# Kobiety (Women)/II

II
"GARDEN OF RED FLOWERS"
Imszanski was patient and persevering, and determined to take no repulse as final. In the end he had the good luck to come at the right time, when Martha was in a favourable mood: whereupon she relented, gave up all her objections, and married him very willingly.
For close on a year after their marriage, I had no sight of them. They were travelling about Europe, and Martha had never been abroad. Every two or three days I would get a post-card from her, which I of course "read between the lines." Plunged though she was in an atmosphere of intense bliss, she was continually revolving the thought of death in her mind. But that is probably no unfrequent phenomenon in such cases.
She returned, bringing with her a son a few months of age—returned very pale, and like ​a shadow, yet prettier than she had ever been before.
Having grown much thinner, she seems to be taller now. She wears her dark plaited hair round her tiny head, like a crown. Her age is thirty or thereabouts. Imszanski, though considerably older, seems of that age too.
They have rented a flat in Warsaw, and insisted on my sharing it with them. But I spend the best part of my day in the office, just as in former times.
To me, life brings nothing new; my memories are mostly colourless or grey. Truly, I am disappointed with myself, since I belong to the class of those who "give great promise" all their life.
All the same, though I cannot overcome this, my "tristesse de vivre," I daily look upon it with more indifferent serenity.
You at first look straight in front of you. Then, when a certain point has been passed, you begin to look behind you. Now, this point is by no means the instant when happiness passes you by, or you are struck some awful blow, waking you up from a sweet illusion; it is a moment which may, like every other, go by in laughter or in tears: it may ​even be slept through; and you do not know when it comes, but you know well enough when it has passed.
For me, it has passed: and now I look behind me. Though I should prefer to look nowhere at all. I look back, and I think all that was perhaps not worth such a fuss. … And yet! …
In any case, I have learned some wisdom, and wisdom is eternal. There remains of it enough for me to smile in my solitude. And there remains some pride, too,—the pride of knowing that I am what I am.
On returning from a concert, I went with my friend, Wiazewski, to Lipka, to meet the company jwe usually see there.
I take some interest in the atmosphere, reeking and tainted though it is, of a high-class restaurant, crowded with "gilded youth," old financiers, beautiful actresses, and demimondaines. The saloon is a large one, lit with wide-branched chandeliers. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke, through which the sparkles of a thousand lights and the brilliant notes of the merry orchestra assail both eye and ear. The ceiling is painted in antique ​style. The background is all speckled with bright stains—blots of white napery on the tables, and candles shaded with glass "lampions" of various tints, forming spots of many a colour. There is a twinkling mingled with a tinkling: the rays of electric blossoms over our heads, and around us the jingling of cups and glasses, join together in a seething tumult.
This is a life apart. Not the daily round of appearances—the mere mask which hides life,—but life immediate, naked, real. You see here that in spite of all it is possible to be merry and to care for nothing. Here are no unsightly garments, no clumsy inartistic motions; no children (that most objectionable element in life!); no "respectable" women, who are to be recognized by their ugliness, their want of style and charm, their tediousness and stupidity, and the fact that, when they think at all, they are always hopelessly depressed. This is a very good illustration of the "Law of Selection": in marriage, the qualities of virtue and fidelity are of more account as guarantees of felicity than such endowments as beauty and health. Beautiful women of a lively temperament are set aside as too knowing, too exacting, and of doubtful ​trustworthiness: and so they go to swell the ranks of the fallen.
For my own part, did I not fear the accusation of anti-social tendencies, I would, from the height of my cheerless philosophical eminence, declare that I view the "frail sisterhood," as an institution, without intolerance. Therein breathes something that tells of times gone by: something existing, but of which men do not speak. There exist human beings, scorned as a class, whatever their personal endowments may be, with whom no other class is allowed to come in contact, under pain of defilement:—not unlike pariahs. These beings are to be bartered for precious metals by means of a secret contract—bought as the slaves of ancient times were bought. Their existence is kept a secret quite disinterestedly, for the mere sake of the secret itself: every one knows all about them. In our days, so hyper-civilized, so deprived of all poetry by reason of excessive culture, this is a most astonishing state of things.
Nearly every man here present has a wife, actual or intended: but these are not permitted to enter: they would be by far too much out of place. ​
No doubt, their wives, having put the children to bed, had some words with the servant over the daily account of money spent, and put on a clean night-gown (of a wretchedly bad cut, by the way), say their prayers and lay themselves down to sleep under the red woolen coverlet, thinking all the time: "How late he always returns after these meetings!" or else she may bite her nails with fury, revolving in her mind the idea of another angry scene with her husband—a scene foredoomed as heretofore to be without effect. Or again, in agonized resignation, she may bend over the baby's cradle, and murmur mournfully, with naive pathos: "For your sake, my child!" And the girls whose troths are plighted have long ago gone to sleep under the wing of their domestic guardians, lulled to slumber with some such sweet fancies as: "Most men have intrigues before they marry: he, and he alone, has surely none." And so forth. …
They are foolish—but fortunate, because not allowed to come in here.
Ah! once upon a time, in the days of my childish marvellings, how bitterly did I weep over all these things! ​
"Stephen, how late is it?" I asked Wiazeski.
"It will soon be midnight. Our friends are not coming, it would seem. Are you in a hurry to get home?"
"I never am; I have got a latch-key, and so wake nobody when I come in. But are you not yourself sometimes engaged of an evening?"
He shook his head, his teeth shining good-humouredly in a friendly smile.
"You know perfectly well that there is not an assignation I would not set aside to spend an evening with you. To me, friendship is a boon far rarer and far more precious than love."
"I do not hold with you at all. I have enough of the cold consideration granted me by the world."
Stephen smiled again.
"There is no help for it, Janka," he said. "Men of our times are too weakly to love an all-around woman: the very thought of one gives them an unpleasant shock. The day for types of women so extremely complex as you are has now gone by; at present women are preferred who display some very distinct and ​special characteristic: especially either primitive natures, or such as have been depraved by civilization; or types of spirituality or of sensuality; women either of very well-balanced minds, or nervous even to hysteria; or, again, those in whom warmth of heart or a distinguished bearing prevails. And that is why the monogamic instinct is now dying out completely: in a few years' time, it will be no more."
Wiazewski was on the war-path, the topic being a favourite one of his.
"For how can a man be true to his wife, if he takes her 'for better, for worse,… till death do them part,' only, let us say, to kiss a mole that she has on her neck, just under her left ear? Monogamy requires exceedingly strong, rich, abundant natures."
"Then it would follow that our near future would witness our return to the hetairism of primaeval times?"
"No doubt; for both the primitive instincts of the senses, and their ultra-refined activity, have identically the same result."
A handsome woman, with strikingly original features, accompanied by an elderly man, clean-shaven (an actor probably) went by ​near our table. She too had the look of an actress.
Wiazewski's eyes followed her with keen scrutiny.
"A fine woman," I remarked.
He turned his eyes away from her.
"She is not my sort," he replied. "Far too cultured for my taste."
Then he again returned to the subject.
"Hetairism, yes. Yes, undoubtedly. But if it all depended upon me, I should wish for one slight restriction. … You see, one of the most genial types of womanhood is the wifely type: that of a woman faithful, trustworthy, absolutely your own. … It were desirable that such a type should not perish entirely. But I should wish her only as a class to contrast with others, and as a haven of rest, when wearied with those."
I was gazing at the pretty Frenchwoman; suddenly I saw a delighted expression flash over her striking and reposeful face, somewhat harem-like in its beauty. I instinctively followed her glance, and—not without somewhat of embarrassed astonishment—discovered Imszanski. He was just entering from the doorway, and going through the saloon, ​distributing on all sides bows or smiles, as a beautiful woman does flowers. His wonderfully sweet and dreamy eyes were seeking some one in the room.
A sudden flash lit them up, as they met the gaze of the handsome Frenchwoman.
Imszanski, on his way to them, happened to see me, and Wiazewski in my company.
Directly, and without showing the least surprise or embarrassment, he changed his expression and saluted us with urbane cordiality, and though he had just gone past our table, he returned, shook hands, and begged leave to sit down beside us.
The Frenchwoman at the neighbouring table was just putting on her gloves, while the actor paid the bill. I should very willingly have told Imszanski not to mind about us, but go on to his acquaintances, who we could see were expecting him. But I refrained, not wishing to lay on his shoulders a burden of gratitude for keeping this matter concealed from Martha, which might later have proved irksome to him.
Stephen, too, understood.
"We are here," he presently said, "waiting for Madame Wildenhoff, Owinski with his ​intended, and Czolhanski. It is rather late now: I doubt whether they are going to turn up."
Imszanski turned aside to sa^^ something to a waiter, when he noted with satisfaction that the actors had left the saloon.
He then said he hoped and trusted that we would not look upon him as an intruder, though he had thrust himself on us in such a way.
Czolhanski, a journalist, arrived at about one o'clock, together with Owinski and his fianceé, Miss Gina Wartoslawska, whom I had seen several times previously at Imszanski's.
Her real name is Regina; but she is called Gina. In the movements of her lithe elastic figure is a sort of snake-like suppleness, which tells us of a nervous nature, burning with a passion almost painfully suppressed. She is like a tame panther. Her eyes, long, narrow, partly concealed beneath thin lids, wander hither and thither about the floor with a drooping, apathetic look. Her lips are broad, flattened as it were by many kisses, moist and crimson as if they bled. And, with all that, there is in her something of the type of a priestess. ​
She came in, drawing black gloves off her slender hands, greeted us with an unsmiling face, and at once called out to a waiter who was passing by:
"A glass of water!"
She drank the whole glass at one draught, and sat down at some distance from the table, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped over her knees. Owinski took a seat close beside her.
"Czolhanski," he told us, "has only just got through his critique of the leading actress in to-night's play. We had to stay for him in the editor's waiting-room."
"Ah," grumbled the critic, "it's beastly, this work all done to order and at railway speed! Such a piece as that ought to be thought over till it is possible to form a definite judgment upon it. As it is, we are forced to save the situation by means of a lot of sententious generalities."
At last, Madame Wildenhoff arrived with her husband. At the unexpected sight of Imszanski in our company, a deep blush mantled her face. She seated herself next to Gina, and burst into a fit of chuckling, shading her eyes with beautiful hands that carried many ​a ring. All this was rather unusual and disquieting. Imszanski flushed slightly; a warm haze, so thin that it could scarce be seen, bedimmed his eyes, and his long lashes drooped over them.
Wildenhoff, an unpleasant cut-and-dried sort of man, whose humour inclined to sarcastic silence, proposed that we should pass into a private room. She protested.
"Oh, no! I dearly love noise and music and an uproar all about me. We had better stay here, hadn't we?"
Wildenhoff smiled at his wife and was presently deep in study of the bill of fare.
She again set to laughing without any cause: a disquieting sort of chuckle, with something like a sob now and then.
I glanced at the two couples, feeling a twinge of envy. "There is love between them"…
Oh, but all that was so very, very long ago!
I wish Stephen would fall in love with me. But he is always running after some theory or other. At times he is as droll as a boarding-school girl. I do believe his friendship for me to be absolutely disinterested. He, on his side, declares that a handsome woman, as such, ​means nothing to him. The type he loves is uncultured, shallow-brained animality.
He is as yet too youthful. Men's taste for women more spiritualized, more cultured, more quick-witted, is only a reaction: it shows a decline in the vital forces, and tells of old age about to set in.
All the time of our return home, he, rather in the clouds, holds forth with artificial animation.
"With you, Janka, I could well live alone in a wilderness, were you even twice as beautiful as you are—and never remember that I was in presence of a being of the other sex. And, indeed, this is the most natural thing in the world: if such a thought ever entered my brain, I should feel humiliated that a woman was mentally my equal."
"But is it with perfect disinterestedness that you have chosen a pretty young woman for your best friend?"
"Why should I not do so? That gives me the advantage of a double pleasure: not only can I enjoy your conversation; I can enjoy your appearance as well."
"You might just as easily take a handsome man for your friend." ​
"Yes, but then beauty in a woman generally accompanies intelligence; whereas good-looking men are, as a rule, rather foolish. Moreover, however objectively I strive to judge of things, I must confess that a woman's body is more handsome than a man's."
"And what of her mind?"
"Why, she has none: I mean there is no such thing as a feminine mind. Though, look you, it is not unlikely that women also have minds. There is nothing sexual about the brain, either way."
"Yet you have always said I had the mind of a man."
"I was wrong; as a friend, you are neither male nor female. You are something that I set in a class apart; and I want you to do the same by me."
At our door, I take leave of the whole company. Imszanski desires to go on with "the ladies" a little farther, but he is back at once. I can guess why. …
The Imszanskis are, as they have given out, "At Home" on Sundays. From three till dinner-time, the door is practically open to all. These "At Homes" are formal, tedious, and ​rather pretentious affairs. There are, besides, but few people who come; for Imszanski has no acquaintances with whom he is on really cordial terms.
But I like these Sundays: they soothe my nerves as warm baths do. With the people who come, I need not attempt to keep up any appearance of truthfulness. On the contrary, I say very far-fetched and most fantastic things—things, besides, that I know not to be likely to interest any one present.
But here is the field wherein Imszanski bears away the palm. Never are his movements more elegant, his smiles more cordial, his glances more winning. No one can better than he deal out the small change of social amenities in his looks, his superficial judgments on literature and on art; none, when addressing a compliment to a woman, can more subtly envelope what he means in a mist of allusions.
Both husband and wife appear to advantage. He, with the perfect culture of his ancient and noble descent, is simply enchanting. Martha is a contrast to him, as standing for something newer, but deeper: the culture given by unassuageable sorrow, the ​concentrated reverie seen in the sad looks of those dark-blue eyes, albeit a kind smile always flutters on her parched red lips.
Now and again, the Wildenhoffs come here on Sundays. They produce a most interesting effect. Everybody is saying that Madame has an intrigue with Imszanski. Martha knows that, and every one knows that Martha knows: and she feigns ignorance, though aware that no one believes her. So here is being piled up an immense heap of lies: which is a curious situation, and as such not unpleasing to me.
Of Madame Wildenhoff, Lombroso would have said that she belonged to the class of courtesans "by right of birth." Her snowy flesh, her golden hair, her brows, blackly looming above azure eyes, her rosy cheeks and scarlet mouth,—the whole of this fairy colouring gives an appearance of complete artificiality; and her wonderful shape and inborn talent for coquetry make one regret that such gifts should have been lost on such a very unsuitable field of action. For I myself have not the least doubt that need of money is but a secondary motive with those who join the "frail sisterhood." Were it, as is generally ​supposed, the chief inducement, what should force men to lead lives so similar to the lives of demi-mondaines?
I like to watch Imszanski with her, playing the part of the host. Nothing, it would seem, nothing in the whole world can possibly throw him off his balance. He greets her just as he would any other visitor, with a set "So-pleased-to-meet-you" sort of smile; gives her as much of his time as he does to any of the women there; and converses with her, partly flirting, partly freezing her with the haughty consciousness of his preeminence as a drawing-room lion. He makes no endeavour to conceal his liking for her, but shows just as much as it becomes him to have for any young and handsome woman. It would be a breach of the laws of hospitality, if he had not for each of these a few discreet compliments, and for each a look of warm admiration, beaming from those ever half-curtained almond eyes.
Orcio is sometimes called in from the nursery; and in he comes—a little fair-haired boy in black velvet, with a superb collar of yellowish lace. The ladies talk to him in French, in order to praise his accent. ​
To-day the following conversation took place:
"Qui aimes-tu davantage, Georges,—papa ou maman?" was the question put to him by Madame Wildenhoff, who, her hand in a white glove of Danish leather, was stroking the boy's curls with a blandishing smile.
"C'est papa," was Orcio's reply.
"Et pourquoi donc?"
"Parce que maman ne rit jamais."
Whereupon everybody set hurriedly to expatiate upon the accomplishments of Orcio,—who is not yet four! This they did, wishing to hide a certain confusion felt: that enfant terrible had so unconsciously touched on a matter that every one knew, but no one talked about.
Madame Wildenhofif, who no doubt expected the boy's answer, and had perhaps elicited it purposely, was the only person to underline its meaning; she let her long eyelashes droop over her rosy cheeks, pretending to be shocked at the unseemly associations that it had by her means called up.
Martha laughed in merry contradiction of what Orcio had just said; then, kissing his fair brow, she told him to make a nice bow ​to the company and go back to the nursery with the maid.
Society is irksome to Martha now. We two often went together formerly to the theatre or to a concert: at present she cares no more to go.
I mostly spend my evenings with her, in interminable conversations. She either relates something to me, or else she "gives sorrow words." I listen.
She is just now much grieved that her husband Witold has for nearly a fortnight hardly ever been at home. Some days we even dine without him.
"It is surely so," she was saying yesterday. "He enjoys his manhood to the full: everything is his. There, he has 'Bohemian' society, revelling, fast people, singing, champagne, flowers, and forgetfulness: here, he finds the pure and quiet light of the domestic fireside, the delights of fatherhood, the love of a faithful wife. When he is tired of one sort of pleasure, why then he tries the other. … And we—we are all crippled, helpless things—all!"
Silence for a moment. ​
"There he gets his amusement at the expense of those poor weaklings, whose souls have been wrenched away from them, who have lost the feeling of their human dignity, the consciousness of their right to live, even the very sense of pleasure; who groan under that most unjust burden, their own self-contempt; who feel the continual oppression of a guilt which does not exist, and for whom the first wrinkle is as a sentence of death.
"But on his domestic hearth there beams another fire, and beams on another kind of weakling; a strange creature, now no longer able to descend into Life's hurly-burly; for whom certain deeds, for many a century regarded with scorn, have through long heredity of atavistic feelings become really loathsome. …
"Our duty is to amuse them—the lords of life and death—with the effects of contrast; that they may have the assurance of having experienced the whole gamut of emotions, that they may enjoy their manhood to the full."
When Witold came home to-day from the club (which was at about noon) Martha received him in a beautiful white peignoir, ​trimmed with Angora fur, and asked him whether he had yet breakfasted. He thanked her graciously, kissed her hand and brow, and desired to see Orcio.
Martha changed colour. She is not so jealous, even of women, as she is of her beautiful little boy, perhaps because he is with her constantly.
The nursemaid brought Orcio, who at once jumped on to his father's knee, and began talking at the top of his voice about a number of things which had happened to interest him since the day before.
Imszanski was enchanted with the little one, and kissed his rosy face.
For men like him, there is something incomparably sublime and public-spirited in the fact of being a father; this they hold to be the only thing that compensates and atones for the life they lead.
Martha shrank away; standing at a distance, fury in her heart and a smile on her face, she looked on at the father caressing his boy.
"Look, you," she whispered to me, "this—this is my vocation, this the mission of my life; all the pain I have undergone, all the ​rage of my never-ending and vain revolt, all my disappointed existence; all these have been, only that they two should sit here thus, forgetting me entirely; and that all the wrong done to me by the father should come to life again in that son of his!"
But Witold, having caressed Orcio, went to bed. Not until the evening did he wake up, fresh and hearty-looking, to dine with us, kiss Martha's hand, retail with lively wit several stories then going the round of the town, and make his way to the club once more.
In his love-affairs, Wiazewski is just as fickle and as insatiable as Imszanski; but their "spheres of influence" are different. Wiazewski has a liking for seamstresses, shop-assistants, and so forth; whereas Imszanski is specially interested in cocottes (even his intrigue with Madame Wildenhoff is a case in point). Neither of the two has any great liking for the other, in spite of their mutually courteous bearing at all times. Imszanski has against my friend that he is too democratic: whereas Wiazewski looks on Imszanski as a fool.
The latter explains his dislike for demimondaines thus: ​
"I have a great liking for misdeeds, but not when committed by professional criminals."
The art of playing with his victims has been brought by him to the acme of perfection. To this end, he employs what naturalists call "mimicry." His features being rather common, he has no trouble in putting a girl ofif her guard; he makes up as a commercial man, or a lackey, or a waiter; and in such parts he expresses himself most eloquently in the slang of those classes, which he has picked up to perfection.
He is a thorough expert in the art of getting into touch with the minds of such people; and the ease with which he finds his way through a labyrinth of ideas quite unknown to us is truly admirable.
On principle, he is for continual change; but latterly he has been making an exception, and declares he has hit upon the right sort, or nearly so. For some time he has been "keeping company" with a girl, whom he has, on account of her exceptional qualities, distinguished from the common herd. I once saw her at his lodgings and was struck with her good looks. ​
He has been reading a letter from her today. I asked him to give it to me as a "document," which he very readily consented to do.
It runs thus:
"Dear Stephen I must tell you about something that is Roman the intended husband of Genka came to see me at the shop yesterday evening and he set a-talking to me this way don't I have no notion where Genka is so I answer back what business of mine is that and he just says don't you make believe for Genka is in Krucza with that there mechanic and he keeps her I hear is in love with her but I'll pay him out for it, only the street and the number where he lives are gone clean out of my head can you tell me I know his name is Stephen and I answer this way don't you go worriting an honest fellow for he don't have nothing to say to no girls let alone such hussies as Genka he asked me where you lived and I said Krucza number 129 fourth floor and Stephen Tworkowski is your name and he said thankee and hooked it and he says he'll ask the porter in Wspolna and I said don't you poke your nose in or ​you'll get your head punched as you did once before when you flung dirt at me so if he comes you tell him so and give the beast a talking to. … And something else my dear darling ideal I write this I love you to distraction I am regularly off my head with thinking of you and I have your photo before me and kiss it night and day. O God how I love him more than my life more than my faith I can't tell what sin I have sinned that I have to pay so dear and you dearest you are so cold and you'll bring me to my grave with your coldness and in no time too I don't know but it seems to me you told Elizabeth I slept in Hoza and she makes a mock of me and I don't care a fig for I am daft for your love no one won't cure me and no one can't it's too late I loved you when I saw you first and shall till my life ends and so long as I don't put an end to it and w^ho will make me do that but you Stephen mv dearest pet and sweetheart.
"I end this scrawl of mine throwing away my pen crying my eyes out and dying of hunger for that blessed Sunday.
"Your unhappy or rather love-sick
Hela."
Quite aware that I am doing wrong, I let Martha look back into her past; and I even question her myself so as to bring before her eyes the long dismal perspective of her wounded love. I listen in the manner she likes best, calmly and without any show of compassion. Nor have I any for her, any more than for a fish that must needs live in cold water, or for a bat that cannot bear the sunlight. Martha likes to suffer, and—perhaps for this very reason—she is compelled to suffer. Indeed, she is something of a Sybarite in her almost abnormal sensitiveness to pain. She is fond of telling me all the petty foolish troubles of an injured wife; and this procures her an odd sense of what may be called a sort of enjoyment.
"But, all the same, there was a time once when he loved you, did he not?"
"Oh, Witold declares that up to now he has loved none but me!"
"Well, well; but then at what time did this—the present phase begin? For some time at least, he must have been faithful to you."
"Oh, yes, for a few months. Quite at the beginning. Though I myself was never happy. … First of all, during the six ​weeks before our wedding, I was constantly a prey to such mystic terrors that I came near losing my senses. You know that I do not admit any of those hackneyed maxims of morality—and yet I continually felt that some evil thing was afoot, and a day of reckoning close at hand. And besides, how intolerable then was the thought that now I had to marry him, however averse I might feel to the act; that now I had more at stake upon my side than he on his!"
"And afterwards, by the seaside?"
"Oh, then it was entrancing! I almost felt happy. But it lasted so short a time! Shortly after our arrival I fell sick, and grew unwieldy and weakly and plain. And then, if you can believe me, surrounded with all those marvels of nature and of art, I was always longing for Klosow, my own place!"
After a silence of a few minutes, she went on:
"I saw a drawing by Brenner. It was always in my thoughts; a woman who had died after an operation, stretched on a table, stark and stiff. There was a man bending over her, mourning; his hair was like Witold's. And another picture, showing the tragedy of ​motherhood: a young mother has just breathed her last; on her bosom sits a naked child, a loathsome idiot, looking out at life with wide open, bewildered, lack-lustre eyes. I can't help fancying that Orcio resembles that child."
With a sudden abrupt movement, she rang for the man-servant.
"Ask the nurse why the child is not in bed yet. I hear it making a noise. Tell her she must put it to bed. Or else take it farther away from this room."
When the servant had gone out, I said to her:
"Why, what made you speak so angrily to him."
"Really, I cannot recognize myself any more: my nerves are so horribly unstrung." … And she sank into a sombre reverie.
"Tell me more," I said, to draw her out.
"More? Well, I was not so badly ofif then. We took delight in the blue sky, in the murmuring green sea, and in our all but absolute solitude. Witold was ever by my side, tender and kind—masking with his exquisite courtesy the disgust I must have made him feel. Why, for myself I myself often felt pity ​and aversion; I who had never before been other than graceful all my life.
"Then things went worse. … Listen; but it is too much for me just now."
"Then don't talk of it, Martha."
"Ah! what does it matter after all? If I could forget … but I can't.
"A few weeks before George's birth, Witold for the first time spent the night away from home. I sat up all the time, and looked out through the window over the sea. Ah, that night!
"The servants had gone to bed long before. There was a great storm, with boisterous gusts of wind: and I gave ear to the never-ceasing roar of the waves. You know what a visionary I am. I at once fancied Witold must have been sailing in a boat to the farther shore of the bay, and gone down to the bottom of the sea. I was horribly alarmed for his sake; and for a time, not an inkling of the truth flashed upon my mind. The horror of my fancy came over me so strongly that I quite forgot all about his past. … For I believed with faith unbounded in his immense love for me, and should have scouted, as a ridiculous notion, the idea of his possibly ​being unfaithful. I was out of my mind with terror. I counted the hours that went by, in agonized expectation, surrounded with the dark cloudy night, and hearing the terrific howling and rolling of the winds and waves. … Ah, that night!
"In the morning he came in.
"With the mien of a youthful page, he doffed his hat to the ground in a courtly bow, and stood motionless in my presence, humble, clasping his hands: then, in a soft sweet voice somewhat broken by emotion, he said, in an accent of dismay:
"'Ah! my lady, I am afraid, greatly afraid!'
"'I did not rush to welcome him, nor did I cry out aloud: I felt too weak for any display of joy. But at that first instant, in the sole knowledge that he was living, an infinite intensity of quiet and fathomless and endless bliss flooded my heart: and I was minded to exclaim, like Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre, 'Rabboni: which is to say, Master!'
"And then up rose the sun!
"He had never before appeared so admirable to me, as in that attitude of a page of Mediæval times, and with the playful humility of his bright smile; he had never yet been ​so loved by me, so dear beyond all measure. No, I had never been so glad in all my life as in this one short instant of consolation!
"And yet they say that women have intuitive minds!
"I was as it were caught and suspended in an aërial cobweb that stretched over an abyss of waters; and there I gazed upon the golden glitter of the morning landscape now that the tempest was over—gazed into the blue and shimmering stillness. Beneath me, under the bridge of hanging gossamer, rolled the sombre sea of dread and death; before me rose the sea of life, crimson and blood-red in hue. But I—I saw nothing there, save the dawn and the sunshine."
Here she broke off, closed her eyes, and, resting her head on the arm of her easy-chair, remained some time plunged in the contemplation of that past scenery, all azure and gold. I let her rest so for a while, and then, rousing her:
"Well, and what then?" said I.
She knit her brows slightly.
"Then, ah! then! It was a mere idle question, for I troubled about nothing now that I ​had him again; but I asked him what he had been doing all night.
"'Oh, but I am in fear, in such fear of you,' he said, smiling, kneeling down before me, and clasping his hand—so! You know the gesture well; it is almost the embodiment of child-like humility.
"'Oh, what?'
"'I want you to promise you will not be angry with me.'
"I was suddenly torn with a sharp misgiving.
"'No, do not tell me, Witold,' I whispered.
"But he was unable to conceal anything from me. All he said in excuse was that I ought to pardon everything, by reason of his great love; that no woman could ever snatch from me the place which I held in his heart. That he had not been truly unfaithful, since his true and only love had always been with me; I was the only woman that his soul loved, and not his senses. … It is ever the same: stretch out your hands for life, and Death will come to you!"
"And what did you do?"
"In the first moments I did not understand ​all. He again and again said he loved me a hundred times more than ever before; I was the only woman, so pure, so ideal … and I could not make out what he meant. But my hands, when touched by his lips, grew cold as ice.
"He was frightened, and tried to soothe me; said he would never do it any more; it was not properly his fault, he had been overtaken with wine: and besides, she—she was indeed most beautiful.
"At the bare memory, I saw his eyes flash bright. Oh, he is a connoisseur in women!
"And then, at last, I understood it all; and I thought (believe me, with the utmost sincerity): 'Why, rather than this, has he not been drowned in the depths of the sea?'
"A mist came before my eyes: I rubbed them to see clear. Then a sudden pain clutched at my heart and made me writhe with torture. I fainted; when I came to, I was seized with fits of hysteria. In short, I made all the scenes that the typical 'injured wife' is wont to make.
"Then, at the time when George came, I was dangerously ill. Witold did not admit that he had done me wrong, nor did he come ​near me all the time. Later, he justified himself by saying that he could have been of no use, and was himself far too sensitive to bear the sight of suffering.
"Finally, when all danger was over, and Orcio was making the house ring with the noise he made, there was the same night over again; and he was again 'a little flushed with wine,' and 'guilty of no offense'; again I was 'his only love.' And later, the same scene was repeated over and over, and at shorter intervals. And this day … it is just as usual. …
"And now I am looking into the very bottom of my soul. Have you ever seen it? An open coffin, in which there are no worms, there is no corruption. Only patches of colour, continually fading and changing and reviving, and forming lovely, lovely stars—just as in a kaleidoscope. And these hues glisten like the scales of a serpent which rolls and coils itself in ecstasy."
A smile passed over her face. Then she gave a long shudder and closed her eyes fast. Starting up on a sudden, she joined her hands behind her bare and shapely neck.
"If you knew, Janka," she whispered, "if ​you only knew how I love him! If you knew how I am longing for him every moment when he is away! If you knew how fondly, how wildly, how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!"
Madame Wildenhofif does not belong to the class of women that Martha was speaking of. I think that, were it not for her intrigue with Imszanski, even Martha herself might acknowledge her as a "complete woman." One may, however, be a complete woman, and yet not a complete human being. We are not yet in the habit of distinguishing these two ideas, as we distinguish between "human being" and "man." The part of a human being is one so seldom played by a woman—they have so few opportunities of doing so—that we expect their womanliness to comprise the whole of humanity. Nor do we realize how much we lower woman by such an expectation.
Now, as a woman, Madame Wildenhoff is complete, although her human nature cannot be said to be rich.
Her life, which she told me with the utmost frankness, has not been wanting in colour. ​The daughter of a rich land-owner, she was not yet sixteen when she crossed the frontier to elope with a neighbour over forty, and with whom she was not even in love! The whole affair came about quite by chance. She was the friend of his daughter, whom (though he was not in favour of religious education for women) he had decided to send to a convent in France: and the parents of Lola had asked him, since the two girls had made their studies together from the very beginning, to take their daughter with him as well. This man, having put his own daughter into the care of the nuns, asked Lola whether, instead of poring over books in a convent, she would not like to go with him to Italy. She very readily agreed to what she considered as a most natural plan. After a few months had elapsed, she threw him over for a very handsome Italian, who afterwards turned out to be a Parisian Jew. After a good many other such experiences, her parents, as a last resort, took legal measures to find her. This time they actually placed her in a convent: and there, during three years of penance, her outlook upon life took definite shape.
Her father at length relented, and allowed ​her to return home, for the family had given up country life altogether, and now resided in town. There, before the year was out, she entered the married state.
Her first lover was Wartoslawski, who died some time ago; Gina Wartoslawska, whom I have mentioned, is his daughter.
No long period elapsed ere Madame Wildenhoff became unfaithful to her husband: but he, from the height of his silent scepticism, looks down with scornful amenity upon her "flirtation." It may even be that he does not dislike this state of things.
One child, a daughter, has been born of the marriage. She is two years older than Orcio; and Madame Wildenhoff has for her the greatest care and the tenderest maternal love.
I went to call upon her to-day, in the place of Martha, who is constantly unwell. She was by herself; for Wildenhoff, of course, like all husbands of his kind, either was no longer at home, or had not yet come back.
She tried to interest me by talking, as her custom is, about herself.
"My outward appearance, when all is said in its favour that can be said, is insufficient ​to explain the extraordinary success I have all my life had with men. My only ability—call it an art if you like—consists in influencing men by an appeal to their lower natures. That is the only way to succeed with them: for all of them are mere animals—all!"
She offered me some fruit, taking up the vase containing it with the gesture of a "hetaira" of old days, presenting a goblet of golden wine.
"You see," she said, "I am an epicure. I want to get as much as I can out of life, and I know how to get it. With nothing but champagne and songs and flowers life would pall upon me very soon; so I like now and then to get the atmosphere of an 'At Home': for instance, with the Imszanskis. As to her, I don't know whether she is really purer than the atmosphere of a private supper-room: at all events, her style of corruption is peculiar—more Gothic—and the virus is more skilfully inoculated. I like to take a rest, and spend some quiet evenings in my family circle, teach little Sophy her alphabet, or pass sleepless nights in penance and vigil and sombre meditations. After which, I may perform a sudden 'pirouette', Paris style, and ​blow from afar a farewell kiss to husband, Sophy, mamma, grandmamma—and virtue!"
She laughed merrily.
"The future of the nations is not what I am looking forward to. No, I am resolved to get for myself the greatest possible amount of happiness, under the circumstances in which I am placed. … You will say I am a mere product of environment; well, let it be so. But mind: the way I live harms no one. If I am contented, so is my husband, and so are my admirers as well."
"And their wives too?" I hazarded.
"Well, but is it my fault if they are fools? Now, I'll tell you what. Never have I taken a man from a woman he loved. I am not of those whose sole aim is to make difficult conquests."
She added, after a pause:
"For ever so long (and that you must surely know) Imszanski has been quite indifferent to his wife."
Just then the bell rang in the antechamber. Madame Wildenhoff gave a start, then burst into a fit of laughter. In that laugh of hers, I find something peculiarly interesting; but I cannot guess what. ​
I rose to bid her farewell.
"Why, what are you running away for? It is only Gina. I like to see two clever, handsome women together; a thing which, I must tell you, very seldom happens."
Gina came in with her customary smileless greeting, and as usual called for a glass of water. Then she set to look through certain albums, scattered about the table. Her figure, perfectly faultless in style, stood out like a sort of anachronism on the background of that florid middle-class drawing-room. In the light one could see that her eyebrows and lashes were golden, and her wavy hair of a dark auburn hue, falling in a dishevelled mass on to her shoulders as she bent forward.
Madame Wildenhoff attempted to lead the conversation towards topics of general interest.
She began by the rights of women, and their failure to understand what emancipation really signifies. Gina speaks little, but belongs, like Madame Wildenhoff, to the category of those that are emancipated in every sense of the word. As a matter of fact, her intended husband is her paramour, and ​she has not the slightest intention ever to become his wife.
I have for some time noticed that she is possessed with a spirit of contradiction. In presence of people who have some certain definite convictions, she always takes the opposite side: this possibly in order to produce a more striking effect by the sharp contrast of tones. This attitude called up in my mind certain reminiscences from out of atavistic past. I began to talk about the gradual extinction of individual monogamistic women, of the eroticism which has soaked our democracies through and through, of the necessity for a class of courtesans, that the type of those women who care for something besides love intrigues may be preserved, and other nonsense of similar nature.
Gina only looked at me with a drowsy smile; but Madame Wildenhoff took up the cudgels with a sort of enthusiasm. A curious thing: her talk is not unlike Martha's, though their natures are very far asunder indeed.
"Men are endowed by nature with a sense of equilibrium: so long as they are in the prime of life, they live and love and laugh at plain and virtuous women. Car il faut que ​jeunesse se passe. They therefore require what may be called the 'brute-woman'; a woman who laughs and glitters and shines for a few years, till she ages: then of course she withdraws from the arena, regretting that 'she ever followed such a path.' It is only after men have sown their wild oats that the animal dies out of them, and there wakes up—a plebeian, or a thinker, or a father, or a citizen; and then he stretches out his hands towards what we may call the 'human woman.' Then comes the triumph of her who respects herself; her day of victory has dawned, she is at last 'appreciated,' which is to say remunerated for her virtue with that famous respect which is never given to those of the other class. True, the intellectuals may complain sometimes that men will not acknowledge them as mentally their equals; but the foolish ones will be honoured by their husbands' friendship and confidence; and the good mothers will have no aim or happiness in life beyond the bringing up of children: while they each and all either look down upon the 'brute-woman' or regard them with philanthropic compassion."
"Poor things!" Gina exclaimed; "they do ​not know that the tragic excitement of a single night may be perhaps worth more than a whole existence passed in such torpid apathy as theirs."
To-day there is some festival or other. I have not gone to the office, and have been sitting all the morning at Martha's bedside, who is not to get up until the afternoon. She is as usual always complaining, her sad eyes gazing into mine.
"Janka, I can no longer sleep a wink. Last night it was twelve before I ceased tossing on my pillow. Like a child, I cried myself to sleep at last: and when I woke, it was no later than three o'clock."
She crossed behind her head her lacedecked arms, and looked out into space with infinite wistfulness.
Then she continued in a low voice: "I cannot imagine why my former life in Klosow now comes back to me so very vividly. I remember how sometimes I used to rise early on a winter morning, when it was still dark, and how I dressed by lamplight, shivering with cold, and fighting down my longing to go back to my warm bed. Then I would put ​on a huge fur, and take the keys, and go to the farm with a lantern in my hand. Do you know, all this is present to me now, just like a vision? And then I remember the far-off fields, lying fallow beneath the snow, and stretching away even to the verge of the horizon, under the sky in which the stars were beginning to grow pale. I remember the farm buildings, vague dark spots upon the landscape, the forests like streaks of violet, the grey fences, and the delicate tracery of the leafless garden trees. And now through the darkness there come sounds: the clattering of tin pails, and the faint drowsy calling of the maids to one another. Oh, and I remember well the cold, the lusty, fresh, piercing cold, making the teeth clatter in one's head. And then, the close warmth of the cow-byres, and the low black-raftered ceiling overhead; the outlines of the solemn-looking cows and sleepy milkmaids, the bright circles of the lanterns on the floor, and the quaint broken shadows on the beams and girders above; the milk stream rhythmically into the pails, the indolent lowing of the kine, and the jingling sound of the chain that bound the savage steer to the crib. … You remember the cat, ​too—our cat? Don't you: so sharp of wit, following us everywhere like a dog? All that's so far off, so irrevocably gone! Oh, I tell you, I would give more than my life, if I could but see one such morning return—only one such bleak and dark and frosty morning, and I were now as I was then!…"
She turned her cheek to the pillow, and shed tears.
"Martha, your nerves are again in a very poor state. If you like, I shall go with you to Klosow; and we shall spend Christmas there together, and enjoy a few idyllic days as of old."
"Oh, no, Janka ; they would only be the miserable ghosts of times that are past for ever. That stupid, clubby-faced woman, Janusz's wife, would get on my nerves so; besides, the thought that Witold would be staying here with Madame Wildenhoff, and glad I was away!
"But," she added with a sudden revival of spirits, "do you know, I fancy her triumph will be over pretty soon? It is true that Witold was never very much attached to her: but now it would seem that his affections are strongly engaged elsewhere." ​
"Are they?" I asked, much interested: for I recalled Lipka and my unexpected meeting with Imszanski there.
"Did he tell you anything?"
"Oh, he is simply ridiculous—so hopelessly frank with me. He never will spare me any details, and holds it in some sort as a duty to conceal nothing from me. …"
She laughed bitterly, and at once looked sullen again.
"Yesterday, before you came home from the office, I asked Witold all about her. She is some star of the Parisian demi-monde, who has made up her mind to get an engagement at any price on the stage here: and Witold is expected, on account of his influence in Warsaw, to obtain a fixed situation for her. It appears that her voice is tolerable, and her outward appearance marvellous: he has described her to me in every particular. It was, I assure you, one of the most emotional experiences I ever went through."
She closed her eyes, to intensify the image that she was forming in her mind.
"The woman is tall, and seemingly of spare proportions: but only seemingly so. Her bony framework is exceedingly slight and ​reed-like: so you see, Janka, on close inquiry she is found not to be really thin."
As she spoke, she turned upon her pillow, tearing at its satin covering with her nails, and striving to swallow down her tears of rage.
I could not contain myself.
"Why on earth does he tell you about such things? He must be a monster."
"There are a great many things that he never can understand—what I told you seems but the merest trifle to him."
She took a spoonful of bromide, and continued:
"You must know that he tells me she has large oval-shaped eyes, with extremely long lashes—eyes of an unfathomable black, in very striking contrast with her voluptuous mouth; always sorrowful, dreamy, and with a far-away look, like the beggar-maid loved by King Cophetua. She has also much originality, something like an odalisque, and uniting the primitiveness of a mountain goat with all the cultured grace of a maid of honour at a royal court."
This, after the elimination of certain exaggerated points, was easily recognizable as the description of that fair French-woman ​whom I had seen at Lipka's. And now I understood why Imszanski had shown himself so very full of courtesy toward Czolhanski. The latter, as a theatrical critic, may be useful to him.
"She dresses, it appears, most superbly, with all the magnificence of Babylonian times: golden combs and strings of pearls in her hair; in her ears, rings of the greatest price. Moreover, she is a very miracle of depravity. Witold smiled as he told me so, with an inward look, as though recalling some particular.
"As he told me so, he smiled; and I too smiled, listening with the blandest interest. He looked at me attentively, kissed my hand, and said:
"'Your nerves are better now, I see. How glad I am! You have no idea. You have at last realized that to feel jealous of a cocotte would be unworthy of you.'
"'Why, of course. Yes, yes; I am all right now.' And yet, Janka, I never felt it so deeply; I never saw things with such awful clearness of vision. And alas! I never, never yet loved Witold with such passionate love. ​
"But, more than him, I love that pain which I feel. …"
She rose in bed, as if to repel something that was weighing her down; then she sat propped up by her cushions and pillows.
"Do you imagine that in all this I had any idea of revengeful pleasure at Mme. Wildenhoff's disappointment, and for that reason made him tell me what he did? Not in the least. I wanted to drink my fill of pain; as in Spain they wave a red flag in bull-fights before the bloodshot eyes of the poor brute, to make him yet madder with rage and despair, so I wished to excite myself to the same delirious state.
"I do not wish for anything that can diminish the intensity of my anguish, I hate whatever could mitigate or deaden it. I love to gloat over the raw bleeding wounds, bare and unbandaged. …"
At that moment, the nurse tapped at the door, to ask whether Orcio might not come in to bid his mother good morning.
"No—no! shut the door! I will have no one here! Janka, you have not the least idea how I hate my son." ​
At Lipka's to-night: and this time in a private room. Mme. Wildenhoff talked at great length, somewhat to the following effect:
"There is in reality only one kind of perfect love—that of the brute creation; indeliberate, irreflective love, wherein victory is to the strongest and most beautiful ; the pure reproductive instinct, unalloyed by any culture or mental analysis whatsoever. But we—we, who are civilized—unfortunately look down upon this sort of love. For we have reckoned, with quasi-mathematical exactitude, how much of love should be taken, and how much rejected, in order to get the greatest possible sum of quintessential delight. And thence has sprung quite a new type of love: instinct which has emancipated itself from obedience to the laws of nature—love with its chief motive, preservation of the species, eliminated. Now love of the kind I have spoken of generally receives the epithet of bestial ; whereas on the contrary it is most specially the outcome of refinement."
"It appears among nations at the epoch of their highest evelopment, and is the harbinger of their speedy decline," remarked Czolhanski, with solemn dignity. ​
"What does it matter? Après nous le déluge!"
"And to what class would you assign conjugal love?" asked Owinski. Gina, who had silently disposed her lithe, snake-like, supple figure on a little sofa, looked round with astonishment at her fiancé.
"Oh, we may call it love of a third type," answered Madame Wildenhofif: "love sanctioned by law, the union of two souls in friendship, and the bringing forth of rachitic off-spring: an abnormal combination of brute and human love."
"Do you then, Madame," urged Owinski, "perceive no good points in marriage?"
"None whatever," she replied with a bland smile, "because—and this reason alone would suffice me—because I hate marriage with all my heart. It has been and is the aim of my life to blast marriage, whenever I can succeed in doing so. Between the happiest and most moral couples—those in which one of the two, the husband or the wife, leads a profligate life, and the other knows nothing of it—I bring the dissolving element, enlightenment, and rejoice when I see the couples fall apart." ​
Here she bent aside toward her husband's chair, and said to him in an affectionate and audible whisper:
"But we are a pattern couple, are we not?"
This time, Imszanski went home with me. I overheard Czolhanski say, on taking leave of him: "You may rely upon me absolutely; I will manage everything."
It has been terribly cold, and now there is a thaw. At such times, I love to wander up and down the avenues in the park, which then are completely deserted.
My nostrils inhale that peculiar scent of bare moist earth, and the effluvium from the buds as yet invisible; and I muse upon those incomparable and marvellously beautiful things that have never been realized.
On the yellow background of dry dead grass, there appeared in the distance a young man to whom, as to myself, loneliness was no doubt pleasant, and who enjoyed walking along the avenues oversprinkled with last year's fallen leaves.
He came up with me, and on passing by, looked keenly into my eyes, and with something of astonishment. ​
I did not return his glance, but walked more slowly, so as to lag behind him.
The young man stopped presently, and waited until I came up; then he passed by me again with a protracted stare.
This manoeuvre was repeated several times. Presently I was seized with an unaccountable desire to burst into a fit of nervous laughter, which I smothered down as best I could. At any rate, I had the full control of my eyes, the expression of which was mere indifference and disdain. Presently I looked him steadily in the face, to stare him out of countenance; so that he could see my attitude to be unmistakably hostile.
"But why," I was thinking all the time, "why should I look upon him—this handsome slender stripling—as my foe? He certainly does not mean to harm me in any way; his interest is simply aroused in finding a person who has the same taste for solitude as himself, whilst he naturally has a friendly feeling towards a good-looking woman."
The young fellow, at first kindly disposed, was nettled by the look of hostility in my eyes. He came up close to me, with a flippant ​laugh, and said in an ironical tone of sympathy:
"I would give anything in reason to know what sorrows of the heart have driven you to take so very romantic a walk as this."
I was silent, and knit my brows.
"Souls that pine in loneliness," he went on, as sarcastic as before, "ought to comfort each other, I think: don't you?"
There was a pause, as we walked side by side.
"But why knit those fair eyebrows so? Oh, really, you frighten me. … Such malignant eyes! Come, come, I shall do you no harm; why be so cantankerous?"
In a rage and turning my back on him, I walked swiftly away. He made no attempt to follow. On arriving at the gate, where I was safe at last, I looked round. He was standing where he had stood before, and from afar waving me with bared head a graceful farewell.
The incident mortified and abashed me. I had behaved like a silly goose, narrow-minded and ill-tempered; I had spoiled a situation that might have had pleasant or ​curious developments. Why on earth had I done so?
Was this, again, only a matter of form? The necessity of that regular introduction, so dear to the bourgeoisie, in a drawing-room where two persons are made acquainted with each other by a third? Or was it not rather that dread—now a part of our life—the instinctive dread of things as they are, the eternal need of playing the part of a besieged fort, which defends itself stubbornly in order to surrender on the best terms possible?
As I came out of the park, a carriage driven at full speed passed by me; I saw a couple of feathers and a good deal of fur. Suddenly the coachman pulled up, and Mme. Wildenhoff jumped out and came towards me.
"Ah! how delighted I am to meet you! You won't get away from me this time. Pray step in: I must make a regular woman of you."
"With pleasure: but what's the matter?"
"You shall hear."
We got in. Mme. Wildenhoff gave the man orders to drive slowly.
"Quite a warm day!" she observed. … ​"Well, you see, I have one idée fixe, at least that's what my husband calls it."
"And that is? &hellip"
"Ah, what a coincidence to have met you, of whom I was just thinking!"
"Very good, but what do you want me for?"
"Wait a bit; I must begin at the beginning.
"Let me tell you that I consider it a most important point that we should, in the cause of Woman, meet and come to an understanding with women of so-called 'loose character.' And, in particular, enter into social relations with them. It is indeed an eccentricity on my part; but I enjoy stemming and making head against the current."
"It may lead to curious developments," I said.
"You are perfectly right. In the first place, we must all of us get to understand our community of interests. The social boycott which the whole demi-monde has to undergo, is a real civil war waged by women against one another; a weakening of our powers, to which men not only do not object, but which they also tend to aggravate. It is they who make 'those dreadful creatures, bereft of a conscience,' responsible for all the transgressions ​which they themselves commit: so that the fury of jealousy which their mothers and their wives, actual or intended, would otherwise pour out upon their heads, is all transformed into a feeling of hatred against such women. It is undoubtedly a very clever bit of tactics on their part; but we ought not to let ourselves be taken in so easily; we should all close our ranks and join shoulder to shoulder to fight the common foe."
"But what if those women hate us more than we do them?"
"That they do, is true; but it is only because they believe us to be happier than they are. We have to dispel this egregious delusion; we must let them know that we feel our wrongs as keenly as they do theirs; that we recognize them as our companions in womanhood, as sharers in our common humanity. … It is because we do nothing that such a falsehood has been able to take such strong root.
"We should join with them, for they are our necessary complement: not only so, but mingle with them without endeavouring to intensify the difference between us and them by trying, in so far as we can, to deprive our ​souls of those immense fields of womanliness, and renounce to our own detriment the glamour of frivolity and of frailty. There must be a thorough fusion ; and it is only by such levelling down that we shall arrive at the synthesis of womanhood: a new type, a complete type, in which the only difference observable will be those of individuals, not of avocations."
"All that's very fine, but where are you taking me?"
"I am coming to that. I am just paying a formal visit to an excourtesan, a Mme. Wieloleska—formerly Mary tout court, for I don't know her family name. And I absolutely want you to come along: with me."
"But … is she possible?"
"Quite; you may believe me. She takes everything as a matter of course, and will be much pleased to receive you. … Only you will have to behave exactly as if she were Wieloleski's real wife."
"What? then they are not married?"
"The idea! The man has a wife and five children somewhere down in the country. … And that woman has got such a hold on him that he won't stir so much as one step ​from her side. … You must take a look at their place. … She was formerly quite a common demi-mondaine, though well spoken of."
"And how did you get to know her?"
"Oh, she's an old acquaintance, made by means of Imszanski."
The carriage had stopped in front of an ornamental gateway, leading to a handsome suburban villa, screened from view to some extent by a tracery of branches and tree-trunks, and in a frame of towering fir-trees.
As I went up the broad white steps at the entrance, I felt my heart beat, and could not tell exactly why. Perhaps at the fancy which then came to me, that I might, within those very doors, come face to face with the naked, dark, and horrible mystery of Life!
An elderly and very stylish footman raised the door-hanging to usher us into a large sitting-room, conventionally furnished à la sécession.
In a few minutes there entered a very tall, slim, lady-like person, quietly dressed in a clinging morning gown, somewhat like a riding-habit, and followed by a little white lamb, ​which came treading stiffly and sometimes funnily sliding along the polished floor.
Mme. Mary welcomed Mme. Wildenhoff with smiling effusion.
"I have come to call upon you with a friend of mine: Miss Dernowicz, Mme. Wieloleska," she said, introducing me. "I trust you will have no objection; I wanted to show her your greenhouse very much."
"Indeed, my dear Madame, but you are doing me a pleasure. I feel so bored in this solitude, where I see nobody at all. All day long, my husband is in the greenhouse or pottering about the hotbeds; he has engaged a new gardener from Haarlem, and it is quite out of the question getting him anywhere out of doors. If you care, we shall have a look at the greenhouse at once. I tell you, if it were not for my books and studies, I really might be tempted to make away with myself."
"And why should you not take a walk sometimes? The weather is splendid just now."
"Oh, no! My husband won't go out; and it would not be proper for a woman to go out alone. You know how uncharitable people are." ​
"And what may you be studying, Madame?" I asked.
"Pretty nearly everything possible," she replied, laughing. "I take at least five hours of lessons daily. One of my professors only just left the house: he is giving me a course of University lessons on the ancient literature of India. Since a week, too, I have been learning to read hieroglyphics. … Haven't you made a study of them? … They are very interesting. … One is carried away—other lands, other times. … And I am so curious about everything in the world. … But I am best in languages. It is so extremely important to be able to read every writer in the original."
"For you must know," put in Mme. Wildenhoff, "that Mme. Mary is a well-known linguist."
"Indeed?"
"Ah," she said, smiling modestly, "it all comes to me so easily. At the present time, I am proficient in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian. This year I am learning the Finnish and Japanese languages. I have, moreover, read Homer and Virgil in the original Greek ​and Latin. Not one hundredth part of their marvellous beauties can be rendered in a translation : and I am so sensitive to the Beautiful. … !"
"Do you know?" she broke off, turning towards Mme. Wildenhoff, "I have at last managed to satisfy my husband that we must positively take a trip to Algeria. And that will have to be in a few weeks: it is too hot there in summer. … Ah! you can't think how hard it is to get him away from those flowers of his; he loves them so dearly!"
I examined Mme. Wieloleska with careful scrutiny. Her face is pale and surrounded with scanty locks of fair hair; her eyes, small, greyish and expressionless, and bordered with a faint pink hue, are continually in motion to and fro; she has a tiny nose with rounded nostrils, and a full, rather bloodless mouth, now and then moving with a quick twitch, like a child making a wry face; and with all that she is attractive. Her talkativeness, her tuneless voice, and a certain carelessness in her manner, correct one's first impression that she is pretentious, and give the effect of a schoolgirl désinvolture, rather than the effrontery of a bona-roba. ​
She stooped to caress her pet lamb, which had lain down at her feet in a posture that suggested careful training. Then she rose, saying: "Perhaps we may now go and look at the place."
On our way to the conservatory, ve had to pass through several rooms and galleries full of pictures. On the right, we saw a work-room, with bright jets of gas burning, though the night had not yet fallen. Several girls were there, busily bending over tambour frames.
"These are my little ones," said Mme. Wieloleska, smiling at them. "Unfortunately, I have no children myself, so I have undertaken to bring up these girls."
"What are they about here?"
"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 ​—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.
"On this point, I cannot agree with you. ​Those who dispute the right of property take no account of the reality of things. Immemorial custom has made the right of property as much a 'category of thought' as Space is, or Time."
Mary, who was just behind us, interrupted him: "Oh, Edmund is reading you a lecture already, I hear. My dear, you had better come and flirt with Mme. Lola, and I'll take Miss Janina with me."
She came and put her arm round my waist, saying that she liked me very much indeed. This I answered with an indulgent smile, always suitable when women pay compliments to women.
She felt that this was not the way to win me, so she set to talk about literature.
"There are some books," she said, "in which I find a rest, and which enable me to escape from reality altogether. And that's why I can't bear such authors—Zola, for instance—as bring dirt which ought to revolt any delicate mind, into a sphere where poetry alone should reign supreme."
I hazarded another objection here.
"Do you not think that the first step ​towards healing the ulcers of society is to lay them bare?"
"Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself, there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into contact with them. … No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short sweet moments when it is possible to dream?"
She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work, ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt of her dress.
"Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he not?" she asked, after a short silence. "Alas! there is no one, with ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the existence of God—and all the rest of it.
"But we can at any rate respect the poetry which religion contains, and the feelings of those who have not as yet lost their faith: is it not so?" ​
"Certainly," I replied with the utmost gravity.
"Well, the Bible which I could not go to sleep without reading, and out of which I read portions daily instead of my prayers, is that book of legends by Voragine. … Do you know it?"
"Oh, yes," I assented, "the Golden Legend"
"Oh, what a world of poetry there is in it! What treasures of freshness and simplicity of feeling!"
"Well, I say! if they are all of her kidney!" was all I remarked to Mme. Wildenhoff, as I returned with her after our half-hour's call at Wieloleski's. I felt a good deal bored, and mused over the meaning of the well-known aphorism:
Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille.
For some time Imszanski has been spending his evenings at home! He either goes out later in the evening, or not at all, and Martha's hopes are reviving within her; but I do not take this conversion of his very seriously.
We three sit together frequently; now and ​then Czolhanski and Owinski, or Rosuchowski drop in.
One peculiarity about Owinski is the continual vague absent look in his eyes, caused by his extremely short sight. He cannot see two paces in front of him, and distinguishes people by their voices only. His facial muscles are in constant play; and he never smiles but with set teeth. He is very far indeed from being good-looking; yet I do not wonder at Gina's loving him to distraction.
Witold has been pleased to take me as his confidante now. He is probably feeling compunction for his recent behaviour, somewhat late in the day.
Life, taken in general, is a barren waste. His theory of love does not permit him to hold innocent those delusions of the senses which are usually termed "bits of love-making," though in reality, they and love have nothing in common. They are then evil; but they have become necessary evils, to which men have in the course of ages completely accustomed themselves; evils from which women—he means of course those of the better classes—are free, and against which they ought to be guarded with the utmost care. ​By means of this reasoning, he considers his relations with Martha to be all they should be; for he always endeavoured to spare her, and to preserve her high ideals, and her feelings of purity.
I could not help smiling as he said this, knowing as I did how little his intention had been realized.
But now he too seems to be tiring of the life he leads—this howling wilderness of a life. "These w^omen are so shallow, so mindless, so fatuous! Their own looseness of morals is the key-note which decides every one of their acts."
I could now shrewdly guess what his drift was.
"Take, for instance, Mme. Wildenhoff. She enjoys a change of—affections—once a month. That's her business: but why the devil does she bring in Philosophy and Sociology, and Emancipation? The thing she does is as old as the hills, and why trouble about her and women like her?"
I had long ago made the remark that men object to women who argue. On the other hand, they rate their souls very high indeed. Now, Witold confesses, it is the soul—the ​soul alone, the soul at any price—that he wants to have.
Who knows whether he will not again become a faithful husband to Martha?
I dislike all colourless people. And I dislike myself along with them, since I find I am growing more and more colourless day by day. I feel out of sympathy with my own type of character: I am ordinary. I have had enough of my life; more than enough of it.
How terribly I am craving now for some one who shall tell me—and tell me incessantly—that I am good-looking and clever and original in mind, that I dress nicely and move gracefully.
For though at this moment I am quite satisfied that none of these things are so: yet, if I were told so this day, I should at once believe it to be true.
I am in pain. At times I feel a special need of saying all that I think. At times it is so hard to wear a mask. … And I want some sympathy. …
I was at the Wildenhoff's to-day, and had a talk with Witold. I cannot conceive how it ​came about, but on a sudden I found I was saying too much—or rather, speaking too much to the point.
Finding the position I had taken up was too advanced and too much exposed, I decided to beat a retreat.
"But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?" I asked.
On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.
"In that all I have told you is untrue &hellip and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life's cloudless philosophy."
"And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don't know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me."
At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.
"Why has not Martha been here to-day?" she asked. "We have not seen her for ever so long." ​
"She meant to come but she is continually a victim to sick headaches."
"Ah, yes, those sick headaches," she remarked sympathizingly. "They are so very hard to get rid of!"
Presently she asked if I would come and look at a beautiful screen, a birthday gift for her, painted by Gina. Imszanski remained where he was.
I asked Mme. Wildenhoff why Owinski was not present.
"Really, I cannot say," was her answer. "He was to come: but it is rather late."
"I noticed that Gina was very much out of sorts to-day."
"Yes, and I must say that I feel rather uneasy about her. There is something here that I cannot at all understand, and I love the girl. … Owinski is perpetually wool-gathering; he is a man you cannot rely upon. … He strikes me as one who would be deaf to any remonstrances, any reproaches. … He is a typical poet. …"
"Then it may be that Gina is wrong in holding ofif from marriage with the man."
"Marriage? A fine thing that would be! She is surely wealthy enough to do without ​it. … Marriage!" she added, not without a touch of pride. "Of what use was it in Imszanski's case, I beg?"
She just looked into a mirror, hanging opposite her bed, and then swiftly glanced over me from head to foot. The comparison between us must have been not unpleasant, for ishe at once became more cheerful and friendly.
"My dear Miss Janina, Gina's is a nature far too artistic for marriage. No one who can paint like that would ever make a husband of her sweetheart. Pardon me; the thing is absolutely out of the question. … Look at those flowers; with what grace she has dashed them off!"
"They are certainly exquisite. But did you notice how extraordinary an interest Owinski took in what you were saying about marriage last Thursday?"
"Yes, oh, yes; I remember. … But I can't suppose he is thinking of marrying any one else. … No, that is surely impossible."
She was at once in a state of great excitement.
"Look here. Now that marriage is no more than a contract, assuring to the wife board ​and lodging for self and offspring, and to the husband a woman in permanency, always at home and on the qui vive; now that a bachelor cannot marry until he has achieved a position in the world, so that a marrying man who is not bald sounds like a contradictio in adjecto,—marriage amounts in principle to the same as prostitution, whereas its every particular is yet more shocking."
"I am afraid I don't quite follow you."
"Why, the thing is as clear as clear can be. A courtesan makes only a temporary bargain, and if she makes it for a longer time, she always reserves to herself complete liberty of action, some intervals of freedom, and the power of breaking her chain whenever she pleases; whilst the 'honest woman' makes the bargain for her whole life, without any hope, of ever being set free: for we need not take divorce into account, were it but for the fact that a divorced woman is adversely viewed by her 'honest' sisters. … A common courtesan, even one who lodges in a house of ill fame, has her Alphonse,' some one to whom, and some place wherein she can give sincere, true and disinterested love, which the average honest woman cannot dare to allow ​herself, without the imminent danger of losing her right of alimony. Now, as to the moral difference. It lies in this: that one possesses only one husband, together with the respect of society, whereas the other has many, and is despised. Though I cannot for the life of me see what logical connection there is between a number of lovers and the obligation for a woman to respect the rights of humanity. Again: the police take charge of the street-walker's health; but who sees after the wife that her own husband has contaminated? The former may die of anything; the other, the honest woman, in childbed, if married; if not—if, having no portion, she cannot have a husband—she may die of what you will—and there you are! And Abolitionists arrange congresses, publish books and pamphlets, found philanthropic institutions, refuges, Christian associations to raise fallen women, and young people's leagues to shield their purity during school-years. All this, to what purpose? That a common doctor, and not the police, should see after the street-girl's health; that a few silly females should be shut up, not in bagnios, but in sewing- rooms; and that some women may have to teach their ​husbands certain things which the latter have not yet learnt! And all this in the interest of 'coming generations!' An empty phrase. Is not all that most ridiculous?"
She laughed; but to me her words were painful.
"But then, instead of this, are we to do nothing?"
"Not at all. Let us found homes and refuges: not for the women, but for the children whose mothers are unable to take care of them. And as to the so-called ignominy, that will remain; but we ought to laugh it to scorn. And allow me to add," she went on, in a more earnest tone, "that to loosen in so far as we can all artificial bonds is a far easier and a more natural task than to draw them still tighter. Both roads lead to the same goal,—with the difference that in one case the goal would signify freedom, and in the other slavery."
As she spoke, I remembered what Witold had said to me about her.
She abruptly broke off. "Oh, let's join the company! What will they think of a hostess who neglects her guests so!"
In the drawing-room, Owinski had not ​made his appearance as yet. Gina, as beautiful as a portrait by some Old Master, was reclining silently, in an amaranthine-coloured easy-chair.
Imszanski shot a glance and a faint smile at Mme. Wildenhoff, and offered me his arm to go in to supper.
Whoever it was—Amiel, I think,—who maintained that women do not care to be analyzed, was in the wrong. It is rather men who dislike such analysis.
Why does a woman rarely fall in love with a man inferior to herself? Because she wants to be loved for all that is in her. And thence proceeds the grievance, not less distasteful than groundless, that men do not look on women as having minds as well as bodies. Now a man is quite satisfied if the woman acknowledges his superiority over her.
Those whom I like best are not those who attract me most, but who are able to comprehend and to realize my whole power of attraction. That is why I dislike to hear Imszanski babbling, in a superficial and general manner, of the excellence of my nature, not knowing in what it consists, and unable to grasp it.
And that, too, is why I have a liking for ​Wiazewski, and a wish that he could find it in his heart to love me.
Spring is coming. With a hot sun overhead, there is a cool breeze around. I feel joyful, and frolicsome, and full of animal spirits. I could fall upon the neck of the first man I met in the street! To be loved by somebody, that is my craving. I might feel less fearfully alone and cut off from everything in the world,—I would give many a year of my life. Lord! if anyone would kiss me … now!—Only, not one of those … Oh, not one of them!
So many years have passed away since that parting, never to fade out of my mind! Yes: he was the only man I could ever have loved. … How quickly it all passed away, and how completely it all came to an end! Strange.—A bit of life.
And now it sleeps, that happiness,—sleeps beneath the flowery palls of many a springtime, past and gone.
Such a spring; oh, well-a-day! And in my heart and life all is so blank and so dismal!
I have lived but a short, a very short time; and notwithstanding, how many and how fair ​flowers 01 memory have I culled! If I could only remember them all—all of them—why, then, life would be endurable still.
And I am ever, as I go on, closer and closer to life: I wade along, athwart its foaming and tempestuous current; but it is in vain I would try to plunge into its waves and moisten these lips of mine, so parched with thirst,—as if I were traversing a sea of quicksilver, whose dry metallic drops fly into liquid dust when they are touched.
And still I have to wait—to wait—to wait for something else, something like the spring in its glamour and its sunshine—to wait for a marvel, a prodigy, a miracle, that is to come!
In company with Gina and Owinski, I was just leaving a coffee-house. In front of us, surrounded by several men, there walked a woman, rather thickset, far from tall, who wore a short-skirted, bright-coloured dress, and a wide-brimmed hat, also of a bright hue. She went slowly, with an undulating motion of the hips, turning, now to right, now to left, now behind her, chattering with lively interest, and addressing them all together, her hands meanwhile nimble with gestures like those of a flower-girl offering nosegays. We ​caught glimpses of her profile,—very long lashes and a short straight nose. There seemed to be some witchery wafted towards me from that figure.
"A cocotte? I asked Gina.
She looked at her, and nodded, with a lowering face.
We had previously been talking of love. She resumed the subject where I had interrupted her.
&hellip "Ah, but I am not by any means telling you it is absolute bliss. No. Love only intensifies all things whatever: and thus, not joy only, but pain as well. Love is an exceedingly powerful stimulant, the strengthener of all that belongs to life. And this, when all its colours are thus suddenly brightened up, becomes like some magic fairy tale, some eternal Divine Vision of life. …"
Owinski, plunged deep in his musings, was not listening to us at all, though Gina spoke especially for him. The golden fire which flashed in her eyes died out when she realized this.
"We ourselves are alone in fault; it is we who have brought about that immense misery, the fiery pain of which is now eating our ​hearts out. For every time we have turned a man away from us, every denial of the lips that belied the pulsing of the blood is a sin against Life. Every such night, when those who craved love for love received it not, but were perforce obliged to purchase it with gold, is a sin against Life—of which we are guilty.
"And therefore should we all—like consecrated priestesses,—go forth:—forth to suffering and to shame, with the laughter of Spring, and its cry Evoë! love for love, joy for joy, pain for pain,—welling up from our hearts!"
"But why then pain?"
"I do not know; but so it has to be. Surely you feel that intense joy is not to be purchased without intense pain."
Owinski, looking down the long vista of the street, took not the slightest interest in what she was saying. Gina became silent; it may be that a feeling of shame had come upon her.
The strangely bewitching woman had stopped, coming to a sudden standstill to take leave of some of her companions. Her laughter resounded through the brightly lit, deserted street, with all the effrontery and witchery of Life itself.
Half-consciously, Owinski turned towards ​her, and so did we; a breath of the coming spring seemed blowing in our direction thence.
"Is she to your taste?" Gina asked her fiance, with a curiosity in her tone of voice that she strove to make light of.
"What did you say?—oh, I don't know, didn't see her," he returned, wool-gathering as usual.
Wishing to please her, he again turned round to look; but the whole company had already disappeared in the doorway of a neighbouring restaurant.
Gina took his arm, with a gesture of famished and baffled desire. Laying her head on the sleeve of his great-coat, she brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek.
"No," she said to me in an undertone; "no, I cannot tell; I myself am ignorant of the end for which suffering exists; why must there always be suffering?"
Still Owinski heard not a word we said; so we could converse quite freely. For my part, I could not love a man so continually lost in thought.
"Seldom have I happened upon a type in such sharp contrast to all that I am," she ​continued, alluding to the woman we had just seen.
Far down in Gina's eyes, whose nervous energy was tired and worn out,—somewhere very deep down,—there shone a livid gleam of disquiet.
She gazed searchingly at her fiance, but there was no change in the expression of his face. After a time, he was aware that her glance was upon him; then he bent forward to her, and, stroking her glove, said smiling:
"What is the matter with you, Gina?"
"Nothing—only love for you," she whispered.
Afterwards, we sat with Mme. Wildenhoff almost till dawn.
"What's to be done? If he loves her no longer, he cannot be forced to stay with her," said Mme. Lola to me, speaking of Owinski, of course. "Changes in feeling have nothing in common with ethics and the sense of duty." … And so on, and so on.
Gina approached us presently.
"To-morrow I shall be living by myself," she told us. "I am now in such a state that I can't bear any one, not even so amiable a person as Idalia. She will live in my studio, ​which she likes very much, and the room that she rented formerly will now be let. I should greatly like to find another tenant for her."
Mme. Wildenhoff turned upon me directly with these unexpected words:
"Wouldn't you like to lodge with Idalia? She plays so beautifully; and that family life must, I fancy, bore you by now."
It then occurred to me that Mme. Wildenhoff's intention was to get me away from Imszanski! Was I right? Possibly.
"I shall think it over," I answered in a pleasant tone. "Though indeed I like just as much to hear Martha play."
This staying up all night long nearly once every forty-eight hours or so fatigues me beyond measure. They—that is, all the others—have nothing to do; they rise at noon, and enjoy plenty of money and leisure; and their greatest enjoyment is talking interminably about the deepest problems of existence. But for me, what with having battle with sleep in the morning, to walk so very far to my office through mud and slush, and to sit motionless at my desk for so many hours, those nights charge me with a burden very hard to bear. ​I have, it is true, a frame of iron: but such a life would wear it out at length.
I am weary and miserable, and from time to time I feel almost distracted. My state is that of one who has an appointment, and waits, waits, waits, through the hours and through the years, although the time allotted to keep it has long since passed by. I experience the same fever of impatience, the same clutching at my heart, when in my delusion I think I can at last hear his footsteps; the same chill of terror, when for an instant I think he will never come.
All this is very banal, very "missish." Yes, I know, I know. But now and then it is simply beyond my power to keep down, simply overwhelming. For the time assigned to me, the wonderful time of meeting with one whom I love, fled into the past so long, so long ago!
Ah, it has come, that time! It came yesterday. I had already felt it in the air for many a day; it was in Martha's eyes; my own heart told me. And while I yearned for it constantly, yet did I fear it like a sentence of death.
Having returned long after Martha had ​fallen asleep, he noticed that there was a light in my room, and tapped gently. I did not answer: nevertheless he came in.
"How late you have stayed up reading!" he said in a whisper. And then, seating himself on the couch beside me, he remained silent.
Covering my eyes with my hands, I let my head droop as low as to his knees, and in an instant was possessed with a mad, frenzied effervescence of expectancy. I shivered all over as with the ague; then shook all over with soundless laughter. Something was leaping up in my breast, palpitating in my very throat, in my brain, in my hands that were covering my eyes. … Had this unparalleled excitement lasted but one moment more I should have cried out aloud with terror and agony.
Then in an instant I grew quiet, overwhelmed with a sense of sudden numbness: and I let my head droop yet lower. Witold bent over me, and kissed my hair and shoulders. And then he raised up my head, and showered kisses on my eyes and mouth and throat.
Not one word of love did we speak. ​, long before, we had understood one another. But there were a thousand thoughts rushing through my brain.
He bent his marvellously beautiful head down to my knees, and whispered low some few strange inaudible words—words of incantation, words of magic: he could afford to be humble, for he was like a king who knows how mighty he is and how supreme. And then his lips were very red, as on fire. …
All at once I shook myself free with a hissing intake of the breath, and gently extricated myself from his embrace.
"What, my Queen of the Icy Caverns!" he said in sport, with his eyes fixed upon mine. "Has some thought of death come to make you afraid?"
"No; I was thinking of Martha."
His bantering humour left him at once.
"Oh! for once in our lives surely we might learn to think only of ourselves," he said, and his tone showed that he was vexed with me.
"And have you found that lesson so very hard to learn?"
"That's unkind of you," he whispered, and closed my mouth with a kiss. … ​
"And now I have no more love left, not even for my husband. Not that I love another, not that Witold has made me suffer torments beyond endurance. No: I am merely unable to feel anything else in the world save pain. The very thought of him is a torture."
As she spoke, I bowed my head very low.
"It may be that there is some world in which Kant's 'categories' do not hold, where we are out of Space, out of Time. I believe it is so. Sometimes space does not exist for me: I have the power to see all those he has loved with him in one place. There are moments, too, when time does not exist for me: I can see them all together in one instant—both those that have been and those that are to be; yes, those that are to be, Janka."
From under her brows sho threw me a questioning glance, and went on:
"But I can see, I can fancy nothing, save under the mental form of Pain. Yes, and I have thus discovered a new 'category'!"
It were difficult to say why, just at that moment, I remembered Wieloleski and his discovery that land-owning was also a ​ and this put me in a humour of pleasantry that it was not easy to shake off.
"Looked at through this prism of Pain," she continued, "the sun itself is black, the most superb flowers in the Red Garden turn to tongues of flame, and the cistern filled with flowers of bliss changes into an infinite, infinite ocean of blood." She looked round, and shuddered.
"Pray, Janka, do not go to bed to-night; do not leave me alone during the dark hours. Truly, I cannot remember when he went out. I think he was not at all at home to-day."
"Yes, he was; he dined with us."
She passed her hand over her brow.
"You are right, but it doesn't matter. At any rate, he will not be here till morning. Janka, do not sleep in your room!"
By this time it is impossible for me to endure the sight of Martha. She fills me with such mystic awe that I am ready to shriek aloud with dread of her. I feel as though I were the cause of all her afflictions, as if it were I who have marred her life. Her eyes hurt me—those great dark-blue, sorrowful ​eyes. But all the same it must make no difference to her; to her who—
On returning from the office, I stepped in to Mme. Wildenhoff's, to see about the room Gina spoke of. At any price, I must get away from here. I want never to see either her or him any more.
Mme. Wildenhoff was a little paler than her wont; she looked out of sorts, and complained that her head ached. I understood that something had gone wrong between him and her. And again my heart was crushed with fear. Only when I looked at her did I remember that she likewise— &hellip I had for the time being entirely forgotten that fact. My first impulse was to flee her; but Mme. Wildenhoff retained me against my will. She, I think, has not made any definite guess; but the other!
"I must confess to you," she began, "that all I have made you think of me is untrue—a mask of mine, a mannerism, an empty theory. All women are at their heart's core exactly alike; during all their life they follow one thing alone, and perish in pursuit of it."
"You mean love?" I questioned, trying clumsily to feign indifference. ​
"Yes. That is the one thing. It is our fate; if not the first thing that we pursue, it is always the last that we give up. There is no help for it—none. We may be all our life forcing upon ourselves the conviction that we have the same rights as men, and are capable of bearing the same amount of liberty as they; but there must come a moment when, for that one true love, we most willingly give up all its counterfeits."
"But you have, Madame, the comfort to know that men too are liable to a similar reaction. When quite sated with freedom, the very greatest profligates will settle down to a married life."
"Only for a short while, and then they begin all over again, and return to their favourite pastime. … Why, take Imszanski, for instance; you surely know him well. …"
My face flushed up as red as fire, but I undauntedly raised my eyes to hers. She, on encountering my gaze, blushed, too. Once more I felt an uneasy flutter at my heart.
She burst into a sudden transport.
"I love, I love, and without any return!—Oh, how unlike me, is it not?"
Whereupon she laughed hysterically, and ​then shed tears, tearing at her handkerchief with her teeth. She was waiting for me to put her some questions, that she might be able to confide her sorrows to me. I thought I should soon be likely to go mad.
At last Gina came in. She took me to Idalia, a fairly well-known pianist, who returned here from Paris a year since.
The room was very much to my taste; so was Idalia. There, all is tranquil and artistic. There I find nothing of that monstrous life which hurts me so—that lie which I feel here in my eyes as they look, in my mouth as it speaks!
Now I have left the Imszanski's for good. Even for my nature, life with them was too exquisite a torment.
Martha, according to her custom, has understood everything but let nothing come to her as a surprise. Nor has she in any way altered her behaviour towards me.
When I told her it was too far for me to go from her house to the ofiice, she never asked why, during close upon three years, I had not noticed the distance. She appears not to know that I am aware she has no more trust in me.
When, for the last time, I entered my room, ​in which there was but little change (for only a few of my things had been brought to their flat) I burst out crying. Martha stood by my side, grave and mournful.
Later, too, at the moment of my departure, there came to me a horrible pain of unbounded bewilderment, that took me, so to speak, suddenly by the throat. All this was, I thought, so heart-rending, so incomprehensible!
Imszanski was speaking to the porter who helped the man-servant to take my things downstairs. Then I asked Martha: "Don't you—don't you think it were better for me to die now, this instant?"
A smile dawned in her face, which she averted to hide it.
"No," she said; "there is no need. Nothing comes to me unexpectedly now. … And latterly I have found an enemy—in myself besides."
Quietly, daintily, she kissed me on the lips, and then, with a gracious gesture, gave her hand to Imszanski, who was going out to take me to my new abode.
I sit for a long time, spending the evening with Imszanski. And I enjoy myself. ​Although I do not for one instant forget her, that graceful melancholy woman, who now is wandering through the magnificent apartments of her lonely dwelling, always awaiting him, though she knows he will not come, and at the slightest noise rushing to the ante-chamber, listening with her ear close against the door, and her brain on fire with excitement. But the billows of undisturbed stillness are beating all around her. … And then she goes back to her rooms, and seats herself upon an easy chair, and again upon a lounge, trying to fall asleep; and to keep herself from sobbing aloud, she bites her fingers hard. … And in a little while she goes once again and listens at the ante-chamber door. For now I am no longer by her side; now she is quite, quite alone; and so cruelly abandoned!
Not for an instant do I forget all this; and yet I enjoy myself. The faint bitterness of this tragedy gives, I suppose, an additional flavour to our amorous and delightful dalliance.
Witold would prefer not to speak of the subject, which I nevertheless bring forward again and again. ​
"But tell me now, how could you behave with such abominable baseness, forcing yourself into Martha's life so? For you married her under downright compulsion: I well remember that she resisted with all her might. Were you at the time really in love with her?"
"She attracted me extremely, and I was puzzled by her great love for virginity. Never before had I found any woman with the instinct developed to such a degree. And I was then in a romantic, an idealistic, a Platonic mood, with which Martha harmonized to perfection."
"Well, and how was it that this mood of yours came to alter so quickly?"
"I found Martha just a little disappointing: and even at the time when I married her I was quite sure that she could not satisfy me for long. All that alluring mystery of her ascetic philosophy of life merely proceeded from anæmia and poverty of temperament."
"Witold! Witold! do go back to her again. For remember; I shall never love you as she does."
"No, I will not; I will not," and he gathered me in his arms: "I will not leave you, nor would I, even if you came to hate me. ​Besides: what, in this whole affair, has pained Martha most? Why, it is your leaving us. She is always sitting in your room; and she very often talks of you, and wonders why you don't come."
I had reached the conclusion that all Witold had said was but of a piece with the rest of Martha's behaviour, studiously correct in regard of him: but I have got a letter from her to-day.
"Come to me, Janka, come! Do not bear me more ill-will than I bear to you. Remember that everything in our relations is still just as it was before. The memories are too deep-rooted; I cannot—— Once I loved you even more than——
"I await you. M."
I shall go to her to-morrow.
She received me, clad in a black dressing-gown, with grey borders and a silver fringe. I found it hard to conceal the painful impression that I felt. We talked together in a friendly way for about an hour.
With some air of mystery, she explained to me the idea she had of fitting up a boudoir ​entirely in mourning. "It might be made quite ornamental. The walls hung with crêpe, the furniture of black wood, upholstered with white plush, crosses of silver and of ebony, standing and suspended chandeliers of silver, a profusion of such flowers as are used to dress a catafalque, a large table in the centre, covered with a black cloth. And the boudoir lit with wax tapers only."
She then showed me an album bound in black leather, with a silver cross that stood out in relief on the cover.
With an embarrassed smile, she explained its contents to me.
"Here I have placed all Witold's loves, in chronological order," she said, and the very sound of his name made her blush hotly. "The number looks very great indeed, but this is because I have in many cases several portraits of the same person."
I looked it over for a time, enthralled and captivated by these faces, each of a different type, some laughing, some grave, some pathetic, others comical or exotic or common-place, these full of fire, those ethereal-looking; many attired in the strangest raiment, or posing in voluptuous attitudes, and stretching ​out their half-nude limbs with serpent-like grace,—all these surrounded with Oriental magnificence: and again exquisite women, very lady-like in their British stiffness, and the sexless elegance of their tailor-made dresses simple but striking. A multitudinous chaotic assembly of many a style and many a nationality, down to one monstrously sensual negress, no doubt a singer in some music-hall.
"Since you have been away," she said, "it has been a custom with me to pore over this album. Those different faces remind me of the different periods of my life. I possess but few belonging to the old times of Witold's love-making; but of those he loved since he married, not one is w^anting here. Some of them I purchased myself."
"That," I observed, "was of old a custom of yours. I remember well how as a girl the collections you liked best to make were post-cards with photographs of handsome actresses."
"Oh, but that was quite different," she replied with a shake of the head. "I feel such a pleasure in gloating over this collection!"
"Yes, the pleasure you take in self-inflicted torture!" ​
"No, not even that. You see, I gaze at those beautiful faces, those full red voluptuous mouths, those white rounded shoulders, so pleasantly smooth and soft; I look through the garments and see the colour of the flesh beneath: and each of these women I fancy delirious, swooning in his arms; and so I feed my mind with the thought of their delight in him—or perhaps (I am not quite sure which) of his delight in them!"
Her nostrils were quivering. She settled herself in her soft-cushioned seat, and closed her eyelids; they were red with tears.
On one of the first pages of the album I found Mary Wieloleska, clad as an Algerian girl, blithe and blandishing, and far better-looking than in reality. Towards the end there were about a dozen photographs of Mme. WildenhofT, and one—a small one—of that French actress whom we had seen at Lipka's restaurant. The thought flashed upon me—a very unflattering one assuredly—that she had already placed me there too; but, sitting as I was by Martha's side, I could not possibly look at the last page. Besides, she herself held the album, and showed me no ​photographs after those of Mme. Wildenhoff and of the French actress.
The same thought occurred to us both at once, and it cast over us the shadow of a moody silence.
She laid her head on my bosom, and closed her eyes with an expression of the utmost fatigue.
"Don't go on like that," I said to her soothingly. "That way madness lies, and you might easily get there."
"Oh, that is very likely. Indeed I wish I may. Oh, to lose memory, and consciousness, and all feeling!" And then: "For I am everlastingly wringing my own heart, Janka!" she added, very sorrowfully.
Silently, I stroked her long dishevelled hair, and all the while, with tender craving and emotional entrancement, my mind was reverting to Witold.
"Are you my husband's paramour by now?"
It was with some surprise that I was aware the question evoked in me a reaction of outraged dignity. But I choked down the feeling, and unembarrassed, though with downcast eyes, I answered, in a low voice:
"No, not as yet."
"That is better. You may then presently become his wife."
Her mouth was slightly twitching. She has that most unpleasant habit of melting with compassion over her own woes.
"Only, please, Martha, not death! Don't let us hear about death!"
"I am in a very bad way."
"The idea! You always have been so terribly afraid to die; you told me so. Do you remember?"
"Oh, but it's quite another thing now!—Afraid of death, I?—No, I desire it with all the desire of my wretched heart. Yes, I desire it that you may become his wife, that you may yourself fathom the depths of the tortures I have gone through, and bask (as I am doing) in the beams of the bliss they give; that you, like me, may taste the delight of them by cupfuls brimming over!—Yet more, yet more!—May you quaff your fill of wormwood, till you overflow with it!—be suffocated with the mortal scent of those flowers of his—drink in their odoriferous delight and the poisonous steam of them, even to agony, even to death!—May I be avenged, when you are forced to yield him up to another! And may the ​knowledge that even death itself is no sufficient expiation, make the bitterness of your last hour bitterer still. … Oh, God!"
She hid her face in her hands; she was trembling all over with the violence of her spasmodic outburst. Finally, she fell on her knees before me, covering my hands with kisses that I felt burning hot.
"No, Janka, these words of mine are not true: they are lies,—lies! There is no longer any hatred at all, nor any thirst for vengeance: there is none—I love you! … I shall die, that you may be happy—in his Red Garden—and that he too may be happy by your side. Don't you believe me? Won't you look into my heart? My only wish is for your happiness: beyond this, I have no wish whatsoever. … I humble myself at your feet thus, see! and bless you that in your turn you have taken away from me what to me is dearer than life itself; that you have poured into the cistern of my bliss the last drop of that nectar which inebriates unto death. I love you: it was Christ, was it not? who gave the command that we ought to love our enemies. … Hear me!—I am dying that you may be happy with him. I wish you all happiness. I want to ​receive death at your hands,—your beautiful hands, so soft to caress. I would not have you feel any twinge of remorse: I would you could kill me, and yet not know that my death has cleared the way for your triumphal chariot.—Oh, Janka! be happy!"
Her head fell back; her eyes closed fast, and her teeth were clenched, showing between her half-open lips.
"Slay me. Oh, slay me!"
Now she has fainted. I lift her up, and lay her limp and lifeless body on a couch.
The purple chamber grows dark in the gathering twilight.