somewhat frightening moment draws near. Such a moment demands all one’s powers of thought and will, while awakening hope, timidity and—who knows?—perhaps a feeling of inadequacy when the habits of one’s entire life collide with the daunting strangeness of a new situation.
She stopped in front of the gate of one of the most ostentatious townhouses and looked at the number. It was apparently a number that she remembered, because after taking a long, deep breath she began slowly to approach the wide, sunlit entrance.
She had hardly taken a dozen steps when she saw two women coming down the steps. One was dressed with painstaking care, even a certain elegance. Her bearing was confident and her expression was not merely serene but self-satisfied. The second was younger—very young, and pretty. She wore a dark woolen dress, a threadbare shawl and a little hat that remembered more than one autumn. She walked with her arms down and her eyes fixed on the ground. Her red eyelids, pale complexion, and thin waist gave her entire figure a look of sorrow, weakness, and fatigue. It was clear that the two women knew each other well, for they spoke intimately.
“My God! God!” the younger one said quietly, almost moaning. “What will I do now? The last hope is lost. If I tell my mother that I have still not gotten any work, her illness will get worse. And there is nothing to eat at home . . .”
“Well, well,” replied the older woman, in whose voice a note of sympathy sounded above a tone of strongly felt superiority, “do not worry so much! Just work a little on your music.”
“Oh! If I could only play as well as you, madame!” the younger one exclaimed. “But I cannot . . .”
“My dear, you do not have the talent!” said the older woman. “What can you do? You do not have the talent!”
As they were speaking, the two women passed Marta. They were so absorbed, the one in her self-satisfaction and the other in her despondency, that they did not notice the woman whose mourning dress brushed past them. But she stopped suddenly and followed them with her eyes. It was clear that they were teachers who had left the place to which she was going, one with a beaming face, the other in tears. In a half an hour, perhaps a quarter of an hour, she would also be descending the stairs she was now mounting. Would her visit end in joy or tears? Her heart pounded when she rang the bell on the door, which bore a gleaming brass plaque with the inscription:
INFORMATION BUREAU FOR TEACHERS
LUDWIKA ŻMIŃSKA
At the sound of the bell the door opened into a small entrance hall. Marta passed through it into a spacious room lit from two large windows that faced the crowded street. The room was adorned with fine furniture, including a new, ornate, and expensive grand piano that would be noticed at once by anyone who entered.
There were three people in this room. One stood up to meet Marta: a middle-aged woman with hair of an uncertain color, smoothly combed under a shapely white cap, and rather stiff posture. Her face, with its regular features, had nothing noticeable about it. Nor did her gray dress, which had no decoration apart from a row of monotonous buttons down the front. Nothing about her either attracted or repelled. She was dressed from head to foot in a style that was businesslike and nothing more. Perhaps at a different time or in another place this woman could smile freely, express tenderness with her eyes, extend her hand in warm greeting. But here in this drawing room, where she received people who called on her for help and counsel, she appeared in the character of a professional intermediary between these visitors and society. She was as she was supposed to be: polite and proper but reserved and cautious.
This room was a drawing room in appearance only; in fact, it was a place of business just like other places of business. Its owner offered advice, guidance, and useful contacts for those who demanded them from her in exchange for mutual services rendered in kind. It was also a purgatory through which human souls passed, ascending to the heaven of a position secured or descending to the hell of involuntary unemployment.
Marta stopped in the doorway for a moment and looked at the face and figure of the woman walking toward her. Her eyes, which yesterday had been full of tears, today were dry and shining, and had taken on an expression that was exceptionally shrewd, almost penetrating. All the young woman’s powers of thought were visibly concentrated in them as she tried to look through the outer casing and into the depths of the being whose lips would issue a judgment, for good or ill, concerning her future. Marta was coming to someone on a matter of business for the first time in her life. The matter was one of the utmost importance to poor people: the need to earn a living.
“Madame has come to the information agency?” asked the proprietress.
“Yes, madame,” she replied, adding, “I am Marta Świcka.”
“Please sit down, madame, and wait a little until I finish my interviews with the ladies who came first.”
Marta sat down in the armchair that was pointed out to her. Only then did she turn her attention to the two other persons in the room, who differed immensely as to their age, dress, and bearing.
One was a woman of twenty, very pretty, with a smile on her pink lips and blue eyes that looked around brightly, almost joyfully. She was wearing a light-colored silk dress and a small hat that set off her fair hair exquisitely. Ludwika Żmińska must have been talking with her just before Marta entered, for she turned back to her immediately after greeting the new arrival. She spoke English, and from the first words of her answer one could guess that she was an Englishwoman.
Marta did not understand the women’s conversation because she did not know the language they spoke. She only saw that the Englishwoman’s easy smile did not vanish and that her face, her posture, and her way of speaking expressed the confidence of a person who was accustomed to being successful—who was sure of herself and the fate that awaited her.
After a brief talk, the proprietress took a sheet of paper and began to write in a flowing hand.
Marta watched every move attentively, for this scene had a bearing on her own situation. She saw that Ludwika Żmińska was writing a letter in French; she saw that it mentioned a figure of 600 rubles, and that on the envelope she was writing the name of a count and of the most beautiful street in Warsaw. Then, with a polite smile, she offered the letter to the Englishwoman, who rose, bowed, and left the room with a light step. She held her head high; her lips curved in a satisfied smile.
“Six hundred rubles a year!” Marta thought. “Good heavens, what wealth! What good fortune to be able to earn so much! If I get even half that sum, I will be easy in my mind about Jasia and myself.”
Then she looked at the person with whom the proprietress began speaking after the Englishwoman left—a person who drew her interest and compassion.
She was a woman perhaps sixty years old. She was thin; her withered face, with red eyelids, was covered with a dense network of wrinkles. Her hair was almost completely white; it was parted in the middle and combed back smoothly under her black, rumpled hat, the relic of a fashion long past. A black woolen dress and an old silk stole hung loose on her gaunt body. Her small white hands, with almost transparent skin and bony fingers, rolled and squeezed a linen handkerchief that lay on her lap. A corresponding anxiety was reflected in her once-blue eyes, now faded and without luster, which she lifted to the face of the proprietress. They moved from one object to another, mirroring her apprehension and the painful jerking movement of her exhausted mind as it searched for a point of support, comfort, and peace.
“Have you ever worked as a teacher?” Ludwika Żmińska asked her in French.
The poor woman stirred in her chair, moved her eyes up and down and along the wall, squeezed the handkerchief convulsively, and began quietly:
“Non, madame, c’est le premier fois que je . . . je . . .”
She broke off. Obviously she was searching for the foreign words that could express her thought, but they escaped her tired memory.
“J’avais . . .” she began after a moment, “j’avais la fortune . . . mon fils avait le malheur de la perde . . .”
The