Part 12

At that instant I drew back, and—with all the force of my rage, hate, despair, and revenge—revenge for everything and for us all—I dealt him a furious blow with my clenched fist, right between those phosphorescent greenish lustful eyes!

He reeled, and fell along with his chair on to the floor. Gina was at the door in a flash.

I flung down upon the table all the money I had by me, and, slamming the door behind us, rushed out in Gina’s company.

No one was in the passage. I walked out of the saloon, my face by this time wearing an unconcerned expression. In the cloakroom we put on the hooded mantles we had taken to the concert. I went home, shorn of all my strength, and in a state of complete collapse.

An astonishing woman, that Gina! She never asked me for any sort of explanation.

“This explosion scene has done me good,” was her indifferent and only comment.

From this day, I am her friend.

I have told Gina all about the whole business, from beginning to end. She said I was terribly naïve. “Things could not possibly have turned out otherwise.” She advised me to forgive Witold. It was only if he had loved another that I could have had any cause for complaint. But such a passing connection as that!... Besides, I had no rights over him; and moreover, he was a man!... Owinski, too, had been several times unfaithful to her; and yet, though their relations had been very different from ours, she had always forgiven him: though indeed not without difficulty.... It was only now that the inwardness of suffering had come home to her.... Had he been willing, she would have agreed to his having a dozen others besides his wife!

“Never would _I_ agree to such a thing as that,” I replied. “If Witold gave me up for the love of some other woman, then I should at least be sure that my misery was of some service to others, and that there was on both sides equality of rights, since I too might have just as well fallen in love with another.... But if he is false to me for a mere plaything and to amuse himself with what does not mean any more to him than a good cigar, then I am absolutely unable to act, and quite defenceless against him. I shall never, never be able to do the same. And, between the measure of his guilt and of my retaliation for it, there is such huge disproportion as makes me ridiculous in my own eyes.... Why, when Roslawski forsook me, I was also most miserable: but in his behaviour at least there never was anything one whit so mean, so dirty, as this.”

“I have not the slightest wish,” returned Gina, “to impose my philosophy of life upon you.”

He has excused himself; has assured me, even sworn that I am in error. I have refused to believe him. Women are hugely credulous, credulous in the extreme.

I have not seen him this whole week. He came here twice, but was denied entrance, as I ordered. I don’t care for the forgiving system. I don’t care to become like Martha....

However, if I act thus, it is on principle only; in reality, I am tortured by his absence. My feelings incline me to believe that he says true.... Surely he cannot possibly be thus false to me.

I fear greatly lest, if he should come again....

No, no.—I am going to call on Wiazewski, who has of late been quite neglectful.

I started by complaining of things in general, and with but little of personal feeling. He has hitherto known nothing about my relations with Witold. And I am also ashamed of this love, in which I have been playing so ludicrous a part.

“... And to think of the years, the golden years of youth, gliding, gliding, gliding by, beautiful, but empty as some marble bath of ancient days!...”

“But I told you once that men of modern times do not care to bathe in those waters. They are too clear, too cold; they run with too swift a stream, and with too many, oh! far too many an eddy and deep hollow. Janka, they fail to _attract_.”

“Let me say, Stephen, that I am unhappy, and therefore come to you. You, as a friend, have some responsibilities toward me; you can’t get out of them. All that I am is going to pieces at this time; and I do not know whether life or death will come of the change which is taking place.”

I had never yet yearned for Witold as at that moment, though I knew perfectly well that no one had done me the wrong which he had done.

“What about Helen?” I asked, with friendly interest.

“There again! I have been disappointed in her.”

“What, she! Unfaithful to you? Can that be?”

“Ah, no! I, rather than she, have been at fault in that respect.”

“Well then?”

“Well, what shall I say? I have broken with her.”

Forsaken! She too had then come to swell the list, after Martha, Gina, and myself!

“That’s horrible. She was so very much in love with you.”

“Whereas I, alas! have a preference for women who care for nothing very much.”

“Yet I know you have been moody of late.”

“And you are right: yes, I have.”

“Well, what was it that troubled your Olympian calm? The parting scene—tears—upbraiding?”

“_Pas le moins du monte._ She went away without uttering a word.”

“Then what was it?”

“That I have simply lost my belief in the last dogma left to me from childhood. Everybody complains that women are too devoid of heart and brains and soul; and I now find that it is in vain I have sought for a woman bereft of those superfluous appendages.”

“But Helen, as I understood, answered your ideal of a woman to perfection?”

“I fondly thought she did. Oh, you cannot imagine what I would give to meet a woman really soulless, primitive: you know,—a creature absolutely and bewilderingly unenlightened.”

“Really, I quite dislike you to-day, Stephen. You are positively in bad form!”

“Please forgive me.”

“What special mark of her culture has Helen given you?”

“Culture? That would have been by far too bad. Besides, it was something perhaps even worse: a mark of character, firm conviction.”

“Up to now,” he continued, “I had been quite satisfied with the girl; so, a few days ago, I proposed that she should give up her employment and come to live with me. Would you believe it? I met with a point-blank refusal. You fancy, perhaps, it was marriage she wanted, or something of that kind; and, word of honour! If she had, I would have taken her willingly.... Not at all. She told me sententiously that ‘although she recognized free love, she never would be a kept woman!’ What do you think of that, eh? Ha, ha! It’s something astounding, isn’t it?”

But I could not laugh. I sat silent, thinking of many things, far more pained than amused.

Stephen continued: “A girl with such splendidly expressionless eyes of a bright azure, like a piece of water! No shadow of any yearning for the Beyond, no shadow of anything like intellect or brightness of thought!... By day they reflected the sun, her lamp in the evening, and my own eyes at night. They had the beautiful dead gleam of pearls. She might have been less pretty: with such eyes, she was pretty enough for me. And then, that slow, sleepy, brainless voluptuousness in her glance! And her white flashing teeth, too! I tell you, there is not a single spot or flaw in any one of them; her molars are like the molars of a ruminant, large and flat. She did, it is true, write me letters without necessity; but, through my influence and under my direction, she had come even to forget her alphabet. She truly gave me the impression (false as I know now) that she never thought at all.

“And that girl ‘recognizes free love’! Such a surprise may well make one throw all the beliefs of one’s life on the dustheap!”

All this talk of his seemed to me decidedly shallow and foolish. Why on earth was he trying, by means of that far-fetched theory of his, to justify the fact that the woman simply bored him?

He has now made up his mind to seek for his future Dulcineas amongst kitchen-maids.

“Dressmakers have decidedly too much culture for my taste,” he said.

“I sincerely hope you may be successful,” was my parting wish.

Witold, contrary to my expectations, has not yet called again. There is something going on that is beyond me, incomprehensible.

I am assailed by innumerable thoughts which make me turn pale with fear.

He, too, is possibly “seeking oblivion,” as I was; but he is scarce likely to stop in time, like me. Moreover, his vengeance will not, like mine, be a more horrible pain than the injury itself.

He has a supremely great advantage over me, and the conditions of the struggle are the most unequal possible.

Will he delay coming for long? Is it conceivable that he has given me up for ever?

I was in tears all this evening.

Idalia felt it her duty to try and comfort me. A kind, lovable girl she is. And she knows how to deal skilfully with “semi-tones” of every description. Her eyes are gentle, her face a little faded and careworn; there is something maternal about her.

“We take everything so very seriously, so very much _au tragique_,” she says. “And that, you see, puts us more in their power. We should analyse things less, and learn rather to glide over them. Analysis is a two-edged weapon: it easily turns and wounds you. Do endeavour to pass along with a cursory look about you, even with half-closed eyes; things will seem different at once. Don’t cry any more: and if he should come, the servant is to let him in, is she not?”

“On no account; on no account;” I cried, in a fury.

“But why?” she murmured, gently stroking my hair. “Why? To let him in—that does not bind you in any way: you are free to act as you like. And why not hear what he has to say?”

“Because I have heard him already.”

“And you would not believe him? You were not right in that. It is so easy to believe!... And whether the thing is true or not, what does it matter to you? What is true in some part of time may be false in some part of space; and _vice versa_. A fact is true, but only for the day. When he is beside you, and assures you of his love, you will have the greatest of all truths: the indubitable truth in the present. What took place before?... What is to come later?... Never mind: it is all the same!”

And I think she is in the right.

Every now and then Czolhanski comes and calls upon me. He came yesterday, too. This, I think, is rather too much. God! how I detest that man!... He enters, sits down, stays for three mortal hours, pays me a few compliments, lets out a few commonplaces about the lamentable position of a journalist: a man untidy, unshaven, rather dirty in his ways, and very pretentious: his finger-nails are in mourning and his hands always moist. No use to take up a newspaper, even to be more uncivil to him still: he will not take the hint and go. Once he wrote a sonnet to me! Journalism has evidently been the death of his poetical talent. But, Lord! what does it all matter after all? He _will_ kiss my hands, though I always beg him not to, he disgusts me so. If I were in his place, I should go and hang myself! And he—he is quite unaware of my feelings, and very much self-satisfied.

Yesterday Radlowski came as well, and for the first time, under the pretext of a message from Gina. His company would be most pleasant, for he is so very extremely young; and his eyes sparkle like a diamond in the sun, with a sort of delectation so lively that it seems unnatural; painfully so. He has again asked me to sit for my portrait.

I have promised: but I cannot—I cannot as yet.

What is the reason of Idalia’s playing so very poorly to-day? She writhes and twists herself to and fro at the piano, with more than sensual affectation; she suddenly and convulsively coils and uncoils herself like a snake, during the more brilliant passages: and she goes on playing interminably, from dusk till far, far into the deep, dark, never-ending night.

And why is she doing so, this day of all others, when all my strength to bear it has left me?

The longing, the pain I feel, is stifling, is strangling me: it bites at my throat, and I shudder to feel it cling round my feet like ivy, together with the thought of my blighted joys.

These I see lying on heaps of tropical flowers—lying in long rows, naked, asleep, and beautiful as dreams of what is past forever.... Over them there blows a gentle breeze, scattering the flower-petals upon their fairy-like forms; but it does not wake them from slumber. Only, from time to time, do their long black eye-lashes open and shut, slowly and rhythmically, as the silken wings of a fluttering butterfly. They are dreaming of their delights.

Say, O say! why does all this give me such infinite pain?

And then there always come to me haunting visions, which are my childhood! A dark outline of forest-trees; a perspective fading into infinite, infinite distance, and the clear waters wherein life lay hidden once upon a time. The vision stands, I know not how, for the times of my childhood. Music always renders concrete even the most abstract of things.

Something is tearing my soul; it is the impossibility of any delusion about....

Ah, do not, do not bite thus at my throat!... I cannot weep!... And do not make the sharp-edged music of the violin soft by the dark velvet touch of your smooth hand!... And do not, do not press my bosom so; my heart will burst!... And do not hug my body with that tender embrace, that Lesbian caress!... Nor twine like ivy round my feet, uttering that awful moan for blighted joys!...

Witold, O Witold! behold, I return to you! O sleep, O life! Yes, I return....

I have written the following short note to Witold to-day:

“If you wish, you may come. J. D.”

It breathed the spite—the unavailing and very plebeian spite—of my humiliation. I fully recognized this: and yet I chose to send the note, thus styled.

I expected that he would come like a conqueror, triumphant and self-assured; and thinking so, I for the time being ceased to love him at all.

As it happened, he has belied my expectations.

On my return from the office, I found him already here. He was quite childishly delighted, and for a long while I could not free myself from his rapturous embrace.

“Janka, Janka! how cruel, how cruel you have been!” he cried out in broken words amongst his kisses. “You are a monster of barbarity! And of stubbornness too! For you know so well how much I love you!... You should have had trust in me, as I have trust in you.... Have I ever given you any cause for mistrust? I hide nothing from you, nothing whatsoever!... Oh, my dearest, my only one, my darling!... I know that you will be mine one day—mine! It must be so.... Could I ever have exposed myself to the danger of losing your love? Think of that. Think how different you are from all other women.... I know you could never have forgiven me, if....”

So handsome, so kindly, so affectionate! I knew how intensely I loved him. And then, in the secret depths of my heart of hearts, I was aware that I could forgive him anything in the world.

Yet I said: “My love for you would then instantly turn to hate, as it did for the last few days....”

He feigned to be horribly frightened. We were both of us in ecstasies of joy.

Long, long, did we speak together of our love. We should love each other forever and forever: and with what intensity!... Only we were to have more of mutual trust, and to be more tolerant one for the other: there would be no more of those former bickerings which had been so painful to both of us.

Closer and closer we drew. Hallucinated with rapture, I was almost out of my mind. The air around me grew rosy, and the walls had a purple glow, and the lamp was burning—how can I express it? Black, quite black! Bending down his head, he fixed his eyes on me.

“Janka!” he said, with low but clear-cut articulation; “Janka!” His voice was changed; it was strangled and seething with emotion. There was in it just a touch of surprise—surprise at the victory which he now foresaw.

I was startled, and a shiver ran through me. A noise as of a whirlwind murmured confusedly in my ears; my throat was filled with a hot suffocating fragrance, and I felt as if the air I breathed had grown solid and came in morsels.

“Janka, Janka,” he whispered again, as if struggling with his deep perturbation; for he was greatly moved.

In a sort of hypnotic trance, I stared hard into his dimly glistening eyes. I kissed his mouth.... All my soul, with all its faculties, transported from the infinitely distant confines of the world of thought, was concentrated and poured out in that one kiss of mine!

Ah! I cannot understand what it was that at such a moment held me back, since I and all that was mine had now been transformed and had passed into one desire alone. It was no longer thirst, it was hunger—raging, ravenous hunger. I clung to him with all my might, and whispered and stammered a string of broken incoherent words; and, in a delirium of mingled agony and bliss, I sighed under my breath:

“Oh, my only one; oh, my own!”

And afterwards—afterwards, when he had left my side, ungratified and disappointed, as he ever had been—then, with a burst of heart-rending tears, I threw myself down upon the floor near the door which had just closed on him, and listened to the sound of his footsteps, and murmured imploringly:

“Oh, come—come—come back! I am yours!”

But had he come back—I knew it well—I should have resisted then, as always.

And perhaps it is true to say that such a thirst as mine was cannot possibly be quenched by any delight on earth!

All is once more as it was of old. I am much in love, happy (to some extent), and slightly sarcastic about things in general. Witold comes daily; he is good and tender to me beyond words.

Sometimes our conversation flags. Then we read together—novels and poems only; for Witold, scientific literature is non-existent. A volume of Owinski’s poems, just published, has given us many a pleasant hour.

She is right, Idalia: I had taken all things—and that also—too much in earnest. At present, I am trying to live more practically than I ever did.

Of the present situation, nothing can come—neither marriage nor anything else. So, as I reckon, it may last at the most one year more. I have to be prepared for that, and let the parting come by degrees and as easily as possible; so I am looking beforehand for some rock or other to which I may cling when wrecked. Now and then, when I think of my ideals once cherished in the past, the notion still comes to me (though rarely) of a love both _deep_ and _wise_.

Better seek something far other than love—an “aim in life”—some idea—asceticism—even such as a nunnery can provide! “_Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille!_” Yes, but—is it “_assouvie_”? Well, I am rather tired, not only of love, but of the whole atmosphere I am living in.

In truth, disdain of all things is best of all. Yet again, disdain itself would be one of the things to be disdained!

I am curiously entangled at present, and can scarcely recognize myself as “Her of the Ice-Plains.” In this continual struggle with myself, my strength has been exhausted.

Ah, yes; another incident. Czolhanski has proposed to me in the most naïve fashion imaginable. Although I am a woman of “advanced” ideas (and they say such a one hardly can make a good wife), still he is not alarmed; he trusts in me! Besides, he could not live with any woman unable to understand him.... Also, he gets two hundred roubles a month, which, together with my office salary, ... And so on.

I have refused him categorically, hopelessly, irrevocably. And—which is much more strange—I have done so without the shadow of a smile.

When I am very weary and out of sorts, I go and call up Wiazewski. There are people who resemble those ships which were formerly used by slave traders to convey their human freight: these had a double hold. And Wiazewski is one of such men.

He allows any one to overhaul his soul on the asking, freely and frankly. Only he does not like them, when they come to the hold, to knock too hard: the hollow sound underneath would betray his secret. Beneath the false bottom, there is a dark den into which he smuggles those he has enslaved to his will, never to go out free into the world again. The knowledge of this would spoil his reputation in society as an estimable man.

“Do you know, Stephen, you look like a man who has a bit of a tragedy upon his conscience, and is concealing it.”

He laughed. “Since when has Janka begun to grow romantic?”

“Since I fell in love, of course!”

“You!!” Astounded, he stared at me.

“My dear friend, what can there be to surprise you in that?”

“I really ... no, really I do not know. I was only taken aback. Certainly, on your side, it is but a natural thing. Don’t you see? I had grown so accustomed to look on you as belonging to a third sex.”

“There now, how unjust you have been! I on my own part have always looked on you as a man.”

“But come, tell me with whom you are in love, and whether your bliss is all that fancy painted it.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Bliss! It is you who are romantic now, Stephen. At the best, I am not bored. And the less bliss I have, the less bored I am!”

“Then you are not bored?”

“Oh, I am—very much so at times. At such moments, I come and call on you. I have learned to cherish our disinterested friendship ever more and more.”

He moved as if annoyed a little; then he lit a cigarette.

“Whom?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Whom do you love?”

“Oh, an ideal according to your own taste. _A bon entendeur salut._” Note: All the better if you have caught my meaning.

“Won’t you tell me?”

“No, I won’t. Guess, if you want to know.”

“A fool?”

“To some extent, yes.”

“Handsome?”

“Too much so by far.”

“Wealthy?”

“Indifferently.”

“It is—it is Imszanski! _Et tu, Janka!_” he exclaimed, looking into my face with a curious expression.

I knew what question was implied by his look, and slowly shook my head.

He breathed more freely.

“And yet I should never have imagined....”

“How’s that? I have only been practising your own theory of love.”

“Ye—es, but....”

“Well, but what?”

“This is quite another thing. Of primitive elemental simplicity he has nothing at all.”

“It is true. In that point, and in that point only, has my practice departed from your theory. But I think good art is not unfrequently preferable to problematical simplicity.”

“Yes, no doubt. And, moreover....”

“Pray continue.”

“I myself have ended by abandoning that theory of mine. My experience with Helena exploded it definitely. I have radically changed my attitude; now I am without any conviction at all on the subject.”

“But I imagined that the fallen edifice of your theory was to be restored by the aid of kitchen-maids.”

“Vain hopes! They have proved impracticable, even to myself. My experiments in that quarter only completed the ruin of the theory.”

“Well, then, what are you going to do about it?”

“I am seeking love.”

“Oh, dear! _Et tu!_ And it was to you I came on purpose to get a rest from it. There must be some fatality about all this—the atmosphere is vitiated everywhere.... Stephen, have mercy, have mercy!”

He smiled compassionately.

“So soon as that? Janka, how soon you get tired!”

We went to a _café_, where we saw Gina sitting along with Radlowski at one of the tables. There were none vacant, so we joined them at theirs, and I introduced the men to each other. Wiazewski objects to artists; but he must have been pleased with this one, whose exterior is that of a typical “gentleman.” I was in exceedingly good spirits, and set about flirting with the painter. He was now much changed from what he was when I saw him last. His eyes are not bright any more, and he looks a good deal older. We fell to talking upon speculative subjects, and I strove to be original and sparkling. Radlowski’s eyes were fixed steadfastly on my face all the while.

“Well, I see you are far more of a woman than I had ever thought you.”