Albina was fifteen years old at the time of Josif Migurski’s visit. Migurski had in fact stayed with the Jaczewskis before as a student, in Wilno where they spent the winters, and had paid court to Wanda, but now he was coming to visit them in the country for the first time as a grown up and independent young man. The arrival of young Migurski was agreeable to all the inhabitants of Rozanka. The old man liked Josif Migurski because he reminded him of his friend, Josif’s father, of the time when they were both young, and of how they had talked together with great passion and the rosiest hopes about the current revolutionary ferment – and not only in Poland but also abroad, whence he had just returned. Pani Jaczewska liked him because when there were guests present old Jaczewski restrained himself and did not scold her for everything in his usual manner. Wanda liked him because she was sure that Migurski had come for her sake and that he intended to propose to her: she was preparing to accept, but she intended, as she expressed it to herself, to ‘lui tenir la dragée haute’.4 Albina was glad because everyone else was glad. Wanda was not the only one convinced that Migurski had come with the intention of asking for her hand. The entire household, from old Jaczewski down to nanny Ludwika, thought so, although nobody said anything.
And they were correct. Migurski had arrived with that intention, but at the end of a week he left again, somehow confused and downcast, without having made any proposal. They were all surprised by this unexpected departure and no one, with the exception of Albina, understood the reason for it. Albina knew that the cause of his strange departure was she herself.
The whole time he had been at Rozanka she had noticed that Migurski seemed particularly animated and cheerful only when he was with her. He treated her like a child, joking with her and teasing her, but with her feminine intuition she sensed that underneath this treatment of her there lay not the attitude of an adult towards a child, but that of a man towards a woman. She could see this in the admiring expression and affectionate smile with which he greeted her whenever she came into the room and took his leave of her when she left. She had no clear awareness of what was happening, but his attitude towards her made her feel happy, and she unconsciously did her best to please him. In fact anything she could possibly have done would have pleased him. And so when he was present she did everything with a special kind of excitement. He was pleased when she ran races with her beautiful greyhound and it jumped up and licked her flushed, radiant face; he was pleased when at the slightest pretext she broke into loud and infectious laughter; he was pleased when, continuing her merry laughter in the expression of her eyes, she put on a serious face to listen to the Catholic priest’s boring homily; he was pleased when, with exceptional accuracy and humour, she mimicked first her old nanny, then a drunken neighbour, and then Migurski himself, switching in an instant from the depiction of one to the depiction of the next. Most of all he was pleased by her enthusiastic joie de vivre. It was just as though she had only just realized the full charm of life and was hastening to enjoy it to the utmost. He liked this special joie de vivre of hers, and this joie de vivre was aroused and heightened especially when she was aware that it was delightful to him. And so it was that Albina alone was aware why Migurski, who had come to propose to Wanda, had gone away without doing so. Although she could not have brought herself to tell anybody and did not confess it directly even to herself, in the depths of her soul she knew that he had wanted to fall in love with her sister, but had actually fallen in love with her, Albina. Albina was greatly astonished at this, counting herself totally insignificant in comparison with the clever, well-educated and beautiful Wanda, but she could not help knowing that it was so and she could not help rejoicing in the fact, because she herself had come to love Migurski with all the strength of her soul, to love him as people only love for the first, the only time in their lives.
II
At the end of the summer the newspapers brought the news of the July Revolution in Paris. After that news began to arrive of impending disorders in Warsaw. With a mixture of fear and hope Jaczewski awaited with every post news of the assassination of Constantine and the beginning of a revolution. At last in November the news arrived at Rozanka – first of the attack on the Belvedere Palace and the flight of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich; then that the Sejm had pronounced that the Romanov dynasty had been deprived of the Polish throne and that Chlopicki had been proclaimed dictator and the Polish people were once more free.
The insurrection had not yet reached Rozanka, but all the inhabitants followed its progress, awaiting its arrival in their home region and making ready for it. Old Jaczewski corresponded with an acquaintance of long ago who was one of the leaders of the insurrection, received a number of secretive Jewish commercial agents not on economic but on revolutionary business, and prepared to join the insurrection when the time should be right. Pani Jaczewska concerned herself as always, but now more than ever, with her husband’s material comforts, and by that very fact managed to irritate him more and more. Wanda sent off her diamonds to a girlfriend in Warsaw so that the money obtained for them could be given to the revolutionary committee. Albina was interested only in what Migurski was doing. She learned via her father that he had enlisted in Dwernicki’s detachment and she tried to find out all she could about that particular detachment. Migurski wrote twice: the first time to inform them that he had joined the army; and the second time, in mid-February, an enthusiastic letter about the Polish victory at the battle of Stoczek, where they had captured six Russian guns and some prisoners.
‘Zwyciestwo polakòw i kleska moskali! Wiwat!’5 – he wrote at the conclusion of his letter. Albina was in raptures. She scrutinized the map, trying to work out when and where the decisively defeated Muscovites must be, and she went pale and trembled as her father slowly unsealed the packets brought from the post office. On one occasion her stepmother chanced to go into Albina’s room and came upon her standing before the mirror wearing trousers and a konfederatka.6 Albina was getting ready to run away from home in male attire to join the Polish army. Her stepmother went and told her father. Her father summoned Albina to him, and concealing the sympathy, even admiration, he felt for her, delivered a stern rebuke, demanding that she should banish from her head any stupid ideas about taking part in the war. ‘A woman has a different duty to fulficlass="underline" to love and comfort those who are sacrificing themselves for the motherland’ – he told her. Now he needed her, she was a joy and a comfort to him; but the time would come when she would be needed in the same way by her husband. He knew how to persuade her. He reminded her that he was lonely and unhappy, and kissed her. She pressed her face against him, hiding the tears, which nevertheless moistened the sleeve of his dressing-gown, and promised him not to undertake anything without his agreement.