But at last the father and daughter had been obliged to leave with the Russians. How furious the Russians had been—so depressed and discouraged when the order came to retreat. There had been no fighting round there for several days, and suddenly the news came that the whole army was retreating. Why? They said there was no ammunition. So the father and daughter left their property in the care of the gardener and his wife, who were too old to move. How terrible it had been to abandon this ground that so many Russians had died to win! No ammunition. Waste—mismanagement—graft.
Those in Petrograd should think more of their country and less of their own pockets. The unquestioning courage of the simple Russian soldiers! Every one ready to die—and yet nothing to back them up. It was disheartening.
"The Russians gave us a place in a cart, and we left in utter confusion—soldiers, motor-cars, cattle, wounded, with the Austrian cannon rumbling behind us."
"Were you frightened?" I asked. We were speaking French together.
"Not so frightened as sad. I was leaving my home. All my life I had spent there excepting for a few weeks in the winter when mother used to take us to Cracow for the balls. I hated to leave my beautiful party dresses hanging up in the closets. I know some Austrian woman will wear them. And I can't bear to think of our house burned! We have had such jolly times there, hunting and riding and visiting the neighbors. You don't know life on a Polish estate, do you? I can tell you there is nothing so charming in the world."
Pan Morowski is a handsome, full-blooded man, and plays bridge all day either in the pension drawing-room or at the club.
His wife is small and nervous, and you can see that her main object in life is to marry off her daughters well. She has three daughters, pretty, fresh girls, who are fond of reading, and perfectly willing to read only what their brothers permit them. Every day I run across one or two of them in the circulating library in the town, and always try to get them to take out a forbidden book. They are convinced that Bourget has sounded the depths of feminine psychology. "Isn't it mean!" they cry. "If only our brothers would let us read more of his wonderful books!"
Sometimes, in the evening, we sit out on the balcony, and the Morowski boys come in to talk to us.
"Aren't you ashamed to treat your sisters in this Oriental way?" I ask.