Part 14

“There’s one point—I must tell you, my dearest love, that you make me suffer extreme tortures. Yes, you do. You sometimes torture me to such an extent that I lose all self-command, all patience.... I am in torments, to put it plainly—I beseech you, believe what I am saying now. I cannot break myself in to accept your theories. I am unable; besides, I will not.... You make no sacrifice, you. Have you ever given anything up for my sake? No. If not, you have no right to lay down conditions. You must take me as I am; try to understand me and to adapt yourself to me, rather than me to yourself. Remember, I have no sympathy whatever with high-flown sentiments; I cannot walk on stilts. I cannot, no, I cannot! All that is such a trial to me that I am often longing to get away—away—as far as I possibly can go! And so I concoct untruths, invent mythical shooting and supper-parties, and go to imaginary meetings—simply because I have to breathe now and then. You can see that I am at present speaking the truth! Not that I do not love you! Oh, no! who is it—if I did not love you so deeply, so intensely as I do—who is it that could make me bear this even for one instant?... Truly, you have not the slightest idea to what lengths of despotism your strong individuality drives you. Your demands on me are endless, Janka; you put me in fetters, with your exactions, and those tastes of yours that I have to follow. Have I ever, in anything whatever, interfered with you? No; never have I brought forward the slightest claim to anything; nay, I have preferred that you should feel yourself in some respect to be in arrears with me, for I reverence the liberty of others. Why can you not have the same toleration for me?... And then, for the life of me, I cannot make out why you are, all of you, of such jealous dispositions; nor why you all go on everlastingly philosophizing in that way!”

His outbreak having exhausted him, he sat down on an arm-chair at some distance from me, and proceeded to light another cigarette.

For many minutes, I was dumbstruck, trying to dig my way out of the ruins of that building which had fallen upon me so suddenly and in a way so unforeseen. Who would have expected this from this page of mine, with his sweet, tawny eye-lashes.

At first, I was unable to realize it.

“But I see, Witold, that you have not the least love for me—that is, for what is most essential in me; I have at last found it out.”

I mused awhile.

“And then, besides, what you say is untrue. Recall which of us two revels more in high-flown, naïve, silly, maudlin sentiment! Who was it was always dreaming of an ideal ‘brotherhood of souls,’ instead of regarding love in the ordinary way? It was I who cannot bear what is high-flown; I, who always had to bring you down from your stilts.”

Witold was looking out of the window. There was in his bearing aristocratic boredom and lassitude, plainly expressed.

“Ah, Janka,” he said, this time in a tone of supreme indifference, “that, too, is on your part all theory. Of this you only make use, that you may struggle against the high-flown sentimentality which you feel within you, though you disown it, and deny its existence. And the eternal conflict with yourself in which you are plunged, and your empty theories, with their unconscious hypocrisy—these are the best proof of what I say, and the most high-flown sentimentality of all.... Only you delude yourself.... You are just as other women are, capable of infinite self-devotion and sacrifice. Hear me still. If I were now to love you no longer, to go away from you and forget you (men forget so very readily), you would be longing for me, and in anguish, like any other woman in the same situation, and in spite of all your ‘positive’ theories; you would be miserable, as you were during the last two weeks when we were parted; and you would again write first to me. And should I not come in answer to it—as I had a great mind not to come, notwithstanding my ‘idealistic’ way of looking at love—why then, you would write again and again, even to the tenth time! Don’t say you would not; I know you well. Oh, how well I know women! I’ll tell you what: I am still more certain that you love me and will be faithful than I was in Martha’s case, for all you say about paying me in my own coin, if I were false. Martha could forget herself for my sake; you never could. A bundle of theories, of sentimental scepticism, of self-assurance: that’s what you are! A poor frightened bird always popping its head under its wing!”

I felt quite broken. There was an immense and awful void in my heart. I had the odd delusion—or had his words suggested the feeling?—that I really experienced the weakness of which he spoke, and was unable to escape from his hands. Thereupon, I began to cry.

“I don’t—I don’t believe—that you ever loved me!”

In an instant he had changed his manner, and become kind and gentle as he had always been before. He came to my side, with caresses and words of comfort; even a little friendly banter.

“Alas!” I groaned; “why did you never tell me about this before?”

“Because I was quite sure that you would burst out crying, as you are doing at present, you naughty child!”

At those words, directly and on the spur of the moment, there fell upon me a sense of strong distaste. Back to my memory came in swarms all sorts of seeming trifles, which, together with many a minute detail of our past, made proof demonstrative and irrefutable ... of what he was.

“And you were quite sure, Witold, of something else into the bargain!”

“What was that, Janka?”

With downcast eyes I answered, smiling:

“That I should never love you any more.”

I had spoken with absolute candour and certitude. I knew this to be a necessity of life to me; and I wiped my last tears away—

“Bah! give over, little girl. Do you not see this too is silly sentiment? You yourself don’t believe what you say.” He still spoke as in tones of tranquil persuasion; but I could see disquietude looking out of his eyes.

I smiled at him once more, saying: “Whether I believe or not, matters little. What matters is that you certainly do!”

He turned a trifle pale, and felt nervously for his cigarette-case. “Give over!” he cried out roughly, on a sudden, and again came towards me.

I rose, quivering all over with excitement, but managed to say, calmly enough:

“I should not like to part from you too tragically. And since I have had enough of love in general, and enough of your person especially, I am afraid I must ask you to have the goodness to withdraw now. Let us shake hands on parting. Go.”

He came forwards, with knit gloomy brows, and looks which betrayed the storm that raged within him. I stepped backwards. He stood for an instant struggling with himself, and I fully expected he would rush at me.

But his breeding prevailed. He made a courtly bow, kissed my hand and retired.

I stood where I was, with head bent forward.... That page, with his dear tawny eye-lashes—with his soft sad eyes—with his lips, of the odour of faded roses—he that once had been mine!

“All the same,” I whispered to myself, “the thing is done at last!”

To-day I feel I have crossed the Rubicon, and am standing on the farther shore, not very sure whether things are better with me now. And yet, I should not wish to go back again.

I have this morning received several nosegays.

Flowers to embellish the funeral repast! Flowers on the coffin of one gone forever!

But that is nothing. No, nothing, I swear! Often and often the monument over a sepulchre may turn into a gate that leads to a new life.

Smilowicz has come to see me.

He, too, is mentally depressed at times: which I should never have suspected.

He edged himself into the very arm-chair in which Witold had been seated last evening. For some time he was silent; and then: “There are days,” he said, “when I think myself an idiot for having wasted my life over a mere shadow. Oh, how I envy you!”

“Why, is your life wasted?” I cried in amazement.

“You have been at our lodgings—and you have seen.” ...

“Well?”

“You have seen all!”

“But your wife is a happy woman,” I said, trying to take the optimistic side of things; though all the time I was saying to myself (and I really don’t know why): “How is love possible between those two?”

“My wife may be so,” he said, slowly. “Sometimes I cannot.”

“They say it is a great thing to have children. Even if you do not attain the goal you aim at, there always remains something of you.”

My remark elicited no reply from him. I could see painful and bitter thoughts flit over his thin face, as he looked round the room.

“You have no end of flowers!” he murmured.

“These are all _flowers of farewell_. These at least you need not envy me.”

His face darkened.

“You know how ill I am. That is what makes me so hateful. Not that I regret life, but that I have nothing in life to regret losing.”

I did not answer.

“To know for sure that death is at hand gives you quite another outlook upon life. An extraordinary attachment to things positive springs up, together with an intense hate for abstractions. Each renunciation, each victory over self, is to you like a fresh nail in your coffin.”

“But you surely love your wife?” I asked him, after a pause.

“I do.”

“And your son, too?”

He gave a nod.

“Well, then....” I tried to draw some comforting inference, but unsuccessfully. “Well, then....” I repeated once more, and once more relapsed into helpless silence.

“Ah, how kind you are!” he said in a low voice, and looked at me for some time with a grateful expression. “And how beautiful besides!” he added unexpectedly.

I felt startled: mere instinct on my part, for I had no reason to fear. He glanced away from me, and turned his attention to some orchids that stood close to him, stroking them with his bony hand.

“When I ask myself now for what reason I did what I did, I can find no answer to my question. Such flowers as these; I have gone through life, always trampling upon them; why? Why should Obojanski cut them to pieces, that he may, in them and from them, hit upon some new abstraction or other—their genus, their species, their variety? Why do you call them _flowers of farewell_? Oh, now that I know how terrible the way of self-denial and virtue is, I should this day like to lie on a bed of flowers such as these.”

“I can answer to your question: You trampled the flowers, because you were a strong man.”

“Is love of life a weakness then?” He fell a-thinking.

“Perhaps it is. Perhaps I care for life for the same reason that made Voltaire confess before he died: vital energy giving way. And after all, life!”

Here I set to explain to him at great length that life is in reality an evil, and not worth regretting when it goes from us, that in its track it leaves a bitterness still greater than the bitterness of self-denial and self-control, and evokes a yet stronger reaction....

To that he said: “Yes, the reaction which life brings is directed against life, and makes it easier to die. All the better.”

“It is well,” he added. “It is not after all life itself that I wish for. I wish only to be convinced—convinced by experience that life is an evil thing. This is all that I would have.”

When he left me, I presented him with a great many flowers, begging him, as a pretext, to carry them to his wife from me.

Looking out of the window, I saw him going his way, clad in a fur, notwithstanding the mildness of the weather, and pressing my flowers to his heart.

In the evening, I sent to Wiazewski, asking him to step in. I thought he would be some consolation to me; but though he made visible endeavours to show good humour, he had none. I therefore proposed we should take a walk.

It was a splendid night, fine and breezy, and steeped in the sweet, drowsy, dizzying perfume of coming spring. The lamplights twinkled away, far into the distance, like innumerable strings of diamonds; the streets were deserted, but brightly lit. The white moon was now and then visible above the irregular line of the housetops. All was picturesquely calm and cold—a condition that I especially like.

Our way led us down a great thoroughfare, along which a few belated carriages were passing.

Stephen was jesting; but it went against the grain. He was telling me about the tragical fate of some disappointed suitor.

Just in front of us, at the very corner of the street, and opposite the doorway of a large hotel, a brilliantly elegant equipage, coming at full speed, suddenly pulled up.

A servant ran to open the carriage-door. Witold jumped out nimbly, and helped a woman to descend.

Springing lightly from the step, and walking by his side at a rapid pace, magnificent in billowy furbelows and lace, and spreading around her an atmosphere of dainty odours, Iseult Lermeaux went in.

Witold’s eye caught mine at the very moment when, helping her out of the carriage, he was about to take her arm. In the glare of the electric lamps, I saw him turn deadly pale. He bowed instinctively; his arms dropped to his side: he was at a loss what to do. Wiazewski’s presence embarrassed him, and he stood like one transfixed. She turned round and also glanced at us.

And thus they disappeared as we walked down the long bright vista of the street, and we saw them no more. “No laggard, that man!” I thought. “The very next day!”

“As I don’t wish you to feel sorry for me, Stephen, I will inform you that I have already broken with that gentleman; so that his doings do not concern me in the least now.”

At my words, Wiazewski slackened his pace.

“Why, in that case, Janka ...” he began.

“Pray, Stephen, don’t. I begged you once before——”

He said nothing further then, and walked on for a considerable time with head bent down; finally, he said to me in an undertone:

“May we not think of marriage, merely as a bond of friendship?”

“No, no!... Can you not see that a wife never has the disinterestedness of a friend? How can she be at one with her husband in everything? In many cases, she would be wronging herself. For instance, what interests me most in you—your scorn both for things ethical and emotional—would, if I were your wife, become hateful to me; and your close acquaintance with feminine psychology and the art of love-making, would either be dangerous to me, or, as recalling past times, unpleasant at the least. And you, you would have to become insincere; to gain a wife, you would necessarily lose a friend: and surely a friend is worth more....”

He walked along in silence, listening to me.

“And besides,” I concluded, “let me tell you that you have come too late. A year ago, at the time when you never would treat me but as a friend, it would have been possible. Then I was not unfrequently vexed with you, calling you (I remember) a boarding school miss, when you extolled friendship and poured your love-theory into my ears. To-day I am not for love any more. Not because Fate has dealt me any crushing blow. Nothing of the sort; but merely because it has all been most fearfully boring to me. And at present I am taking my revenge for it upon you, in the proverbial phrase: ‘Let us remain friends.’”

I had quickened my pace. Wiazewski said not a word. I felt as if I was hastening towards a dark chasm which ever drew back before me, fleeing as I advanced.... I want all to be over—to lie there, at the bottom of that murky chasm; and, do what I may, I cannot arrive at the brink. And my teeth are clenched with pain.

“If you knew how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!” The words flashed then through my mind: a reminiscence of the far-off, far-off Past!

“I cannot understand you in the least. Never, never, should I have acted so in your place.”

“Well, Gina, it is over. Tell me now what remedy you would advise me to take. How do you yourself manage to bear life? To remain passive, doing nothing—that were surely impossible. Work? But work is of no avail. Unless something happens to rescue me, I shall have to leave the office; I fear I am about to go mad.... Are you still interested in art? You paint very little now; I cannot make out why.”

Gina shook her head with a drowsy air. “I always preferred Life to Art.”

“Why,” I said, noticing that she was in evening dress, “you are going out to-night!” The thought of staying by myself all the evening made me shudder. At the same time, I felt my cheeks colouring, for I feared there was a mortification in store for me which I could not understand. “I trust you will tell me quite frankly.”

For a few seconds she knit her brows and reflected. Then, “I think,” she said, “that it will not be impossible.... I have for a long time wished to make you the proposal; but, in such a matter, one cannot be too cautious.... Yet, after all, we too have something in common. And I have learned to know you.”

Abruptly she came to a decision.

“Then—yes, I can recommend something to you. If you hold out, it is only by its means.”

“Give it me, quick!”

“Wait a little. I must in the first place demand of you to keep this a profound secret. I hide nothing else that I do: yet this I hide. Secondly: it is something that, for effects and surroundings’ sake, we do in conclave. I shall take you there.”

We went.

Radlowski came to open the door. When he saw me, he was taken aback, though he tried to carry it off under a show of courtesy.

“We have a neophyte here,” Gina explained.

But the explanation rather increased than removed his trouble, though he at once pretended lively satisfaction. He said aside to Gina: “But something must be done: Emma is here.”

Gina laughed. “Oh, all the better! If you have nothing but that to make you uneasy!”

Radlowski was now more at ease. He ushered us into his bedchamber, beyond the studio, and left us there together. Now and then we could hear a confused sound of talking, though the voices were low, in the next room.

“And Emma, who is she?” I asked.

“Oh, a most beautiful woman, though not exactly admissible into society. One of the celebrated _étoiles_ of beauty, formerly a model of Radlowski’s.”

Gina, picking up a small phial from the toilet table, took some of the contents herself, and then gave me directions how the narcotic was to be taken.

We went into the studio, where a wealth of carpets, hangings, bits of tapestry, and wide low Ottomans was scattered about. Nothing here revealed the artistic disorder of the typical _atelier_. In a corner, however, there stood an easel, with a half-finished canvas—a portrait; and several paintings hung from the walls.

By the delicate radiance of several glass and paper patterns of artistic design, I perceived some men and women, who all rose to greet us as we came in.

Emma I recognized at the first glance. She got up and walked slowly towards Gina, looking all the time straight at us, out of wonderfully bright and unnaturally dilated pupils. She wore what was not so much a dress as a veil, beneath whose light clinging folds, of a steely blue tint, the shape of her body, not covered by any other garment, was discernible; and a broad Venetian girdle, gold-wrought and ponderous, dangled from the wide hips round which it passed.

Many a fair woman have I seen in my life; but, at her sight, I overflowed with admiration. As soon as I beheld her, I had a desire to laugh aloud, and kneel down, and thank her for that she was so marvellously fair.

All that had hitherto fascinated me now seemed to be effete and colourless. I would never have believed that any being so majestical, so like a classical antique, so royally more than beautiful, could exist in the real world. All there was of pure nature in her was—that she _lived_; the rest appeared like a masterpiece of painting, of sculpture, of poetry. She was indeed fairer than anything in nature—whether in the azure heavens, or in the meadows, or in the forests—fairer than a Midsummer night!

She kissed Gina as she went forward to welcome her. To me she gave her hand only, with a courteous but frigid mien. Her eyes, looking into mine, expressed distrust and scrutiny, though she strove to appear icily serene.

The other woman present belonged without question to “good society”; a pleasant, handsome, dreamy blonde. Radlowski, when he introduced us to each other, artfully found means to avoid uttering her name. She was one of the _irréprochables_, come here incognito. All the men were already known to me by name: two painters, a few literary men, and a poet. Like Emma, they too had unnaturally dilated pupils; Radlowski, Gina, and the irreproachable unknown lady were all alike in this respect.

On making acquaintance with these people, I remarked, not without a pleasant surprise, that all the collars were immaculate, and none turned down; that not one tie was eccentric, not one head of hair superabundant. On the contrary, their dress was in good taste, their behaviour unaffected, their bearing quietly refined. Seen in the midst of this company, Emma was a far greater anachronism—twice as striking, twice as fantastic.

They all speak under their breath; no one contradicts, no one is excited. There is no general conversation, only a few utterances here and there. They talk neither of literature, nor of painting; life, and the present day, is all they speak of. They hold discourse about frivolous or ordinary matters, with elaborate elegance; and their fashion of taking things, their tone and temper, shows at once what manner of men they are. They are of those who have now left behind them the Past—the stress and storm of finally triumphant Decadentism—and have arrived at some sort of fragmentary synthesis, which they have set up as their standard. Their mental equilibrium has bestowed upon them an amazing excellence of form, a philosophical calm in their way of looking upon the world, and an ecstatic cult of life, which, from their standpoint, becomes all but synonymous with the Beautiful. They are all characterized by great enlightenment, mental distinction, contempt for all unsightly mediocrity, picturesque in their life, and a moderation inexpressibly artistic and reposeful—something like the Greek soul.

One of the painters exclaimed: “I should like to remind Emma of the promise she made us last night, which was so gratifying to us all.”

“Ah, yes: we are all expectant.”

“Emma is something of a _littérateur_, and writes poetry,” a slender fair-haired young man beside me explained.

An exception to the universal custom took place. She made no bashful excuses.

“As you like,” she said.

With exquisite grace in every movement, she rose from the sofa, and traversed the studio slowly, that we might feast our enchanted eyes on the spectacle of that fairy-like beauty.

Enamoured, not unlike Narcissus, of her own goodly form, and radiant with her lofty queen-like head, her shoulders moulded as perfectly as a Greek statue, her cream-hued limbs just visible beneath the clinging tissue that she wore—she came to a standstill opposite me. With a motion as harmoniously entrancing as a strain of music, she adjusted the golden fillet on her superbly chiselled Pagan brow, and began her recitation:

“She is in love, the Ice-Queen,—charmed and spell-bound; Strings of cold pearls fall from her iced cascades; Flowers in her frozen cisterns weirdly blossom; Flowers in her chilly grottoes flame like gold.

“I have this night guessed the stars’ Runic riddle: ... There, on the verdant banks of Life,—alas! Some one hath rent in twain the shroud sepulchral.... Under that shroud sepulchral Sleep lies dead.

“Why should I yearn impatient for the morning, Since it is writ that I expire at dawn? Oh,—for my heart distraught still loves Life madly,— I will my true love call to me to-day!