluous questions of her heart. Stefan Wolski had been a vulgar and purse-proud man, whose passage to woman's hearts must infallibly have been barred by his large red nose, had he not possessed a golden key, which opens this like other doors; and though her accession to fortune was envied by many, Sophie did not find her lot as his wife to be altogether a bed of roses. The position of sick-nurse and general souffre-douleur to a querulous and disagreeable old man is hardly to be taxed higher than that of a paid governess. However, luckily for her, this second martyrdom was but of short duration. Her naturally sweet temper and a certain stolidity of nature helped her to endure her fate during something more than three years, and then she reaped the benefit of her prudence and patience, for the obnoxious Wolski died; and, more to spite some distant relations than out of any particular attachment for Sophie, he left the whole of his very considerable fortune to her unlimited disposal. Thus it came about that the former penniless orphan, hard-worked governess, and tormented wife, found herself at twenty-six an unfettered widow and the richest proprietress in the neighborhood.
That was why this stifling August afternoon still found Sophie Wolska uncompromisingly attired in heavy mourning robes of crape and cashmere.
It was now more than a year since the unprepossessing Wolski had been laid to rest, therefore the young widow might well have allowed herself some slight modification of her weeds. A year is a very long time to mourn for a disagreeable man, avaricious and querulous, and old enough to have been one's grandfather. But a year is a very short time indeed to honor the donor of those broad lands and heavy money-bags; more than a year must be due to the memory of the magician who had transformed the penniless girl into the richest woman in the country.
And so thought Sophie Wolska, who had always had a great regard for the proprieties of life, as well as an endless fund of waiting patience. Not one whit would she lighten her mourning, — not one visit would she receive until the correct time since her bereavement was elapsed.
