did not return for so long, Mama!” she cried. Suddenly she went quiet and looked at her mother. “Mama,” she said, “you are crying again, and you look the way you looked when they carried Papa out of our house in the coffin.”
Indeed the young woman was trembling all over, and large tears were running down her flushed cheeks. She was shaken deeply by her fifteen-minute excursion into town—by her struggle with her own fear, her rapid walk over slippery streets amid crowds and cold winds, and, above all, the insult of being accosted by an unknown man for the first time in her life. But she evidently made up her mind to overcome her feelings, for she quickly calmed down, wiped away her tears, and kissed the child. As she stirred up the fire, she said:
“I have brought you some rolls, Jasia, and now I will set out the samovar and make some tea.”
She took the clay pitcher from the cabinet and, ordering the child to be careful of the fire, went down to the well in the courtyard. Soon she returned, breathless and exhausted, with one arm bent from the weight of the pitcher filled with water. But without resting even for a moment, she began to set out the samovar.
She was doing this for the first time in her life, and with difficulty. In less than an hour, however, the tea was drunk and Jasia was undressed and asleep. Her quiet, even breathing showed that she was sleeping peacefully. The traces of tears shed abundantly all day had vanished from her pale little face.
But the young mother did not sleep. She sat in front of the fading fire in her mourning dress, still as a statue, her hair falling in loose black braids. She was resting her head on her hand, thinking.
At first, her white forehead was wrinkled deeply with pain. Her eyes were filled with tears and her chest rose with a heavy sigh. After a while, however, she shook her head as if to push away the sorrows and fears that had overwhelmed her. She rose, stood erect, and said quietly:
“A new life!”
Indeed, this woman, young, beautiful, with white hands and a slender waist, was entering a new life. For her this day was the beginning of a future as yet unknown.
What had her past been like?
* * *
Marta Świcka’s past had been short because of her age and simple because it was uneventful.
Marta was born in a manor house that was neither splendid nor very affluent, but charming and comfortable.
Her father’s estate a few miles from Warsaw comprised several hundred acres of fertile land, large, flowery meadows, a lovely birch grove that furnished wood for the winter and space for romantic strolls during the summer, a large orchard full of fruit trees, and an attractive house with six front windows looking out on a circular lawn. It had cheerful-looking green blinds and a porch with lavender morning glories and beans with scarlet blossoms entwined around its four columns.
Nightingales sang over Marta’s cradle, and old lindens waved with dignified gravity. Roses blossomed and ripening wheat formed waves of gold. The lovely face of her mother leaned over her, and her little head, with its black hair, was covered with kisses.
Marta’s mother was a beautiful, kind woman and her father was a good man with a fine education. She grew up as an only child among loving, doting people.
The first pain that darkened the cloudless life of the beautiful, cheerful, blooming girl was the loss of her mother. Marta was sixteen years old at that time. She despaired for a while; she yearned for her mother for a long time; but youth placed a healing balm on her heart’s first wound, her face regained its rosy color, and joy, hope, and dreams returned.
But other calamities soon followed. Marta’s father, partly because of his own imprudence but mainly owing to economic changes that had taken place in the country, found himself in danger of losing his estate. His health weakened; he saw that he was facing both the collapse of his fortune and the rapid approach of death. At that moment, however, Marta’s future seemed to be secure: she loved and was loved.
Jan Świcki, a young official occupying a high position in a government office in Warsaw, fell in love with the beautiful dark-eyed girl, and awakened in her similar feelings of respect and love. Marta’s wedding took place only a few weeks before her father’s death. The ruined aristocrat, who perhaps once dreamed of a grander future for his only daughter, joyfully placed her hand in that of a man with no fortune but with a capacity for hard work. He died peacefully, believing that at the altar Marta’s future had been thoroughly safeguarded from the unhappiness of a lonely life and the danger of poverty.
For the second time in her life Marta experienced great pain. But this time it was assuaged not only by her youth but by her affection for her husband and, in time, their child. Her beautiful family estate had been lost forever and passed into the hands of strangers, but her beloved and loving husband created a soft, warm, comfortable nest amid the hubbub of the city. In this home soon sounded the silvery voice of a child.
Five years passed happily and quickly for the young woman amid the comforts and duties of family life.
Jan Świcki was a conscientious, capable worker. He received a good salary, sufficient to surround the wife he loved with everything she had been accustomed to from her childhood, everything that lent charm to every moment and peace to each new day. To each? No, only to the next. Jan Świcki did not have the foresight to think of the distant future at the expense of the present.
Young, strong, hard-working, he counted on his youth, strength, and industriousness, never dreaming that these riches would be depleted. But they were, and too quickly. He was taken with a sudden, serious illness from which neither his doctors’ advice nor his frantic wife’s efforts could save him. He died. His death not only put an end to Marta’s domestic happiness but pulled from under her the base of her material welfare.
So the marriage altar did not render the young woman forever immune to the misery of loneliness and the hazards of poverty. The axiom, old as the world, which states that nothing on earth is permanent proved itself as true in her case as it ever is. For it is not completely true. Everything that comes to a person from the outside passes, changing around him under the influence of thousands of currents that become entangled as they move forward, currents in which social relationships and laws take form. All these are subject to the frequent intervention of what is the most terrible force of all, because it is unpredictable and impossible to figure into one’s calculations: blind chance. Yet a man’s destiny in this world would indeed be regrettable if all his strength, his inner riches and his truth resided only in those external elements, which are mutable and fleeting as waves governed by wind.
Indeed, there is nothing permanent on earth besides what a man possesses in his heart and head: knowledge that shows him his paths and how to walk in them, work that brightens solitude and keeps poverty at bay, experience that tutors him, and elevated feelings that shelter him from evil. This permanence is only relative; it is broken by the sullen, unyielding power of illness and death. But as long the process of movement, thought, and feeling called life continues, and develops soundly and durably, a man does not lose himself but provides for himself, helps himself, supports himself with what he managed to accumulate in the past. It serves him as a weapon in his struggle with the complications of life, the fickleness of fate, and the cruelty of chance.
All the external forces that had befriended and sheltered Marta until now had failed her, leaving her abandoned. But her fate was not at all exceptional. Her misfortune was not caused by some bizarre adventure or astonishing disaster rare in the annals of human history. Financial ruin and death had destroyed her peace and happiness. What is more common everywhere in our society than the first? What is more inevitable, more frequent and inescapable,
