I was tempted to take the first train out of Cracow, so painful to me was this condition of affairs; for I admire the Slavs, although I think I know their weaknesses. But the first train did not go until midnight, and I had nearly eight long hours on my hands. Then I remembered my letter of introduction. I found it with my passport and letter of credit, and looked at it again, to assure myself that it was right. Yes, it was addressed to the Countess So & So, and all the way to the house, I pictured to myself my friend’s mother-in-law. She would be rather rotund, for Slavic women incline that way, especially during the full moon of life. She would have gray hair, dark complexion, and a rather pronounced down on the upper lip. That seems to be the tendency of the Polish woman as she grows older; perhaps because of her great vitality.
Beneath the portal of a so-called palace, which was pervaded by an incredibly strong smell of whitewash, I presented my card to the porter, who looked somewhat contemptuously at the German name it bore. After long waiting I was guided to the very top story of the house, through clouds of falling mortar and showers of broken brick. The building seemed to be in the possession of masons and plasterers, and the noise they were making was as confusing as the dirt and dust their destructive hands were creating.
Two surprises awaited me. The first was, that in spite of the fact that the roof was partly torn off, and confusion reigned supreme, that top story contained some of the most lavishly appointed apartments I have ever seen. Pictures, statuary, and bric-à-brac, created by Polish genius, costly vases, rare flowers, exquisite rugs and furniture; and everything in perfect taste. If Cracow without seemed dingy and dead, here it was brilliant and alive. Thus had I pictured my Slav at his best—imaginative, creative, revelling in the beautiful, lavish of colour, yet creating harmonies. Everything around me seemed to breathe out life, and here I could understand the “Noch ist Polen nicht Verloren,” although in the street I had been ready to sing a requiem for the nation.
A hundred questions passed through my brain; questions which I would ask the mother-in-law when she appeared. Then came my second surprise. As I sat there thrilled by contending emotions, the curtain opposite me was thrown back gracefully and quickly, not at all as if a short, stout mother-in-law were behind it—and my eyes fell upon one of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. This again was Poland at her best, if not Poland typified. Her eyes were burningly eloquent, yet showed a hidden pathos; her features looked as if chiselled by a master’s hand, yet, in the background, the crude touch was faintly visible. The welcome accorded me was genuinely cordial, yet tinged by the proper reserve.
“How is it,” I asked, after some conversation, “that you don’t look like a mother-in-law, and that you speak English as if you came from Boston?”
“Because,” she said, with the sweetest smile, “I am as yet only a sister-in-law, and I do come from Boston. That is, I lived there for years after my parents were exiled from Poland. I came back here after my marriage.”
This, then, was my chance to ask all manner of questions about the Slavs in general and the Poles in particular, and have them answered in the light of a rather unique experience.
“Why is Cracow a dead city?” This was certainly a perfectly familiar American question, and I received a characteristic answer.
“It is dead because it is ‘crying over spilt milk.’ Nobody is regarded as a patriot unless he talks about our past glory and blames some one in general and the Germans in particular, for the loss of that glory. We might do great things if we would just do them. We have the vision and the talent; but we wear ourselves out, saying what a great people we are and how superior to all other human beings; yet we accomplish nothing. Look at this house of ours, and you see Poland in miniature. I don’t know just how old it is, my husband can tell you; but when it was built, the work was poorly done, and every year it has to be repaired from the bottom up. In America, it would have been torn down years ago, and a new house built, to suit the needs of the times. Instead of that, my husband is spending a fortune trying to make it a fit place to live in, and he never succeeds.
“Yet that is the thing he enjoys. He can scold the workmen half the year for dragging their task along, and the other half year he scolds them for having done their work so poorly.