Part 10

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 commonplace, 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 wanting 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. Wildenhoff, 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.

III A CANTICLE OF LOVE

“I expect you will be here in a day or two; so this letter will never be sent. I am writing only to be alone with you this evening; and if I write it, it is but for my own sake.

“It is an autumn evening, most marvellously fine. I want to be with you. For I do love you, my dear, my only one!

“The earth is black, the sky is blue, the gloom is deepening. A little while since, Idalia handed me a letter from you; and now I am in a vein of tenderness. I will not even chide you for excess of openness in your naturalistic way of expressing your desires. There are moments when I can pardon everything.... I want to show that I love you, very truly and very much. The days of my ill-humour, the days of my dark misgivings, have passed away now, and the days of bright vision are come. This very morning I was saying to Idalia that I should advise her not to fall in love, for I am so far gone that I cannot fancy myself capable of loving anybody but you....

“I should be a hundred times better to you than I am, if I were not afraid. For now, since you made your confession, I feel afraid lest you should get the upper hand: and in love, I do not believe that two can both be on an equal footing. And if I but yield up to you one jot of my rights—anything whatever—you show no generous feeling at all, but triumph over my self-abasement, as if it were abjection. Witold, have some little generous feeling; allow me to rest for a moment from this eternal watch I must keep over myself; let me love you in peace, were it only for a short while.

“Again and again, the painful thought is borne in upon me, that—this time as well as the last—the pleasure of meeting you will not compensate for the pain of longing when apart. My mind misgives me, too, that you might have come to-day, but did not: ‘Why? you really didn’t know,’ as once before. I make no reproaches, but am a little piqued, and may once more go off, as I did last spring, in order to get away from you, so that you may learn better how genial, how clever, how incomparable I am.

“There is no doubt about it: you love me more than I love you. And if I say this so frankly, that is only because it is not absolutely true. Now I am going to tell you a most important thing, which I never yet pointed out to you quite clearly, and to which you have to give a direct answer. So, attention!—We might love each other equally, but I love you less: why?—Because you do not make yourself in the least uneasy about my love, neither as to what you confess you have done, nor (which is far more important) as to the disposition you may be in at the time. You have done what you have done, and you feel as you feel; and you find frankness a more convenient thing than concealment. And so I must constantly keep your love at high pressure, forcing my disposition, and not showing what I really feel. Now this is unjust. Once you said to me: ‘Never allow me to get the upper hand, for I should make a slave of you: as soon as Martha became my slave, I ceased to love her.’ I then resolved to hold my position of superiority, became more secret, less natural; and all that is in me of feebleness, abasement, poverty of spirit,—the _ewig Weibliches_—I most carefully locked up and kept to myself alone, in order to provide our love with a longer existence, which surely concerns you as much as myself. If now I told you not to press your cheek against my dress, nor humble yourself before me, because I cannot love where I do not honour—you would begin to sulk and to tell me, with the air of a cross sullen child, that you are the one of us two who loves most, and that I have shown myself a selfish girl.—In my opinion, the preservation of our mutual love is the affair of us both, and like an altar on which we should both of us sacrifice absolute sincerity, especially as concerns passing dispositions, and more especially such as imply self-abasement; we must play a part, wear a mask, and keep strictly to ourselves all such grievances as might lower one in the eyes of the other. So I ask you, who know this well by the experience of your own life: am I right or not? If I am, then: Do you intend to make me love you as much as you love me, or would you lower the level of your love to that of mine? That is: will you bear the burden of constant watchfulness with me, or do you deliberately consent that I should set it aside?—Answer me that. And do not forget all about it in ten minutes.—And, in spite of all, I love you very much.

J. D.”

Witold returned only yesterday. He was at a great shooting party in Klosow, where he was obliged to go, as a proof of his friendly relations with Janusz, and so put a stop to rumours rife among the neighbouring gentry that Martha and he were separated. Once I forbade Janusz to shoot hares; all that has long ago been forgotten, and now he astonishes everybody by his skill as a marksman. The Past—is the Past!

These few last years, which have not told at all upon Witold, have changed Janusz beyond recognition. He has married “a young lady from the country,” and grown fat and rubicund and common; he has four sons, of whom he is excessively proud: Witold brings me news that he is expecting a fifth shortly. The former wild primitiveness of his nature only shows itself now on his occasional visits to town, when he carouses and revels furiously, in company with Witold.

As to his sister Martha, she has been in Germany for about six months, staying at a sanatorium for nervous patients. She is allowed neither to receive any letters nor to write any. We only now and then get news from the doctor, saying that she is better, and will soon be able to return to her home. She is, as the kindly German has the politeness to add, always pining after her husband and her son. The latter is being brought up with Janusz’s boys, and the country air must have a very salutary influence upon his system.

I took but a very short leave this summer, spending nearly all the time in town with Witold, and leading something like a domestic life; for he shows himself in my case very particular about keeping up appearances. I wonder why, in his former relations with Mme. Wildenhoff, he never cared a fig for them! Perhaps he means, by taking such care, to show how much he esteems me.

He read my letter through, but made no comments on it; he suddenly remembered some incident at the shooting party, telling it to me. And then he set about caressing and kissing me: he had been wanting me so very, very badly!

“But answer my question, Witold,” I said.

“How can I? I don’t know,” was his answer, as he ardently kissed my inquisitorial eyes.

“Janka, is not this the best answer of all?”

He is always like that. My looks set us apart, his kisses unite us together.

But I am wrestling, held in the grip of my love, as a kite that soars above the clouds wrestles with the string held by a boy at play!

Idalia is not averse to having company at her lodgings, where I have met several characters in the artistic world.

Wiazewski cannot hear “Bohemianism.” Yet in spite of this he not unwillingly comes, too, to see us, and to “observe.”

“Look well at all those men,” he says. “For the most part ill-shaped, ill-favoured, sitting in corners and smoking cigarettes, and paying no attention whether ladies are present or not. All of them sceptical and pessimistic, taking no interest in any but exaggerated views, and in most deadly earnest about all their convictions. That is the type of men I most abhor. If intelligent, they grow narrow-minded; and, if dull, utterly impossible in society. You have surely noticed that the greatest fool, so long as he has no convictions of his own, may be a very nice gentlemanly fellow.”

“And what about the women?”

“They are less unendurable. They don’t talk of feminism, they don’t approve of women’s emancipation, and (best of all) they practise it very effectively indeed. They have a great deal of intuition, but for all that—and luckily so—not a grain of conscious experience.”

“Whom do you like best of all?”

“Miss Janina Dernowicz.”

“I was asking about artists; I am not one.”

“Ah, I see.—Artists? The prettiest is Miss Wartoslawska, whom I have known for a good long space of time. But just now she is far from looking as well as usual.—Why does not Owinski come here with her now?”

“Owinski?” I hesitated for a moment. Then: “Well, the engagement has been broken off for a month,” I said.

“Has it? Yes, I had heard something about his being affianced to some one, but fancied it was only gossip.... Why, he seemed to be a very passive sort of fellow, and bore the yoke meekly enough.”

“I don’t know who is responsible for what has taken place.”

“Oh, you have but to look at her, and you can’t help guessing.... Besides, women always love longer and more deeply. It is through love that they attain their highest degree of culture; and I must acknowledge that, so far as culture goes, they have outstripped men; a woman’s instinct stands higher than the wisdom of a man.”

“Why, Stephen, from where have you got this attitude of benevolent optimism towards woman?”

“Of tragical pessimism, I should say,” he answered, gayly, but then was lost in a brown study.

How am I to know? Very likely this also is love. And a good thing, too, that it came to me: I was so lonely then and so crushed with longing!

Now and then I enjoy emotions of superhuman delight, of ecstatic bewilderment. And then again there flutter about me, like black moths, certain bitter self-reproaches for the past, and maddening apprehensions as to the future,—Really, it is too ridiculous!... As if there could be anything worse than the sepulchral monotony of my life, as it formerly was!

And yet I know—I _know_!—that this is not happiness: that this romantic adventure of mine will have no morrow.

Put an end to it? I cannot; for just now the man is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. But some time or other I shall not love him any more; and then I shall hold it as a sacred duty to pay him for his deeds in the past by my future conduct.

And she, this my poor love! stands here, gazing with eyes full of frantic terror at her end, that will and must come some day!

The keynote in the tragedy of woman’s life is the fact that her need for permanent love stands in contradiction with men’s instincts and with their interests. Wiazewski calls this her “higher culture.” I think that Schopenhauer’s justification of this need as simply a case of design in nature is far more convincing. For how can we see any superiority in an instinct that we find equally developed in the most refined _inamorata_ with her deep emotions, and in the average middle-class woman, all given up to passivity and routine?

After Owinski had engaged himself to a new _fiancée_, he would still, in the beginning, come at times and call upon Gina.

She would receive him with a smiling face and serene looks, and endeavour to delude him into thinking that no change had taken place, and that, if he said he had come back to her, she would be neither surprised nor dismayed.... She would talk about things which had interested them both; about her paintings and his poems. Together they read books, treating of the Beautiful, and Life, and Love. Once he said that he could not come to see her the next day, as his intended was to arrive in town; she took it as quietly as if he had announced his mother’s or his sister’s arrival. But, though they still called each other by their Christian names, they no longer kissed, not even at parting.

On one occasion, she asked him to read her one of his poems; a thing he was always willing to do. She listened, adapting to each changing phrase of his mind as she had used to do, and following every flash of his eye.—Now, there were many works of his with which she was not acquainted: formerly, she had been the first to read anything he wrote With a composed and tranquil mien, she listened even to the love-song, written for “the other.” Of course, they were the output of the reaction which had set in: the magic power of innocence; the first confession of love from the untouched lips of one ignorant of life; the return of his springtime, of his youth, of his ideals.... Gina had great self-control. At the end of one such poem, she handed him a love-song of the old times, written three years before, and under her enchantment. And this too he read aloud as he had read the others; and, roused to enthusiasm by the very music of the lines, showed a fire too evidently, alas! out of all connection with the object which had once inspired them.

Like a tune sunk deep in memory in bygone days, the words at once brought all the past before her: it rose up, plainly visible to her mind’s eye. The vision was agonizing, and the dismay of it made her raise her hands to her throat, as if to prevent the outburst of lamentation that now tore her bosom, as if she had been a feeble child, long and unjustly ill-treated. For she knew not how long, she wept like one distraught, even forgetting that he was present and only aware that all her universe had given way, was broken to pieces, crumbled to dust, annihilated.

Some one took her tenderly in his arms, smoothed her hair, kissed those moist, red, tear-swollen eyes of hers.

She felt it, and this act, meant to comfort her, seemed to her harder than all to bear. It was a kiss of pure sympathy for suffering, of mere humanity, a last farewell kiss.

The anguish she felt stifled her; she could not breathe,—till her pain tore its way out of her breast in a tempest of weeping.

Then, as in a nightmare, she heard his steps farther, farther away, and the sound of the door closing upon him. She knew it was closing upon him for ever; she knew that he would not return.

And then there came a time when she crept to his feet, like some poor beast that its master has driven away; and when, no longer admitted to his house, she loitered about for him in coffee-houses and in the street, and importuned him with letters incessantly. Whichever way he went, he was doomed to behold that face, pale as a spectre, and those eyes, so reproachful and so full of entreaty!

At present Owinski salutes her distantly, as he would salute some slight acquaintance; but he gives no answer at all to any of her letters. Nor does he any longer call on people at whose houses there is any chance of meeting her.

When I look at Gina, Martha recurs to my mind directly.

Once I thought I had eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.

And nevertheless, there is a feeling here, in my heart,—a silly persistent feeling,—that all that has happened is evil, most evil, whereas it might just as well have been good.—An adventitious otherness; circumstances, or possibly dispositions, make all the difference....

Yes, but I constantly see those eyes,—those pure dark-blue eyes, which had not merited for her such pangs as she has suffered—and the curve of that mouth, her tiny crimson mouth, set hard with pain, and always ready to burst out into lamentations.

She sometimes appears to me as a fiend, whom I hate for her obstinate will to suffer, for the childish and insensate whim of posing as a victim, for her attitudes and her love to gloat over herself. She comes with black wings and fluttering white hands; with a beggar’s impudence, she opens out her mourning weeds and shows me her bosom; beneath her white transparent flesh, I can see her purple-coloured heart. And she points to it. It is misery that has stained it so deep a red, filling it with red fire; for there is not a single drop of blood in it any more.

And she strokes that heart with dainty relish, and smiles on me malignantly.

I—am suffering remorse!

To differentiate between good and evil is far from wise. This is why my ethical principles are of such primitive simplicity. All my culture exists only in my brain; what is emotional in me remains elemental and primitive, full of stupid sentiment and of scruples.

And therefore it is that I am so unlike other women, whose great characteristic is that their feelings are cultured.

At times, when I see him afar, standing out from amongst the crowd, splendid in shape and wonderful in beauty, I have a sense of pride that he is mine—my own! Neither a pet cat nor a dog, neither a parrot nor a canary: a man of the world, tall, refined, in life’s prime. And this marvellous creature belongs to me. It is truly hard to realize this; and my brain whirls with pleasure at the very thought of such a possession.