DOI article:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: Wladlislaw's Advent
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0112
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Wladislaw’s Advent
long because so very young, heard the note of finality in my voice,
and looking puzzled but complaisant, reserved further comment
on the woman in the unbuttoned boots.
*****
All that follows this, I am unable to teil in Wladislaw’s own
words 5 the facts were not given me at one, nor yet at two
recitals—they were piled heterogeneously in my mind, just as he
told them at odd moments in the months that followed ; and that
they have arranged themselves with some sort of order is to be
accounted for first of all by their dramatic nature, and secondly by
the inherent habit of my memory, which often straightens and
adjusts, although unbidden, all that is thrown into it, so that I may
take things out neatly as I would have them : thus one may pick
articles, ordered in one’s absence, from the top left-hand drawer in
a dressing table.
At half-past eight upon the Sunday it was a very black night
indeed in the Rue de Vaugirard. Wladislaw had well-nigh fallen
prone over the broken Moorish lamp, now frozen firmly in the
gutter which was the centre of the unpasse; he had made his way
round by the sculptor’s Studio,-found the door unlocked, and being
of a simple, unquestioning temperament, had strolled into the
untidy, remote little annexe which communicated by a boarded
passage with the handsome atelier.
A small tin lamp of the kind a concierge usually carries, glass-
less, flaming at a cotton wick with alcoöl ä brüler, was withstand-
ing an intermittent buffeting by a wind which knew the best hole
in the window to come in at. Wladislaw nearly lost half of his
long light-brown moustache by lighting his cigarette at it in a
draught.
It was cold, and he had to undress to his skin 3 the comfort of
a cigarette
Wladislaw’s Advent
long because so very young, heard the note of finality in my voice,
and looking puzzled but complaisant, reserved further comment
on the woman in the unbuttoned boots.
*****
All that follows this, I am unable to teil in Wladislaw’s own
words 5 the facts were not given me at one, nor yet at two
recitals—they were piled heterogeneously in my mind, just as he
told them at odd moments in the months that followed ; and that
they have arranged themselves with some sort of order is to be
accounted for first of all by their dramatic nature, and secondly by
the inherent habit of my memory, which often straightens and
adjusts, although unbidden, all that is thrown into it, so that I may
take things out neatly as I would have them : thus one may pick
articles, ordered in one’s absence, from the top left-hand drawer in
a dressing table.
At half-past eight upon the Sunday it was a very black night
indeed in the Rue de Vaugirard. Wladislaw had well-nigh fallen
prone over the broken Moorish lamp, now frozen firmly in the
gutter which was the centre of the unpasse; he had made his way
round by the sculptor’s Studio,-found the door unlocked, and being
of a simple, unquestioning temperament, had strolled into the
untidy, remote little annexe which communicated by a boarded
passage with the handsome atelier.
A small tin lamp of the kind a concierge usually carries, glass-
less, flaming at a cotton wick with alcoöl ä brüler, was withstand-
ing an intermittent buffeting by a wind which knew the best hole
in the window to come in at. Wladislaw nearly lost half of his
long light-brown moustache by lighting his cigarette at it in a
draught.
It was cold, and he had to undress to his skin 3 the comfort of
a cigarette