Whirlpools: A Novel of Modern PolandSienkiewicz, Henryk
General
Whirlpools: A Novel of Modern Poland
Sienkiewicz, Henryk
Poland -- Fiction
As a result, they waited dinner for them. In the meantime, about four
o'clock, Gronski sat in his room writing a letter to Dolhanski,
Marynia, upstairs, played her daily exercises, Pani Otocka sat with the
patient, and Miss Anney went out on the balcony, ostensibly to
photograph the old and lofty trees which enclosed the courtyard on two
sides, but in reality to see whether he, whom they expected at home,
was returning. So instead of photographing, she began to lose her sight
and soul in the shady depths of the old linden roadway. Hope that soon
she would behold in that depth a cloud of dust, horses, and carriages,
and that afterwards the lively form of a youth would leap out, filled
her with a quiet joy. Lo, after a while she would see before her that
countenance, stately, sympathetic, and sincere; those eyes, whose every
glance spoke to her a hundred times more than the lips, and would hear
that voice which penetrated to her heart and thrilled it like music. At
this thought, Miss Anney was encompassed with such sweet, calm feeling,
as if she were a child and as if some loved hand were lightly rocking
her to sleep; as if she were resting in a boat, which the gentle waves
bore somewhere into a distance, unknown, but radiant. To permit herself
to be rocked, to allow herself to be borne, to confide in the waves, to
not think, for the time being, of where the boat will stop,--this was
all that the heart of the maiden, at such moments, desired. But at
other moments, when she propounded to herself the question, "What will
happen further?" she looked with faith into the future. Sometimes when
sleep refused to close her eyes, there flitted through her mind, like
dark butterflies, uncertainties and fears, but even then she said to
herself that the heaven may become cloudy in the future, but at present
she was enjoying charming, fair weather, and every day was like a
flower, and she plucked those flowers, one after another and laid them
upon her bosom. So she thought that for this it was worth while to live
and even to die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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