“They are learning embroidery, under the tuition of a German instructress. I am particularly anxious that my philanthropic plans may not do them more harm than good; for my husband very wisely says that ‘it is not hard to give, but to give judiciously....’”
“Well, but what do you do with the embroidered work afterwards?”
“Oh, you see, I don’t like to wear lace upon my linen—besides, it is not the fashion nowadays—so I have everything covered over with embroidery. Linen is far more beautiful so. I—I might perhaps show you—yes, I think it’s all right here—only women present....”
She laughed, winking significantly, and took us farther down the passage, where, with a swift twist and twirl, like a ballet-dancer, she raised her dress above her knees, showing several tiers of cambric flounces beyond her silk stockings. At no other time of our visit was there anything to recall what she had once been.
“You, I fancy,” she said, turning to me, “wear a petticoat; I am not sure you had not better give it up. A well-flounced undergarment makes the dress look quite sufficiently wide; a petticoat altogether effaces the outlines of the hips.” Then passing her hand down my waist: “It is a pity,” she said; “for you have a splendid shape—hips like a Spanish woman’s.”
We have found Wieloleski standing at the very end of the conservatory, and carefully watching his gardener at work. He is a tall man, something over forty, rather stout; very elegant-mannered, and courteous, but distant and abstracted. He has an extensive bald place, with long thin wisps combed over it from the left, though without any attempt at concealment; and an abundant black beard.
As he was taking us about his greenhouse, he observed: “It is only at present, and since I have been living here, that I have learned to understand Tolstoi properly. It is only by a close acquaintance with nature and with manual work, that we discover all the emptiness of society life and its form and prejudices, and all the futility of social dissensions and hatreds.”
I am not so well able to maintain my position as a cool observer, as Mme. Wildenhoff is: and here I could not refrain from presenting an objection to him.
“And nevertheless, your being able to stand thus aside in social struggles, proceeds from the fact that you possess property; and property itself lies within the sphere of these struggles, since they make an object of it. So the very land you own brings you back into these classes of society from which you flee.”
Wieloleski, rather surprised, offered me a few white kalia flowers, just gathered, before he replied, in a calm but very dogmatic tone.