Free The Bronski House by Philip Marsden

once, she might be surprised.
    She picked up her hairbrush. She pulled it down through her long auburn hair. It would not fall straight; she wanted it straight! But with each stroke of the brush its stubborn curl sent it springing back. She threw the brush down.
    In the wardrobe were the Petersburg clothes her father had given her. She pinned her hopes on a dress of sky-blue cotton and a straw hat. Chewing a cherry to colour her lips, she went out into the park.
    Beyond the drive was a small birch copse. Helena said she heard Adam’s voice echoing through the trees. She stood on the edge of the copse and pulled back the leaves to see in. He was alone. Now he would talk to her!
    He was standing there beneath the trees, singing. He did not see her. He broke into a strange Indian dance. He threw open his arms and spun. He tried a one-legged pirouette but fell to the ground.
    Helena could not help smiling. But she remained where she was. She watched him get up. She watched him run backwards and forwards through the trees. He did not once look in her direction. Soon he had run off into the distance. She waited for him to come back, but he did not. She returned to the house in silence. She threw her hat on the bed. What a waste of time it all was! Animals, as she always suspected, were much less bothersome.

9
    I N THE DINING ROOM at Druków one wall was painted with a scene of Diana hunting in the Arician grove. Each morning, at breakfast, a samovar was placed against this scene. It filled the room with strange bubbling noises and Panna Konstancja would come in, wink at Helena, and cock an ear to the samovar: ‘
German idyot… German idyot
… Do you hear, Hela? The Germans are coming!’
    And the German forces pressed on. From Klepawicze, the Brońskis – all except Adam – had already been sent to St Petersburg. Long lines of carts and livestock were filing every day through Nowogródek. News, rumours, counter rumours were all anyone mentioned. Adam Broński was about to empty the great vats of the Klepawicze still; the
spiritus
and the grain would be given to the peasants. Adam himself would wait and join the retreating Russian army.
    Uncle Nicholas was unequivocal. He was sending all his valuables east. He told Helena’s mother to take her children with them. He himself could not leave his land.
    So one morning in early September Helena and her mother, and her brother and sister, and Panna Konstancja and Tekla rose at dawn and gathered on the drive in front of the house. Uncle Nicholas stood on the steps. He was wearing a long overcoat and a pair of Berber slippers. He traced the sign of the cross over each child.
    A train of wagons already stretched away into the avenue. All Druków’s valuables, all the furs and goldplate, the Persian silk carpets, the Saxony china and Kiev ware, and the trunks and trunks of Moroccan leather books, joined the bedding and fodder for the journey east. The horses were fidgety. Uncle Nicholas’s foresters ran up and down the line shouting to each other, checking the harnesses, finding space for the last few boxes.
    In charge of this strange caravan, and its team of
parobcy
drivers, was Pan Rymszewicz, Uncle Nicholas’s gamekeeper. He put his lips to a hunting-horn and gave two blasts: the first carts lurched forward.
    They drove out of the avenue. To the right a mist clung to the river but the water-meadows were empty. The cattle had already left. Passing the church, they joined the main road and turned into the sun. A small hill rose above the road and the track to Klepawicze led up over it. Waiting on the crest of the hill, beneath a clutch of larches was Adam Broński, seated on a bay mare. He galloped down to meet the wagons.
    Reining in his horse he slowed to a walk and touched his hat to Helena’s mother. ‘
Dzień dobry
, Comtesse.’
    Some of his own carts, he explained, with the silver, had also left that morning. Could they join theirs? They would be waiting at the Niemen. He