Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/155

Rh there will be just enough money to buy a turning-lathe," she did not venture to utter any expression of dissent.

The three years which had passed had brought but few changes in the village. About the time of Magda's marriage, Danelo had been taken away by the soldiers. His time of service was over by rights already, but he had not returned to the village. Perhaps he had taken service elsewhere, Magda thought, or else he might have married and settled down in some other part of the country.

Madame Wolska no longer resided at the great house: it was more than two years since she had left the place in her travelling-carriage, taking with her many trunks packed full of blue and green and rose-colored gowns; for her time of mourning was over, and she was going to enjoy herself and see the world. People said she was travelling in foreign countries. Only once in these two years she had returned for a few weeks, merely to collect her rents and give some orders. She had had a new maid with her then — a thin, sharp-featured woman, whom they called Mademoiselle Josephine, and who held up her hands in horror at everything that she saw, and pronounced the country to be ''horrible! détestable!'' She it was who now "confectioned" the rainbow-colored robes for her mistress, and whose deft fingers built up Sophie Wolska's luxuriant hair into that surprising edifice of curls and puffs which now replaced the smooth braids of her widowhood.

No rumor had as yet made people suppose that she contemplated giving a successor to the deceased Wolski. Apparently she was enjoying her liberty, and had not as yet found it worth her while to barter it against a new name.

On a fine evening on one of the last days of July, Magda was sitting on the little bench before the cottage door. There was no more work to be done for the day, and she was enjoying an hour of rest before supper-time.

It had been one of those few days which had come to us in midsummer, where nature is quite passive, and suspends for a few passing hours her eternal labor of alternate creation and destruction. Every leaf had already expanded to its full size, every blade of grass had grown to its utmost height, every flower had deepened its chalice to its full depth, every brilliant insect was let free from its shrouding chrysalis. The young birds were all fledged and flown from their nests. Everything was at its prime; it was the short-lived season of perfect beauty and vigor, as removed from the unfinished crudeness of youth as from the decay of old age. Spring, as represented by eggs, and buds, and chrysalis, was of the past, but autumn fruits were still of the future; and though June was over, full-blown roses and carnations were still the order of the day.

There were no roses in Filip's garden, however — they were not useful flowers, he said; and only such as had well-established claims, as hard-working domestic plants, were admitted within his paling. No flaunting marigolds or dahlias, no useless pansies, no foolish forget-me-nots. Only the substantial sunflower, whose oil was valuable; the scarlet-runner, whose qualities are well known; and the praise-worthy poppy, whose seeds would be collected by-and-by, to be sold at the market, and baked into Christmas cakes. But they were pretty for all that, those virtuous household flowers; for after all, beauty and merit are not always at variance in this world, and some few useful things are handsome as well.

The poppies covered the whole space at one side of the garden; the rich variety of tones to be found among them going far to make up for the exclusion of other flowers. The white ones, so delicately transparent, so exquisitely crimped, were like some magnified and idealized anemone; the crimson and lilac varieties replaced all the scale of tints of the carnation and verbena tribes, though they could not rival them in sweetness; while the large pink ones, seen from a little distance, were a very fair apology for the exiled cabbage-roses.

The sunflowers, standing in a row against the whitewashed cottage wall, had been staring at their great master the sun all day, in mute admiration, drinking in his rays, and spreading out each golden petal in his sight with tender worship, to be burnt by him into a richer hue. And, like servile courtiers as they were, now that their master was sinking down to rest behind the low range of wooded hills, they thought it necessary to follow his example, and began to sink lower themselves, hanging their yellow heads wearily on their stalks, and curling up their petals, in blasé indifference to everything else now that he was gone.

Magda was feeling very solitary on this lovely summer evening; she was so lonely sitting here on this roomy bench, which seemed constructed rather for tender duets than for solitary reveries. If she had at