Читать книгу Whirlpools - Henryk Sienkiewicz - Страница 18

"How everything blooms and smells agreeably here!"

"Those are jasmines and elders. Did you observe on the forest road, riding to Jastrzeb, that the edges of the woods are planted with elders? That is my work."

"I only observed it at the bridge, where an old building stands. What kind of building is that?"

"That is an ancient mill. At one time there was a great deal of water in the stream beside it, but later my uncle, Zarnowski, drained it off to the fish-ponds in Rzeslewo and the mill stood still. Now it is a ramshackle building in which for over ten years we have stored hay instead of keeping it in hayricks. Folks say that the place is haunted, but I myself circulated, in its time, that myth."

"Why?"

"First, so that they should not steal the hay, and again because it was of much concern to me that no one should pry in there."

"What an invention!"

"I told them that near the bridge during night-time the horses get frightened and that something in the mill laughs; which is true, because owls laugh there."

"Perhaps it would have been better to have told them that something in there weeps."

"Why?"

"For greater effect."

"I do not know. Laughter in the night in the solitude creates a greater impression. People fear it more."

"And nobody peeps in there?"

"Not a soul. Now, if they only would not steal the hay, it would be all the same to me, but at that time I was anxious to screen myself from the eyes of men--"

Here Ladislaus bit his tongue, observing in the moonlight that Miss Anney's eyebrows frowned slightly. He understood that in repeating twice that it was important to him that no one should pry into the mill, he committed a breach of etiquette and, what was worse, had presented himself to the young English lady as some provincial boaster, who gives the impression that often he has been forced to seek various hiding-places. So desiring to erase the bad impression, he added quickly:

"When a student, I wrote verses and for that reason sought solitude. But now all that has passed away."

"That usually passes away," answered Miss Anney. And she turned to the doors of the salon, but without unnecessary haste, as if she desired to show Ladislaus that she accepted as good coin his explanations and that her return was not a manifestation of displeasure. He remained a while, angry at himself and yet more angry at Miss Anney for the simple reason that the indiscretion was committed solely by him and he could not blame her for anything.

"In any case," he said to himself, "that is some deucedly penetrating Puritan."

And he began to repeat, with some indignation, her last words:

"That usually passes away."

"Did she," he thought, "intend to give me to understand that from such grist as is in me nobody could bake any poetry. Perhaps it is true, and I know that better than anyone else, but it is unnecessary for anybody to corroborate the fact."

Under the influence of these thoughts he returned to the salon in not quite good humor, but there the duties of host summoned him to his feminine cousins and that evening he did not converse any more with Miss Anney.